TAHERA

Prologue

I woke up that morning earlier enough not to miss the bus to the hospital. It was a cold, rainy day. I constantly have a fondness of rain as it caused a feeling of sorrow that every human cannot experience. The sky was comparatively dark and the roads were really engaged. Since it was a weekday, the bus was over loaded with students and working men.

 I hurried of to the hospital. She was inward the worst situation yesterday and the doctors had lost all their hope. I rushed to meet the chief doctor. Only on my direction toward the chamber, I was held back by a nurse who caught my hand; and with one of those saddest and compassionate filled face sobbed her heart away, "She departed..... Today morning".

I was not shaken; I was expecting her to die soon. I did not want to see her living with the pain, it was better off she left early. I walked to the room to see her body kept there. She seemed as though she was holding a peaceful nap, something she missed for the past 19 years of her liveliness. I did not have tears flowing down my eyes. Not because she is not attached to me, but because she rang for her death sooner and I was easily informed about it. I looked at her face, pale and skinny!  The sleepless nights and drunken mornings have changed her a lot. She was too aged not by the time, but by the countless chaos that had besieged her.

After the official procedures in the hospital are over, I got her home.  I don't know any of the rituals and rights regarding the religious mourning; and so called up my only uncle to help me out. For the first time in my life I prayed and then my uncle with the help of some other relatives took her body.

The house did not feel as if someone just died. The silence, the stagnant and dry tone was very much usual in the household. Even when she was awake, even before Ayesha eloped, even before he left us, the house was still.  My mom used to say it was silenced after my birth. I proved to dismiss those words, but only I recognized how much it haunted me. Today, as I sit alone in the hall I only want to cry out loud, but my eyes were dry. It had been that way for a long time. I wanted to scream out; after all it was my mother who died. Is it not innate for a human to cry when his/her loved one pass out? She was my mother, or maybe she was for namesake!