An Open Letter From a Dead Child To His Mother On His Death Anniversary

A mother crying on the death of her child- Peshawar School Attack 16 December 2014, Pakistan.

Ma!

It’s 16 December. The day you saw my blood stained dead body. The day you died along with me. It’s our first death anniversary Ma.

I can see your red swollen eyes today, you didn’t sleep Ma, I know it. I can see your hands tremble while you make tea for Baba. I can hear that painful unspoken conversation between you and Baba. When you look at each other and say nothing, your silence tells me all. The wails of your heart and the cries of Baba’s eyes, they pierce my heart. It’s been a whole year since that happened, but you still live in the moment I died. The days after that, they didn’t pass for you.

I know you can see the wound of bullet on my head bleeding again today. The very place where you used to kiss me before sending me off to school. My white shirt which you used to wash with such pure love, It’s blood stained forever in your heart. You clean my books, my toys, my chair where I’d sit to eat and my plate everyday, with your scarf. Today when you clean, I know you can hear these weep with you.

Remember Ma, the day when they entered our school with big guns and started shooting at the children. There were cries everywhere. I was scared. I called your name. You were not there. You were running in the street towards my school without shoes.

My friends with whom I’d play everyday, they were crying and falling down while bullets hit them. I saw a pile of small bodies on the ground beside me Ma. I was standing in a pool of blood when a bullet hit my arm Ma, It was so painful. I fell on the ground. Your little kid Ma, your baby. I remember how you wept when I once had my arm broken while playing. I had a bullet in it now, I knew you’d come to save me.

They fired up my teacher who tried to save us, she burned to death alive and we saw it. It was all so scary. I wanted to hug you and hide in your shawl. I called you Ma. I tried getting up and run to you but I couldn’t. One of them saw me. He came towards me and put his gun on my forehead. It hurt so much Ma, so much. I looked him in the eyes. I wasn’t afraid of him, he was a coward. I did called you and baba for the last time before he fired the bullet.

I saw you from up there, when between blood stained books and misplaced shoes you searched for me. When in the hospital Baba showed you my little cold body. When you touched my face, brushed my hair and fell down. Hysterical, crying, unconscious. The eyes that you saw shining in the morning, they were dark. The tongue you heard speaking, singing poems while having breakfast, it was silent forever. I felt your pain Ma. I felt the pain of 132 Mothers that day.

Please don’t cry Ma. Do you know, with every tear that sheds from your eyes, a beautiful flower blossoms here in our garden. Oh did I forget to tell you? We are here Ma in this magical garden with green grass and so many beautiful flowers. They smell of you Ma. We play here and laugh. We have Allah here with us, who love us like you do. He takes care of us and He tells us that you and Baba will be here one day and then we’ll live together in peace. No bad people can enter here with their guns.

I want you to be strong Ma. We’ll meet one day. You can kiss me on the forehead then and wrap me up inside you.

Till then, With Love.

Your Brave Son.

 

From this….

To this…

 

 

 

 

Black Heavy Boots

With sewed lips and glued eyes she’d put her first quivering step on the stairs of cellar. Before climbing down, she’d leave her mortified ‘self’ on a shelf beside the cellar door. Her exhausted 10 years old corpse would soon drag itself down to the cold ground where sinful darkness would cloak her.

A pair of black heavy boots would instantly follow her down. The sound of their hammering knocks matches the rhythm of her thumping heart. As it reaches more close, her frightened heart rips apart her chest and falls right in the middle of his feet. The bleeding that follows would be far less than the one that happens just before he leaves her there.

His hands reach for her clothes. Her body turns to a rock. Her heart would squirm like a fish out of water, lying right beside her as the water in her stone eyes dry out. Her teeth would bite hard into the flesh of her rosy lips.

A tough blow from one of his boots makes her alive again.

She draws a long burning breath in, in a desperate hope of it to be the last one. Hope laughs. She falls into the arms of despair yet once again.

On the way back, she never forgets to take back her ‘self’ from the shelf beside the cellar door…

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She helps her mother cook food for her father. It is time for her mother to go to her teaching job. She want to beg her not to go but she can’t.

As she serves food to her father, she could feel a burning sensation on her skin where he stares. She looks down on his feet.

His black heavy boots are covered in blood…

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Almost 90,000 cases of child sexual abuse are reported each year. Out of which, 96% are known to their victims and 20% are fathers. (Advocates for Youth, 1995)

 

 

Fire, Water And Humans !

A fire festival in Fukushima.

Fire and water, two opposite forces forever lost in epic revelry. Fire seems to be the destructive one, which strangely proves out to be  the most fruitful while providing food to humans. Water be the constructive one, floods away civilizations with it. Isn’t it strange ? What force urges these to change their entire nature ?

