“You need to learn to sit with yourself,” the psychiatrist had said. He’d said it like I hadn’t tried. I’d nodded. What else was there to do?

That first morning back home, I took the pill with water, as I had for years before – regrettably. The same absinthe-colored, small, round pill. I walked into the lounge and switched off the lights. I opened the fridge then closed it. I made myself tea and a piece of toast with honey. I sat on the couch and ate my food. I rubbed my chin and ran my fingers through my beard. I waited for my thoughts to settle. 

I climbed the stairs and went into the big room, the largest in the house. The off-white walls with X-shaped panels jutting slightly outward, casting faint shadows in the light. The small chandelier hanging from the ceiling, its glass arms dulled with dust. The soft grey carpet full of faded roses and curling floral patterns, worn out by countless footsteps over the years. As always, the room faintly smelled of dry paper and wood polish. At one end, stood two wooden closets with a long counter between them, their doors slightly ajar. Inside, the  shelves were crammed with books: some half-read by me, some still untouched, some upright, some stacked, some slumped like old trees, a few still holding pencils between their pages where my reading had stopped. 

I walked toward the closet on the right and opened it fully. Before the visit to the hospital I’d been reading Celine’s book War and was halfway through his anti-war mongering when I’d decided to save it for later, for when times were worse. I looked at the book again now. I still wasn’t hungry for war. I closed the door.

I went toward the other end of the room. There, through the big windows, was the green façade of the neighbor’s balcony. Tendrils spread like fungus over pale peach walls, snaking their way upward through the off-white concrete lattice of the railing. A pigeon stood on it, still as a statue. I saw the windows of the empty balcony full of sunlight. To the right of it, there was a narrow slit-window with an ornate iron grill, rising like a cathedral arch. Beside it was a broader window framed in white grilles and its dark glass. Above, the sky was pale blue, deceptively calm. Soft clouds drifted in a slow procession. Not the sort of sky that meant anything. Certainly not rain.

My eye fell on the cat with the tortoiseshell coat on the street below. I stood watching it, to see what it was up to. The cat emerged from the faint shade and strutted in the cobbled street, prodding anything that came in its way. First, a plastic bag full of garbage. The cat straightened its back and arrogantly extended its neck as if it didn’t need scraps and crumbs. It nosed at the neighbor’s gate, hoping somebody would open it so it could sneak through and claim the house. The elegant way the cat moved and the sleekness of its limbs and its narrow shoulders made me think it was a she. She was the queen of the feral kingdom, and no one could look down on her. Nothing could belittle her, at least not in that moment.

The cat brushed her flank against the steel pipe that ran down from the gas meter. She looked up in my direction. I backed away from the window but I knew in my heart that she had seen me and there was nothing I could do about it. Slowly, I put my elbows on the windowsill, stretched my neck, and peered down. Green feline eyes caught me. They bulged out as the cat watched me. She appeared to be angry; if I were standing in the street she would have scratched me to death. She ran away and slid under the house’s door, vanishing.

I turned away from the window, took my shirt off, and lay on the ground. My belly faced the ceiling and my arms lay underneath my hips. The fan spun, the blades catching the sunlight – in slower flashes now, softer, less sharp than before. I took my hands from the undersides and placed them on my chest. And lay there for a while.

It started low in my gut, a slow pull, heavy and steady, sinking until it settled in my legs. I sat up sharply, as if coming out of water. Sitting still, I waited for the feeling to pass.

My hands were cold. Not shaking, just cold. My breath came in short and dry. I tried to swallow, but my throat felt shut. I pressed my palm to my chest – it felt firm, unmoving. Something turned behind my ribs. I didn’t know what it was; it wasn’t pain. I thought, If someone comes in now, even someone I hate, I wouldn’t say a word. I would listen and nod. That would be enough. The world was very big and I was very small. I could feel it now, how big it was. I could feel it pressing in. I placed two fingers on my neck and counted my heartbeat. It was normal, nothing to worry about.

On the white walls, the shadows had vanished from their grooves. I raised myself and put my shirt back on, the oversized black bowler shirt that I always wore in the summer. I grabbed the car keys from the wooden counter and made my way down the stairs. If I went out, I would feel better. I had to move.

 It was the same every evening. I’d feel the world pressing in and I would get out and drive and drive. I’d call my friends and speak to whoever answered the phone. If someone was free, I picked them up. It felt good to fill the space around me. When they talked and laughed I did too. Some nights we ended up at a café in some cramped corner of the city. Some nights we just drove with no destination in mind.

