She dashed down the stairs. Her dad always yelled at her whenever
she rushed down the steps, telling her she’d trip over those stairs one day.
Stalling at the very last step, she paced it down with uber decency to spare that
‘you’re-gonna-trip-over-those-stairs’ lecture. She stole a glance to check if
anyone had seen her violently rushing down those steps. Nobody had. In fact,
she could only see her uncle and aunt when she entered the family room. They
had come all the way from London and it had been over a week now. Her house was
their staying spot and she loved it when they’d come here. In fact, everyone at
their house loved to have their presence around. Entering the living room, she
could tell something was going on.
‘Are you guys going somewhere?’, she asked.
‘Yes, to the graveyard.’, her aunt replied.
‘Oh. Just you two?’
‘No, your dad’s coming as well.’
Never would they miss to visit this ‘family graveyard’.
Every time they would come to Pakistan, paying a visit to the graveyard was
always a must-to-do task at their hands.
‘Do you want to come
along’, her aunt zipped her purse close and wore it on her shoulder.
‘Me? Uhh.. ok yeah sure.’, she seemed unsure at first but
then suddenly something told her she had to go there.
She didn’t have anything to do at home and besides, she
thought it would be exciting to visit a graveyard, particularly this family
graveyard where her ancestors, whom she had never actually seen in her life,
were buried. Except one though, her dad’s sister. She still remembered that day
when she got the news about her death. They were out of town, staying in a city
that was a few hours’ drive away from her hometown, when late at night her dad
got a call that broke this tragic news to him. She remembered how time felt
stranger with every minute that passed by after that call. She and her family
hopelessly tried to sleep that night. The night only kept on stretching longer.
She lay on a couch with her eyes closed and waited for the sunlight to fall
through the windows. Next morning, they set off for the journey to the town
where a lifeless body awaited them to bid her farewell for the very last time.
‘We’re about to leave with your dad’, her uncle’s voice
snapped her and her instant recollection of murky memories withered away. ‘You
better get ready.’
‘I’ll take a minute’, she yelled as she rushed swiftly back
upstairs to her room. ‘Don’t leave without me!!’, she shouted from her room.
The afternoon sun blazed upon their heads as they advanced
towards the graveyard. Her dad pointed out a black iron gate located inside
a narrow, roofed street.‘The graveyard is on the other side of that black
gate’, he told her. It wasn’t like she had never come there before. She had
come there once.. or twice at the most. But that was quite a long time ago. She
was only a kid when she last visited it. She needed a fresh view of that
graveyard to be saved in her mind. It was their family graveyard, after all. There
were a few small houses on both sides of the street and right ahead of them was
that big black iron gate. They approached the gate and her dad unlocked a rusty
padlock that was hanging there, lifelessly. A small door was forged within that
black gate. The door was so small that when the four of them entered through it
to the other side of that gate, they practically had to duck to ward off knocking
their heads against that iron gate.
She stepped through the gate and saw several mounds of earth
aligned perfectly in a row. Not that there were a lot of graves. The first row
had some eight graves and the second row held only two, just below the graves
of the first row forming the perfect symmetry. Just one glance of everyone’s
ultimate dwelling made every cell of her existence melancholic. Her feet
dragged her towards those tumuluses. Her family lay beneath those heaps of
soil. The rest of the land was bare. It’d take quite a while to get it filled,
she thought bluntly. And with that another thought popped up in her mind right
away. Those who would die first would take up their places here and then
there’d come a time when there’d be no space left for anymore graves. Where the
rest of family members would be deposited then? She motioned towards her dad in hopes to get a fair answer. But her dad,
along with her uncle and aunt, was already standing in front a grave with his head bowed down and hands postured to pray. Dutifully she stepped beside her dad and
did the same. As she prayed, for the salvation of whoever was beneath that heap
of soil, she noticed something that was too conspicuous to be ignored. That
grave in front of her. It was relatively smaller than the rest of the graves.
Another query of the day. It was an obscure place for her. Curiosity had set
in. She had a lot to ask.
Her dad raised his cupped hands to his face and his palms
brushed his face, a signal that his prayer was over. He moved to the next
grave. But her uncle and aunt stayed there, looking affectionately at that
small grave. She heard a sniff that progressively grew into rhythmic sniffles. They
were in a cemetery, someone was definitely crying. She turned her head to see
who it was. The answer was quite obvious. Men do not usually cry. It was her
aunt who was crying. She stood there, stared at her aunt and let her heart feel
sorry for her teary eyes. She didn’t move, nor did she try to soothe her crying
aunt. Her aunt calmed her crying self down and wiped her tears.
‘Do you know whose grave is it?’, a tear appeared in the
corner of her aunt’s eye.
‘No. But I want to know.’
‘That’s my daughter under that mass of soil.’, her aunt
ended her sentences with a sniff.
