سکوت – Stillness

Time. Can you count it? Seconds, minutes, hours, years… yes years. They pass. Can you count them? Ofcourse you can. It’s been 2 years since we last met. It’s been two and a half years since i last layed on this bed in my room. Where time stands still, like all the toys in the huge wooden shelf standing tall against one of the walls. All my dolls, books, teady bears, trophies from school and college, photographs, diaries and my old broken computer. My whole life. My everything summed up. It all stays here, on the same spot, collecting dust and memories. Silent. Still. Nothing ever moves. My mother, who is a bit weaker now than she was two and a half years ago, she doesn’t let anything move. She pickes up things, cleans them and put them on the same spot as they were. It’s been two and a half years since i last visited my room. It’s been 20 years since i put my toys in their spots for the first time.

My room.. it reminds me of you. All those years that i spent talking to you in this room, when a second would feel like eternity. The air, it smells of you. Of us. Of what was never meant to be. Out of all the feelings bubbling up in my heart while lying in this room, your memory is the strongest. It stands still, on its spot, in my room, in the air. Like other toys in the big wooden shelf. It won’t move. Years would pass. Years have passed.

But time… it stands still. Frozen. It hasn’t passed. It can not be counted. Like years. It has made my father older, my brothers stronger and my mother weaker. But everything else is the same. As it was two and a half years ago, three and a half years ago and five years ago. I am home. I feel as if i float here, weightless and still. Burden on the shoulders feel lighter. Walls surround me, walls of unconditional love. Walls that once suffocated me. After years now, they make me feel safe.

Some things, just a few, have changed though. All those years did not pass in vain. They have filled my father’s life with some more hardships, some more pain that’s intense. My mother’s life with some more dreams and uncontentment and my brother’s lives with sime tough life experiences. Their faces look mature now, it breaks my heart. Their eyes shine with the same naughtiness that was there, years ago. One of them is still the most sensitive, one still the most angry and one still the most calm and sensible. Like they were before the years passed. When we were children. When i lived with them. Here. In this house. Where time stands still. Nothing has changed after all the years. This, is still my world. I belong here. In the world that doesn’t change with the years that pass. The world that holds the six people, who mean the world to me. Yes, including you. It’s still you. It always were you. My heart, after all those years, never opened again. Like time in my house, it stands still. On its spot. Closed. Shut. Holding my world of straws. Protecting it from years that pass. Through time.

Time. That can never be counted. Only lived.

 

— My visit to Pakistan. 10th March – 24th March 2019.

Other Side To The Story !

Once upon a time there was a man who lived happily with his family, a wife and a son. One day his son went to school and never came back……….

Oh no you are guessing it wrong. Lets read the story once again.

Once upon a time there was a man who lived happily with his family, a wife and a son. One day his son went to school and never came back BECAUSE some soldiers were searching for a terrorist and during this search operation, many children were killed that day.

The same day while that man was carrying dead body of his son in his arms, a drone attacked his home and killed his mourning wife.

On 16th December, that man along with his friends invaded a school full of students. They killed hundreds of them. Put bullets in the shining eyes of children until all the dreams of a shining future came out in the form of boiling blood. Grabbed two children and cut their necks with sharp knives until their innocent souls left their body and they turned cold. Made bullet holes in heads, chests and backs of children crying with fear, delicate children who were used to cry with pain on minute injuries. Burnt a teacher alive in front of her students.

And while doing that, their hands didn’t shiver but their faces turned black and cold after they were killed.

All that was left in the school that day, were books drenched in blood and floors piled up with dead bodies….. Sky never fell down and earth never cracked open.

They witnessed. They cried. Everyone cried that day.

Because everyone knew what happened. Sometimes, similar things happen in other parts of our country and no one cries. Because no one knows what happens there.

Except the sky and the earth….. And Mothers who are left to mourn their children forever.

——————————————————————–

Everyone knew the story. I just explained the other side as well. I had always think, what thing urges these terrorists to do such things like to attempt suicide attacks. After all, they are plain humans like us. The same emotions, the same heart and same bodies. No wings or extra ears. Then what happens in their life that they kill themselves and kill many others along with them. May be they suffer with the worst kind of mind disease that is born with the death of their whole family. Revenge mixed up with this sickness can do devastating things like ‘Peshawar incident‘ and the famous ‘9/11‘ !!

May be, the simplest way to eradicate all this nonsense is not through the “revenge taking cycle“. May be the way is to change the whole system of “War against terror” started by America. No one is stupid enough to notice that this system is producing more and more terrorists instead of eradicating them. Killing the innocent along with the guilty, Oh no this isn’t the way !

Stop lighting up candles and pray for the martyrs, for our nation, for our country.

War, terror, fighting, killing…… No good can come out of all this. War is never the solution.

Peace, Patience and hope…. That’s the real solution.

New Country, New Life, New Me !

The fear of Change has always scared me to death but changes turn out to be the best for me every time. Sitting on the floor right beside a big glass window in my room, sipping a warm cup of Mocha latte while taking small bites out of the bar of whole nut dairy milk chocolate, I think about my new life.

It is freezing outside. But inside, it is warm. Inside my home and inside my heart. The life that haunted me for too long, that made my heart cry and that gave me shivers. I am living that life now and it is nothing like that. If I would have to define ‘perfection’ in my words, I’ll define it as ‘My Life’.

What is happiness? You get to know the answer only when you struggle to drag yourself right through the furious thorns of life. What is Love? You get to know when you feel it inside your heart and someone rips out your heart along with your love. Answers are simple, the procedure of finding them out is difficult. But you have to pass yourself through mines to turn yourself into gold.

When I was sitting in the plane, I peeked through the window and thought of how far away I have left my life. And whether all my pain and sorrows have been left there with it or they are coming all along. And then, my husband held my hand while he was asleep during the flight and all of a sudden I got my answers. For the first time in my life, I became sure how satisfied my life is going to be.

After all the sense of security, the love and care and the respect that my husband gives to me, It is worth forgetting my painful past and moving on with my new life with a fresh start. It’s been two weeks since I moved here, and life is good. It is peaceful and nice. I like my new self and I am sure you’ll like it too. No more tears, no more worries, InshAllah.

More about my new life in the coming posts. Hope you all are doing fine.

P.S: I moved to England from Pakistan on 22nd Nov.

 

 

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.