(fifth moment)
We stood outside knocking and knocking
He saw both of us and opened
He stumbled out of the house dazed.
Then saw the truck full of what ever we had
He still didn’t understand
So I made him, wordlessly
Picking up the damaged
Little chairs as I walked in.
By Ali A. Naqvi
(fourth moment)
He was powering down the green banks
The Strid mashing itself white on his right
My backpack in one arm
Then he stopped to look back
As I scrambled down, creaking,
Relieved that the walk would now be flat
He looked up the hills,
Children of the crags he had climbed in Quetta
Something in my hurt little city lungs
And my plump rib cage had no master
So I found a rock and slumped on to it
He watched then said “Good boy. Let’s go”
By Ali. A. Naqvi
(third moment)
We didn’t have a chimney.
It presented a problem.
I wanted a chimney
To prove the con was on.
They said to me Santa would come
Down the chimney,
Of course they were lying
There was no santa even if there was a chimney
I was sitting in the lounge
And told my father about the chimney
“There won’t be a santa , because there isn’t one”
Council houses, I knew, had no chimney.
Boring fables on TV
And Christmas came with its glitter
At least there were the cartoons
Dad tapped me. “You have a present. Go see.”
In our beaten up little flat
On the mat of the corridor
A parcel, too big for the letter box
Leaned up on the white door
Twenty years later I bought him a hat
Put it on his head and beamed
His white beard gleaming away
He was still Santa Claus after all.
(second moment)
It was one long year.
Started with classes on Englishness
In a city crumbling
As it suffered an era changing
We were like a rickshaw
Mother pulling
Me the wheels
Sometimes remembering
It was the year after
The magic days of gardens
Snakes , Bemba and song
Taken away by one long plane ride
It was the year waiting
Because I wasn’t fatherless
Like those in the hostel
Or those at the agency
And when he finally came
The Molana looked at me
“See that light? It wasn’t there before”
And my father smiled and lifted.
by Ali. A. Naqvi
(first moment)
There was a white door
Lurking the other end of the corridor
Entrance to a room tacked on
To the end of the colonial house
That was his room and locked
He was in Hong Kong he said
And in the soft summer
And lazy Zambian heat
It tempted. So I reached for it.
It swung slightly ajar
The lock slipping open
And drew me in.
There was no light save a single shaft
Pouring in from the one window
The other four were shuttered
With plans and drawings tacked on
The dust swam circles in the light pillar
Shelves stacked with books
Piles of paper leaning against the wall
Pens in glasses and ink on everything
Chaos was ordered if you looked
Jumbles had names and numbers
Set into rough readiness
Marked “Powder”, “Artillery”
I snuck out my short self
A little wiser about those hours
He would spend in there.
I would later call it Alchemy