FEELING ANTICIPATION

The rain is falling in a rhythm, like someone hitting the street with pebbles. I can see the vast, blue sky foggily walking into my room, through the open blinds. Some cars pass by in a blurry vision of headlights and the distant, angry sound of speed. No one enters my room except the night as it falls everywhere on the bed, the lampshade and me. I guess this is the perfect time to think.

I have a few questions. They are psychological in nature. I would like to know why I have never been able to form a strong bond with a child; why none have found me intriguing as well. This seems to connect with that dream of mine, when I was lost in a town which only had blue doors and each and every one of them had a lock placed on it. I could not enter, so I roamed the streets unable to fathom my entry point.

Oddly, it is only now that this dream seems to make any sense; the blue doors of childhood are completely shut for me. Perhaps the dream meant something else altogether. It could be about that trip to Istanbul that I could not make; though why does Istanbul have blue doors? But very obviously, it does.

Earlier tonight I started work on a dictionary of esoteric terms; the catch is that these are not everyone’s esoteric terms like sufi, zikr or tawheed. These terms are specific to me and by extension to anyone else who can fancy them having any context in the scheme of things. For example, tonight I coined the term “essential loneliness.” This is what I put as an entry into its definition:

Essential Loneliness

It is not that the essential loneliness hits you on a wave of lunacy, no it is rather, on a rational and esteemed day full of remark and long ambition. It hits you like a surge of quiet on loud, infamous roses – it defeats you as only un-knowing can. You then want to build a minaret, full of prayer and longing.

But there is nothing to long for. This brand of loneliness is not that you don’t have a friend or a lover; you escape into the corners of a page – it is from a book you have half lost because you drift. So what is it? Is it continuity? Is it ending? Is it a damn beautiful sky? Or is it the hunger in the black of her heart?

What is it that defeats you? What is it that veils your disregard? What is it that follows you as ransom on deserted roads? It is this that I am referring to – do you see it now? This is the essential roam of a vacant eye, the hurting corridor of your haunted house, the indefinable mystery of my signature.

Perhaps you don’t think much of it right now. It is just a passing phrase. It has not yet acquired the authenticity of experience. But mind you, careful! It has a way to slip in past the ghost of the twilight and stare at you as the clear moon on wintry nights.

The idea of the dictionary of esoteric terms has come about in Waterdown, Ontario, however, the seeds of this were sowed years ago when I was reading Roland Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments. I remember being caught by his terms the way cigarette smoke would be caught inside a glass which is immediately turned upside down. Instead of capturing a spider or a fly, Barthes captured the states of love. At that time, there was pure fascination for his world but I can clearly recall that I did not have any inclination to form my own dictionary one day.

Many years after I discovered Fragments, I came across John Koenig’s The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. Koenig fashions new words like a sculptor and imbues them with feelings we can’t find expressions for. So, “Ozurie” becomes the anguish of being torn between two worlds like Dorothy who dreams of Oz, but lives in Kansas. Though I enjoy these neologisms and find many of them ingenious, I find it difficult to let them seep into my memory as keepsakes. However, the descriptions are such that you are drawn into the web of Koenig’s creation over and over again. The coined words thus become an archeological find each time you visit the dictionary – as if they exist only in the folds of Koenig’s book itself.

Today, for the first time, I consciously wanted to create my own dictionary. I think the idea began when I was contemplating on the state of un-knowing, but did it? Perhaps it came out of the fact that we are lonely even when surrounded by friends and lovers; suddenly this new poignant and essential loneliness made its way into my diary.

But I was talking about how I have never had a true connection with a child; nor a child with me. (Why do I feel the need to assert the latter? Doesn’t saying the former suffice? – No but I’ll still say it because I am unsure) Is it something I should await? Like an unexpected love? Is it something I should desire? Do I desire it?

Before we get lost in clichés and institutionalized thinking, I want to make clear that like the unexpected dictionary idea that has arrived into my world, so has this idea of possibly one day connecting with a child, and a child connecting back with me. It has obviously come about because I am visiting my nieces, aged fifteen and twelve, and lost in their own worlds. Again, I don’t consciously recall ever wanting or needing this connection before.

It might also partially have to do with my new year’s resolution: connections. And thus, not be about age differences in those connections to begin with. But something unexpected has happened nevertheless. I suddenly want to know the world of a child. As the girls are happily involved with their music, friends, movies, games and school, and it has simply not occurred to me yet as to what I can say to them without disturbing their cool spaces, I have pretty much kept to myself. Besides the friendly greetings, I haven’t really gotten very far.

I did pick up a book from the library though. It was an Annie Ernaux, and the protagonist was a fifteen-year-old girl named Anne. I think my sister and her husband would be shocked at the content of this French novel, and I am glad that no one else can read this book in the house. But it makes me think of what fifteen-year-olds are all about?

Around two days after I arrived, I wrote a poem imagining what my fifteen-year-old niece’s imagination might be like. This was simply by observing her briefly as she made her quick entrances and exits. The poem was titled “Girl on the Balcony Edge.”

