I’ve been a knight ever since steped into KAS campus, back in 1991. I didn’t know it at first. It was all new to a latinamerican teen just landing in this kind of heat. It was all too new to be addressed in a single glampse of the entire situation. It was a new town, and a new life that I had no idea how it was going to turn out.
It became something else when I realized that was entering another type of world inside that American School in Karachi. Nothing made sense. Nor did I there.
But somehow we’ve come back to find ourselves in a place where we’ve not just found each other again. We’ve found love too. And it’s a place, once again, a set of coordenates in our environement that have come across three women that we’ve fell in love with: Meritxell, Valerie and Nadia. Spain, France, Pakistan.
Kumayl and Hunain are brothers. And they are, somehow, my bros.
There are other types of brothers. Like Mohammed and Kumayl. That’s there, in a different dimention of the understanding of two friends that have known each other for 44 years. Life long friends. That’s worth nurturing.
Life has a funny way of functioning. And we’ve all been exposed to the kind of life that you are able to manouver as you walk the talk of your own thing. It’s never quite the way you imagined, yet you are there, somehow fulfilling the dream you’ve set yourself to build.
Life is like that. And every other way. We just get use to the nuances, and cope the rest. Like the way we were taught, the day someone explained what cope was. A literature assinment with an Escher staircase going places, and back. Life is like that, I guess. Coping and going the distance. You keep at it. While handling the situations. The circumstances. The everchanging environment. And yourself. In the middle of the equation.
Hunain showed up first. He was the leader of the pack. He salute me from afar, as he approached the corner of Mallorca and Enric Granados, where I had been waiting for just a couple of minutes. He had a reservation. Valerie came right after. She pointed to Kumayl, who was last. He had had his two hour nap to able to make it through the night. It’s the jetlag, plus the drinking from 11 to 10. Whatever that means.
Kumayl gave me one of those hugs he gives. It’s a powerful tool he used. Just like his wisdom to connect with anyone in the room. The capacity to reach out to the unknown and make a close connection with the current vibe. That’s what he did as soon as we sat down, s he started to bond with the table next to ours. A group of friends in a convention from NGOs from many different fields, trying to make an impact in solving the challenges ahead, wherever they may be. Some from the USA, some from England. But where in the US and where in England, Kumayl wanted to know? London. Ohio. Somehow Kumayl happend to have been in Ohio, and to have loved Oberdeen, or something like that, which happens to be a very open progressive city, as open as they get. And the Ohio girl recognized the odds of having someone in the next table to a story so close to home, even when she ended up going to Syracuse, and freezing her ass off, as Kumayl infered.
The place was a Japanese restaurant. But somehow we would start to speak soon enough in urdu, indi and nepalese, if that’s a thing. Kumayl rapidly bonded with the waiters who were from India, Punjab, from Nepal, and from Peru. From then on everyone in the table expressed all of our talents in urdu. Achas, benchonds, tiri-maka-loras, gandús, the whole pack. We drifted some french, and as the sake entered the scene we were rapidly speaking some wise japanese to properly intake all the mixture of sensations coming through.
The night let the knight in us get through. We were suddenly there, in Karachi, as much as we were in Los Angeles, Austria, and back here, in Example. The experience of toro, tora, tora, and succulent company, ended up in an uplifting night to hold the treasure of meeting old friends, and getting back in touch, to align ourselves with life, as it unfolds, once again, to deliver the unveiling act of yet another Saturday night in a the transformed city of NEW barcino.