Thursdays

Photo by Fahim Ahammad

After school, we ran back to the dormitory to change our clothes. Thursdays were shopping days in Murree, and we only had 15 minutes before the green school bus left.

I chose jeans and a long shirt that covered my body, while others changed into the native shalwar kameez with headscarves. As foreigners, we were an oddity off campus, no matter how much we tried to blend in. We were a group of Western teenage girls eager to escape for a few hours of shopping.

With our meager allowances, we browsed Mall Road, the busy main street winding through the hilltop town of Murree. We passed the Holy Trinity Church, a British-era landmark, and weaved through coolies carrying heavy luggage on their backs. We stopped in little shops to buy shampoo that smelled like green apples. We bought imported chocolates, tins of sweetened condensed milk, and pale-green boxes of glucose powder. Those were our favorites to eat and share with spoons during Saturday documentary nights in the school dining hall.

Sometimes, we visited the Corn Walla. He sat with a Hibachi on the side of the road, surrounded by a pile of corn, chili powder, and salt, roasting cobs over the fire until they blackened. He seasoned the corn, wrapped it in newspaper, and handed it to us. Every bite was chewy and sweet, though my lips burned.

My favorite vendor stalls were filled with bold, glittery earrings and jewelry meant for garish Pakistani weddings. I didn’t have pierced ears, but all my friends did, so I could only share my opinions while they bargained. I couldn’t help but feel a little left out. Mom had always said I could get my ears pierced when I was older, but I wondered when that time would come.

Or maybe I just wasn’t brave enough.

That fall, I decided to get my ears pierced. I did it because my friends wanted me to and for a crush on a boy who’d never notice me anyway. The principal’s daughter offered to do it, using a hatpin with a pearl on top and a bowl of ice cubes. In her stuffy bedroom with the curtains drawn, she held the hatpin over a candle flame to sterilize it. I numbed my right earlobe with an ice cube, water dripping down my neck, and tried to steady myself from the fear.

“I don’t know about this,” I whined. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” I could hear the principal and his wife talking in the next room. My mind played out the consequences if we got caught. “Maybe we should wait.”

“Wait for what? Quit worrying!” she said. “I’ve done it before, and you’ll be fine as long as you don’t scream.” She threw me a pillow and told me to put it over my mouth. That made it worse.

When my ear felt cold and numb, she marked a dot on my earlobe with a black felt pen. She stepped back to make sure they were even. My heart pounded in my chest.

“Are you ready?” she asked.

I nodded. A friend took my hand and gave it a painful squeeze.

“Here we go. On the count of three. One, two...POP!” Before three, she’d pushed the hatpin through my earlobe until it came out the other side. The anticipation hurt more than the piercing itself, but the second ear wasn’t quite as numb.

In the days that followed, my earlobes swelled, turned bright red, and oozed green pus. The cheap gold hoops I bought in Murree became embedded in my earlobes.

I finally went to see the school nurse, even though I didn’t want to. She was a crotchety woman with a sharp bedside manner who’d spent her career as a missionary at our school and among the locals. She adjusted her lamp to get a better look through thick glasses.

“God help us all!” she said. “Your earlobes smell like death!”

Fear gripped me. I confessed everything, including the hatpin and the principal’s daughter.

“If you get gangrene from your stupidity and your ear lobes fall off, it’s your own fault! Do your parents even know about this?”

“No,” I said.

I winced as she roughly squeezed my earlobes to drain and clean them. I had borrowed hypoallergenic earrings from a friend, and after several tries, the nurse managed to put them in. Looking disgusted, she handed me a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and told me to leave.

I counted down the Thursdays, imagining the swing of dangling earrings against my neck, feeling impatient for the day my ears would finally heal. But that perfect Thursday never came.

When I confessed in a letter home, admitting that I wasn’t old enough yet for the responsibility of pierced ears, Mom didn’t get mad. Instead, she wrote back saying she was glad I was okay and that she'd commissioned 24-carat gold studs from a jeweler in Rawalpindi; they would be ready by Christmas break. She thought I might be allergic to nickel, as she was, and wished she could have taken me to a professional to get my ears pierced, rather than have it done by a kid. But what was done was done.

That’s when I realized that some things, like growing up, shouldn’t be rushed, no matter how much you want them.