The first time I met my cousin Iqra, at my uncle’s place, we were both twelve. She sat on the front porch with J.D Salinger’s ‘Catcher in the rye’ in her lap, while she fumbled with a Rubik’s Cube. I walked up to the porch and asked her “The swing is empty. Do you want to play?” She kept her things aside, held my hand and ran with me in the park. “I will solve the Rubik’s Cube puzzle one day. Daddy says I can.” She said. We spent the next three days playing, reading and talking about things.
I had found a good friend in her. “Iqra means read in Urdu”, she said to me as we sat on the porch reading. I told her that my name meant ‘happiness’ in Persian. “That is what connects us so well. When you read, you feel happy," she said, smiling brightly.
It was the last day of our vacation and we went down to play in the park. “I want to be a physicist like Stephen Hawking when I grow up”, she said, as her swing went up high in the air. Later when I admitted to her of not knowing who Stephen Hawkings was, she explained to me about the theory of the formation of universe.
When I met her a year later on her thirteenth birthday I gifted her ‘A brief history of time’ by Stephen Hawking. My mother’s skepticism over my choice of gift for a thirteen year old was put to rest when Iqra was exhilarated on seeing the book. “She sleeps with the book under her pillow”, her mother told me a week later.
For the next few years, I didn't see much of Iqra. I learnt from my mother that her father had lost his job. I got away from my conscience by blaming it on the absence of telephones in her town for not contacting her. I was just too occupied with my cosy life to worry about a distant cousin’s troubles.
When I was in the first year of Engineering, her father passed away. I wanted to pick up the phone and talk to her but I wasn’t sure what to say. I even contemplated writing a note to her but my absence in her troubles drove me away to disguise under the pretext of studying for my exams instead.
It was the last day of my second year engineering exam when I came home and saw my mother packing her bags. “We are leaving; the wedding is in the evening. There is food in the refrigerator.” She said. “Who’s wedding” I asked opening the refrigerator door. “Iqra’s”.
By that time, I had learnt to do away with my conscience. No matter how contrite I felt for being indifferent to her sufferings, I had mastered the art of concealing my guilt by focusing on something more prominent in my life. “It’s been so many years, she probably won’t even remember me, besides I have a class project to finish”, I said to my mother when she asked me if I wanted to accompany her to the wedding.
When I got my first job, it was her first kid’s third birthday. Our lives had moved on in different paths. A year later, she had moved to our city with her family. My mother asked me if I wanted to meet her. My guilt long forgotten, I only had good memories of our old childhood friendship. I decided to pick something up on the way for her kid. He was too young to read a book, besides, Iqra would already have plenty of them, I thought.
When I saw her on the front door waiting for us, I tried hard to hide my disappointment. I did not recognize her. She wore a pale green suit; hair oiled and tied in a braid. She looked ten years older than her age. As soon as she saw me she embraced me. I hugged her back, with a lump in my throat.
Our reunion was disturbed by a glass breaking noise which came from her house. Startled, she ran inside and got her kid holding him by his waist. The little boy started screaming. She threw a stack of pages at him and said “Here, make paper planes out of this and fly them. Don’t touch your father’s bottles.” My hand touched the Rubik’s Cube inside my bag but then it stopped when I caught sight of the paper plane. The header on the paper read ‘A brief history of time Page 46’. I swallowed another lump in my throat, took out my wallet and gave the boy a 500 Rupee note. I couldn’t bear the sight of her world. Tears streaming down, I left her place to escape in to my own.
