Good Morning Good Morning

Lahore

The waiting room was full so we decided to go and wait in the other terminal. It was for another bus service. As we entered, a feeling almost as if committing a crime crept its way up to us but we let it subside, after all we could get away with a little deception.

The room smelt like it hadn’t been cleaned in a while, with a strange pungent smell that was only bearable because of the aroma of assorted juices that lined a stall outside the doorway. There was a rusty breeze in the air and it wafted these playful scents together in a way that was enough for them to be ignored by our senses for the time being. In this heat even the slightest smell could turn utterly vile in an instant but it was less the contaminated air and more the army of flies dancing around that bothered us most. They did their intricate yet annoying ballet around the room and stopped only to sit down on something very dodgy on the floor, or the end of a boot, or a spot—not very far from but very much like the other questionable patterns on the floor—that seemed to be a reminder of some form of bloodshed.

I won’t think too much about it, lets think it was where a child had his nose bleed at the thought of and sight of these monstrous buses with their mirrors hanging in front of them; ears or fangs maybe. Only his imagination could decide.

There were different people, in different clothes, in their different lives, thinking about their little differing problems sitting around the room. Some stared others glanced. There were the ‘normal’ ones and the ones that looked like they were dressed to kill—others were dressed in a way you would prefer having yourself killed, or at least gauging the eyes out of people within a considerable radius of them.

For a moment I began to wonder if everyone else was thinking the same about me.

Perhaps that could explain the odd stares I had been getting as soon as I walked in? I had still been getting them from some of the ‘crowd’ particularly one individual.

I never understand why that happens. Is it a show of insecurity? Or is it a show of machoness that is associated with being a male and further more a Pakistani?

I finally had to resort to staring back, it worked, left me no less puzzled nonetheless. Interesting enough the rowdy bunch of boys in the corner in their low down jeans and tattered shirts were ignored entirely as they yelped like rabid dogs to the agressiveness of their game of cards.

I wanted the bus to arrive earlier.

Originally published at haideraliakmal.tumblr.com as part of an earlier travel log.