Sleep left her alone that night. She stared at the shadows of trees through her window and tried to imagine that the branches were the arms of some monsters. They were waiting for her to fall asleep, so that they can grab her legs and drag her into another world. It was such a strange thought to keep herself awake.
Hassan wasn’t the first ghost that she had seen. She held tightly onto her pillow just like she used to hold on to her grandmother. That was a long time ago- A grief that has been forgotten because of the piles of
irrelevant memories that clouded it.
She was so sure that it was her grandma whom she saw. Kamala looked at her old wrinkled face, her hair that refused to turn grey and felt the smell of fire wood. Her grandma used to spend a lot of time in the
kitchen burning wood, as a result she had the smell of ashes and
smoke.
She was more than happy to see her. The next morning, she told her mother about this and she was sure that kamala was either lying or had
gone crazy. Lying felt the least terrible of the two options, so she choose to believe it and made sure that her daughter realized the truth as well. Ever since, her grandma was truly gone. When her feet touched the lifeless sand, she did not know that this was the last time they were going to see each other. The dead and the living had to move on at some point.
“Its nice to see you “, he said. The confusion that was present on his
face on the first few days were gone and had been replaced by a faint
smile. Something seemed different about him. His eyes seemed to capture the depths of the ocean. He looked fragile, as if she would touch him and he would vanish like a beautiful dream lost forever. “It’s time, isn’t it”, kamala could sense it through the distant look on his
face.
“look”, he said.
His voice had the gentleness of a drizzle. “Thanks for helping me move
on.”
She was trying to focus on what was happening. The sound of the waves, the heavy wind, the piercing cold, the strange night sky looking down on them were all overwhelming. She did what she always did at times of pain. She thought of herself as someone else, distancing herself from her emotions. She viewed herself as a stranger.
The pain was gone. Maybe it wasn’t gone, maybe it was hiding somewhere waiting for the right time to strike. But until then she can go on like this – by being distant.
The problem with being distant is that you can’t just distance yourself from the pain alone, with it you are getting rid of the joy as well.
“I have something to give you. My diary. If you want to you can read it. I
know it’s not much and it’s been a long time since I wrote anything but
that’s all I have to give you that’s truly mine.”, he said
She was no longer a stranger. Her heart has pulled her back to reality
only to break down crying because it was all too much. Tears fell to the
ground as she wept silently. Was she crying for Hassan or for her grandma or was it because she missed her father. It seemed as if she was crying for herself, for what she had, for what she had lost.
She watched as he walked away. She stood still, her hands pressed
together, eyes focused only on him. He looked smaller as he walked
further. She could not understand weather he vanished into thin air or did he walk too far that he was no longer visible to her. Anyway, he was
gone.
The sun was shyly ascending from across the horizon. The first rays of
light touched her skin and she felt its warmth. She was up before the morning birds and the paper boy. She looked around and the saw the plants that had risen from the baren earth after the thunderstorm. Their delicate leaves as soft as a feather was all ready for life.
