The Begining

“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.