The Shade of a Lemon Tree

The thunder came rolling in, violently tapping against windows, beckoning for the recognition of its presence. The faces of Lahore ran for their doors, out onto their yards, as if it were a call to prayer. They danced in the rain, a sight I hadn’t had the pleasure of ever seeing before. The rain marks the beginning of the monsoon season in Pakistan. The end of the drought, and the cleansing of ones past.

Following the rain, comes the rays of sunshine, glistening like honey over the picturesque city and its beaten down cement buildings. Each building, laced with vines of ivy that trail into the nooks of secret gardens, where promises of everlasting love are whispered between star-crossed lovers.

The sunshine soaks itself within each face, causing the citizens of Lahore to remain a constant hue of ebony. Their burnt tones accentuating their joyful smiles - visible from thousands of miles away.

Beneath this sunlight, I walked through a marketplace, where the aroma of spices and the colours of brightly painted saris seize my senses. While my mind wandered away in this alien reality, the touch of a small hand allows me to realize that I am in fact walking on two feet and not floating within a spectrum of colours. A young girl with a golden hoop embellished on her nose smiles up at me. She leads me to a gracefully aged lemon tree, where she imitates the sounds of the snakes that slither underneath.

Even as we lay a safe distance from the tree, it provides us with its shadow. The girl refers to it as “saya” as she crosses her arms underneath her head and stares up at the sky. This sky that we both share, on both ends of the world, holds a different value here. I find myself timing each breath of mine, in a childish belief, that I can store this air within myself and blow it over my piles of paperwork when I return home.

The sun begins to set and I lay in awe as tones of marmalade coat the horizon. Fireflies appear like fallen stars, and we gaze upon them with a dreamy sight as they disappear and reappear, while softly dancing back and forth between our vision.

Now, as I find myself running to catch the 7:30 a.m. train, unsure of how I found myself in this race against time, I remember a lemon tree in Lahore and the serenity I found under its shade.