RIDA ALTAF
— THE AEROPLANE TO HELL
What did you say?
What did you say?
I can’t hear you anymore.
All I hear is the roar of this airplane
which they say will take me to hell.
Sometimes, I close the windows that
lead to my ears, adamant not to hear
a sound, but one can only hold down
the windows for so long, until the
roar suddenly cracks the glass pane,
the way lightning cracks the sky in
two. I can’t forget where I am going,
& I can’t remember which prayer I
am supposed to say. I wish the airplane
would crash or land into the sea, in the
middle of nowhere, where I can stay
still, not breathing until patches of my
body start to fall off like autumn leaves.
The other passengers are talking loudly.
They are unaware of their destination
& I do not know if not-knowing is better
than knowing, only that I must escape.
I try to find a parachute but the airhostess’
eyes follow me & when I ask her about
it, her full, red lips curl up in a demonic
smile. I tore them all up, she confesses
without guilt & I ask, aren’t you worried?
& she laughs & laughs until I can hear the
sounds of her vocal cords ripping apart.
When I give up & go back to my seat,
I can still hear her laughing. The man
beside me is kinder – he tells me, we
were always rats in a pipe wishing for
the rush of water to drown us & I can
only say: I prefer drowning to burning
& he laughs, too, like that woman,
like he knows a secret I don’t & when
I stay silent, he says: honey, we are
immortal. I want to weep about it but
my body turns into a stiff stone,
unbreakable, untouchable & I think:
there is a limit to how resilient we are.
In the end, when the glass-pane cracks
& we can no longer shut out all the sound,
we have to accept who we are underneath
this skin, we have to count the knives we
threw & the butterflies we trapped in our
small jars & we have to pay the price of all
of this, we have to pay the price of all of this.
KARACHI GIRL IN BURQA TRIES TO FIND HERSELF AT THE LITERATURE PARTY
Karachi girl cannot find her ghost.
Cannot find her reflection on a page.
She knows that some poems are like glistening water
but when she bends next to the river,
in a flowing black burqa,
all sees is a
d i s t o r t e d image
There are other girls there. Plucked straight out
of a white book about white dreams
& white men. They say your story will
never be (complete) if you do not have
someone to
love.
There are Princes out there, waiting to take
your hand, to lead you into some
forbidden forest, so they can protect
you from the
wolves.
Karachi girl does not want a love story.
Does not want Rishta aunties pouring into
her house. Does not want them to demand
that she be adorned as
a model.
Karachi girl is not a model. She is just a poet,
trying to climb up the ladder, without
realizing that the ladder does not
exist.
Karachi girl is so bilingual that both languages
refuse to accept her. But that’s alright.
Maybe in the future, she will know
how to build a ladder.
Alright, they say, but you must want to be a
princess. So, Karachi girl looks for her
crown, but the crown does not look good
on her hijab. And anyway, she can’t even
relate with these
princesses.
Cinderella for example goes to parties & dances
at balls & marries a prince with a foot fetish.
Karachi girl has never been to a party. Does
not know how to dance. Does not even want
to learn these things. But this is a foreign concept
to everyone else.
On the other hand. Rapunzel is stuck in a tower
& has a library. Karachi girl would never
leave the tower if she had a library. And
anyway, she wouldn’t let her hair down
just so that a guy on a horse could climb up
to her.
No. If a guy in a horse appeared out of nowhere
& called out to her, she would first: grab
a stray dupatta (sometimes a hoodie or
a towel) & haphazardly wrap it around
her head. Then, she would throw the frypan
from the window at the guy’s head. And
a number of other things.
She doesn’t want a guy to rescue her. She is
comfortable at this height. She has always
loved being a little closer to the sky.
Felt more at home with the
stars.
Still. It must have felt nice. Being all the others
in the books that are not about her. Letting
the magic of beer drain away the harsh
memory of time. Releasing all the pent-up
energy through a ridiculous dance move –
Having everybody look at her. Taking the hand of
a boy & walking underneath a sky covered
with lanterns. Except. How long do any of
these things last – and why would she want
to give herself away, to a boy or a drink or
music or anything else, if she can stay right
here where sometimes the world makes
perfect sense?
She is proud of holding back. Except. Holding back
does not make for good stories. Maybe it’s
what the English language has taught us –
it makes everything seem so
white.
Karachi girl doesn’t know how to feel the sweetness
of Urdu or Sindhi or Punjabi or Memoni or any
of these other languages, because a few decades
ago, some foreigners left a permanent stain
on her culture.
Karachi girl is choked for words. There is no
wordlessness like that of the Karachi girl.
The Karachi girls.
So, she opens the books again. The white books.
the white girls. Popular girls: bullies strutting
in hallways & pushing nerds out of the way.
She tries to find the clique of popular girls in
her school but they don’t like the ones in the
books:
not as pretty
not as dumb
not even as ruthless
save for a few snide comments.
Next. She tries to find the insecure girls. The nerds
that are pushed on their backs to lockers.
(There are no lockers) & wasn’t Karachi girl
rewarded for being a nerd?
And where are the girls with head-scarves, the ones
trying to push that one stray hair inside &
whining about looking ugly?
Karachi girl cannot find anyone she knows, does not
know who to cosplay so she shows up with
empty hands at the literature party. Her costume:
the same burqa that she wears on a
daily basis.
The other girls come up to her.
Hermione Granger.
Elizabeth Bennet.
Jo March.
Katniss Everdeen.
They ask her: who are you?
And all of the guests turn their heads, wait for the
answer, intrigued by this new presence.
Karachi girl looks at her hands.
She does not respond.
Rida Altaf is a poet based in Karachi, Pakistan. She mostly posts on her Instagram account @deskofideas but has also been published in the Red Eft Review and the IBA Literary Magazine. She recently self-published a chapbook of poems about her city called "Karachi, Mera Shehar". She is currently pursuing her Bachelors in Social Sciences & Liberal Arts, and is obsessed with tea. Because of her love of both stories and poetry, she wishes to amalgamate the two. Mostly, her poems are fictional stories mixed up with truth.