A Room Full of Books

by Mina Omer Hassan

A Room Full of Books

Waris bhai or Waris Shah, I cannot tell

who guided me more, stern and lyrical 

through the end of my childhood.

Waris bhai trained me in quick-lipped combat

and crawling conversation that defied direction,

while I pointed out left and right 

turns on the way to my destination 

and his reluctant waiting.

In the Karachi morning dust 

I would wake him—

Waris bhaaai school ke liye deyr ho rahi hai!

and he would stumble out with sticky feathered hair,

his cheeks swollen from sleep and prepared

for the perfect positioning of a ball of naswar—

his instant energy mound.

Like this, every morning I would find by my side 

the same mountainous smirk.

He promised me the future

would bring madness because I read too much 

and he had once heard about a man who lost himself  

to a room full of books.

I wasn’t frothing at the mouth yet

so I assured him I could learn

all the pashto he taught me I let slip 

into rose, sidewalk, tree, nose, question.

One leg up on the car seat, he would sigh 

when I conjured up nothing but images 

that could not reach him.

I was a child and in some ways you were too, 

going along with my running, and smashing

of walls you said I found or created.

I gathered all the words I knew and screamed 

patriarchy, oppression, injustice and about the uselessness 

of my feet in a city that kept its streets from me

while tracing lines of bougainvillea and graffiti poetry

around my neck a noose of car-window barrier and fear.

That’s when you gave me the wheel,

your eyes the impossible bright of a room full of books.

I could hear the pebbles of your teeth,

as you ground them in the passenger seat 

because I had been unleashed 

onto the sand dunes of phase 8

and you were terrified.

I put a foot each on the brake and the accelerator,

you put your face in the cups of each hand

making the sound that bored horses make.

I was tired when I demanded 

you drive me to the train station.

I wanted to move on my own for once.

Never Heer, always Ranjha—

the lover who leaves, the wandering 

ascetic whose beauty is in her flute,

not in the contours of her coveted body.

I dipped my laddoo into Shah’s words

and took a bite, not for my doomed love

but to be never Heer, always Ranjha.