Aaryan 2 Destinies: Lemuria

Birth of a Warrior

Birth of a Warrior

“AAARRRGGGGHHHH….” Came the searing cry of pain of a woman, which broke the silence of the night of the workers dwelling of Lemuria, though woke no one, as all were already awake.

Ahmed, sitting amongst his friends, rose up to rush inside his small mud house, his face in tears for the agony of childbirth that his wife, Farwa, was going through. He felt a hand on his elbow and looked down to see his childhood friend Samartha grabbing him and pulling him down.

“Sit Down.” Samartha hissed at him. “You know that men are not allowed when a child is born. Remember, the inspectors are looking at you.”

“But, my wife… my child….” Ahmed moaned.

“Will have to do this without you.” Samartha patiently explained, as a father might to his young child, which he often felt as towards his childhood friend. “You know our laws. If a child is not strong enough to take birth by himself, he is not strong enough to survive in this world.”

Ahmed, though not lacking to see the reality of what Samartha had just said, did not like it. But nonetheless, he sat down in a worried despair. Around him, people were muttering amongst themselves in hushed tones. He saw the two inspectors of the kingdom staring at him. Ahmed averted his gaze, unable to keep an eye contact.

All of Ahmed’s instincts were forcing him to go and look after his wife, to hold her hand and to comfort her. Only the thought for his yet to be born son, (if it is a son, a voice whispered in the deepest confines of his mind), kept him at bay. Outwardly, his appearance suited the occasion, a hint of anxiety and excitement to see his new born son, but deep within him, the cold hands of despair were unfurling in his gut.

Ahmed seethed in rage with his inability to do nothing. Technically, he could still go to his wife. It would just mean that his son (again a small voice in his conscious said “If it is a son!”) will be shunned by the society and would never rise above his station.
No. Ahmed spoke to himself in the deep confines of his brain. He is my son. He is going to make it by himself. As Ahmed day dreamed about what all he will teach his son about life, his thoughts turned to his own childhood.
Born eight and thirty years ago in the same room where his wife now lay, Ahmed was the youngest of three children. Born five and ten days later than usual, fate conspired against him from the moment of his birth, or so he felt. His mother gave up on the struggle and died with exhaustion even before he was delivered. His father himself had come inside the room (as he had learned when he had grown up), gently kissed his now dead wife and took the knife to do the distasteful deed, crying all the while he did so and cut open his dead wife’s womb and removed Ahmed from her, thereby condemning Ahmed to a life time of shame, ridicule and oppression.

Even as a small child, Ahmed sensed, much to his displeasure that he was shunned by other children. Save for Samartha, no other child of the dwelling liked playing with him. Samartha, like him, had been born under similar circumstances, though his mother had survived.
Naturally, the two boys formed a pair and were soon inseparable. Samartha’s mother, Kanta aai, adopted him as one of her own and Ahmed blossomed under her maternal love. She cared for him in the absence of his own mother, made him delicious sweets, tended to small scrapes and bruises that he got as young children always managed to get and soon took the place of his mother, whom he did not even have the privilege to meet.

As he grew from a small child to an inquisitive boy of three and ten, Ahmed started looking for more friends, but to his disappointment, he was always shunned by other boys his age. “Weakling!” they hissed at him, perhaps the kindliest of all words they addressed him with.

His father, whenever he saw the treatment melted at him, just averted his head in shame and with a sorrowful expression, went about his task. When Ahmed pestered his father for a reason as to why he was treated this way, pat came the reply “You are too young to understand. I will tell you when you are old enough.”
Faced with such disappointment at such an early stage in his life, Ahmed would always run to Kanta aai crying. Kanta aai would then pick him up on her lap, wipe away his tears and whip a small delicacy out of thin air (or so it seemed to him) and tell him stories to cheer him up.