HOPE IN VAIN

Writer: Schatz

A police officer, probably in his late forties or fifties, with a moustache so long that it seemed to cover his entire face, tried to explain that they found her around a street corner and thereafter immediately shifted her to the hospital. Looking at her clothes, torn apart from one side and filled with dirt and blood on the other, cold shivers ran down Khadim’s spine as he tried to look at his little girl: suffering an unbearable pain. Her body, numb and broken, that when Khadim glanced at first, could not say that it was his beautiful Dilshaat. He tried to get near to her; he wanted to touch her hand and feel the warmth of it, so to remind himself that it was really her; it was his little Dilshaat, and that she was alive. But when Khadim got her hand in his, he felt it was burning like a naked fire, like a wild fire set in her body that is barely living; he could feel her pulse thumping hard on her outer flesh. Khadim sat still and watched all of her in silence, holding his tears, suppressing the gulp of scream stuck in his throat that wanted to call her name out and curse those who had done this to his little soul.

“I suggest we should go through a thorough investigation into this matter, Chacha.” The officer said after standing in the ICU for quite a while and getting no reply from Khadim. The officer took his hands towards his mouth and snapped out a black bulb of naswar he had squeezed between his front teeth and his upper lip. Khadim ignored what the officer had said: he was giving a glance now to his daughter and now to the ECG machine: her pulse and the machine, synced, beeping with discrete intervals each second. “Sir!” the police officer raised his voice a little after losing his patience, and looking straight into Khadim’s eyes said,” I have other places to go to…. so if you can tell me if you want this investigation or not for God’s sake.” Khadim jerked off from his thoughts, he wanted to say something, but held the thought back because he knew if he would, all that will come out of his mouth would be a waited cry and anguish. “That means a yes. Aan fath thay,” he told the other policeman whose uniform’s upper button was set loose, that one could see a pale white shirt he wore below the uniform, “and don’t forget to get every detail to me by…. Tomorrow morning. Yes, tomorrow morning is perfect.” Before leaving, the police officer put his hand on Khadim’s shoulder, “Chacha, Inshallah, you will get justice”, and with a grin on his face, he finally added, “Believe in the system, Chacha. Sho?” Khadim nodded, still not looking directly towards him. That said, both men left the ward. Khadim seated himself near his daughter and waited for her to say something.

Years passed, and still Khadim got nothing from the police. In the first few months Khadim went by himself to the police station, months after that he took some his neighbours with him when they insisted. But time and again he got nothing but “ the shallow promises”, as one of his neighbour told him when they visited the station for the third time. But not getting anything valuable, for a long time now, Khadim this time, and maybe for the last time, alone, by himself, visited the police station. But all that they said were more complicated technicalities and administrative words that would touch nowhere near Khadim’s understanding. He would bow his head, would listen to the officer, not getting anything that would set calm to the turmoil stirring in him, he would nod to every question the officer would throw at him. “We are trying our best, with all the resources, not enough of course, that we have Chahcha. But God’s will it is of course, he will do the best Inshallah. You do not worry, sho? Awa, hah, that’s the courage Chacha. “Naseer loko tha, get two cups of chai here right now.” “Shukriya M- sahab, but I have to visit the hospital now”, Khadim said with a face and tone that felt to the ears as
weary and tired, “I will visit you again tomorrow. Khuda Hafiz.”

