Author: Zahar Ishaq
Time was weaving its threads, as he was on his bicycle paddling it without knowing where to go just like his life going on but without any meaning. For him, everything was meaningless, as he had lived a dry life. He found attraction in nothing. He was an extremely reserved nature man. He had his fences of anger and rigidity around his own created space and no one ever dared to enter into that space. He had said goodbye to many things which might be fantasized by a normal being, for example, a permanent job in his middle age, a house given by the government, and a peaceful city surrounded by the trees and the mountains. He was a retired healthy man with no disease, a family with no concern, with a pension which was enough for him to keep his life going on, and most of all with a religious sect who could never satisfied him. He never tried to find hope in anything, he didn’t even know what he wants.
But there were few moments when he used to blame himself, nobody knows what it was but that thing kept pinching him inside his brain and was not letting his heart, beating with satisfaction. With these unsatisfying things he still had no frown on his face. He was a man with a peaceful face and an unsatisfied mind.
He used to wake up early and go to bed at the time just like a kid whose parents force him to follow the time strictly. He has nothing to do in his whole day. One thing he couldn’t bear that if he saw garbage anywhere in his way (at home or on roads) he always tried to remove it whether it was thrown by someone else. He never made it a matter of ego. It shows that he also had little flexibility in him. He seemed to be waiting for something, perhaps it was a day that takes him to another world. Because in this world he found no interests at all. He was living in a world created by him. The glitters and dimness were the same for him.
They say “nihilists are victims of meaninglessness”, perhaps he was the great nihilist of his time without a name. Neither he had got friends nor foes. He neither spent a tragical life nor a happy one. But he felt something missing in his life without any urge to find it.
Nobody had become able to know him until a star came to his life in form of a baby girl, it was not his daughter but he owned her, he gave love, affection, and kindness to her although he was not familiar with these gestures.
If a man wants to be loved he also wants to give love he cannot live without both. They say “time changes a man” it didn’t change him a lot but perhaps these emotions were already there waiting for the right time.
A few months old the little girl was not aware how much she was being owned and loved by a man who seemed nothing else a rigid rock to everyone. There was not a single day when he did not want to see that little girl. When the girl started school, he used to teach her with love came through anger.
He often took her on his bicycle to show her the world exists outside her home. He showed her the roads with traffic, the crowd of people. The laborers waiting for the bus along the road.
Apart from daily routine he also took her to show green fields which according to him will smoothen her mind and asked her to feel the fresh air. He showed her many places for example the factories, the police station, the nurseries, the tombs, the fort, the mosques, and the graveyards. He used to share stories, his personal experiences, and his regrets too. The little girl used to be very attentive although she was not being able to understand a single word. Sometimes it seemed that he was waiting for someone with whom he could share what he had kept inside his mind for years.
On his bicycle with him, time was paddling too, and the day has arrived and he started seeing the light which almost blinded him, the light was spreading around him and in a few moments, he realized he was standing in another world.
Yes, he was gone quietly, even without telling his beloved child.
“We desperately want to something, to simply live out our lives believing in nothing, to live as if this we call life is filled nothing but nothing”.