Without planning to, I took the road to Bolan Medical Hospital. At the psychiatry wing, I parked near the chained gate that blocks vehicles from going through. That was my spot; I always parked my car there. I stood by the gate for a second, then climbed the stairs.

From the warehouse next to the stairs I could hear the familiar low thrumming that never stopped. I could never be sure about what went on in there. Big metal vents stuck out of the back wall, round and rust-red. I asked my psychiatrist about the noise once, and he told me that they filled oxygen tanks in there.

The locked chain that pulled the two wings of the metal gate was looped low, loose enough for a man to slip through sideways. I slipped in, as always. The cafeteria was beside the psychiatry department, under the tower that held the water tanks. A slow drip descended from the pipes above and spattered onto the concrete, just left of the glass door. 

Through the glass I could see the long fluorescent lights of the cafeteria, and the flicker of the blue electric fly-killer. The boy with the backward cap was wiping the tables, his head low. The place was empty except for one man slouched in the corner, head back, eyes closed. He was a waiter as well.

I didn’t go in. I turned around and walked back down the stairs and back to my car.

“One’s car,” my father had said once, “often resembles the man who owns it.” He’d said it a long time ago, with that calm certainty he always carried, as if he were stating a fact of nature. I remember laughing, not thinking much of it.

I looked at my Alto under the tree – sand-beige, sun-faded at the edges, back bumper cracked and barely hanging on. I wasn’t laughing now. The hood was still warm. There were dents I didn’t remember making, and the plastic headlights looked tired. Maybe my father was right.

I didn’t know how long I stood there, but a loud horn on the road broke through and I put the key in and pulled it out just a little – not halfway but just enough – then turned it hard. The door unlocked. I slid in and took off.

After Golimar Chowk and on the long, new Sabzal Road, I pressed down on the pedal. The road seemed to never end, and I drove and drove. When the car got up to 80km/h it began to shake and the wind whooshed fast through the window. That was when I always slowed down. I cruised around Jinnah Town’s fancy neighborhoods, with the music low and my arm resting on the window. The wind now drifted in, warm and steady.

At Pishin Stop the vehicles were like a long colony of insects moving steadily without hurry. I waited patiently in the traffic jam, watching the last of the daylight fading through the window. And as I waited, rain began to hammer the roof like a thousand tiny fists. Water streamed down the windshield, blurring the brake lights and the traffic lights into streaks of gold and red. That’s how it always was in Quetta: you could never trust the weather. Eventually, the road opened up.

The petrol gauge dipped low, and I decided to head home, taking Spiny Road. Under Benazir Pul, where there wasn’t much traffic, bats hung high in the dark guts of the bridge. Their screeches came sharp and sudden, like static from a broken radio. My ears buzzed for a moment. I veered off and took the exit toward Secretariat Road.

The lights were out in the Secretariat building. A solitary guard sat still on a chair. On Zarghoon Road the rain lost its fury. Hospitals and laboratories lined both sides of the road, their names lit up in the dark, all the way to Saryab Bridge. People drifted out of entrances like smoke. Again, there was traffic, the rickshaws blocking most of the road. I moved recklessly now, switching lanes and cutting through. My patience had worn out.

Good Bridge was the road that led home, curving to the right, smooth and clean, and I turned toward it. From the bend, I saw Chilton Mountains in the distance, standing tall and grey-blue at the city’s edge. The rain had cleared the air, making the view sharper and brighter. The white and blue lights of the small houses dotted across them were distinct against the hillside. I descended onto Saryab Road, and the buildings fell away, revealing a more open sky. 

Tires hissed over the wet asphalt. On the left stood an old tree with a bench underneath its canopy. A little ahead, a narrow bridge split from the road. Its cement-block railing was cracked, rebars jutting out like snapped bones. Drug addicts had peeled the metal loose, slowly and deliberately. That was how they got money for the drugs.

The yellow streetlights had come on in my neighborhood. There was the porch light of my house, switched on as always. I killed the engine but left the ignition on. A few seconds later, the fan kicked in – a soft whirr from under the hood. The car was cooling itself down after all the aimless driving. My cousin had told me to only turn off the ignition when the fans stopped. I wasn’t ready to go inside, so I let the radiator fan spin and waited until it ticked to a stop. I thought to myself then, I am always moving. Like a mutt chasing something it never catches.

“Tomorrow,” I said. “Tomorrow I stay in.”