In The Name of the Father
from the April 2005 INsite Magazine
Keep your eye on the ball. That’s what my principal told me at high school graduation and that’s what Niamat is telling me now. But for some reason I can’t stop watching the wall. My legs are burning, my butt muscles are twitching and my balance is letting me down. I don’t really feel like holding on to my racquet any more. I’ve been in oxygen debt before but I’m on the verge of oxygen bankruptcy right now. I need a break. I need air. I call a TV timeout.
I’m playing squash. It’s not the first time I’ve played, but the last time was in college and that’s longer ago than I want to admit in this column. So before we started our match Niamat gave me a quick lesson, the objective of which, I believe in hindsight, was to ensure that when I awoke the next morning I’d fall over backwards on the way to the bathroom. Mission accomplished.
Mercifully, Niamat granted me my TV timeout, though we were not on TV. Squash doesn’t broadcast well. The ball is too small. Therefore squash is not an Olympic sport and it’s not as popular as it’s slacker cousin: racquetball (the difference being that in squash the ball doesn’t really bounce and there are areas on the court that are out of play).
Squash is to racquetball what veganism is to vegetarianism. Anyone can sit down for a meal and eat some vegetables, but it takes a real man to lay off the cheese. Squash is all about laying off the cheese.
During my “lesson” Niamat taught me the basics. The grip, the forehand, the backhand, the sprinting for no apparent reason. If I were him I’d have wanted to tire me out first too. After all, he was about to spot me 7 points in three 9-point games and I was going to start with the serve. Also, if I whiffed, wussed out, or otherwise withdrew during a point, we would replay that point.
If I were Niamat, though, I probably could have spotted me 9 points and still won. Niamat is a member of the Khan squash dynasty, the family that ruled the international squash tour for five decades. Niamat, along with his brothers, Sakki, Naji and Enamullah, each played on the pro circuit for a number of years and climbed the world rankings. The Khans are also responsible for making squash the national sport in Pakistan and their devotion to the “soft ball” version of the game also helped drive the less technical “hard ball” variety into obscurity in this country.
If hardball squash is like veganism then softball squash is like starving. I asked Niamat which version we were playing. “Soft ball,” he said with a smile. “It’s all soft ball now.
Watch the soft ball. That’s all I need to do. But as I tire I forget, and I’m left with half the time to react as the ball caroms off the front wall to wherever Niamat wants me to chase it. This is far more exhausting than you’d think.
I “won” the first game on a drop shot. Nice. High five.
“Okay, this is a little taste of what you’d see in competition,” said Niamat. He blanked me in the second game.
In the third game I got the picture. We weren’t really playing squash. I was playing squash. He was playing “let’s see if I can get Nathan to quit.” We went to overtime. I had the chance to tank a few times and end the misery but instead held on to the hope that I’d catch him slipping, just for one, perfectly timed point. Didn’t happen. But I didn’t quit either.
The next day I had a lot to complain about. I was on the phone with my mother, who always has the right answer.
“If it wasn’t for squash you might not exist. So if your butt hurts, that’s a small price to pay,” she said, having met my father at the Charles Street T stop in 1974 with the famous opening line, “Is that a racquetball racquet?”
“No,” said my father, “It’s a squash racquet.”
And now he’s a vegetarian. Go figure.