"Kashmir has always been more than a mere place. It has the quality of an experience, or a state of mind, or perhaps an ideal." - Jan Morris
I watched, with my dupatta over my face, as the sun rose from the east, it's burning intensity almost scorching my watery, hazel eyes. I pulled my light blue shalwar kameez below my knees so that I could watch the brightening sky with upmost peace and pulled my pearl-coloured dupatta back so it hung low on my shoulders. My dark brown hair hung in coiled ringlets just below my shoulders, like waves falling onto a sandy bay. With the glow of an angry sunrise, I watched the skies fill bright orange and pink. It was so beautiful, like dropping a yellow bath bomb into a pool of bright blue water and watching it disperse and merge. The blazing red sun shone with the gleam of a thousand spotlights, making the whole of Pakistan seem like a house on fire as it rose, merging with the pale blue sky.
In the early hours of a warm morning all I could do was watch the sunrise. With it's tempting beams shining through the gaps in my curtains, calling me to come outside and watch it. I was practically perspiring my own body weight in sweat, staying in bed would do me nothing but damage. Sitting on the flat maroon roof of our meagre abode in my wrinkled white kameez, I felt so at peace with myself. Like not even the birds could touch me. Time grew longer and the sun came higher in the sky, but I remained in the same position on top of the heated, stone roof. I fell into a sleep-like state, dazing off at the sight of the gleaming sun rising higher as my head rose lower.
Suddenly, amidst the sedative sound of birds chirping and the remote sound of cars on the horizon, I heard someone calling me from below the roof. It was a low, husky voice calling my name, echoing around the isolated streets and jolting me awake. I looked up, rather abruptly, and saw a boy that lived on my street, Daniyal Aziz, smiling up at me. I looked around house after house woke up, the street immediately illuminating with a burst of colour. Pakistan was waking up and I loved to watch it happen. The streets slowly filling with students and workers, the market stools being set up with mehndi and brightly coloured churhi.
"Hello Aqsa! What are you doing on the roof?"
Ignoring his rather amusing questions, I clambered off of the stone rooftop, that had become so incredibly hot with the heat from the sun that you could fry an egg on it. I dangled my legs down the side of the rooftop so that my orange leather sandals touched the window sill below. "Do you need help, Aqsa? Wait, I'm coming."
Before I could resist, Daniyal was directly below me, with one hand on the gutter and the other ready to assist me in climbing down. Looking up at the round yellow sun with great satisfaction, I ambled down the side of the house and stood on the gutter, lifting my brown leather satchel around my neck. Daniyal held under my arm, carefully helping me down with utmost concentration and respect. Once my feet had finally reached the floor, he repeated his question once more.
"I don't know. I was watching the sun."
He nodded slowly, though he didn't really understand what I was trying to say. "Would you like to walk to school with me?" He pointed to the direction of our school and I nodded, reluctantly. Daniyal was just another boy in my school, there was no harm in walking together, surely. "Ammi Jee ! I'm going to school now!" I called, walking down the dusty pavement with Daniyal closely beside me. "So, have you done your exams yet?" Daniyal asked dodging a large white goat that was tied up to a gate with muddy, disbanded rope. "Mrs Khan said that we will do them today." I replied, nodding to myself nervously.
"Arithmetic?"
"And Literature."
We continued our journey down the street and reached the school just before hearing the sound of shrill bells echoing around the courtyard. Daniyal smiled, "See you after school then?" I thought about his offer, carefully. "Okay, sure." I nodded waving at him as he dispatched and joined with his group of friends.
"Aqsa! Hello!"
I looked up and saw one of my best friends, Sarafina staggering towards me with a spring in her step. "Hello, Sarafina." I smiled.
"Assalamo aleikum, students!" My teacher, Mrs Khan called, standing tall at the door of the building and all of the girls in my class lined up in front of her. I looked over, curiously and saw Daniyal falling into line across the courtyard with all of the other boys in the school. Sarafina and I fell into place and we were soon pushed through the single door by the bustling of students.
"At your desks please."
I lifted my school satchel off of my shoulders and placed it onto my desk before pulling out my chair and standing in front of it. "You may be seated."
Everyone in the class sat in their chairs, in perfect unison before the fidgeting began. "Okay girls, so please put your satchels away, but keep a pencil. I'll pass around the exams now."
I lifted my satchel onto the floor, being sure to pull out my sharpest pencil, reciting Ayatul Kursi three times in my head before I began. I was a nervous wreck, shaking and quivering to the sound of my heart pounding through my chest. As soon as I looked down at the exam the numbers began to dance around the page. None of them seemed to stand still on the thick black lines on which they were placed. I strained my eyes at the bulging letters and picked my pencil off of the table, hoping that the sudden realisation of what I had to do would kick in. It didn't. I looked to the desk next to me where Sarafina was flipping over her page and my other friends, with their eyes strained and their teeth gritted, were working away. I tried again but the numbers just didn't make sense together. Like a chemical mixture that just couldn't form a compound, or two people that just weren't compatible.
"Twenty minutes left girls."
