I spent several weeks in the hospital after my horseback riding accident, and when I was finally able to come home, my mother thought it would be a good idea to put my bed in the drawing room (known to most people as the formal living room). I protested this idea, but she didn’t think I could manage the stairs.

I came home in a plaster cast that made me look rather buxom. It seemed to function as a bustier in the way it pushed my breasts up closer to my chin. The cast started below my waist and went all the way up to my chest. I tried my best to hide my now voluminous bosom with various shawls, which would have been much easier to do in the privacy of my own bedroom. But no, there I was in the middle of the drawing room, propped up with several pillows, to greet all the guests who would invariably stop by for lunch or afternoon tea.

We lived in a four-bedroom A-frame house on Street No. 1 in F 6/3 in Islamabad. The house was modernist but the interior decorations were antique reproductions. My mother had all the furniture custom made out of walnut wood in a style that resembled the Louis VI period.

We went to F. Shumacher and Co. in Manhattan to purchase fabrics in ornate classic styles and designs for the Islamabad house, which we moved into in 1979. We bought  fine silks, printed fabrics and European-influenced wovens for the draperies and the upholstery.

My single bed was placed, quite literally, in the center of the drawing room in the middle of all the household activity. The tea trolley would be rolled out at four o’clock every day, and more often than not people would drop by for afternoon tea. I did my best to smile gracefully and respond to questions and observations about my injury.

“Darling, you look positively sickly,” some Aunty would say. “Quite like an invalid, really.” Or, “My, that cast makes you look rather robust.” This last comment made me decline the offers of cakes and cookies from the tea trolley and I lost about fifteen pounds or so. Normally, I would have been happy to drop a few pounds, but the cast became loose and didn’t offer much in the way of support for my cracked vertebrae and I had to be fitted for a new cast.

I hadn’t spent that much time in Pakistan, so I didn’t know most of the people who dropped by. I found this picture as I was going through old family photos. It reminded me of the kinds of ladies who would drop by for tea.

I have no idea who they are, and I don’t know if they actually dropped by for tea when I was convalescing, but they may have. And if they did, I’m sure I didn’t know who they were back then either.