Amid Life and Death

“Mama, Mama....” She was sobbing in her sleep and clinging harder to me at the sound of each explosion. There is nothing I can do except tell her that everything is going to be fine.

“Yaa Allaahh, Why do you allow this? Without your wish, without your knowledge, nothing happens in this world” I wanted to scream out into the darkness, ask him why he bought this fate upon me. My baby, Noor is hardly two years old..... How do I tell her why she won’t see her baba anymore? How do I explain why her mother can’t stop the explosions and gunshots that disturb her so much?

It’s past midnight but my child is still unable to sleep tight. I grew up hearing gunfire and explosion. It seems like she too will have to get used to it. I lost her father and brother to these people....the so called soldiers who kill our brothers and molest our sisters in the name of power.

(Suddenly, someone screams outside. Fatima peers through the thin ragged curtains.)

“Allaahh...the street...it’s raining fire, they are dropping bombs...Noor woke up and started pulling my robe. Burying her head in my lap, she tries to hide from all the horrid sounds...sounds of death.

Nearby, my neighbour Layla’s house has caught fire...her daughter is as old as mine. They are moving out with her husband. She ducked to cover her child from fire and ran across the road...the entire street suddenly filled up with heavy smoke.

Here, I stood peeping through my window, without courage to move out...silently praying my home is saved....I know if I go out with her, we will both die. We don’t have anywhere to go.

Slowly the smoke cleared. As dawn began, I realized that the only house left on this street is ours. To take a better look, I opened the front door. “Allaaahh! Layla...her baby, their half burnt bodies hugging each other at my doorstep.” The fire had left holes through their skin and flesh till the bones. She was trying to take her baby to the safety of my roof. What new devil’s way is this? How much more gruesome will you make death for us? I turned away behind my door.

This was how days began for us, greeted by dead and injured....from how long I don’t remember.

Word has it, that it is a new chemical bomb that was used yesterday. A chemical, that sticks to the skin or clothes and burn in the air. You can’t wipe it or take out. It separates the bones and flesh. They are not supposed to use it in wars; rules are meant for the suppressed and weak. At times we can’t stand the hotness of the teapot and this small girl and her innocent baby, with their skin burning when they are fully alive? How can a mother see her baby burnt alive in front of her eyes?...

Only a few people are alive from our street, many are fatally burnt.

In the kitchen except a little flour and water, all our supplies are over. I have to cook something before Noor wakes up. My poor girl does not even know life with good food, nice clothes, toys or even peaceful sleep. She was born in an uncanny tent of a health camp. All these mighty men who order war and sleep peacefully at home, don’t they have families? Don’t they fear for their children at the slightest hurt or ill-health? The slightest pain for a child is heartache for a parent. Do they not know that we too have children?

This world, where people run behind celebrities who spends his/her life showing their body and masked face to the public, who spent their life with alcohol, drugs and later in rehabs, who died of some disease which was an outcome of their lifestyle, a world which spends hours talking about that human being while they plans, funds, supports and ignores the death of hundreds who lived a meaningful and difficult life to help others, to bring up a family or feed their children, who never had money for even food or water. Why do the virtuous ones suffer and those who go astray have everything in life?

(Gunfire rings through the kitchen’s window. Fatima falls on the floor. Noor come running and shouting for her. She falls stumbling on her mother’s lifeless body. Her fingers feel the lifeless face. She tries to poke her mother’s closed eyes just as she used to wake her from sleep. Noor starts crying when her attempts fail.)

“Mammaa...”

“Noor, baby, Mama is here” I am not able to touch her.... I was shocked. I tried to move my hand; I tried to touch my crying daughter. No, I can’t feel her. I see her but can’t touch her. She is crying; she is not seeing me. She is trying to shake me yelling ‘mama mama’. She wants me to hug her and hold her tight. Her feet are wet from my blood. It’s all around her or she is sitting in a pool of life blood which brought her to do this world and now, left her alone in this world.

“You are the soul, there lies your body” A bright glow beside her answered.
“Nooo, it cannot be, I can’t leave my dear Noor and go, please...she is alone in this world of shaitans....I have to protect her”
“The doors of paradise are open and await you Fatima...Come, let’s go”
“How can I enjoy the scents of paradise when I smell my blood from her little fingers? How can I come with you when she is hungry and unfed?”
“Your afterlife in heaven with all the goodness is your reward for your sufferings here...Come with me”
“No reward is worth leaving my little one here where she has no one. I cannot orphan my child.”

