Travel Thinkpiece

Zahrah, 23, Lahore, Pakistan

A lot of people I know prefer travelling with a bunch and consider travelling alone highly depressing activity. For me, the most satisfying way to travel is on foot in solitude, with my own rules. Walking through streets of your neighbourhood, you get to notice so many tiny details you took for granted behind the insulated glass windows of a car and they shame you, "How could you miss us?"

They fill me up like a warm drink and I come back home full.

Here are a few of them:

·         The trees have grown higher than the houses in our fortunately neglected neighbourhood

·         This has invited kites (which are magnificent birds!) to dwell in them and circle above us.

·         The sunflowers have gone from the gardens and irises have replaced them

·         Wires criss-cross above the street carrying strings of crows and black-crowned birds

·         The creepers draping the walls of the housed are drying up

·         Gardeners gently pry open the land and are growing marigold bushes everywhere

·         The gate at the front of our street is tangled with vines and creepers. It drops leaves as it moves.

·         Nature generally is flourishing through the cold thanks to the collected efforts of gardeners who plant, replant, water, dig and mow lawns everyday

·         The smell of methi coming from the houses near the masjid has gone

·         An office of sexually harassing PML-N supporters has developed at the mouth of the street. They ogle unashamedly at every girl who passes by

·         There is a great art gallery a half-hour walk away from my house

·         Faiz Ghar (the house where the wonderful leftist Urdu poet, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, lived) is near I could cry! And it is open to public for several talks. It has artifacts and bits from his life encased and framed around and I walked to it one day when I was feeling especially horrible.

·         Men on the street are pigs who try to make women loitering feel as uncomfortable as possible. They follow you in cars, they try chatting you up if you are alone and for a while I stayed at home after one incident. But I recovered and have decided that I will walk as much as I please.

I also saw three amazing people going about their work and I yet have to talk to them. I tried catching their eye to pass them a smile as I passed but they were busy in their work most of the time and I didn't have the courage to talk to them. All three come at 8 in the morning. One is an old woman who sweeps our street. She smokes openly, wear men's shalwar kameez and has a fluffy beard she strokes as she jokes with a group of men sitting on charpais. She has a lot of friends.

The second is another old woman who sits basking in the sun on her plastic chair reading a newspaper. I remember she used to talk to us as we passed by her house, mother, sister and me, when I was younger and she was very sweet. But I haven't seen her in a long time and I am afraid and want to ask about her.

There is a small boy, about 9, who sweeps the front of the house where he works. In one tiny hand he holds a water pipe and in the other he holds a jharroo. He rushes on tiny feet across the street if he is blocking a car's way, drivers honking at him even when he is out of the way.

I don't even know their names but I want to be a part of their lives. Often walking reminds me how I am part of a larger silence which stings and hurts and it will keep on stinging and hurting (others) till I break the silence.

I have so many whatifs in my head, whatif I am not needed, whatif they ask me about my weight, whatif they laugh at me and think I am weird? But I realize that these whatifs are going to keep buzzing around me till I do talk and find out for sure. So the next time I go on a solitary trip I have decided I will talk to them