Friends

Picture credits: Humans Of New York

My best friend growing up was the neighbors' boy (also the only boy on a block full of girls) who gave me a genius idea about how to marry my doll but still keep her. He became my friend because I'd let him play with my dolls (I had too many toys, I was spoiled) when no one else would because the girls didn't want to play with a 'boy' (see I have always been surrounded by women who put the other gender down a lot, no wonder I planned a masculinist movement in middle school :D) and his parents won't buy him any. 

The oldest of our pack, now a lady with two children, had been banned from buying any dolls because she ruined them all within a day of buying them and then wanted new ones. To get more dolls, she coined a great plan. Her sister and cousin (who lived next door) had boy-dolls. 'Lets get our dolls married' she said to us. 'These boy dolls are of no use otherwise, this way we can play with them.' We, very happily, agreed. It wasn't until one of mine and another girl's dolls got married to these two boy dolls that we realized that we had to 'send off the girls with the boys' and since the pack leader was the oldest kid of the boy-dolls' household, she will be the 'care-taker' of the dolls aka will keep them and play with them. I let her keep my doll for a few days but then threw a fit, went to her mom and got my doll back. A breach big enough to get me exiled from the pack.

After a couple days of observing me watch the girls play from my balcony, the neighbors' boy came over hesitantly and asked if he could play with my dolls. He suggested many games, 'Kitchen kitchen', 'doctor, doctor', 'school, school', 'dress up', 'mama, mama' but I was only interested in playing what the other girls were playing and sad because they won't let me play with them and I didn't have a boy doll. He cut me a paper boy doll but it was too small and too flimsy to stay upright. I remember him looking around in exasperation, his eyes landing on my baby brother in the crib and him exclaiming, 

"I have a groom for Warda!" (my doll's name). Our moms helped us plan the wedding, even the older girl's mom conspired with us because she was mad at her daughter for throwing me out of the pack and we threw a huge party for which every kid on the street was invited. We married the doll to my brother and the farthest she got from my possession was in my brother's crib. 

I still have the doll. I lost the friend when I was 15. 

Both of us were high achievers and competitors. Our interaction had lessened over the years as we grew and my family moved away but we still got to see each other at least once a week and then only on major occasions. He was a couple years older than me so he graduated high school, FSc. in Pakistan, before me. We had planned to go to his house after school on the day of his graduation. When my father picked me up from school that day, he told me we'll instead be going to his janaza. Someone poisoned him, he said. "Why?" I remember asking weakly. "I don't know. He was a smart kid, many people were jealous of him." Papa replied.

I didn't attend his funeral. The next time I saw his mother was a few months later on Eid. I remember her being all over the place, her house a shrine to her son, his pictures and belongings displayed in every corner. I never went back. No one ever mentioned him again in front of me. I remember hushed conversations and my dad signaling my aunt to not talk about him in front of me when she started asking probing questions.

Last year, when I visited my grandmother, she brought up the subject. I learned he had committed suicide. He had been suicidal for a few months following his break up with his fiancee and the family had been keeping him under strict surveillance after a failed suicide attempt a couple of weeks before. He had seemed so happy after the awards ceremony that day, he had scored second highest in the nation, that the family let him go out for a few hours with friends. He ditched them after a couple of hours, ingested a bottle of CuSO4, panicked at the last minute, tried to throw it up and call his parents, accidentally called my dad who was in court and didn't pick up. When he called back, no one picked up. My father called his parents (since he knew what was going on) and they called the friends. Eventually, his cellphone was tracked to find him dead in a back alley, steps from his house. 

He used to call me his only 'real friend'. I wish now that I had been educated to recognize symptoms of depression and not deemed too young to be told that my best friend was suicidal. Our life, so much of it, depends on our mental life and health. May God help us all.