next to the toffee tree

My head fell soft against the grass, and the hideous expression upon my face faded into the most peaceful death-mask. I took a deep breath, even though warriors lying face down on the battle field aren’t supposed to breathe. The cool air above me and the cool grass below lapped away the heat from my small, incandescent body. I was six.

We had been running our selves dizzy on the playing field sandwiched between the dormitory and the forest. My schoolmates and I were in the throes of some game based on an ancient civil war, where we carved turning and returning footpaths on the field of grass till all the faces and limbs blurred in our eyes, due to the dizziness. At full speed, we ducked in and out of each other, firing shots with our imaginary long-bows. Then, when fatal wound number twenty one (or forty one) was inflicted, we would pirouette, and fall to the ground. I was one of the best in the art of faking death. Many of the other boys would fall in silence (my brother often fell smiling!) but I would always let out a hideous scream as I died. Then the face of agony would slowly fade into a quiet visage. It was in this peaceful sleep that Joel had jumped on my back.

I struggled, arching my small back; pressing my palms into the grass trying to rise. This attempt utterly failed and after a few seconds I resumed my death pose. “I think this one is still alive.” Joel whispered in my ear. “I think this one is still alive!” He repeated. “I think this one is still alive.” I smile now thinking about Joel’s lack of creativity in attempts to produce a response, but I smiled then because we were children at play and I wasn’t actually dead. Since he had found me out, I was obligated and out of a deep joy for play, my lips curled.

I turned my body to face his. He had become distracted by the still raging war and was watching the carnage that had continued without us. I had never been taught to punch, and thinking back on it now, a good sock to the gut would have been my best chance for release, but lacking this gift, I grabbed his wrists in an attempt to throw him. I kicked and flailed in my attempt to remove him, but he was stronger than I, and in a much better position. Soon, I was struggling to breathe as he had now centered himself on my chest. Joel was smiling, but for me, this game was becoming less and less fun. “Joel” I coughed, “I can’t…breathe!” He, thinking I was playing the game, didn’t relent. I started to become fearful, which further constricted my breathing. When I thought I could take no more – he rolled off. I lay there paralyzed by my new freedom of air. The reason for Joel’s rather sudden departure became quite clear in the next few moments.

A small Pakistani boy was heading over towards us, and Joel had rolled off to avoid him. The boy was maybe two years old and propelled himself towards Joel and I on awkward steps, leaning forward and letting his weight carry him onward. He was smiling, eyes wide and full. He obviously had seen the fun Joel and I were having and wanted to join us. Joel at this point was looking frightened, I’m sure, because he never questioned the older boys’ mythology, which recently included a disease. The boy, which was pedaling towards me, was covered in sores. He had a pox of some sort on the full length of his body. He wore only a shirt that was unbuttoned, leaving his belly and his bottom half exposed. I sat there frightened more by his nakedness than by the blistering sores.

“How could he have had a disease,” I asked the boys later that evening, “If he was smiling and happy?” Diseased people in my young mind never smiled and never slept, they walked the dark city streets with palms outstretched under the moonlight. When they got a few coins they hid in a corner, or went down into a man-hole and ate them.

The boy came close, extremely close, and it is this moment that is etched as one of my most vivid memories of that era. He reached out a small arm ready to topple on top of me. I looked at the clean palm of his hand reaching for my white shirt. But he was jerked away. His sister had run from the door of their small home; the only building that belonged to the woods and not to the school. The look on his face was changed from overflowing joy to broken sorrow; his mouth dropped and tears filled his eyes. She pulled him away and he stared back in despair at what he had lost. As she brought him up to her hip he began to wail openly. She was dressed in a red salwar kameez; it was the last thing I saw when the two disappeared through the dark doorway of their one-room house.

 Joel ran off to tell the older boys about how I had just about got the disease, but how I was okay because he had pulled me away – right when the boy was about to touch me. Joel also had another story like this, where I just about drown and he had pulled me to the surface. Actually, he just kicked me and used me for leverage as he scrapped for his own breath of air. Later, his stories for the older boys included a scene where he comes up and doesn’t see me; amidst all his fear he goes back down to save me.

The next day, when we were supposed to be playing in the front of the dormitory, I snuck out back. Alone in the huge field of grass, I made my way to the edge of the wood. We had seen monkeys on the fringe of the forest, and gypsies a little further in, some boys had claimed to have looked jackals in the eyes – but despite the blurred lines our society of boys had made between myth and reality, we were really quite sure that all of the most fervent life dwelt in the deep deep reaches, and rarely came to the outer gates. I stood there alone, staring at the cold green face. I was a dramatic child, and mostly copying my current stare from some movie I had watched earlier that month as part of our weekly viewings. A light breeze was up, rustling through the tangled patch of ferns and weeds that stretched toward me, but the massive evergreens stood stone-still. Many souls wandering these Pakistani mountain ranges would only need to look to the great snow caps of the Himalayas, or the fiery white stars that cut through our thin mountain air – but for me it was the trees that made me feel small. I looked over; there was a dim yellow light in the window of the small mud house. Or was I imagining? More importantly, which was I looking for: the boy, or his sister?