The Thief

(Inspired by a true event)

Imagine having nothing but a mirror- a mirror in which you see all the rays of happiness, a probable end to your pain. Then imagine- it gets tarnished and broken...


Momin mashed his father's silvery hair, playing with and loving him as he fell asleep tiringly on his shoulders.
Shakir held him tightly. He kissed the parched lips of his son. Once they used to be rosy. He caressed his bald head and inflamed eyes, warming his cheeks with blood-coloured tears.
It can happen. When your only child gets to suffer from a cancer malady, the pain speaks through your face.
But there is something more painful than having a dying child- The inability to at least save him from dying...
Where would he be getting the money from? To treat his only son- where even the two times meal is a question. Seeing his starved wife Nooran blowing through the clay stove, he had asked himself.
He never complained of his miseries. He always thanked and hoped for the good life.
This time, when life tested him the hardest, he had staggered. Death glares do this to you. But still, he had his belief and hopes high that God would not snatch his only son. It was soothing to think so.
Before leaving again for the night labour he assured her again,
"Nooran, He never leaves us wrenched. Like the way He gives us to eat something daily, He would also create the sources to get our Momin treated. I believe in Him'
Nooran hid her face in his sleeves. She sniffed the smell of his silent screams and unshed tears.
They brought Momin close to themselves, sharing their pain and tears. Their eyes begged for his life. Only, haven was to expect good from Him.
Such kind was the shelter of hope.
Such tattered was the shelter of their roof.
Such congested was their muddied home.
Such vast was their pain.

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Next evening, he was sitting on the roadside of Raiwand after hectic labour.

A young boy came over to him.

He had a strange hue on his face. Taking off his backpack, he sat near to Shakir.

"Look at those worried birds in the sky- Restless to return to their shelters. Return we humans have to one day! Return the real home!"

The boy spoke and rose up to leave.

Shakir, baffled by his words, stared at the blue sky and its hurried birds.

Suddenly, the birds blasted away. The blue sky ruptured like a vein. Rained down the blood. The air smoked out gusts of ashes.

Whose blood?

Shakir when touched his cut ribs and absent legs,  recognizing his parts in the air and everywhere.

He splashed his own pool of blood in pain. He screamed in the storm of screams. He remembered the boy and the backpack that he had left on the road. It had done its trick- it had done the massacre.

He imagined his wife and son. He hugged them, blotted them with his rusty blood and bade farewell.

"You petty freak! Look! I reward people the way you can never do!" Death had whispered to life.

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Nooran was getting her son treated. They were given lacs to compensate for Shakir, who had been scissored in a bomb blast. The rich politicians, Nooran thought, didn't know that he couldn't be compensated for.
Life! What could it have meant to her, had Shakir not inculcated a firm belief in her!

She had to live. For their son. Their only mirror.
The kind shelter of hope had become itching and hot. Nobody was there to maintain it. Yet, it was a shelter, and she was fine under it. It was better than having nothing at all. 
Momin was getting brighter day by day. But the smears of emptiness and search were evident in his eyes.
Every night, he used to ask Nooran who took away his father?
What did she know?
For!
Who had stroked the life?
Who had burnt the shelter?
Who had actually engulfed their shelter- their Shakir?
Who was the shelter thief?
Samina Siddique
Class of 2021