Noor didn’t think this would be a bad idea.
She did not think it was bad when she was getting dressed to leave her house, did not think it was bad when she ignited the engine of her car and did not think it bad when she parked it ten minutes away and walked towards the metro station. But right now, staring at the neon lights of the HUDA City Centre, the sinking feeling of this being a bad idea is finally starting to surface. The air is thick and moist, and the clouds are grey. It looked like it was going to rain. Reluctantly, Noor stepped inside the station.
At exactly 8:30 PM, four hours and sixteen minutes ago, this idea—if that’s what one could call it—occurred to her, right in the middle of her kitchen. The marble tiles cool against her feet, she stood there waiting for last night’s pizza in the microwave to heat up.
“Hello? Are you listening to me?” a voice spoke from beyond the limitations of her house, booming over the broken speaker of her phone, diligently resting on the wood slab. “I’m trying to be helpful, you know. The least you can do is pay attention.” Noor did not have the heart to tell her sister that she was doing anything but paying attention to her, so she tried to pick up the conversation again, especially because she was the one who called her. “I’m sorry, Ki. I’m listening, I promise.” Satisfied, her sister continued to impart her advice on Noor’s one-week-old existential crisis. “Good. So, yeah. If you want to—what’s the word you used? Yes—feel something more, which by the way I’m still not sure what you mean, then you can go ahead and do something new. Something you haven’t done before.” The microwave beeped once, beeped twice, and beeped thrice before it came to a halt. “Like what?” Her sister thought for what seemed like a couple of hours before she suggested, “Painting? I don’t know.” That earned her an ear-piercing laugh. “You want me to paint? I murdered Ms Sharma’s paint set in the third grade,” she let out while trying to regain her composure, “That’s not a good idea.” She took the pizza out of the microwave and took a mouthful of it. Disgusting. “What do you want me to tell you, Noor? You can’t really go skydiving or bungee jumping in the middle of school,” her sister sounded tired, and far away. Like she was not fully in this conversation. And that hurt a little bit because Kiara was the one person Noor could share everything with, lay her heart down to and not care about being judged and these days she felt so far away. But then neither was Noor. “Yeah, I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s come over me. Just like, forget this. How’s college?”
Now, Noor stands in front of the ticket booth at the metro station, thirty minutes away from her house, thirty minutes away from her life. She’s never used the metro before. She’s never left the house after 9 PM before. Yes, this was something new. The lady at the ticket counter seemed as disinterested as a person can sound to another person, and, as if completely by muscle memory, proceeded to do whatever it took to get Noor away from her and to anywhere else. She asked Noor if she had a metro card. She didn’t. She asked her if she wanted a one-way ticket or a departure-and-return double feature. The second one, Noor politely responded. She asked her if she was going to use cash or a card. Cash, put together hurriedly from piggy-bank savings and whatever change she could find lying around in the house. She asked her where she wanted to go. Anywhere is fine, Noor said, but not too far. The lady looked up at her briefly, as if concerned, but then went about printing the ticket and handing it to Noor. “The Metro will be here in five minutes, down the platform, on the right side.” And with that, she sent her away.
The automated voice on the speakers inside the Metro informed Noor that the doors would close in ten seconds and that no one should be standing near them for their own safety. The announcement, Noor thought, was completely unnecessary. The metro was completely empty. For as far as her eyesight would take her, all the boxes inside the metro were quiet and hollow. Perhaps someone sat where she couldn’t see, but what she couldn’t see couldn’t hurt her. Since she was a little girl, Noor had been taught to always be alert, always know her surroundings, always be on her guard. ‘This town is unsafe.’ ‘Terrible things happen here to girls who act carelessly.’ And so, day and night, Noor would look over her shoulder, not wear earphones when she was walking, share her location with her friends—do everything to make sure she did not become a statistic. The irony of voluntarily walking herself to the most unsafe area in the city during the most unsafe hour was not lost on her. At all. It was right there, in the thumping of her heart in her ears, in the sweat accumulating on her forehead.
