They sent me a salwar kameez
peacock-blue,
and another
glistening like an orange split open,
embossed slippers,
gold and black
points curling.
Candy-striped glass bangles
snapped, drew blood.
Like at school, fashions changed
in Pakistan - the salwar bottoms
were broad and stiff,
then narrow.
My aunts chose an
apple-green sari,
silver-bordered
for my teens.
I tried each
satin-silken top -
was alien in the sitting-room.
as those clothes -
I longed
for denim and
corduroy.
My costume clung to me
and I was aflame,
I couldn't rise up
out of its fire,
half-English,
unlike Aunt Jamila.
I wanted my parents'
camel-skin lamp -
switching it on in my bedroom,
to consider the
cruelty
and the transformation
from camel to shade,
marvel at the colours
like stained glass.
My mother cherished
her jewellery -
Indian gold, dangling, filigree,
But it was stolen from our car.
The presents were
radiant in my wardrobe.
My aunts requested cardigans
from Marks and Spencers.
My salwar kameez
didn't impress the schoolfriend
who sat on my bed,
asked to see
my weekend clothes.
But often I admired
the mirror-work,
tried to glimpse myself
in the miniature
glass circles, recall
the story
how the three of us
sailed to England.
Prickly heat had me
screaming on the way.
I ended up in a cot
In my English
grandmother's dining-room,
found myself alone,
playing with a tin-boat.
I pictured my
birthplace
from fifties' photographs.
When I was older
there was conflict, a
fractured land
throbbing through newsprint.
Sometimes I saw
Lahore -
my aunts in shaded rooms,
screened from male
visitors,
sorting presents,
wrapping them in tissue.
Or there were
beggars, sweeper-girls
and I was there -
of no fixed nationality,
staring through
fretwork
at the Shalimar Gardens.
