PukhtunWomen

Pet Harry, runaway lizards and other stories

It is 5.30 and having suffered the twists and turns of a jet lagged night just finally managed to settle down for a few winks, when I heard a loud, “Oh my God, Mom, Mom wake up we have a problem! Mom someone’s pet lizard has got away and when I tried to catch it, it ran under the refrigerator. Mom wake up you have to help me catch it, the owners must be worried sick.”

By this point my son had taken it upon himself that the only way to wake me would be to pry open my eyelids with his sticky fingers and shout into my ear.

I removed his fingers from my sleep deprived eyes and tried to explain that no one kept pet lizards in Peshawar. “Oh my God Mom you just aint listening to me!”

“Don’t take Gods name in vain, and aint is not a word” I managed to say before his next onslaught.

"Oh my George Bush! Oh my Abraham Lincolnton!! Happy now Mom? Will you come and help me get that lizard back to its owners?"

"Bachay, no one has the inclination to keep lizards as pets in a country that is over run with them and especially if they are considered extremely dangerous."

That got him thinking a while and then he shrugged”Ah, ok,"
but didn’t sound too convinced.

I snuggled back under the sheets when the door crashed open again.

"Mom! Pet Harry is dead"

"Who?"

"Pet Harry, my new pet"

"What new pet?"

"The one Grand Mummy said I could keep."

"She let you keep a pet?" (I was surprised and a little hurt since she had never let us have one.) "She actually said you could have a pet?"

"Ya, Mom"

"Ok, how did Pet Harry die?"

"I killed it by mistake"

"You killed it?"

"I was playing with it and it died."

"It must have been sick, keep away from it and don’t touch it."

"Can we resuscitate it Mom?"

"I am not sure I can resuscitate a cat."

"What cat mom?"

"Well, I am not sure I can resuscitate a dog either."

"What dog Mom?"

"And pet Harry is a.............?"

"A roach, Mom, a beautiful black cockroach that will be dead forever if you don’t resuscitate it soon. Mom you can sleep later, pet Harry’s family will all be crying if you don’t save it and guess who they will blame for his death..... you. You who don’t care enough to get out of bed to save it."

Helplessly I got out of bed and went to see the freshly demised pet Harry, only to find that there were now two over turned roaches on the stairs, and my daughter crying beside them.

On asking what she was crying about, I found out that she had found a not dead but only over turned roach Harry who was desperately trying to right itself. Thinking pet Harry was following a morning exercise regimen she had encouraged her roach Rosie to do the same, and now couldn’t tell which was her roach and which was her bothers.

My son who was overjoyed to find pet Harry alive, consoled her

Don’t worry, I know pet Harry, he has a blue sheen and your Rosie has a brown sheen.

They both sat and watched the two unfortunate roaches kick futilely.
I reminded them that roaches weren’t exactly the most sanitary creatures on the face of the earth and that under no condition were they to resuscitate them.

Just then my sister in law came out of her room, she froze at the sight of us and the roaches, I was afraid that she was about to faint but she didn’t, instead she bellowed for Habib, the kitchen boy.

Habib came running in and was instructed to get rid of the roaches. Habib approached us hesitantly and picked up the roaches and promptly flushed them down the toilet, while the kids tried to figure out what all the fuss was about (not knowing any Pukhto has its own privelages). On realising what had just happened, there was a resulting outcry from both my children who were unconsolable that thier pets had just been flushed into the great ever after.

If looks could kill Habib would definitely have been a dead man, the resulting hullabaloo woke everyone else up in the house too.
Now that they had an audience the kids put on an act worthy of an Oscar, and we all felt really really bad for the two roaches. Finally my brother managed to console them

"Remember what I said the other day, sharing is caring. You guys just let your two friends go for a swim and who knows what adventures they will
have on the way."

"Will we ever see them again?"

"Who knows, they may come back in a day or a year, just think of them kindly while they are away."

This seemed to console them and we all finally released our breath and were surprised since we hadn’t even realized that we had been holding it in the first place.