The Centre

by Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi

Now, I didn’t really believe in this tarot stuff, but I did have faith in the intuition of my friend.

“It’s all in your hands, babe. Our fate isn’t written in stone. You need to take it like a warning card.”

Happiness isn’t something you choose. It just … happens.

It’s not that translation is a subjective process, exactly. In fact, in a way, it’s highly mathematical. It’s about retaining the feeling, the thing underneath.

The truth is, whenever I saw a beautiful painting, or read a great novel, I felt joy, of course, but something in me would also seethe. Jealousy is an ugly thing. Even ambition, particularly in a woman, can be undesirable. But this other feeling—this feeling of a life not fully lived—that was worse, practically unbearable. I felt constantly thwarted, and I didn’t even know by what.

And to this day, despite the horror that was to come, I maintain the importance of following one’s curiosity. One’s desire. It is the only way.

It’s always been like that, I thought, so much gratitude and admiration when a white person speaks a non-white language and only contempt and indignation for non-white people who don’t speak English.

“I mean … I could kill you, but I’d have to take you out for dinner first.” Adam was not actually as smooth as his opening line suggested. When I took him up on his offer, he became shy and flustered about where we should go.

that's actually very endearing

We went to the BFI café for a drink

At first I read it as FBI cafe and was deeply confused

I didn’t understand, but it seemed like he preferred to just … not?

King! Sorry but you're not going to make me hate someone for being uninterested in sex

And sometimes, it felt like I was smearing a thin layer of vanilla over my life to make it more palatable for him.

Did he not see, I wondered, that nobody else around him was being treated like a king? Did he not connect his whiteness to the special treatment he was receiving?

What Adam was witnessing were the remnants of a culture where once he was, by law, obeyed and pacified.

“Be settled in yourself first. And in your work. And with God,” Amma said. “That way you’ll never feel desperate.”

“Can you believe it?” I said. “If what Adam says is true, then in less than two weeks, I’ll be able to read, like Freud, in the original.”

Girl they said no telling!!!!

It’s not that I wasn’t conscious that both Adam and the lawyer had sworn me to secrecy, but Naima, well, telling Naima something was no different from telling it to myself in the bathroom mirror.

I know YOU have no way of knowing this but that line of logic in a horror book is simply NOT solid!

“It’s like preservation when it’s like that, right? Preservation of cultures.” “Well, yeah, except it wasn’t his culture,” I said.

Having come from a place where there was virtually no class mobility, I’d operated in a tiny bubble and never properly considered the emotional nuances of what it might feel like to be in her shoes.

That woman truly knew how to hold space.

POV you're cynthia erivo or ariana grande

I may meet someone, or I may not. But I need to be happy either way.” She put her tea towel down, taking a seat at the table. I turned the kettle on and plucked two mugs off the drying rack. “But other times I worry that total acceptance is a bit like giving up.

“You just said men are trash. Isn’t that the opposite of an affirmation?” “Oh yeah, that just came out. No. No they’re not. Men are lovely.”

POV you’re watching a lilsimsie stream after someone asks why she’s playing with lesbians

and she’s going on this language course … um, I mean some kind of course thing … or, not a course, just a thing.

Yeah she’s very safe to tell

I found it strangely mesmerizing and examined it for several moments before clearing my throat and asking, “Um … is that real?”

Why ……. Would the skull be real?? Like outside of manufacturing intrigue, why is that where your brain would go????

The first point, covering what qualified as “confidential,” said that I had to keep literally everything to do with the Centre a secret.

I’ll remind you that you’ve already failed this point

By point eight or nine, which mentioned fines of up to one million pounds and even imprisonment, I started to wish I’d been more discreet and resolved not to breathe another word to anybody.

Well no duh

“Oh, yeah, of course. I’m an introvert by nature.” “Introverts tend to rely on various supplemental aids to provide distraction. The internet is a significant one.

Jesus Tim no need to be so loud

“Do you mind if we measure your skull?”

Lmao?

