EXCERPT: White World by Saad T. Farooqi
"White World is a gritty read that shocks, frightens, and challenges.” — Manahil Bandukwala, Quill & Quire
Saad T. Farooqi was born in Saudi Arabia and moved to Pakistan before his first birthday. There, he survived three separate kidnapping attempts before he was eight. His family eventually settled in the United Arab Emirates. Saad immigrated to Canada in 2015 and resides in London, Ontario. His debut novel, White World, was published by Cormorant Books in September 2024. He is based in London, Ontario.
Episode 10: The Dot
Jahan
November 7, 2068
I never looked at myself in the mirror.
By the time I was ten, whatever I recognized as myself was a
vague recollection. A familiar stranger. Never known intimately,
never for too long.
What I knew about myself, I knew like a half-clouded memory.
I knew my eyes were green. But whether they were the green
of emeralds or the green of Pakistani flags or the green of the river
when a rare sunbeam hits it just right — I could not tell you.
I knew I had short, reddish-brown hair. But if it was more
rusty brown like some of the other Pathan children’s or dark red
like actresses’ hairdos in old movie posters — I could never say.
I knew I was taller than most girls and some of the boys. I
knew my shoulders were narrow and my hips broad because one
of the children pointed it out as we bathed in the river. Everyone
laughed at me.
By the time I was ten, the only part of myself that I recognized
as me was in the centre of my mind. I existed in this inch-wide
sphere, this dot. I breathed in this dot. I dreamed in this dot. No
matter how many dreams I had, no matter how much I fantasized
about being larger than this dot, about being the rest of myself, I
was nothing outside this dot.
Mine were not the long, gangly, hairy arms; mine were not
the thick, rough fingers that scraped against my nipples when I
played with myself; mine was not the hard, flat belly; mine were
not the plodding legs with ugly, squarish feet. I was not the erect,
rigid thing between my legs that would bring a rude end to every
fantasy.
Outside this dot, I was a dark, distorted shape I’d recognize
during a forgetful glance in a window or a cup of water.
_____
June 10, 2070
Our house looked like a scowling, grumpy old man. The heavy
front door was misshapen. Two large windows were uneven. The
bowed roof looked like a slouched hat. The walls were crusty and
bulged outward.
I had just turned twelve when my parents moved here. My
brothers were ten, eight, and seven. We were all excited because
we were closer to the walled city, to the place where there was
more food and water than you could eat in a lifetime, where there
was no load-shedding, no crimes, and the air was free of the snow.
Pretty soon, though, all of us ended up hating this house.
Aurangzeb hated the house because it was the last one in a street
full of ugly houses and it was too far from all his friends. Salim
hated the house because the windows weren’t frosted blue like
other homes, and we had to paste newspaper over them to keep
New Pakistan’s bright lights out. Zulfiqar hated the house because
it was smaller, and that meant Ammi and Abu would fight more
because there was less distance between them.
Why did I hate the grumpy old house?
I didn’t. Not in the beginning. I loved it in the early months
because it had an expansive, sunken rooftop where I could spend
all day. Even as the rainwater pooled at its centre and turned into
an unsettling green slime. Even as the bird droppings hardened
against the walls. Even as the walls began to warp toward each
other. I loved the house because of its rooftop.
It was where the pigeons flew from God knows how far away
and cooed at me, unfussy as they ate everything I found for them.
Up on the roof, I was free under the burned sky. I could breathe
and sing and cry and laugh and read. It was where I had my first
cigarette.
Up on the roof was the only place where I felt larger than this
little dot. Up on the roof, I was more — I was larger, wider. I was
uncontainable because I was the whole white world.
_____
April 29, 2071
The first time I realized I was different was when I met a thirteen-year-
old boy. He was Sunni like me. A wiry boy with curly black
hair and surprisingly small arms for his stature. I don’t remember
anything else about his face except his dark pink lips. Between his
lips and his curly hair, he might as well have been a featureless
blur.
He lived by the Sector 1 border and would walk from far away
just to play cricket with us. When forming teams, I’d be his first
pick. If I grazed my elbows while diving on the tarmac to make
a catch, he’d be the first to check on me, holding my arm in the
most tender way. I’d catch him watching me while I was batting,
and I’d catch him watching me when I was bowling or fielding. If
I smiled, he’d smile. If I didn’t smile, his ripe lips would become a
small O. Every time I saw that smile, my stomach felt as if it were
floating inside me, and my cheeks would become hot and puffy.
One day, he said he’d walk me home, as I had lost track of time
and ended up playing cricket well into the night. As we approached
my old-man home, his finger caressed the palm of my hand.
He looked at me, and those swollen pink lips pinched into a
smile.
I looked at him and, with hot cheeks and my heart thumping
in a frenzy, punched him in the side of his head. He stumbled
backward and fell to the ground.
Dazed and confused, he watched me slam the door shut.
I never saw him again.
_____
February 2, 2072
I sometimes wore lipstick.
My parents were dead, and the roof had been my living room
under the sky for almost two years. I’d spend most of the day up
there. My brothers had begun to distance themselves from me,
and the few friends I’d played cricket with suddenly had no room
for me on their teams.
