flipping cassettes by MahRukh Shah (19, Pakistan)*

it was one of those family dinners hosted on humid summer nights, everyone gathered around the table; filling their plates with the chicken tikka & chicken seekh kebabs Baba drove 4kms to bring home, spilling some mint yoghurt chutney here, a little imli sauce there, aunty distributing quarters of naan around, the hiss of cola bottles opening, the air thick with the scent of barbecue & freshly sliced onions, everyone talking over each other, snippets of conversation floating above the nusrat fateh ali khan music playing from our old speakers. a stack of cassettes piled on top of it. 
each cassette had two sides. A & B. 
i've always noticed that side B was unexpected & completely different from side A. i don't know why that was, but it was intriguing. i always waited for side A to end so i could flip the cassette to a different side, one that had nothing to do with its former playlist.

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the moonlight poured over the veranda, partially blocked by the fruitless tree in our backyard, forming little patches of light. i never got to know what the fruitless tree really was, just that it was fruitless was enough description. earlier, the kids took turns jumping from one patch of light to another. sitting on Ammas velvet floor cushions, dipping a well-folded morsel of seekh kebab & naan into the spicy chutney, 9 year old me had no other worry. Amma had taken her fancy china out, my favourite pieces being the goblets with golden rims. even water tasted special in those. 
as the mouths chewed up food, they were filled with words, words coming out spicier with each slurp of cola. the talk shifting from politics to old family anecdotes that were too funny to be real.

 someone had successfully managed to form an O shape with their index finger & thumb & slide my wrist in there, now the talk shifted to my weight, skin colour & my dark curls. i listened dutifully, always did, always  do. & at age 9, there's not much you can say back to elders complaining about your weight and the amount of melanin in your skin, & how in the future it'll affect you negatively, how as a woman, you'll have to change the things that you were born with. womanhood is compromise, an aunty said.
  all i knew was that nothing lasted inside me. not this food. not the conversation. not the patches of moonlight. not the family anecdotes. not any form of permanent happiness. not the fruitless tree. not nusrat fateh ali khans poetry. 
 i always started to dig my nails into my palm when this started. until it hurt. & bled. & the combined sound of my surroundings started to ring so loudly in my ears that they ached. & the velvet cushion started to melt beneath my toes.

& that's when i got up, walked over, & flipped the cassette to side B.