New Year has just started, Today is 2nd January. Winter seems to be on its peak these days. Chilly winds blowing at night gives your spine a winter touch. Life in a desert seems to be very very different when you have lived in one of the busiest cities of country before.
Seeing the world outside Pakistan has been my one of the greatest dreams. Who would not love to visit this Saudi Arabia? Being a Muslim, we have a special attraction to this land. Seeing the Ka'aba is the best part of this country. The feeling one gets on the first glimpse of the Holy place is unexplainable.
Desert is a wonderful place to see, for miles and miles all you can see is sand and somewhere between camels. The night part is the best. It seems as if God has spread the black stars blanket all over the place. No buildings are here to disturb your vision. Stand on the sand with closed eyes, it seems cold breeze is taking everything from you.
This explanation seems to be from a very "normal" person. The feelings are mine, words are mine but all this is not the way I felt while experiencing. This "was" the way I wanted to feel whenever I thought of visiting this land. "Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world which I find myself constantly walking around in the day time and falling in at night"
If there is hell on earth, it exists for a person who has lost his relations. There is an unspeakable grief that never entirely goes away. There is belief that as time goes on the pain diminishes. My pain grew stronger. My life had come to standstill. Nothing matter to me anymore. I do not blame anyone for the pain because somewhere I was the part of reason. My blood relations turned bitter and the cost of bitterness turned into my emptiness.
I have been a very lively girl with little moody feeling inside. I never made friends easily, during my early years of school I was never able to "label" someone as my "Best Friend" and I never felt a need of best friend. My friends have been there always through up and down. I was all same to everyone in class and around. I had been the prankster of class. It was always very easy for me to crack a simple joke in the middle of a hot discussion. Then laughing out loudly not seeing that people might be noticing me. Gossips about me never bothered me at all. Smiling was my habit. No matter how bad I was feeling inside but smile was on my face always. In the academic way.i was a normal student. I only studied when I wanted to. And Thanks to my teachers who did not bother me much on my academics because they knew that I will handle my books. I had no major hobbies, no book reading, no painting, and no typical hobbies. I wanted to be free in my free time and i "lived" my free time. Friends came, friends left but I never stopped. I always had the positive approach towards my life and relations in fact everything. I moved on with my own buddies and fellows. Questioning anyone was not my habit. I believed "if someone has to say anything to me, come to me. I am such an easy person to talk with”. Thanks to my friends who understood me and we never had that question quiz between us. I still remember that some of my friends who were little "girlish" at heart came to me for cheering themselves up. I would just divert their attention from their thoughts and after couple of minutes they were back on track.
Days turned into months and then years. I remained the same. People sometimes labeled me as “immature, silly, jhaalli, pagli" but I lived without labels. Whenever someone named me, I would just laugh and say “They do not know how to live the real life”. I was living the way I wanted.Ups and down came but never ever I was frozen. Autumn and winter gave me warmth and reasons to smile.Summer and spring made me see the nature. Years brought me "Life”. Whenever I heard “winter makes people sad”, it made me confuse. I used to think" why don't they enjoy the first rain of winter? It makes your soul wet! Eating ice cream in winter is the real beauty when you learn to warm your hands from the cold bowl of ice cream. Slow driving on roads gives you time to see around,Running in the fog gives you the feeling of walking on straight path without fear....."
Then life started to test me like others, it was harsher than I could handle. People did not give me wounds; it was my past and my very own life. The past that came haunting me after 10 years. Things which I have forgotten in this period stood in front of me like a horror movie being played again and again. I still have no questions to ask, friends who knew me more than myself and did not ask a single question. They did not say even a single word when I needed someone to talk and listen to me about things. When I suffocated in never-ending blames of acts I did not do,I sent my friends away for their safety and repute from me ....my act was not noticed. And more labels were glued....
Now I am on a trip to the same country. I never thought I would see Ka'aba in this situation.Being lonely was on greatest fear of my life and now am actually living my fear. I never thought my so-called ideas would stand in front of me like huge mountains haunting me to death. The fears that drowned me to the Dead Sea. My life changed who ruined me from inside. The huge malls do not fascinate me; I have no interest in people around me. People do not make difference here now. Now I only know “Zahra would never watch a sunset or walk through beautiful garden. She would never see a flight of birds or feel a warm summer breeze. She would never taste an ice cream cone or enjoy a movie or play. She would never know the joy of falling in love,and having a family. Never, never, never”. This time the page turned, it marked my end. Sometimes our fate resembles a fruit tree in winter. Who would think that those branches would turn green again and blossom but we hope it, we know it.....