(Noor wriggles into Fatima’s lifeless arms and falls asleep there. Meanwhile, soldiers break open the door and come in. Noor wakes at the noise and clings on the lifeless body. She starts crying aloud on seeing strangers. A soldier kicked her aside; he feels Fatima’s lifeless body compelled by his dirty mind. He moved my body away from the blood pool, close to my daughter.)

“Ya Allah! What all should my daughter see? Her little face is filled with fear. She is screaming. Is she trying to stop him or is she begging for his attention? She cannot see her mother’s dead body being devoured by a savage man who does not even spare dead women.”
“Please, I can’t leave her alone to see more of this!”

(The soldiers finish and move away to search the house. Noor is crying loudly beneath the kitchen sink calling out to her mother, too scared to even move close to her body. One of the men raises his gun at her.)

“Nooo....Allaaahhh....save my daughter...Noor, Noor”

‘Mama’, she couldn’t complete it. I didn’t open my eyes. I knew it was over. I didn’t look at her. I didn’t want to see my daughter’s lifeless body. I didn’t want to see her glowing eyes lifeless. I didn’t want to see the lips that use to kiss me shivering in pain. I didn’t want to see that small hands and legs beating on the ground. Not me, not any mother, who carries them inside for months, who feels the life inside, who feels their kick, who waits for months to see the face and then suffers the biggest pain to bring them to the world and then forgets all the pain in a second when they see their baby, when they hear they cry. The men who make orders and the man who is feasting on my corpse will never understand it.

(Gunshot! Noor’s body falls beside Fatima’s)

“Noor, my baby”

Suddenly, I heard a soft whisper “Mama”. I felt a touch on my hands.
“Mama, open your eyes, where were you”? I slowly opened my eyes. “Oh God” I couldn’t believe it. My baby, she is there in front of me. She is seeing me. She is smiling, she is not tired and her clothes are clean. There are no blood stains on her hands or hair. Her eyes are glowing and she her lips are reaching my cheeks.”

“Now, can we leave?”

I smiled and took my daughter in my hands and held her close to me. She hugged me so tight rubbing her face on my cheeks.

“Now I can leave this place. Yes”

“ Let them demolish the structures made of mud and stone, let them fence the land and build houses, let them break of our bodies into flesh and bones, let them do whatever they want to live here for another few years. You can’t kill our souls, the spirit that led our body; you can’t win over my daughter and one day we will meet you in a place where even my daughter will be seated far higher than the people whom they respected the most, they feared the most and for whom they fought for.”

Confessions of a Son

This not an effort to glorify anyone; I am pacifying myself.

Like an old painting- faded but clear, some frames are there in mind which remains timeless and priceless. In of those frames, I see my father’s loving face and his effort to keep my punk styled hair down. He is talking to me, to distract me and to keep me patient until he finishes his effort which seldom succeeds.

He used to work far from the city and used to spend many hours sitting in the car. When he reached home, he was never tired and never complained when we don’t let him rest. We went out almost everyday and he made sure that we looked clean and tidy. He neither had a car nor was the taxi service in Abu Dhabi good in early 80s. Still he managed to take us out almost everyday and provided us some good moments to remember in life. (I stay in the city, just 15 minutes away from my Office. I have a car and taxis are plenty but we go out twice or thrice a week.)

He was the second boy of his parents and had to work hard with his parents to move ahead in life. They never had the money to support his studies and he had only one shirt which he dyes after sometime to make it look new. (I had different sets for School, Madrasa, Family gatherings or Parties and for daily use.) He completed his 10th with high marks, scoring 100% in mathematics. He was so good in mathematics that even after years in studies and hours at work, I still feel that he was faster than me in calculations. He seldom used a calculator and recently my uncle told me an incident which he witnessed.

Before every trip to India, like all expatriates, he used to go for a major shopping. In those days, there were no duty free shops or big brands in India and almost everything was brought from abroad. Lot of items will be there and the billing itself takes some time. After one of these shopping, my father and my uncle were waiting in the counter for the Salesman/Cashier to finish the billing. There were no barcode scanners and the cashier was relying on the calculator to add up all the prices. In the end when he gave the total, my father didn’t agree with his calculations. He told the Cashier that there is a difference of xx Dirhams. My Uncle was surprised and the Cashier was angry. He told there is no way as he used the calculator and he asked my father to use the calculator and try it again. My father started adding the prices of each item loudly without a calculator and he gave a number and asked the cashier to do the same with his calculator. Amazingly, my father was right and accurate to the 2nd decimal. On the way home my uncle asked when he managed to add the prices, as there were many items in many numbers, the spent hours there and it was hard for him to see the prices when the cashier was doing the addition. He told, “I always check the price before purchasing and was adding the prices in my mind to make sure that it never exceeds the money in his wallet”.

