QUETTA RECOLLECTED
(Memory piece with me at the age of five) by Rebecca Haque
A
fter the rains, after the heat envelopes me once more in this month of Jaistha, I sit in my netted verandah in the dusky evening and look at the kathal tree on the south-eastern corner of the boundary wall. Heavy, pot-bellied fruit cling haphazardly to the trunk and scores more hang precariously from several limbs. The suffocating heat stifles me, and the enervating humidity unites the foliage and me in listless dejection. Looking at the limp leaves and the silent jutting branches, I yearn desperately for the jagged kalboishaki lightning to rend the sky with torrential hail. I imagine the taste of icy water on my skin, and suddenly, sentient tactile association makes me meditate on the various categories of taste felt fruitfully upon the tongue -sweet, salty, bitter, sour, astringent, and pungent. Inexplicably, possibly in response to the impulsive drive towards wish-fulfilment, my mind entices me out of the present moment and takes me back in time to a bright winter's day in the year 1959. I am five years old, in Quetta, Baluchistan, and we live in a row of connected homes for Army officers and their families. Under the shadow of 80
the distant tall peaks of the Chiltern Hills and the green slopes of dense pine trees, I stand in awe in my wool red-caped duffel-coat (with its wood bullet-shaped looped buttons) and look in wonder at the far mountains. Having heard the adults talk of the fierce tribes of this rugged frontier province, my imagination conjures up images of caravans of warriors in flowing cloaks and coiled turbans. I am a red dot in a sea of white snow. Soft, mushy, squishy, clean snow piled in some places as high as my waist. In my tough leather boots, I walk with the slow deliberate plod- pullplod rhythm of a workhorse testing unknown treacherous ground. The air tastes fresh and sweet with the scent of pine cones. Baskets of fruit, overflowing with winter's abundant produce of rock-hard walnuts and green pistachio and almonds in their beige perforated husks and black thin tear-shaped pine nuts, lie on the open verandah, drying in the sunlight. Inside the house, in the dining room, glass jars and bowls are filled with dried nuts. The remains of the surfeit of the rich harvest of perishable grapes and plums and apricots are