Also, the truth is, life without distractions felt terrifying, as if the silence might give way to something beneath, as if there was this big secret pulsating below the earth, above the sky, within the trees, and if we went too quiet, we would hear it, and things would never be the same.

Shiba’s was the kind of beauty that made me understand why men carried photos of their sweethearts to war, the kind that I felt could ease even the idea of sacrificing one’s own life.

honest question are you gay

There was no point, he’d said to me again and again, if I wasn’t going to commit. I thought this was, I don’t know, somewhat cowardly, that we needed to let our feelings emerge naturally and follow them, do their bidding, not the other way around.

hmm

I felt that people were listening to me the way they listened to men, carefully, attentively, as if something of great value might drop out of my mouth at any moment.

are they listening to you like they listen to men or were you just not a professional in this field before?

“Isn’t everywhere outside of London racist?”

Is London NOT racist?

For instance, once, while we were Skyping, I admired the thriving plants behind her, and she told me that every month, she’d pour her menstrual cups into a jug of water, and then at the end of the week, she would water her plants with that mixture.

.. what my love that is a biohazard please just dispose of it

Maybe it sounds odd that I wasn’t suspicious earlier, with Adam’s talk of NDAs and those doctors who spoke in riddles, but I think I’d sort of just floated along with the mystery and enchantment of it all.

I just don’t think it’s that odd? You’re warned ahead of time and allowed to say no. Now you KNOW the process works so why are you throwing a fit??

Nutella, in those days in Karachi, had to be purchased from Agha’s, the fancy shop that carried imported goods, and it was expensive—five or six hundred rupees, a lot at the time. It was therefore out of bounds for household staff.

uhhhhh sure?

public school (which, I think, means private school, but private school also means private school),

What

For instance, instead of emerging from the birth canal, I had been yanked out via C-section, into the shocking cold and light.

we support c-sections here

but she wasn’t recognizing that her impulsiveness was a privilege.

You are all about calling out privilege which is fine but you sort of have the tone of “if it can be done because of privilege you shouldn’t be doing it” which is crazy for someone living rent free off of a family fortune that included MULTIPLE SERVANTS

She’d grown up with a loving mother and a doting older sister and, let’s be frank, had been the honorary son of her family.

like what does that mean

So … I had never been to Adam’s flat. I know that sounds shameful considering we were nearly engaged, but he lived in Seven Sisters, which was basically the other side of London. Like, an hour on the train.

Sorry as a Texan this is crazy

But there he was, asking me to come all the way to his, not even to a café in between. It felt like a power move.

So it’s natural and fine when you make him come to you but inconvenient and a power move for you to go him? Cool. I continue to be pro Adam

“One of the things that’s come up in our sessions is, well, how lowly I must have thought of myself to put up with you.”

Get her Adam

“I felt insecure too, Adam. The … intimacy stuff was hard for me. I felt like you withheld your affection—”

I’m not going to say her feelings on this are invalid bc they’re not but it’s so funny to see someone say very radical things about relationships vs friendships but also be like “your disinterest in sex makes you a bad person"

Suddenly, Adam hurled his fork across the room as if it were this utensil that was responsible for all the problems between us.

Yeah I. Don’t love that.

“You downloaded Tinder the day I brought up marriage!” “And I told you that I did, and I deleted it straight after. You said it was okay.”

this is actually a crazy thing to do because you were still fully dating him?

It’s a legitimate job that Kareem has. Who are you to judge? It’s just the way things are there. Everyone has servants.”

do you hear yourself

“I’m just saying you’re so quick to tear other people apart, but when it comes to you, it’s like you think you have a fucking halo around your head.

I’m aware that this may make me sound like a bitch, but try to understand, if I didn’t feel compelled, I didn’t feel compelled.

Sometimes community means doing things when we can’t be compelled

and by then even off Amazon Prime, they wouldn’t arrive in time.

You use Amazon prime?????????????????

“It annoys me when people try to find holes in plots,” I said.

You usually don’t have to hunt too hard I think I just don't like you