A haze of forgetfulness seemed to have settled over the world, pervading lives that had earlier been untouched. People forgot their names and names ceased to have any meaning. And once that came to pass, there was very little left to hold the fabric of the world together. And happiness was gone, just like that, a candle snuffed out by a wayward wind. And the flimsy winds of change too failed to bring about change in this constant buzz of the memories, the dead and the dying, the lived and the universe. Imagination became just another imagined word.
This is a story about two brothers who are captured and imprisoned by the secret police. Even though this is a fictional story, similar things have been known to happen. There may come a time when mother’s tell their kids- not that go to sleep or a monster will come lurking around but go to sleep because the monster may be the man who lives across the street.
He looked as if he had seen a ghost. His eyes were wide open and even though his gaze was upon me, his thoughts seemed far away.”They are here”, he finally managed. I raised my eyes only to find his conveying the fear I felt. The fear we all felt.
It is not the dead I fear for they have served their term in this hell on Earth and now rest in peace. It is the living I fear for they can be far more inhuman. I am a prisoner here along with my brother. We do not know the reason for our imprisonment. My name is Ali and I am fifteen. My brother’s name is Hamid and he is seventeen. We share this cell along with thirty other prisoners.
I clearly remember the day we were brought here. We were roaming the market, searching for the items which mother had sent us to buy. The items weren’t many as we could not afford much. A couple of men smoking cigarettes stared at us as we passed by. Then one of them caught my brother by the collar and punched him in the face. My brother tried to fight back but there were too many of them. We were beaten in front of everyone. The men said they belonged to the secret police. They handcuffed us and brought us here.
No single person from our cell has been sent home alive. Our families usually receive our bodies in body bags and that is if they are lucky enough to receive a body. I am not sure our parents have been informed where we are.
We are tortured in the hope that we may agree to have committed treason, but most people here are innocent. The nights are the worst when the screams of tortured prisoners echo through the prison cells.
My brother looks at me as if he has seen a ghost. His eyes are wide open.”They are here”, he manages. His eyes meet mine reflecting the pain and fear in mine as I stumble through the door of the prison cell. He catches me before I fall to the ground. He knows they have electrocuted me from the rotten smell which rises from my burnt skin. I would like to tell him that it’s not so bad, except for the fact that they have cut off my tongue.
The unforgiven
Chapter 1 – The meeting
I first met her at my mother’s fortieth birthday.It seemed as if she had got it all wrong. She was still hugging me and my shirt was damp from her tears. She stepped back to look at me. She was now laughing and crying at the same time. “Abdullah”, she shouted , ”I found him, I found my little boy.” A refined looking old man who had been in conversation with his peers broke apart from them and rushed over to us. “I’m so sorry”, he said. He held the gently but firmly by the shoulders and turned her around to face him. “It’s not him”, he said. “What?”, she stammered. “It’s not him”, he repeated. She looked at me more closely, realization dawning on her face .the light went out of her eyes. “I’m sorry”, she said , “it’s just that you look so much like him” , and then she collapsed.
I caught her before she hit the ground. I looked up at the old man. I had been speechless all this while. “I am sorry, I have no idea what she was talking about”, I said. He brought up his grief stricken eyes to meet mine. He asked if I could help him carry her to the car which was parked nearby. Together we lifted her out to the car.We put her in the back seat. He told me that he recognized me and was a good friend of my mother’s. He gave me an address and asked me to meet him there for dinner and with that he got into the passenger seat. They drove off.
Chapter 2 – The letter
I arrived at his place a little after six. His house was huge, a haveli situated on the outskirts of Delhi.A servant opened the gate and led me inside. My host was there waiting for me but the woman who had hugged me was nowhere to be seen.
He introduced himself as Dr. Abdullah Zaffar . Over dinner he told me his story. The woman i came to know , was his wife Dr. Riya Zaffar. They had a son , he told me, his name was Suhail . Suhail had always been quiet as a kid. They had sent him to a boarding school in Nanital . He had been studious and sincere. He never complained. A few months after his nineteenth birthday, he left home. In a letter he told them that he was going off to fight for Islam.
It came as a shock to his parents. They had never been very religious. They both attributed more to Science than God the workings of the world. His father kept the news a secret from the world and told all their friends that they had sent him to study abroad. It had been five years since he left.
Mr .Zaffar suddenly became silent. He poured himself another glass of whisky. My wife’s resting upstairs just in case you’re wondering”, he said. I did not reply. “ I received a letter from him a few months ago”, his voice was barely a whisper. “He said that Allah was nowhere to be found, only talks of him and acts that would repulse the only one true god, acts that he had been a part of”, he looked directly at me, “My wife does not know any of this. I burnt the letter but kept this”. He took out a photo from his pocket.
“I want you to burn it because I cannot.”
He slid the photo across the table to me. In the photo there was a skinny young man in uniform. He was standing on a chair and there was a noose around his neck hanging from a fan in the ceiling. I turned the photo upside down. On the back he had scribbled,
‘The forgiveness which I will never find in your hearts I go to seek in heaven’.
It’s been so long since I last wrote to you. I don’t know where to begin but let me start by saying that I still love you. But love my darling is a superficial feeling based on our experiences and conceptions formed throughout our very short lives, influenced by lots of romanticized bullshit.But then again once we manage to dust away all of the above, we might be left with a shiny new feeling and that I believe would be the love which I feel for you.
“Do you have something that you wish to say to me?”
“A lot of things actually”
“Then why don’t you say them?”
“I’m afraid that my words will drive you away.”
“I could be no farther apart from you than I’m right now”
“I don’t want to lose you”
“You never had me in the first place. You do want us to be closer, don’t you?”
“Yes I do.”
“Then say what it is that you wish to say, if it pleases me I’ll stay and if not, well then it would not really make any difference for I was never here in the first place.Now what are you afraid of?”
“My mind knows the truth but the heart is such a frail little thing, easily broken.”
“Well then, this is goodbye. Protect your little heart while I wait for someone who loves me enough to risk having it scarred.”
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