Thursdays

Photo by Fahim Ahammad

After class on Thursdays, we ran back to the dormitory to change our clothes. Thursdays were shopping days for the girls at Murree Christian School, and the green school bus would leave in 15 minutes.

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

With our small allowances, we browsed along Mall Road, the busy main street winding through the hilltop town, buying glass bangles and cheap trinkets. We passed the Holy Trinity Church, a British-era landmark, and weaved around coolies carrying heavy luggage upon their backs. We stopped in little shops for shampoo or imported chocolate, especially for tins of sweetened condensed milk and pale-green boxes of glucose powder. Those were our favorites to share with spoons during Saturday documentary nights in the school dining hall.

Sometimes, we visited the Corn Walla. He sat by his 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, rewrapped it in newspaper, and handed it to us. Every bite was chewy and sweet, though my lips always burned.

My favorite stalls on Mall Road were the ones filled with bold, glittery earrings and jewelry meant for garish weddings. I didn’t have pierced ears, but my friends did, so I just watched and shared my opinions while they bargained with vendors. 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 I was old enough and got my ears pierced illegally, encouraged by friends and a crush on a boy who would never notice me. The principal’s daughter offered to do it, using a hatpin with a pearl on top and a bowl of ice cubes. In her 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 running down my neck, and tried to steady myself.

“I don’t know about this. Are you sure that door is locked?” I asked. I could hear the principal and his wife talking in the next room. I imagined the consequences if we got caught.

“Stop worrying!” she said. “No one will find out unless you scream.”

When my ear was cold and numb, she marked a dot on my earlobe with a black felt pen. My heart pounded in my chest.

“Are you ready?” she asked.

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

“On the count of three. One, two...” Before three, she pushed the hatpin through my earlobe until it made a popping sound on 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 pus. The cheap gold hoops I bought in Murree were embedded in my earlobes.

I finally went to see the old school nurse, even though I didn’t want to. She was a stout-looking woman with a sharp bedside manner who spent her career as a missionary at our school and among the locals. She adjusted her lamp to get a better look through her 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 ears fall off, it’s all your fault! Do your parents even know about this?”

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

I counted down the Thursdays, imagining the swing of dangling earrings against my neck and 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 maybe I wasn’t old enough yet for the responsibility, Mom didn’t get mad. Instead, she wrote back with understanding, telling me to wait for the 24-carat gold studs she’d commissioned from a jeweler in Rawalpindi and promising they’d be waiting for me at Christmas break. Only then did my ears truly heal. Mom thought I might be allergic to nickel, like she was. That’s when I realized that some things, like growing up, shouldn’t be rushed, no matter how much you want them.