Presents from my Aunts in Pakistan
moniza Alvi
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.
I could never be as lovely
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.
About Moniza Alvi -
Moniza Alvi was born in Lahore, Pakistan, in 1954 and went to England
when she was a few months old. She grew up in Hertfordshire and
studied at the Universities of York and London.
Peacock Luggage, a book of poems by Moniza Alvi and Peter Daniels,
was published as a result of the two poets winning together the
Poetry Business Prize in 1991. Since then, Moniza Alvi has written
four poetry collections. The Country at My Shoulder (1993) led to her
being selected for the Poetry Society's New Generation Poets
promotion.
After a long career as a secondary school teacher, Moniza Alvi now
tutors for the Open College of the Arts and lives in London. She is
presently working on a series of poem-myths, inspired by Kipling's
Just So Stories. In 2002 she received a Cholmondeley Award for her
poetry.
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