“Baba aur taiz”, “aur taiz”, she screamed whirling faster,
locking her hands on the metallic grill, throwing her head back, watching the
sky above her changing colors. Hues of green, pink, orange and rest of the
colors of a rainbow mixing as her vision blurred them all into a whirlpool,
except.., there was no blue in them. “Baba”, she looked where her dad was standing
pushing her merry-go-round from, but her father was not there. She wasn’t even
riding anymore and while the ground below her moved, her ears registering the distant
rusted movement of the carousel it was what she saw ahead that interested her
more. It was a women sitting in the dark corner of the park, against the wall,
shrouded in her chadar, wailing uncontrollably
as she held a child in her arms. Ne ran towards the woman hoping to help out
with whatever was wrong with her. When she called out the woman looked up,
freezing Ne where she stood unable to move or even utter a word as the she held
out the baby. Her mother looked in her eyes, a helpless, desperate stare, showing
her baby Naheed Zafar, she crocked, in the most defeated voice, “It’s a girl.”
Ne woke up in a dark bedroom drenched in sweat, she cursed
her sister for both persisting to sleep in all darkness as well as always forgetting
to honor her promise to keep at least one light on as a way to refuse acknowledging
her mild case of nyctophobia. Squinting in whatever small light came from her
mobile she tried to find her glasses and her slippers, stumbling on a couple of
things she stubbed her toe on one side of the bed and walked out of the room
limping, swearing and, soaked. She knew she would be unable to sleep now, her
only option was to use the early morning to do what she had been meaning to do
for a few weeks now. Grabbing her sketchbook and the mug of chai she headed to
the terrace where traces of the Dawn have just started to emerge, she thought
to herself how the recurrent nightmare was after all a blessing in disguise,
allowing her to witness the beauty of the Sun as it offered its bounty to the
world once again.
