Azhar - A Short Story

Short Story

Peerzada Muzamil

"Although, he can, no longer, see the world, but his dreams, still palpable, are vividly haunting."

They say, ‘wars never end’. They are just draped by illusions of peace. Ever since the Garden of Eden housed Adam and the ensuing The Fall, there have always been wars; sometimes as outrageous as the great war of the twentieth century; sometimes as silent as a sigh of a lovelorn soul. Every time there is some apparent triumph, there, inevitably, has to be a defeat; the entire process submerging mankind in a sheer delusion of victory or even loss while the truth remains that there is no end to the war. People rise again to fight for their nations or their untamed desires, to again portray the end in red; in the bloodstained streets, or the rubble of massacred emotions – the cascading spate of blood and tears, a spiral of insanity and the abyss of sin.  You see, how frail and silentious, yet too grave, the first ever war was – fought silently, in the Elysian Garden, tempted by a forbidden desire; the war, which, apparently, ensued The Fall… was it the end of it? Most of us conjure the lotus dream, deluded into believing that treasures are hidden beneath the mountains of bones. The war it did not end there. It remained there, at times in open sight…at other times-ly – dormant under the sable tapestries of ephemeral peace, only to rise up again like the vision of the Armaggedon, when Cain killed his brother Abel, when the first drop of blood was spilled. And then the war slithered back into the serpent’s mouth hidden again and it came to pass and it came back and hid again. 

Do you know how many manifestations of this war have been fought ever since? How many people have been martyred and how many have lost their lives in vain? And then do you know how many have survived and wept for those who did not? I wouldn’t feign an answer, but sit with me, I’d recount an intricate detail of an act of the war fought, not so long ago, in some Valley of Saints, of which I was an adept agent. I have been known to be the murderer, but more often, my business is even worse, I blind people – yes, I darken their world – forever. It is not that I like doing so, it is dismal... But knowing that my demeanor is precisely ruthless, and my role pitilessly elaborate, I, when called upon, swiftly and slyly, pierce their eyes – the act which perfectly fits my job description.

I can recount every single name which became victim to my rueful business until the day I saw my end too. How can I forget Azhar, a seven-year-old rendered orphan by a dead mother? How can I forget that autumn morning. The Morning over-anxious to redden further? How can I forget him sitting in desolation, watching rusty leaves fall from the summits of the grief-stricken Chinars? I could see how keenly he was scrutinizing a small heap of dry leaves, yonder – the half wet embers slowly dying out to nothingness. And the flare gobbling up the tense veins of trembling leaves as they swayed down. And Azhar who knew not, was yet another leaf, about to get immolated in the conflagration of the war.

Later that day, when he was paddling to home on his newly bought cycle, he found himself trapped in the midst of the mob and it was when my time came, from the corner of the crossroads, the barrel was pointed towards his face and no sooner was the trigger pulled than I started flying towards the fragile pupils of his glistening emerald eyes. I swear, agonized, I shrieked in protest, I was helpless and I wished to change my path, but who was I to decide his fate?  I could feel the innocence of his eyes as I lunged myself to destroy them, and maybe myself too… You see, his face, full of blood and his eyes wherein I lay in fragments, dead and cold. And so, he could never see the light of the day ever again like. I not only blinded him, I shattered his dreams and made him desperate… Although, he can, no longer, see the world, but his dreams, still palpable, are vividly haunting.  How frail and hapless are the sighs of his forlorn father, who fails to answer his desperate inquisitions:

‘Abu, is the moon walking with me tonight?'

I am a wretched and wicked ball of metal. And they call me pellet!