Echoes of Jasmine: A Journey Through Memory and Loss موتیا
In the blistering heat of the summer of 1996, my family and I embarked on a journey that would gently unfurl layers of memory and emotion, as persistent and pervasive as the sun itself. We were on our way back from Pakistan to Edinburgh, navigating the crowded expanse of Allama Iqbal Airport in Lahore. I was just ten years old then, my young mind a sponge for new sights, sounds, and smells. The departure was not merely geographical; it was an emotional transition, my heart grappling with the recent loss of my aboo father, as we left the country that was still intertwined with his essence.
I remember stepping onto the mini bus that would shuttle us to our plane, destined for Heathrow. The airport was teeming with travellers, but among them, a particular group caught my youthful eye. They were young men, probably in their early twenties, each carrying the vibrant emblem of a green passport. Their presence was accentuated by large guitars cradled like precious cargo and the casual, almost rebellious way they wore their denim jeans and oversized T-shirts. What struck me most was the bracelets made of fresh jasmine (motia) adorning their wrists, releasing a sweet, heady fragrance that seemed to trail them like a musical note.
They were an ensemble of laughter and lightness, their voices a mix of Urdu and English, melodies and chuckles weaving through the air. To my ten-year-old self, they epitomised coolness—not just in their attire or their carefree demeanour, but in their very being. They embodied a celebration, a vivacity that contradicted the staid, solemn depictions of Pakistani men I had grown to expect. These men, with their guitars and jasmine bracelets, carried with them an air of artistic tradition—of music, dance, and an irrepressible spirit.
This image has since been etched deep in my memory, a vivid tableau of a Pakistan rich in the traditions of arts, yet casual and contemporary in its expression. Their carelessness was a form of freedom, a dance of defiance against the confines of expectation. Yet, beneath their smiles and joviality, I sensed an undercurrent of something deeper, perhaps a shared resonance of pain. It was a reminder that joy often coexists with sorrow, and that the two are not mutually exclusive but are woven together.
As we boarded our flight, I carried with me not just the physical baggage, but also a heavier, more invisible load—a young heart trying to reconcile the complexities of grief and the abrupt adult realities thrust upon it. Having lost my father, I returned to Pakistan after many years, only to find myself an observer, a child on the periphery of adulthood, absorbing life in its rawest forms. Pakistan itself seemed like an orphan, bereft and yet resilient, a land imbued with poetry and marred by violence, holding its breath in the long shadow of its inception.
That journey was more than a physical relocation; it was a passage through layers of personal and collective memory, a slow stitching together of the past and present. As the plane ascended, I looked down at the receding landscape, a tapestry of green and brown, veined by the river Ravi and stitched by roads, carrying with its stories of joy and pain, departure and return. This was the country I loved, a place as multifaceted and contradictory as any beloved, forever sewed into the fabric of who I am, who I was becoming.