THE COUNTRY THAT ASKED US TO BE PATIENT

In my country, patience was not just a virtue. It was a national assignment. We were told to be patient when the lights went out, patient when the prices went up, and patient when the road to our hospital became a swimming pool after rainfall. My grandmother used to say that patience was the key to success. But by the time I turned seventeen, I had begun to suspect that somebody had stolen the door. In my country, even the problems had become familiar. The electricity would disappear so regularly that darkness no longer felt like an emergency. It felt like a scheduled visitor who refused to announce his arrival. The price of rice increased, and we adjusted. The price of fuel increased, and we adjusted. Transport fares increased, and we adjusted again. At this point, I wondered if the government was secretly studying our ability to bend without breaking. My mother would send me to the market with a list and a certain amount of money. I would return with half the items and a full understanding of economics. "Where is the rest?" she would ask. "Mummy, the money is not enough." She would stare at me. I would stare at the bag. The bag would stare back, empty and innocent. Somehow, the market had become the only place where money could disappear without leaving a trace. And whenever we complained, someone would remind us that things could be worse. I began to wonder why the worst always seemed to be waiting for us, while the better days were permanently on their way. At school, we were taught that the government existed to serve the people. Outside school, we learnt that the people existed to survive the government. I did not know which lesson was more important. One afternoon, I asked my grandmother how long we were supposed to keep being patient. She looked at me and smiled. "My child, patience is a virtue." I nodded. Then I asked, "But what happens when patience is all we have left?" For the first time, my grandmother had no answer. And that frightened me more than anything else. Because in my country, we had learnt to laugh at things that should make us cry. We had learnt to turn hardship into jokes, disappointment into memes, and survival into a personality. We were not laughing because everything was fine. We were laughing because sometimes, laughter was the only thing the country had not yet made too expensive. And perhaps that was the greatest absurdity of all. A nation full of people who were always told to be patient, while patience itself was running out.

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