The Firefly Field Theory

|13| Red Bulls and Revelations: Part III

PART III:

The inside is scarcely decorated and heavily populated. Judging by the booming traffic of people who could be possibly hungry, possibly tired and possibly festering in an OCD to honk after every breath; this little dinner cottage must be having a busy day. Or maybe it’s like this every day.

If you look at the cottage from outside you’d think the seven dwarfs all prepped up, would be serving and platting for their impatient and hungry guests and Snow White would be swiftly landing her fingers over the keys of a giant organ in one corner. The sound of clanking knives and forks mixed in with the upbeat notes of ‘The Next Step to Success’. No, that’s just me then.

Tall, lean and shaved waiters, dressed in the classical white plaid button shirts and fine cut black pants swarm like black and white bees all over the place. Bending down here to place a dish on a hopelessly deserted white table cloth, twisting in between vigorously active tables to place their ordered drinks down for them, carrying four plates at a time with sizzling delicious Bar-B-Q chicken on their outstretched balanced arms and smiling for the zillionth time at a random customer who can’t wait to dig in. There’s no Snow White, there’s barely enough room for an organ, and barely enough interest in the people to want upbeat ‘The Next Step to Success’ while they tear the roasted chicken limb from limb.

The place is packed and there’s a multitude of stimuli that hit you once you step in. First, you can’t ever brace yourself enough for an enormous herd of chattering people clustered around congested white tables and hurrying waiters, otherwise the proverbial nutshell, that is this dinner. The slabs of euphoric sunbeams are welcomed through tiny wooden framed windows on both sides of the cottage. Layers of chilling wind, heavily infused with freshness underlie the bright and boundless rays. The blend arrives, collides and lightens up the dark wooden walls, enough that they loosen up their rich auburn color and look like lovely, dripping golden walls made of honey.

Now that I think of it this has to be what the inside of a honey comb looks like, alive, congested and almost always obsessing over feeding the fat larvae on time. I can feel the current of activity– with enough of a zing that one might end up burning calories by just observing it, the smell of mouth watering chicken roast and delicious beef steaks enthralls my  nostrils and my mouth waters in envy of my nose, wishing to taste the excitement. Bravo asks one of the waiters the directions to the restroom and he points us to one corner, at an extension to a hallway lined with wooden panels. I follow Bravo as she makes her way into the branching passage, and turns in the knob of the ladies bathroom. She holds the door a little until I step in. I have an urge to check if anyone from the waiters, the dinners, the people who just entered the hive and the people who are exiting, basically if anyone gives me a quizzical look because of the obvious misconception I’m shackled with because of my physical appearance. If anyone stares because they think I’m a guy and decent guys don’t walk into ladies toilets with ladies.

I don’t think I should be surprised, nobody gives a shit. They travelled all this way to eat and hell, that’s what they are gonna do. The rule number one of the hive probably is; mind your own business. So, like the other busy bees, I mind my own business. The door reclines and I have a revelation only someone with a twisted heritage as mine may be able to relate to.

Pakistani dinners are nothing like the dinners in America, but the restrooms in Pakistan are everything like the restrooms in America.

 It is disgusting. The mouthwatering scents are gone, and have been replaced by the stench of rotting wastes. The smell is so bad you can feel your lungs rotting inside you. All the hyper salivation that my mouth had gotten into quickly retreats into nothingness, I am only able to blurt a few curses in honor of the environment, when my throat goes dry and I shut up. There is hardly a single tile that could host your foot without drenching it. Muddy puddles reach far and wide across the tiled floor and embrace soaked up shards of toilet paper and floating black little studs, which are possibly flies. Or were flies.