Daily Times

Night was falling and darkness was descending upon the refugee village. A wind from the northern side was gently blowing. Mah Zaib was sitting with her mother and remembering past things. The crickets were producing eerie chirps. Mah Zaib asked her mother about her childhood. Like, she asked:” Mother, can you tell me how was my childhood?” Her mother was at this particular time partly sad as she began to remember the days when Mah Zaib was ill, and everybody was hopeless about her life, but she was brimful of hope that Mah Zaib would live. She also remembered when Mah Zaib was just a child of five years old that she demanded a toy – her memory of this toy was a bird with huge wings. She remembered Mah Zaib crying for this bird, and asked her why she is so yearnful of this particular bird. ” I saw a dream and in my dream I bought a bird with wings and suddenly I found myself flying on that bird to distant planets.” She remembered Mah zaib answering her question.

It was time for bed now, Mah Zaib suddenly became nostalgic, and careened with her knees to her mother, only to give her a hug. She stood on all fours, and rushed to her room to get some sleep. Both of them said good night and disappeared into their rooms.

Mah zaib had a small room on the upper storey of their house. Back at university, she once told shay that how calm and silent are her days in that small room, she also said that she gets lots of time to be with herself and ponder upon deep things of life, such as why we become sad without any apparent reason.

It was early morning that she received the call from Shay. ” Why do you call so late? I mean after days. Please call often, as I feel lonely here, and I really love to talk with you hours on end.” Mah Zaib said, her voice was gentle, yet serious. ” I am sorry. I was busy with a project. But I am sure that this time you would lead our debate and I would get a chance to listen to you.” After feeling sorry, and a bit melancholic, Shay hid her sadness and said.

” You know, Shay, I always feel that human beings are thrown into this world without a proper script to learn their lines, and act on their roles. We are like actors without the ability to act. I suppose, like, I am not sure what exactly I am trying to say, but more or less, I mean to say that human beings, in simple words, don’t know how to live, let alone live meaningfully.” Mah zaid was as though in a deep trance when she uttered these deep statements. Little she knew that what she was uttering were philosophies. ” Have you read Sartre, or Milan Kundera.” Shay asked in amazement. ” I guess once you introduced me with works of Milan Kundera, and I guess I have heard the name of Sartre in the mouth of our language teacher.” ” Yes, yes. Exactly. But your thinking is deep so much so that it is matching with that of Sartre, and Albert Camus. It was Sartre who said that we are like actors dragged onto the stage without having learned our lines, with no script and no prompter to whisper stage directions to us. We must decide for ourselves how to live. It is all upon us to decide whether to live or kill ourselves. Suicide.” Shay was amazed at her acumen.

” You know, I have not read them. I just said what I felt. I also feel that when we feel depressed, sad, and despondent, we lack something inside us, or something continuously disturbs us, it could be a memory, a desire, or a tension of someone leaving you. For me, and this is my own opinion, financial problems depress people apparently. You know exactly what has disturbed your peace. It is bread and butter. It is pecuniary. But what about that sadness whose very object is lost. For example, it is like you want to go home, but your home has got no address, and no road reaches you there. You keep moving on a road, keep searching, here and there, but all your efforts make you lose more and more. That I am talking about this type of anxiety, and sadness, I am remembering two lines once you read to me. Zameen Se Ugthi Ay Ya Aasman Se Aati Ay. Yeh Beirada Udasi Kahan Se Ati Ay. ”

Mah Zaid was so philosophically speaking that Shay was like listening to soft and mellifluous music. I don’t know who I am. But what Mah Zaib is saying is very deep and is touching my soul. ” You know Mah Zaib, this particular idea was once expressed by Albert Camus in his book Myth of Sisyphus. The way today you are speaking is refreshing my soul. I have always known that you are best at speaking on such things, and would far outwit me in these matters. But you always remain silent. I am remembering what Albert Camus said in his book Myth of Sisyphus: ‘Man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity.’ Mah Zaib was still in thrall of her idea that people who have no idea that what is making them depressed and despondent is more lethal and serious than people who know exactly what is making them depressed. ” I was stuck in my thoughts. Can you repeat it? You said something about divorce between man and his life.”

” Yes. I was referring to absurdity. Absurdity is a philosophy. Albert Camus wrote on it and explained it in his novels and essays. It is exactly what you said that you want to go home but your home has no address. The deprivation of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. And I am amazed. You are true. Oh ! I am hearing some strange sounds of animals, and a person, like a shepherd.”

” Oh yes yes. Now just before me a tribe of goats is passing with a woman shepherdess and his little one. The strange sounds are the bleating of goats. And you know, this shepherdess is gazing at me while gently moving her stick to let the goats remain parallel and in tribe.”

” wow. That is amazing. Absolutely amazing. I am so keen on visiting your village. One day we would have our own chalet, or a hut-house, and we would enjoy the nature, simple things, the tweets of morning birds, bleats of passing goats, and splashes of lake water…” Shay was uttering these words as though this was a dream, and which has very less chance to come true. ” One day…” Mah Zaib said with a strange voice, she stopped suddenly at day as though the day would never come.

” But you know Shay,” Mah Zaib continued, ” Grief is something to be well cared of, perhaps welcomed as a guest. I believe we should, not always, take sadness in negative terms. But yet again, the sadness entailed by the absence of someone is almost unbearable, the moment it dawns upon you that your special person is missing from your life, you become utterly sad, and this sadness Shay, we cannot tolerate. But again, we must not let our sadness devour us completely. We must always look forward.”

” On sadness, just now, a saying by James Baldwin is popping into my mind,” after a small pause Mah Zaid took pace with a new energy,” he says, ‘ you think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.’ As this writer says, we must not consider ourselves alone in our pain and grief since there are so many people who are sad and our eyes cannot detect their sadness. Just now, I can see an elderly couple on top of a mountain near me. I see them often. The husband plays flute for her and she claps her hands to her cheeks and eagerly listens to his flute. I have felt that all the music he plays is pathos and sadness. But who knows. Everybody has their own problem. This elderly couple too have problems. Their sadness and anxieties.”

” Oh! I can really imagine this elderly couple. But Mah Zaib your ideas on sadness and anxiety are sagacious. You must always talk like this. But you don’t.” Shay said. ” I was so confident and I had great knowledge but these days every good thing is fading away from me.” It was so that Mah Zaib herself was feeling greatly sad. And shay knew that.

” So Mah Zaib, we really talked well today. I expect this zest and zeal from you.” They were about to drop the line. ” Thank you Shay for these kind words.” Mah Zaib said. ” I have told you never thank me for anything.” Shay became a bit embarrassed. ” Hokay Hokay. I will not.”

” Mah Zaib bye for now. Pay my Salam to your loved ones. Stay peaceful.” ”Bye for now Shay. I will pay them.” Continued

The writer is a student, based in Turbat. He Tweets at @shahabakram6 and can be reached at shahabakram0852@gmail.com