Before she could register what was happening, someone came running inside the Metro, a couple of seconds before the doors were to close. Noor’s panic was about to hit the roof when she first looked at who had entered. She was breathless, clearly having sprinted all the way to catch the metro. A handbag hung from her side, at the verge of being ripped open from its seems because of the amount of things stuffed into it. She wore a long red dress, that had fringes at its end and buttons at its centre. Her hair was in a bun, strands of hair falling to her face and behind her neck. Her hair was the same brown colour as her leather army boots. But her most striking feature was the large, black, shaded tattoo covering her scrawny arms. It was so visible, clearly contrasting her Alabama-snow skin. It was hard to take your eyes off of it.
About five minutes after the Metro started moving and the lady in front of her reverted back to her regular breathing pattern, Noor was still looking at her tattoo. She wasn’t sure if her mouth was open.
“Well?” she raises her eyebrows towards Noor.
“Well, what?” Noor immediately snaps back to her surroundings.
“Well, you can ask me about it instead of just staring at it,” she laughs. For the first time, Noor notices the dimples that dawn her laughter. She likes the sound of this woman laughing. She wished she wouldn’t stop, but she didn’t have the courage to tell her that.
“It’s a cool tattoo,’ Noor nods. Suddenly, she doesn’t know what to do with her her hands. Normally she would stuff them in her pockets, on the right side of which lies a small but sharp blade, ready for any time she needs to use it to protect herself. She wishes the cool metal was touching her hands now, giving them some purpose.
“It’s a dragon. Like the girl with the dragon tattoo? I was obsessed with that film when I was young. Merch and everything,” she glances at the tattoo again and then back to Noor, “You have any?” A burst of abrupt laughter left Noor’s mouth then, almost like a snot. “I’m 16. I’m pretty sure my mother would have a stroke if I showed up at my house with tattoos.” A sense of sadness clouds the woman in front of her at the mention of a house. She keeps the bag in the seat behind her and sits next to it. “Who all do you have in your house?” she crosses her arms and then immediately adds, “If you don’t mind me asking, that is.” Noor didn’t mind, even though she felt like she should act like a grown-up here and not share her personal details with someone who could very well be a serial killer. But, she didn’t mind. After all, her family wasn’t all that interesting. “No, it’s okay,” she smiles at the woman, “Mom and Dad. Me and my elder sister, Kiara. And our grandmother. That’s it. How about you?” The sadness overtakes the woman once again, and Noor can’t help but feel she’s pressed a nerve best left untouched. But the moment is short-lived, she returns Noor’s smile and replies, “Mom and Dad, two brothers—both younger—and my aunt. At least, that’s what it was when I last checked. I haven’t gone home in a while.” The woman’s expression is a mixture of longing and anger, her eyes betraying the yearning but her forehead stoic in dissatisfaction. “Why?” Noor naturally wondered. The woman opened her mouth to reply, before abruptly closing it. Then she said, “Wait, didn’t you say you were 16? What are you doing here on your own? I mean, I fully support it. But still, for responsibility’s sake, where are your parents?” Noor sighs. She’s been asking herself the same questions all night.
“My parents are not in the country. They’re usually away, I mean with their work and everything. Kiara’s in college. Grandma’s at home. And I was in the middle of a goddamn existential crisis. So, yeah, here I am.” The woman laughed then, pushing the hair back from her face and behind her ears. “Isn’t 16 a little too early for an existential crisis? I swear you kids are worrying about everything these days. I mean, I’m no one to say shit. Eight years elder than you and in the same position. So yeah. It’s real.” Noor felt an odd sort of comfort at the fact that someone elder than her was as lost and as confused as she is. Maybe she didn’t have to have everything figured out right now. “Lately I’ve just been feeling so…incomplete. Like there’s something more I should be doing but I’m not. Some sort of purpose I’m lacking. I mean, surely, I’m not here to struggle between homework and exams right?” She looked at the woman hopefully, as if she holds all the answers in the world in her mind. “Yeah definitely not, don’t let school fool you,” she waved her hands around as if to dismiss her doubts, “Everyone has, you know, a bigger reason. I don’t necessarily think you need to find it at 16 though. I hadn’t. That’s why I ran away.” Noor’s mouth dropped, to the floor, and flies walked in. “You ran away? From your house? How? Why?”
