Happy Mother’s Day
It was the day I was moving into the LUMS hostel. Ami was there, of course. She helped me put on the red checkered bed sheet over the single bed in that tiny cubbyhole I was to share with another girl, we set out the lamp she had helped me choose and then we opened up my suitcase. Ami found out where the ironing table was and took it upon herself to iron my kameezs and dupattas, coming back with the clothes hung neatly on plastic hangers, with the burning August heat of Lahore drawing rivulets of perspiration down the sides of her face and back. I didn’t know anyone in that strange, foreign university then and having my mother next to me was a comfort. Also she had just ironed a week’s worth of outfits just so I wouldn’t have to! I also remember exactly an year from then, at the start of my sophomore year when Ami came to drop me off to the dorms again, and I left her in the new cubbyhole, distracted by calls from friends I hadn’t seen in two mo...