It was cold outside the police station. Cold enough that it got straight into your bones. Hanging above the cold and dry streets were blankets of smoke: coming from the small chimneys of houses around. It was early in the morning, and no one could be seen in the street. The sun had still not risen over the huge, ubiquitous mountains surrounding Gilgit. Few cows roam around the streets outside the police station, but no human to be seen anywhere. Shivering and rubbing his hands, Khadim, bowing down, walks by the street towards his home. Walking up the small hill, Khadim encounters Shawkat Sahab, who was the Jamat bhai [caretaker of the town’s Jamatkhana]. “Ya ali madad na Kako.” Khadim stopped by and looking at Shawkat who was fixing a light bulb, stoped by. “Moula Ali Madad Shawkat.” “Any good news Kako?” Looking at Khadim’s face, Shawkat got his answer.
“Some children broke it last night, and so Mukhi sahab told me to fix it before Chandraat.” Khadim, locking his hands beneath his arms, did not say anything. “You will be coming to Chandraat tonight, ay….. baska it has been a long time since you have attended Jamatkhana Kako?” “Awa Shawkat zaroor.” That said, Khadim takes fast steps after saying goodbye. “Will he go tonight? Because certainly people are talking about his absence now… but what am I to find in there but absurd questions of people of all sort? How am I going to answer each of them when I have nothing in hand to tell them? Ya Moulah toh ma jak azaab churaygon?” Khadim stops and turns back. For a while, he stares towards the Jamatkhana. He could not see Shawkat outside the gate, probably he went inside. “What did I do wrong ya Khuda, that you are punishing a no one like me? His heart was sobbing with pain while his mind was on the pinnacle of chaos. Questions of all sorts stormed his mind. For a minute, Khadim’s mind goes blank. He so much wanted to sit and start weeping right where he was standing that he even forgot the breathtaking cold for a while. He wanted to weep, yes, weep until all the pain he locked inside his throat came screaming out. But he did not of course. A dry, soulless cry was there in his eyes, but he did not cry. But what bewildered him was that not for a second he reminded himself of God. He did not pray even once after the incident. It was not that he did not believe in God, apparently he was a fervent murshid of Jamatkhana, but that now it all did not made any difference. To go and pray or not to go and pray, there was no much difference for him now. The silence now was so deep in Khadim’s heart that even the prayers could not hear his soul. And he knew all this. And he accepted all this. Somehow now he let himself be taken away, be torn apart, be ridiculed by anyone or anything. He simply did not expected any good. So now no silence could ever overshadow the one that set foot in his heart after the incident.

Khadim takes a sharp turn from his house street and starts to pace up faster and faster still. He eventually reaches a barren place. There were few dogs roaming around far in the place where the first rays of sun were splashing onto the ground. It was still cold but looking at the sunlight from afar one took the strength to hold on a little while. After walking a little ahead Khadim reaches a sea of graves. In the far corner, away from the
old graves was his little Dilshaat one. Khadim did not had enough money to cement the grave as all that he spent was on the hospital bills and the vain hope he put on the justice system. But he was saving up some money, from small jobs he would find every now and then from his handful of pension at the end of the month. Before sitting by her side, Khadim again looks at those rays in the distant. A cold chilling breeze gushes through the barren land and all around Khadim it’s just hopelessness and either broken graves or old enough not to be recognised, it was indeed all hopelessness reflecting back. With the dry cold air stinging into his bones, that same dry cry again holds Khadim’s throat when he reaches closer and closer to the place he longed to forget. Yet, somehow, he was forced to come again and again. With his one hand in his pocket Khadim and with the other removing the dust from some plastic flowers, Khadim sits beside her grave. Someone must have put them on the grave, maybe one of her friends, Khadim thinks to himself. The sun was rising slowly from the pointy mountains held high behind Khadim, and the sunlight in the distant was getting nearer and nearer still. “Thay Mama-Nazur, chakata! Someone have left these beautiful flowers for you!,” Khadim finally breaks the silence with a joy that seemed shallow, “how nice of them Dilshaat, naya?” After a brief pause, as if he was waiting for a reply, Khadim leaves the flower back on the grave. “Your Mama told me to visit you today Dilshaat,” Khadim, holding onto the waited cry that desperately wanted to come out whispered to his daughter as though she was there sitting beside him, “but how am I to tell her that every time I visit you a piece of me breaks apart”. Still removing the dust from the flowers in his hands he avoids looking straight to the grave, as if he will look straight into Dilshaat’s eyes, which after her death, a “peaceful” death, that is what the doctors told him, Khadim could not look straight to the grave. He peeks to the left, then again to the flowers but not straight ahead.

The rays of the sun were getting near still. “Khuda-ra why did you insisted to go to out that night Dilshaat? And why did I not come with you? Even though I knew here there are no humans roaming in the streets but beasts in men’s flesh!” The waited cry was crawling up his throat now and the sunlight getting nearer and nearer still. “What torment have you set onto your father ja daltass? This weak heart cannot bear this much!” A tear dropped from the escarpment of his eyes as the rays of sunlight finally touched his shivering back. Now the gulp of that dry cry, that had been tethered to his throat all along, mixed with his salty tears, storm out finally. Khadim weeps and weeps and weeps, again and again. The sunlight soothes him from behind and like a calm solemn touch of a beloved’s hand, the sunlight strokes its rays gently onto his back. Khadim with eyes washed away by tears, tears
which he felt he had stored for centuries now, looks finally straight to the grave. After suppressing the pain day by day, hearing absurd back biting from his own relatives, and the constant humiliation in the process of getting the vain justice, and with all those feeble efforts, Khadim finally cries his heart out.