He couldn’t continue his studies after 10th and worked in different parts of India before reaching UAE by sea (those days, from India to UAE by sea, can’t even think about it. Now-a-days, the three and half hours in Plane is boring, tiring, no leg space….?). If he had the opportunities I had in my life, he might have reached somewhere beyond my imagination.
When we returned to India for our studies, he used to visit us in every six months. Telephone was not very common and he missed us – me, my mother, my sister, younger brother and the youngest brother who was very small and much attached to him. After our return, he moved to a Camp far from the City and was staying alone. There were no satellite channels or Fm stations and even the news papers that they used to get were 1 or 2 days old. A good part of life, all alone in a room, in a camp is a sacrifice (We have 100 of channels, DVDs, Laptops, mobile phones and our lives are boring?).

He was so happy and paid extra money to get a telephone connection and will wait for Friday afternoons to call us. But we or me, so busy playing with my friends just outside the house, at times hesitated to talk to him or will do after couple of calls from my mother. Living alone, far from family, waiting for weeks to hear your children and I was busy playing……

When I grew old, I was scared to hear that he is coming home. I was the eldest (I lost my elder brother when he was 7. He had blood cancer and my parents lost their first child on the day before Eid) and he had high hopes on me. I showed extraordinary brilliance in the early years of my education and managed a double promotion from 1st to 3rd. After 5th, my performance graph commenced its journey south and my father was getting worried. In the beginning he was soft but when I continued to be the same, his tone changed and started getting tough with me. It was his responsibility, it was his dream and hope but I never realized. Whenever he asked about my studies, I got really irritated and had a feeling that he doesn’t love me. I was afraid of facing him and though I haven’t seen my father for long time, I never welcomed his arrival news.

He was so happy when I completed my 10th with very good marks, much above their expectations and I joined for Entrance coaching classes. But there I started enjoying my newly gifted freedom and ended up somewhere in the belly of the rank list. He was again disappointed but didn’t leave me on the streets. He paid some big money for my BBA admission and in 5 years I completed my MBA as college topper. That time he used to spend almost 10% of his salary for my studies and hostel expenses. Still he managed to live in UAE, built a big house in India and bought some properties for our secured future.

I had to wait for 8 months to get my first job and that made him think that MBA was a wrong choice. His hope of having a support in his life was fading and my first salary was so low that his worries increased.

Gradually I went up in my career and in the meantime, his health became really bad and he retired and went back to India. He was diabetic and a major part of life he didn’t take anything sweet. After retirement he wasn’t lucky enough to enjoy the fruits of his hard work. He was happy that I completed my CMA and joined a bank as a Financial Analyst. By that time he realized that the road I chose was not that bad and I earned better than many doctors and engineers around (thank God).

In his last days he really wanted to see me and he used to talk a lot on the phone. I decided to go to India after the completion of a project in the bank where I worked. He was waiting to see me but just a week before my leave he left us, leaving me no chance to see his loving face or hold his hand or to hear his voice for a last time. My father, who sacrificed his life for us, who never lived for him, never spent a penny to show off himself left me without seeing me for a long time.

I looked at his face; he was lying in peace after suffering some unbearable pain in the last few months. That moment I realized that whatever I gained and learnt in life became worthless as I couldn’t fulfil my father’s last wish. He will never see me again, never advise or talk. He gave lot of love which I didn’t realize and failed to return at least a part of it.

I got married and have a baby girl. I work in a good company in a reputed position and have my own apartment. But my father didn’t live to see me get married and see my daughter. I wanted to bring my father here and see them play with my kid. I am not lucky enough to have it in my life. It will never, will never ever happen.

To all my friends whose parents are alive, please we will realize the value of their sacrifices only when we become parents and when our parents leave us. When I see my daughter I realize my father’s love for me. Please call your parents, please try to be with them and when they call you home please leave everything and be with them. You may never a get a second chance.