Saffron and Abigail

Today marks week six of relocation from Houston to Karachi. As you are well aware by now, I have been writing the Karachi-Houston diaries. Through these compilations I try to compare and contrast what is in Karachi with what was in Houston. I’m like that. Writing analogically helps me make sense of my present and past life. 

Today, my routine muse (in my head and heart) was missing in action. Normally she would assist in helping me focus on something intriguing to write about from both the Karachi and Houston perspectives. 

So I asked the child instead.

“Today, what should I write about?”

I expected either no comment or something noncommittal from the child, since she would seldom take me seriously.

But this time the reply came promptly and without hesitation.

“Today write about Saffron and Abigail!”

Saffron and Abigail are not exotic condiments. Nor are they administrative staff at my workplace in Karachi.  

They are two fairy friends of Tinker Bell, living happily ever after in Peter Pan’s Never Never Land. However, in my reality, Saffron and Abigail are kites living in Karachi. The kind of feathered kites that breathe, fly and occasionally poop on you. The duo perches on metallic pipes that poke out of the apartment building across from the one that is my temporary abode in Karachi. We distinguish Saffron from Abigail by their perches. The one situated on the left (with respect to me) is always Saffron. Their positioning on the pipes is invariably the same. They tend to locate themselves on those pipes day in and day out – but primarily in the evenings and nighttime. I believe that during daylight hours Saffron and Abigail are doing what kites are meant to do best. 

A few weeks back the child christened the two kites Saffron and Abigail. Hence her recollection was incisive especially given that we were standing on the balcony of the said apartment where all the recent entries of the Karachi-Houston diaries were conceived. Furthermore, we happened to be looking at the birds right then and hence that may have had something to do with it. I had no idea whether Saffron and Abigail was a pair – male or female? Were the names appropriate? It didn’t seem to matter to the child, so I left at it that.

Birds are mesmerizing creatures. I happen to be a keen bird watcher. In fact, you can say that I find them more interesting than anything else in the living world, second only to human beings. While in Houston, I would make trips to state parks just to observe migratory birds. However, the brief trips would never enable me to befriend any particular ones that I could keep watching for long periods of time.

Relocating to Karachi saddened me somewhat because I knew that I couldn’t frequent parks here in which I could watch birds. However, what surprised me was the fact that Karachi, irrespective of being a concrete, volatile, not-very-green jungle, was a bird menagerie of sorts. There are scores of birds in the city. Birds, that enable hours of happy observation. Different bird shapes, colors, sounds, flying techniques, height at which flight occurs, independent or collective flight, and so on. There is a lot that one can learn from feathered fellow travelers.

In the fifteen years I spent in Houston I never came across the likes of Saffron and Abigail. There was Jonathan the seagull that I met in Boston and then again in Houston, but that happened to be the only time I had an interaction with a named bird. Here, in Karachi, I had already been acquainted with a diversity of named birds. Perhaps that is a major difference between the birds in Houston and those in Karachi - the latter are more likely to generate writings in their honor.

Today, therefore, I pay homage to my avian friends in Karachi – to the large regal ones like Saffron and Abigail, the scruffy discordant ones like crows and sparrows, the small mellifluous ones like the koels, and a few others that defy nomenclature by a non-expert like me. Saffron and Abigail may really not be kites – instead, they may be eagles or falcons, says my mind. But since I am not an ornithologist, I have no way of telling them apart. Does it matter? When the child tells you to write about Saffron and Abigail then that’s what you do. And you do so irrespective of distinguishing between species or gender.

[from the Karachi-Houston Diaries]

Acknowledgment: This article was first published by the Houston Inner Looper Newspaper (Dec. 2013). Photos kindly provided by Dr. Ansul Noor.