Predestined

| Closure |

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"Har bashar hai ik wasila, rab se jo milwata hai."
"Khidmat-e-insaan ka rastaa, Khuda tak jaata hai."

- 'Dikhawa', Sahir Ali Bagga.

"Every human is a way to connect to God."
"The path of helping humans leads to God."

Shehzad

My brother had been a real do-gooder. He used to arrange food for God-knows how many needy people on an almost daily basis. Along with Corporate Law, he also specialised in Human Rights, and he advocated them on a daily basis- especially focus on a person's right to live a dignified life.

Even now, two years after his death, he was still praised genuinely by anyone that I met, from all sorts of socioeconomic backgrounds.

I sat in my hotel room, staring at the photo on my phone. I had my arm around Sarib Bhai's shoulders on his wedding day. He was in a golden sherwani and was grinning widely, and I wore a sherwani of a lighter shade of gold, and I had a similar grin on my face. I remember clearly that I had been teasing him mercilessly just before the photo was taken.

I swiped the screen and another photo appeared. It was a family photo of the Bhai, Bhabi, Papa and me on the wedding day. I remember how each time we all saw this photo, we greatly felt the absence of my mother. 

And now when I looked at the photo, I greatly felt the absence of all three of them.

My parents. My brother. My entire immediate family had gone, leaving me behind in this world.

I remember how mad I had been when Papa had died. I had mentally questioned him about how much his love for Bhai was greater than his love for me, because he had followed him without any consideration towards me. 

I swiped again and this time I saw a photo of Bhai and Bhabi on their wedding day, staring at each other, both smiling, clearly in love. Bhai had his arm around her shoulders, and her mehendi-covered hand was pressed against his chest. She was very a traditional red bridal lehenga, and the dupatta with a heavy silver border was placed neatly over her head. 

I thought of her: widowed at such a young age, left behind with a toddler. My grief was nothing compared to hers. And this was why widows were permitted the longest amount of mourning time when a man passed away, as per Islamic law.

 I locked my phone and tossed it aside. Every time I was alone at night, I felt my chest tightening as my mind took me back down a memory lane that I did not wish to visit again. I wished that grief could be locked up and tossed in the forgotten dark corners of our mind, never to be experienced again.

But how could I when I regularly woke up in the middle of the night after experiencing yet another nightmare?

This time I'd dreamt that Bhai had called me just before the incident, and I had been speeding in the car to reach him, but I didn't make it in time. In the dream, I'd arrived at the scene of the crime to see him lying on the ground, covered in blood.

"Shehzad." He had muttered, before taking his final breath.

Sometimes I dreamt that Maaz had grown up and had started to hate me and was accusing me of being the reason his father had died.

I got out of bed and walked over to the window, peering out at the city of Karachi. 

"Life moves on, even if we don't want to. We could choose to either move along with it, or to stay stuck in time, letting our grief turn us into a statue, a lifeless shadow of our former self." Jeet had said to me, shortly after the deaths of my brother and father. "It hurts like f**k, but we need to remind ourselves of how much we're hurting our other loved ones, those who are witnessing our deterioration."