I awoke Friday morning to the sound of rain. It had rained consistently for four days since our arrival. Our relatives joked that we brought the rain from Canada as a gift to them. With the rains came a period of cooling to the heat wave that preceded our visit. But the next day after a rain brought humidity and problem hair. No hair product or styling tool could tame any of our locks. My girls have very thick hair and I would hear daily complaints about how the country was ruining their hair. Forget the immense poverty and lack of life's basic necessities. I remember sitting them down at least once a day to remind them where they were and what they had at home. It didn't take much to change their way of thinking!
At 2pm, dutifully, the electricity went out for two hours. I imagined a small brown man sitting behind a large lever in the electrical station just counting down the minutes before shutting down the city's only energy source. And when the electricity was turned off, everyone's mood shifted. People went to take naps, cry about no tv, or just sit motionless with their eyes rolling to the backs of their head.
I walked upstairs and lay down in my bed. There was an adjoining balcony to our bedroom. My husband and the younger twin elected to open the door and stand on the balcony. At this point it was raining hard but the balcony had a canopy situated above. My daughter had her camera and began videotaping. Father and daughter were talking about the rain when I then heard the hubby speaking Urdu and a strange voice respond.
"Who are you talking to?" I shouted from inside. My husband said that the neighbor was outside in the street enjoying the rain.
I sat upright in the bed. "Don't talk to anyone. They do not need to know why you are outside."
My daughter explained that she was videotaping the rain and the neighbor. I closed my eyes and clenched my jaw. "Do not videotape or talk to anyone!"
The next thing I knew, I heard a gunshot. I jumped ten feet off the bed. Not a second later, my husband, with daughter in tow, leapt back into the bedroom, frantically shutting the door, pulling the drapes and flying onto the bed. I stood with my jaw hanging.
"Did the neighbor just shoot a gun?" I asked with trepidation. My husband nodded with fear in his eyes while my daughter offered an explanation."I think he was trying to shoot a bird in the other direction."
I swallowed my heart back down my throat and wondered out loud why they were talking to him in the first place. Before they could answer, we heard the second gunshot. I lay down and pulled the covers over my head, cursing and yelling at everyone to keep quiet and go to sleep.
Squeeze me? Who could sleep knowing a crazed neighbour dancing in the rain was shooting at random birds? Was this to show off for the sake of providing footage for my daughter's video!?
I walked downstairs after the electricity came on, cool as a cucumber. The aunt and uncle asked me if I heard the gunshots and I replied yes and that we were the instigators. Puzzled, they probed further and I recounted the entire story from beginning to end as they stared back without blinking. That night, our Dubai cousin walked over to the neighbour's house and politely asked him to refrain from shooting his gun as the incident upset his visiting family. VERY REASSURING. Now the neighbours knew we were visitors. Lovely.
Later that day, the girls visited the chickens living upstairs in the servant's quarters. They came down, excited to tell me their experience about handling livestock. The term, sitting duck, came back to me just then and I wished to start moving, in a car, outside. Don't ask me why.
But I think I had to confront my fears, HEAD ON, in order to move forward.
And that is just what I did.
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