THE GIRL ON THE BALCONY EDGE

I want to talk to you

of ways in which the indifferent sun gleams.

It is a communicative sun,

though struck with monstrous moods

like the girl on the balcony edge

who wants, above all else, to speak

& skim through the world

with a hesitation that assures

all is not lost - not yet, not quite.

She wants to listen

to the free and open call of the sea

with an abandon of poets but

the sun has a stinging distaste.

she’d like to interfere

call it a day, but for some reason

she can’t explain to herself

she remains standing on the balcony edge

unable to make decisions.

Reading this again, reminds me that my niece in my imagination gets interwoven with my own self. Just like Ernaux’s novel; I did not know when I stopped thinking of fifteen-year-old life and starting thinking of my own self from a bygone era and how deep memories are like knives carving out names on a wooden table. Sometimes when I look at my niece, I find her innocence striking.

It usually takes me actual conversations to get to know a person. However, since there is no chance yet of that, I am left with just glimpses of these girls as they go about busy with their lives and pass through corridors, or make their exits. My sister’s words fill in the gaps and I imagine them to be moody, or playful, or resentful accordingly. But these are not my own opinions. Some part of me wants to know them as we are related; I am their only maternal aunt and they are my only saggee (blood-related, immediate) nieces.

In all these years, we have always lived in different countries and I have not had a chance to see them growing up. So, in a way, in this month-long visit, I am watching them grow for the first time. For just like days go one into the other like ghosts locking together in the twilight, I imagine that they are growing day by day. There is a difference this month. They have their saggee Khala (immediate aunt) living with them. Do they notice this?

I have tried very hard to become invisible, so as to not disturb their activities and life. Just like them, I too spend most of my time in my room. Thus, there are three similar rooms like that in the house. I want to know what they think – but I’m too afraid to ask. I don’t think I will be able to, as well – at least not on this trip.

Some part of me is bored with all this activity – without wanting to sound offensive. The feeling has simply not hit me or burst upon the scene like one of those Oneonta Harvest Moons that are so close that you’re afraid you could touch them. The feeling of intense love for a child, I mean. Neither have I ever felt a child feeling this love for me. (It still feels important to add that this seems to be a two-way scenario, and both have not occurred in my life as yet.)

I’d like to come up with an esoteric term for wanting to know a feeling that you do not know yet. Feeling Anticipation, sounds right. Many months ago, I texted my older niece with a question: who did she like more, Billie Eilish or Taylor Swift? I guess at that point I wanted to know what kind of mood she leaned on. She had replied, “Billie Eilish”, and we went on discussing the names of our favorite songs from her latest album, Hit me Hard and Soft. I had left her with the note that this music puts me in a mood I zone out in, and she had laughed spontaneously in agreement. But this is the only real conversation I have ever really had with her, beyond mundane talk.

I watched the 2010 The Karate Kid, which features a twelve-year old boy named Dre. Apparently the boy is Will Smith’s son in actual life. I imagined what life for my twelve-year-old niece was like. She likes to play these ‘fun games’ with her online besties and they laugh and yell as if they were in bumper cars in actual life. I tried shyly to play Uno Quatro (a mix of Connect 4, and Uno) with her but we weren’t half as crazy as life with her friends. She was shy too.

My dear friend who is a mother of a boy, told me the other day that this feeling of being a mother to her boy is like facing some thrilling news, a chance encounter with a captivating stranger, the realization of a long-held dream, or even witnessing an overwhelming landscape all rolled into one. Woah! Sounds like quite the feeling, and I told her I’d like to know such a feeling, I’m genuinely curious.

Fatima Ijaz is a creative writer who received her Master’s in English and Media Studies from Rutgers University (2024), where she also taught English to first-year undergraduates. Her chapbook, Last of the Letters, was published by Bottlecap Press in 2024. Her full-length poetry collection, The Shade of Longing, was published by The Little Book Company in 2021. In February 2025, in Karachi she wrote and acted in Fire Morning – a bilingual theatrical response to her poems by Kulsoom Aftab. Previously, she taught English and Speech at Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Karachi. A contributing editor at Pandemonium Journal, she holds a BA in English from Hartwick College, USA, and York University, Canada, and an MA in English Linguistics from Eastern Michigan University, USA. Her poetry, short stories and essays have been published in numerous publications, including Kyoto Journal, Ideas&Futures, Azure, The Missing Slate, Poetry in English from Pakistan - a 21st Century Anthology, Pakistani Literature, Unbroken Journal, Aleph Review, Tales from Karachi, The Write Launch, Rigorous, and The Bombay Review. Her memoir was longlisted for the Zeenat Haroon Rashid Writing Prize (2022). She has been a reader at the Karachi Literature Festival from 2020 – 2025. She writes a monthly poetry column for Tales from Karachi. Her forthcoming projects include a collaborative book project with Liberty Books, Pakistan.