I looked up at the round wooden clock and sure enough it had been ten minutes but still I had only written the answer to two questions, my numbers crooked and strange. The answers, probably wrong. With our own separate desks I could not cheat, so I had to take my last resort. Using what little knowledge was doing cartwheels in my brain. I inhaled and exhaled slowly, my eyes blinking at a constant pace. Holding my pencil properly between two of my fingers I began to write. What I was writing, I am not sure, but it was better than handing in a page as blank as an empty bottle.
After fifteen minutes of writing random numbers that made sense to me I flipped over my page once more and dropped my pencil onto the desk. Sarafina looked over at me and I smiled a little too confidently before looking back to the front. It seemed as if I was 100% certain when in reality I was as unsure as a kitten in snow.
"Okay girls, stop now. Put your pencils down please."
After every single one of us had pushed our test papers to the ends of our desks, Mrs Khan came and picked them all up. She stared anxiously at them all, a face full of dread before returning to the front of the classroom.
"I will be giving these back to you tomorrow. Now open your text books to page thirteen." She said picking up a slab of chalk and turning her attention to the blackboard at the front of the classroom. I sat nervously, a face full of anticipation, wondering what I would tell my parents once I got my exam back. To them, education was key. How would I find a suitable man if I couldn't even get an education?
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"Your parents are going to kill you!" Daniyal gasped as we walked down the busy streets of Kashmir. "I haven't gotten my results back yet, Daniyal."
"But you didn't do well."
"No. But they're not going to ask me for my actual paper, are they?" I replied looking up as someone dried their kurtas and kameezs from outside their window. "So you're going to lie?" He asked, shocked by the prospect of me lying to my own parents. "Yes, they'll never know. It's okay."
"And if they ask for your paper?" He narrowed his thick eyebrows at me in a worried expression. He was more nervous than I was.
"They won't. Trust me."
He stopped at the market and told me that he needed to buy things for his mother. "You go ahead, can you walk alone?"
I nodded, surely. "Of course I can. Bye, Daniyal."
He waved at me before disappearing into the market.
I walked further down the street dodging paupers and sellers that swarmed the streets in large crowds. Reaching my house within minutes, I pulled my hijab back and exhaled.
Our front door was hanging wide open, the wind banging it against the stone walls of our home. I held it to the side and walked through it, seeing Ammi Jee shaping rotis in the kitchen. Her lilac hijab, laced with white silk, hung low on her shoulders and around her neck. Her long, light brown hair that I always grew envious of, falling behind her back in straight strands. "Salaam, Ammi Jee !" I called from the door of the kitchen, kissing her on the cheek as I walked around our round wooden tablet towards the stool that she was sitting on. "Salaam, Aqsa. How was school?" She asked looking around at me, her cheeks and neck covered in atta.
I took a morbidly green banana from the thatched basket that sat on the dining room table and unpeeled it slowly, "It was fine, Ammi Jee." I replied taking an abnormally large bite out of the half-ripe banana. "Aqsa! I'm making dinner." She scolded patting the circular dough so that the wheat flour shot out of it and mixed with the air. "I've already unpeeled it now." I laughed, cheekily unpeeling more, with her seething stare almost penetrating my soul. "Where is Abbu Jee ?" I asked, sitting on the counter where she was shaping the dough.
"Getting changed. He'll be down soon."
By down, she meant in the kitchen. Our house only had one floor so there was no point in using the word 'down' at all. "Achha. Okay." I finished eating the banana and threw the yellow banana peel into the small trash can that sat below the table. "Your Abbu wanted to know how your test went, today. Did it go well?" Ammi Jee asked, walking over to the large circular pan and tossing the flat dough onto it. I contemplated what would be an adequate answer to this puzzling question but I had none. I didn't want to lie but at the same time, to tell her the truth would be suicide.
"It was okay."
"Okay? What does that mean?"
I shrugged and looked down at the floor, drowning in shame, trying to reach the surface for air. "I don't know. I think I did well."
My huge lie stabbed me like a knife going through my heart though I felt the pain of a thousands knives. She nodded, unsurely but being strict was my father's job so she immediately retreated. "One roti or two?"
I put up two fingers and smiled weakly as she dropped two onto a white clay plate that was sat in front of her and pushed it directly in front of me.
I began to eat and soon enough, my father entered the room changed into a brown kameez and white pyjama. Ammi Jee pulled her hijab over her head and turned her attention to the rotis cooking on the stove. "Salaam, jaan." He smiled pulling out the stool next to me and taking his seat before having a plate of rotis thrust upon him. "Hello, Abbu Jee." I smiled, through mouthfuls of food. "How was your test, today?"
I stopped chewing and swallowed hard. "Good."
He looked me hard in the eyes with his emerald coloured pupils and frowned. "When are you getting the scores back?"
I was trapped in a dead end of never-ending questions. "Tomorrow."
He nodded. "Okay... Show me then. Yes?"
I nodded, slowly, instantly regretting that I had told him anything at all. Exams are hard. Arithmetics are even harder. What's even harder than that? Having to tell your parents your score when you got anything less than 90% and weren't the highest in the class. Being sixteen meant that I was officially old enough for these tests to be important. It wasn't just alif, beh, teh anymore. Or one, two, three. This was harder. Much harder.