She had heard a lot about her cousin, a physically &
mentally disabled child since birth, who fought with her disability for four
grand years of her life. Her cousin had died long before she was born. Now she
knew why that grave looked smaller than the others. It was the grave of a 4
year old. It was the grave of her cousin who died at the age of 4. Feeling
awfully sorry for her aunt, she looked down at that grave once again.
Uncontrollably, a tear rolled down her cheek. Emotions are a funny thing, she
thought. She was crying for someone whom she had never even seen.
They started moving to the rest of the graves and paused
before every grave sequentially. Her dad would tell her which grave belonged to
whom and then they’d pray before it and a tear would dribble down in her
prayer-postured palms. The pattern continued and they reached the last grave.
She raised her hands to her face, finished her prayer and looked around. She
was standing in the middle of a graveyard. A place where everything seemed
lifeless to her. Gloomy and lifeless. The air of that graveyard smelled gloomy.
The soil beneath her shoes felt forlorn. Even the chirping sparrow above her
head sounded like it was wailing. She cried once again, thinking how it would
have been like if those people buried in this gloomy place, that included her
grandparents as well, were alive. Oh how she had always missed her grandparents.
While she was mentally communicating with God, complaining why He didn’t let
those relatives of hers live long enough to see her, her dad called her out
from a corner of that graveyard. She mopped the tears from her cheeks with her
sleeves and went over to where her dad was standing.
‘What is it, daddy?’
‘I need to show you something.’ he said pointing towards the
uneven surface of the crude graveyard floor.
She seemed inquisitive. ‘You want me to show what? That’s
just a corner. An uneven corner.’
‘There’s someone buried under that corner.’
She did a double take.
‘Buried? In that corner? Who?’
‘Your brother.’
Flabbergasted, she stared at her father. She didn’t have any
brother. She only had three elder sisters and she was the youngest one. She
loved being the youngest one and she loved her sisters too. She always used to
think if God had given her an elder brother, her family would’ve been so complete. She
loved elder brothers. She envied her friends when they mentioned their elder
brothers in their talks. And when they’d say their brothers were annoying, she
would call them ungrateful for such a blessing. ‘Don’t call them annoying!,’
she used to yell at her friends. ‘There’s a void in my life, a void that could
never get filled up. A void that fate has destined me. I crave for a brother’s
company. I don’t have a brother and I know how it feels like.’ But what did her
father just tell her? That she had a brother? A dead brother?
Her dad comprehended what was going on in her mind. He
continued, ‘You had a brother. Long before you were born. If he were alive, he
would have been about 4 years older than you. But he died as a premature baby.
This is where I had buried him.’, he pointed again at that rough corner.
A tornado of emotions set in. She felt happy to know there
actually was someone whom she could call her brother. She felt sad with the
sudden realization that he was only a premature baby who had died long before
she was born. She felt angry because she thought life had been highly
unjustified with her. She felt helpless because helpless she was. ‘I actually
had a brother?’ Her secret mental conversation with God continued once again. I
had a brother, God? You had given me a brother? But why didn’t you let him breathe in the air
of this world. Why didn’t you let him survive? Why? God! Then she felt a smile
appearing on her face. I had a brother.
She gathered her sanity and looked at her dad, ‘But that’s
not even a grave.’, she felt it was unfair that her brother was buried in a
corner. A corner that was far from looking like a grave, much less anyone would
know there actually was someone buried down there.
‘A pre-mature baby he was. There wasn’t even a proper
funeral. He died even before he came to this world. I took him here alone.
Buried him with my own hands.’, her dad said in a nostalgic tone.
‘But you should hav…’, she paused abruptly halfway through
her sentence when she heard her uncle calling out her dad’s name. Her dad
turned around. Apparently her uncle was trying to read a gravestone’s
inscriptions but couldn’t seem to make out what was written on it. Her aunt
seemed to be failing to decipher the text as well. Her father went over to help
them and secretly she felt thankful for it as she needed some time alone. In
that corner. With her brother’s grave- or what seemed something like a grave. A
moment of solitude. A moment of mediation. A moment with her.. brother!
She thought she had had enough of this crying for a day. She
was wrong. After hearing the news her father broke to her, she realized she had
never been this gloomy before in her life, ever. Knowing that she didn’t have a
brother was a sad enough reality. But now she knew she had a brother who
couldn’t survive. That was depressing. She sat down, gazing at that corner and
never wanting to take her eyes off that rough, cracked spot. Tears, like an
avalanche, flowed down her already wet cheeks. Like a leaky faucet, they kept
dripping down. ‘Brother!’ she said, her voice sounded more like a whisper and
she felt glad for it as she didn’t want anyone to hear her teary voice. Nor did
she want anyone to soothe her. She wanted to cry. So she did. ‘Brother! I shall
meet you in heaven.’, she whispered with a crooked a smile but that smile
couldn’t hold her tears back. Spontaneously, she let them out. Gladly, they
came down running.
