At last he looked up and looked me over. Dressed in a black and white suit, I resembled all the other hopeful candidates looking for admission in the university. In his eyes I was just another kid wasting his time.
“Do you know how many kids applied for the university this year?” the abruptness of the question startled me.
“Twenty thousand!”
“ Do you know how many passed the written exam?”
“Two thousand!”
“And do you know how many will be selected?” I shook my head wondering why I hadn’t prepared for this one.
“Only two hundred. Miss, what makes you think you are one of those two hundred?” he gave me one of his all over stares again and then said solemnly, “You’ve got 20 minutes to convince me and you’re time starts now.”
I stammered for sometime and then began, “As my application stated, the only reason I selected the medical department was because I aim to be an oncologist. Your next question would probably be ‘Why?’ and I have the answer to that as well,” suddenly I stopped.
I had practised this at home but something about the man’s indifferent gaze nagged at me. Would he really get it? And my mind wandered back to the time when it started.
We had been new to Quetta, a city known for the giant, barren and rocky mountains surrounding it like a fort. The house allotted to us was, though large with grounds in all directions but like all other grounds in the city, it wasn’t grassy in the least bit, save for a few patches here and there.
Water was precious in the city. The trees, however, were abundant, particularly at the back of the house where surrounded by three apricot trees and two enormous pines was a shahtoot (mulberry) tree. Tall, with its branches spread out in every direction, the tree completely shaded the circular region beneath it. All these were planted in a nook of the backyard.
One morning as I came out of the sunroom, I heard a crunch of leaves and running water. I walked to the back of the house in time to see an old woman making her way to that nook. On impulse I decided to follow her. She was dressed in a flowing patched green dress that seemed too large for her frail body and had her head covered in an odd manner by a brightly coloured scarf.
Though not cold, she had a worn out shawl wrapped around her body. Looking around I noticed she had turned on the hose lying in the vegetable patch.
As I turned it the other way to stop the water flow, she turned around and spoke out with a loud yet oddly soft voice, “The tomatoes will die if you do that.”
My hands left it at once and I followed the woman towards the trees. She rested her head against shahtoot’s bark and heaved a heavy sigh. I wasn’t sure why but I sat opposite her with the hint of a frown on my face. When she chose to acknowledge my presence, her eyes opened slightly and spoke in an eerie voice.
“No need to be alarmed child, I’ve lived in the servant quarters behind this house for over 60 years now. I’m too old to work so I water the plants when anyone lets me,” she shot me a momentary look as she said this.
“My name is Zar Bibi, my son works as your milk man.”
She was quiet for sometime and I sat there waiting for her to tell me more. It was windy that day and dead quiet. I had nothing better to do and at the moment chatting with a complete stranger seemed interesting.
“I’m dying you know, found out a couple of months ago, they say it would be anytime now.”
I stared at her, but still at a loss for words. Suddenly she laughed. It was a hollow laughed and the wrinkles on her weather beaten face shifted to show the smile and the few yellow teeth she had in her mouth. The laugh, though it might have been pretty once, now accentuated her aged face and for a moment I believed the dying story. The woman had a perfectly oval face with narrow twinkling eyes that had clearly seen a long hard life. The skin dangled from her cheek bones and even though old and wrinkled, it still had a creamy whiteness to it. From under the scarf I could see locks of ash grey hair.
She was lost in a reverie of her own and then out of the blue laughed again.
“I laugh because after years I been told that I’m dying, but I don’t know from what. They call it ‘cancer’ and to think with all their science they could cure it but no. Simply said it to my face that nothing could be done. Cost my son a fortune just for finding that out.”
She paused to catch her breath.
“I planted this tree when I was a child. I saw it grow up with me. Would come sit near it and tell it my every secret. Believe me or not it whispered back.”
She had been looking at me while saying this and now turned her face upwards to stroke the shahtoot’s bark. “You know when I was nine, a fair came to this place and I bought an ice cream for my tree and buried it right here so even though it didn’t go, I shared the fair with it.”
She was getting interesting so I let her go on. “When I was 11, I broke my mother’s special tea set and got a beating. I picked up the remaining shards of porcelain and buried it here,” she patted a spot next to her.
“Once I knit a pretty scarf but my brother tore it so I tied it to the bark. I knew my tree would remember the pain I took in making that scarf.”
In a softer voice she carried on, “Every night I came out here to share the day with my tree. Sometimes my husband followed and we held hands sitting in the darkness. I cried here, laughed here and watched my children play under this very tree.” She sounded eccentric but the animation in her face made me smile nonetheless.
It was a while before I managed to speak, “What did you want to do with your life that you never could?”
“Oh well, I wanted to climb the highest peak in the area and wear a chiffon dress and eat in a five star hotel but that’s not important! Is it?” Her eyes twinkled as she spoke, “Look my child, the fact is that I’m happy with my life and if you’re wondering how to help me then you just did — I wanted to flash past my years and I just did. But you, on the other hand, have a life in front of you and take my advice, become a tree that spreads its shade to everyone and anyone. Live a life that makes people want to keep you alive.”
I was engrossed in the conversation when I heard my mother calling for me. I got up, gave Zar Bibi a hug and ran back to the house. She died that afternoon. Eight thousand people attended her funeral. That summer with my uncle, a doctor, I visited the country’s largest cancer treatment centre. The patient age range was from five to 90 and as I walked through the wards of people waiting for death, I decided to become a tree that would take them under its shade.
“Madam since it’s your 20 minutes I won’t object but do you plan on saying anything?” the man asked me again.
I stared at the man wondering if he would understand. With a deep breath, I began narrating the experience of a lifetime.