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Let me tell you, no one has ever said to my face, that I am too dark to be beautiful -actually, once they did but we’ll get to that later. No one has ever said to me, “Excuse me but your complexion is horrible.” Let them come up to my face now, and say that; they’ll only get embarrassed at their mentality being showcased so blatantly. I doubt being a Pakistani or an Asian in general, I doubt that people ever face colorism directly (however they must still have observed some in their life). For it is the subtle presence of it that abuses one’s heart the most.

At seven years old, do you remember? You ran out the house to play with the neighborhood kids, kicking that football across the pale dying grass; didn’t you hear Aisha’s Mum call out to her: “Itni dhoop mei kaali ho jao gi, andar aa jao. (You’ll get tanned/dark in the sun, come inside.)” Aisha went straight inside after her mum and you guys didn’t stop her because her mum was right, she’d get tanned and becoming a shade darker; that is a dreadful thing, isn’t it? You did not dwell on the question for long, until, you were forced to repeat the query in your mind.

Recall that day a few years back, if your memory’s still good when Danyal showed up with a full sleeved shirt on to football practice, and you wondered how the heck will he play in this scorching heat with this on? and you asked him for a proper reasoning. He said and I quote, “Yaar garmi mei rang kharab ho Jaye ga. (My complexion will be ruined in this heat.)” You completely agreed with him; who in their right minds would want to ruin their complexion and turn it ‘muddy’ or as kids at your middle school would’ve said,’ become like a gorilla’.

These events were the norm weren’t they, tranquility of the mind did not break after watching a few fairness crème ads on the TV or after hearing your friends gossip, Wo Kaha se pyari hai, itna kaala insaan kaise pyara ho sakta hai (how is she pretty, how can someone so dark be pretty). It only hits you, when you realize, one day looking at yourself in the mirror, “hang on, I too am dark”, and then you go on a spree of comparing your skin shade to theirs’, then who the people have labeled disgusting or ugly looking; and finally conclude. You are the kaala or kaali in question.

I had that realization quite early on in life and let me tell you I still suffer from trauma; I wouldn’t take part in debates even though I wanted to, fearful that the people would laugh at my skin, I couldn’t make new friends for the same reason and whole days at school would turn into nightmares because I had heard them trash talk about others concerning mere skin complexions. They never dared say it directly but whenever talking about the brown of the skin, they would give me the look. Nevertheless, I suffered in my own realm, and after coming back home, crying while looking at my brown face in the bathroom mirror; I would calm myself by saying:

Oh, the audacity. To call me ugly, to call me too dark as though I was made from a dirtier mud; a darker mud indeed but not dirty. As though God, in all His Mighty form, shaped my body with a handful of soil from some deeper earth.

I had had too much; people did not mind saying that dark was ugly to my face. Not too straightforwardly, of course, they too had some manners left in them, they wouldn’t look into my eyes when saying that -gazed at whatever wall they could find behind me or at their hands. Growing up, getting matured, and after some years passing by, I finally began making peace with myself. The statement that I had oh-so-often consoled myself with, words -made from a darker mud- that I had repeated to myself in the mirror, was starting to make perfect sense.

You could say I grew into them. I had lost confidence in my appearance because I had heard people ‘darker people shouldn’t show themselves off too much’ (I’m not lying, a friend of mine actually said that). But to think of it, it put me in a more empowering situation. People felt threatened because a few rebels did not follow the standards made by them, felt threatened by the fact that I was confident in my muddy shade. At that, I said, ‘Well Hira, you’ve hit a jackpot without even trying.’

And the ‘people’ I had always felt insure around; I realized that it was somewhat my fault for branding the whole school, or some relatives, or an entire city for the anguish that some owners of uncivilized mentality had caused me. Yet it wasn’t even their fault; they were bought up and fed with this idea, and they let it grow with them. I eventually fell in love with the idea of self-acceptance.

In the end, I will say; mentally, physically and spiritually, I will find peace with myself. I will love myself. And I will accept my skin for being the shade of a darker mud.