That was the question that hopped into my mind a couple of weeks ago. It was 7 in the morning and I was sleeping in my room with air conditioner turned on when suddenly a pungent smell entered my nostrils and woke me up. It took me a while to figure out what had forced me to wake up and when I recognized that smell, I turned my neck back and here it was. With all it’s glory it was fiercely shoving it’s orangish-yellow sparks up towards the roof as if it will consume everything coming in it’s way and turn it to black ash.

I hadn’t seen such a big fire live in front of my eyes before. I am so afraid of fire that I had never lit up the stove for cooking food by myself ever in my life. Witnessing this kind of fire that closely was a night mare. I got up and ran outside shouting for help. My room was all covered in thick black smoke and when I opened the door that smoke started spreading all over the TV lounge. My dad figured out what has happened and turned the main switch off. My mom and brother filled up buckets with water but when electricity supply was cut off, the fire extinguished slowly by itself. I stood there with shivering legs and thumping heartbeat and it took me some hours to get back to being normal.

Our Ac got burnt but there was no other loss by the grace of God. The story may be told dramatically, but it is hundred percent true. That scene still give me shivers whenever it flashes back into my mind. If I wouldn’t have got up that time, the smoke would have made me unconscious and I might not be with you right now, telling you stories.

Children affected by flood in Pakistan, waiting for the rescue teams.

On the other hand, there is water, which has recently played havoc and drowned whole lot of  villages and cities in Pakistan. Watching footage of families standing on roofs of their destroyed homes, waiting for getting rescued, watching their animals and luggage flowing away with water. Watching a mother crying for her daughter whose dowry flooded away– It breaks my heart. Army troops are still busy rescuing hundreds of families affected from this devastating flood.

We sit here and watch them suffer. Say some sympathetic words and change the channel. And we are Humans.

What force urges things to change their nature ? I have no idea but, if this force is strong enough to change HUMANS, It sure can prove out to be a weapon of mass destruction.

 

Weekly Writing Challenge: Collecting Detail |Hunger

Image credits: Google

My children managed to eat a good meal today and got their tummies full after a month or two. I have got three sons and two daughters. We along with my wife live in a small hut of 1 room. There is no separate space for a kitchen or anything else. My wife has made a corner of this room a kitchen. Our kitchen consists of a single brown stove whose every inch is rusted now. This stove is not in our use from quite a month or so because we hardly get anything to eat daily. I look at my children sleeping on the ground at night in torn old filthy clothes with empty bellies daily and my dreams for their future break into tiny little pieces like shards of glass and hurt my soul leaving it wounded. I wake up every morning with a new energy and hope and till night, this energy eats me up. I may be a bad father and a bad husband but I love my family and I die once everyday feeling hopeless for them.

However today is my day. I am watching my children having a good meal. The smiles on their faces have turned my guilt into a peaceful happiness. I close my eyes and suddenly a flashback took me to the place where it all started today….

I was walking on the road in search of some work like usual. Everybody was in a hurry to perform their duties. People with cell phones attached to their ears, people with briefcases ,  people wearing nice suits and people wearing filthy torn clothes like me. Cars;big and small were occupying the road as if they own it. Small children with blue, red and pink school bags , holding each other’s hands , smiling and giggling, just passed by in a line. A thin middle aged school teacher wearing glasses was teaching them how to cross a road. A cool breeze was blowing and giving me shivers. The sky feels so blue and relaxed…. silent like the silence after a big storm passes. When suddenly the silence was torn apart by a loud horn followed by a blast. I stopped and looked backward. A gold colored shining new car just got hit by a huge gigantic black truck and caught fire. I rushed towards the place where the accident had occurred and all of a sudden a huge crowd was gathered around the place. Truck driver was fine but car was all bashed and driver was wounded badly. I pulled him out of the car with the help of some people. His head was bleeding badly and tiny drops of blood started gathering around his head on the road. He had wounds all over his body. His face which may be fresh before a few seconds felt all pale and weak now.He was alive but unconscious. He was wearing a black suit which seemed to be very expensive. A gold watch could be seen on his wrist and an expensive mobile phone was hanging out from his pocket. People were calling the emergency now.

Sitting there suddenly my mind got all blurred with the faces of my children. I had always wished a wonderful life for them like this man was having and they are striving to live and for food everyday in spite of enjoying the luxuries. My heart was filled with anger and hate for myself and at once a thought triggered my mind. I looked at his watch and cell phone and thought about my children and their innocent faces. Hunger blocks your mind and you forget who you are. I was forgetting myself too.

After a few minutes an ambulance came. People dragged that man and put him in the ambulance. A black suit was all that was left on his body. I moved towards my home with a full pocket and a blocked mind and heart……where my children were hungry and waiting for me.

This story is written in response to Weekly Writing Challenge: Collecting Detail.