The woman folded her legs beneath each other and stretched out her arms. “There wasn’t a single reason. It was loads of things. I wanted to become a theatre artist, my parents wanted me to become a doctor. I was expected to marry a man, but I was definitely not into men, at all. I felt helpless and clueless and trapped. So I ran away.” She shrugged her shoulders as if it was the easiest thing in the world to run away from everything you’ve ever known. But isn’t it the very same thing Noor is trying to do, at this very moment? Irony, irony. “So like, did you achieve your purpose? Of running away?” Noor curiously questioned her, now leaning in front of her weight, her hands on her knees. The woman shrugged her shoulders again. “Of finding a purpose? Gosh, I don’t know. But of finding freedom? Hell yeah. I’m doing what I want now, on my own terms. I’m living the life I wanted.” The woman smiled now, the glint fully meeting her eyes. Noor imagined running away from here. Of taking a metro and never coming back. Of leaving behind her friends, her family, everything. Her breath hitched at the thought. “Do you regret it?”
“No, I don’t think so. I never had anyone to ever guide me about shit that happens. I didn’t have a single person who I could unburden my heart to. I was suffocating,” as if knowing exactly what Noor was thinking she added, “But I can tell you that it’s actually pointless to expect yourself to understand the great ‘why?’ of the world at 16. This is not the time to wonder about the deep, real shit. It isn’t. It’s the time to play, laugh, cry, fight, show, make up, hug, dance, sing, live. It’s normal to have existential crises at 16, because yeah, everyone is constantly expecting you to figure out who you are and why you’re here. But like, screw them. 16 is yours, don’t let them take it away.” Involuntarily, Noor’s hand settled on top of her collarbone, as it often would. A reminder she was still here. She rolled over the woman’s words in her mouth, ‘16 is yours, don’t let them take it away.’ “But that’s easier said than done, right? I mean everyone is out here saying that you should do whatever you want. And that’s not true. There are limitations on everything—what you should wear, how you should speak, how you should look. It’s,” she lets out a breath she didn’t know she was holding, “so frustrating.” The woman looked carefully at Noor. She moved her hands towards where her claw clip was and slowly, pulled it out. As the thick canopy of auburn and brown hair fell to her side, she leaned her head back into the seat.
“If I tell you that you remind me of myself, will that creep you out?” A rigorous nodding of Noor’s head earns her another laugh. “You know, everything needs some sort of order to survive. Trees, plants, humans. Without any sort of order, we’ll just cease to exist. And the way society creates order is by placing boundaries, rules, ‘what’s wrong and what’s right’, that sort of thing,” she enunciates using her hands and shaking her head. “But, just because it exists, doesn’t mean it needs to be followed.” For the first time in their over fifteen-minute journey, Noor sits down on a seat herself, directly opposite the woman. “So like, just break rules? Become unhinged? That’s it?” The woman immediately makes a tut-tut sound and moves her finger to indicate that Noor has gotten it wrong. “No, no. What I mean is, you have to understand for yourself, which rules are worth following,” she continues after seeing the creases flatten out on Noor’s forehead, “and being told what to do with your own body, is a rule definitely worth goddamn breaking.”
Her words stayed with Noor long after she could register the return of the automatic voice telling her the doors were opening, long after she realised the metro had stopped and a station had come, long after she noticed the woman getting off. “Hey!” Noor shouted behind her, “What’s your name?”
Noor heard an unmistakable, “Kiara” before the doors closed again.
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