At night, I’d leave my younger brothers in the care of Aurangzeb
and spend hours cleaning other homes in Sector 1 or begging
in Sector 2. Sometimes my brothers would join me as we scavenged
a life for ourselves together. Most nights, though, I’d be
alone. By the time I’d get home, my brothers would be asleep,
and I’d go to the roof. On those nights, I’d put on the lipstick my
mother had left behind — the only thing she’d left behind — and
watch the falling snowflakes with my pigeons. Snowflakes that
were so delicate that they’d crumble at the slightest touch.
The pigeons have been the only constant thing in my life. Before
I understood why all of me was scrunched and locked inside an
inch-wide dot, or what had happened to my parents, or why my
brothers ignored me, there was my love for these gentle, sensitive
birds. I loved everything from their curious stares to the faintest
rustle of their talons as they waddled about to their almost feline
purring when they were happy. I loved how they recognized and
responded to human emotions. I loved how they could always find
their way home, and how — unlike everyone else in Pakistan —
they could fly into the horizon because they were free of the past.
I loved them because they lived on rooftops where no one saw
them, no one noticed them. It calmed me to know that although
we had nothing in this world, my roof belonged to us.
_____
May 30, 2072
“What are you doing?” Aurangzeb asked from the roof entrance.
I didn’t have an answer. I was wearing Ammi’s lipstick. I was
wearing a kurta-shalwar that I had stolen from one of the washing
lines. I had stolen it because of its turquoise-green fabric and
the tiny, intricate hexagonal mirrors patterned on the sleeves and
collar.
Aurangzeb balled up his fists. “What are you doing, you sick
pervert?”
“Lower your voice,” I hissed back, wiping the lipstick away
with the back of my hand. “Do you want people to hear?”
“It’s not bad enough that our parents are gone. It’s not bad
enough that we’re fending for ourselves — you must bring us further
misfortune?”
“Aurangzeb.” My ears were hot with anger. “Shut up.”
He glared at me from across the roof. The pigeons sensed the
animosity and fluttered away. Snow and feathers floated in the air
between my brother and me.
“Maybe it was you all along. Maybe you’re the reason why
Abu killed Ammi. Maybe you’re the reason why our house is
cursed.”
Below us, we could hear Salim and Zulfiqar laughing as they
played cricket indoors.
Aurangzeb’s green eyes cut like broken glass.
I shook my head slowly. “Don’t.”
“Why not?”
I wiped more of the lipstick off my lips. “I’ll leave quietly
tonight. You’ll never see me again. I promise. But don’t tell them.”
“Salim, Zulfiqar, come up here!” he yelled. “Bring the bat.”
Footsteps rushed up the stairs leading to the roof. Salim and
Zulfiqar stood on either side of Aurangzeb. They stared at me,
their oldest brother. Confused, angered. Ashamed.
“What’s wrong with him?” Salim asked Aurangzeb, bat in hand.
“Tell him,” Aurangzeb snapped. “Tell him what’s wrong
with you.”
“Nothing is wrong with me, Salim,” I replied as calmly as I
could.
Zulfiqar didn’t say anything, staring at me in disgust.
“He’s a hijra,” Aurangzeb said, grabbing the bat from Salim.
“He’s a disgusting pervert!”
_____
June 14, 2072
For years, I thought there was no one like me in this world.
If there’s one thing I wish I could tell my fourteen-year-old self,
it would be that I wasn’t as alone as I thought. Even before Allah
burned the sky away, there were Pakistanis like me who felt lost
inside their skins, who felt and sensed the world around them as
if they had been born inside a block of ice.
Oddly, I was glad that my brothers had chased me away into
the Badlands. In that haunting, harrowed place, I met others like
me. Some boys and girls were both at once. There were girls who
found out they were boys when they reached puberty. Some men
dressed as women, some women dressed as men. There were men
who loved men, women who loved women. Some who loved
both. There were boys and girls like me who felt trapped in the
wrong body.
In Old Pakistan, the world seems a whisper away from ending.
Even today, as I pass through Sectors 1 or 2 or 3, I’m overwhelmed
by a sense that we can never ward off the end of the world because
some part of us yearns for it, quietly and patiently.
But in the Badlands, as a lost fourteen-year-old, I felt it. It was
unmistakable, like the smell of rain. Like the slight silver shimmer
above the river.
Hope.
Despite its tents that look like a pile of dirty laundry, its broken
windows smeared with bloody fingerprints, and its endless
pilgrimage of black clothes, the Badlands is Pakistan’s hope. It’s
the very edge of the world, a place where Pakistan pushed us away
decades ago. We were supposed to die. And though we starve and
suffer, we strive and continue to survive. Though they fly the PFM
flags and blame us as the reason Allah burned the sky away, we’re
still here. We always will be.
Book Details
Publisher : Cormorant Books (Sept. 28 2024)
Language : English
Paperback : 354 pages
ISBN-10 : 1770867457
ISBN-13 : 978-1770867451