fighting fear

28th May

Ayesha

  She was running for her class as she had been extremely late, when suddenly a football flew over her head. She backed away in order to judge it, and her feet hit something solid.  

She began to fall.  

The next thing she knew, two strong hands grabbed her by her waist in mid air. She looked up and saw a athletic guy smiling down at her. His brown skin and dark eyes were the first aspects she noticed.

  “Hi”, he said, still in that position.

  “Hey”, Ayesha managed. He finally let go of her.

She began,” Are you…. Umm, American? Because you don’t seem…”   He laughed.

“ Yeah, I am Pakistani”.  

“Oh! Same here!”, Ayesha exclaimed.

  “Hey, Ali! You coming or what?”, his friends called him over.  

“Yeah, coming”, he turned to reply them, but when he returned to the girl, she was gone. His eyebrows shot up. That was a weird girl.

  “ Hey, Ali! We are waiting”.

  “Yeah, yeah, okay”. He dismissively answered them and jogged back. Actually, she ran away. She was too afraid and nervous to face that gorgeous guy- Ali. She was so frightened of saying the wrong thing, she didn’t give herself a chance to say anything. Oh, she thought, and by the way, you were getting late for class, too.

Alina

  She felt a bit weird standing in highschool that day. She actually had a job to look after… like forming a women football team. She knew that many girls would be playing, but not all would sign up, and there was only one sensation to defeat-fear.

  “Hey”, Gavin greeted her.”So you ready to start working?”

  “ I think so”, she replied.

  “So, onwards, I am your assistant on this quest whoever thought could exist.”  

“ Sure, I’ll let you tag along”, she said, laughing. She was led to the gymnasium and all the girls were called. Gavin told her that they would be there any minute. Soon, the doors erupted with a cacophony. She rolled her eyes and decided to meet them half-way. As much as she acknowledged the fact that she belonged to the group, she wasn’t a quintessence of it.  The girly chatter, laughter and shrieks  simply piqued her.

“You’re up, Good Luck”, Gavin said and handed her the microphone. She thanked him, grabbed it and brought it close to her lips.

  “Hello. My name is Alina. As you may know, you all have been brought here to hear me out. This marks the beginning of my quest, which is far from monotonous. I have been given the responsibility of creating a football team for the school, and consequently, for the whole football world.   Fear? What is fear? Fear is actually nothing but a force which aims at impeding our progress and doesn’t  let us pursue our dreams. ‘What’ and ‘if’ are as simple, vague and non-threatening as words could be. However, if you put them together, they have the power to haunt you for your life. ’What if…..?’ This phrase, these cursed words hold us from doing our thing, exposing our real self and  doing something splendidly unique.” She gave a brief pause. The crowd was tranquil now, each pair of eye fixed upon her. She continued.

Ayesha

That girl had spoken the most stirring words Ayesha had ever heard. It seemed as if she had been spying on Ayesha, because her every word perfectly suited her current situation and it felt like the whole speech was meant for her. Who was more frightened than herself? The girl continued.

  “This phrase is, eventually and inevitably, just a phrase.  Can we manifest our weakness and helplessness by bowing to this. I don’t know about you, but I would rather die than admitting defeat to such a minor thing.”

The crowd was completely silent, and Ayesha was sure that every girl had been forced to think, “what am I doing?”  

Nonetheless, the unknown girl resumed her speech.   “You all must definitely be thinking, who am I to lecture you about fear? But, another thing that I am completely sure about, is that each one of you possesses that one element of your conscience that you are afraid to expose. For some of you, that may be football.”

  Some heads rose with a jerk.

  “Listen, if you guys are simply afraid, don’t forget the fact that it is what you want to do. Life is all about taking risks, and if you don’t try, how do you know how good or bad you are? This is my only shot at this sport. Now, I am willing to take risks to achieve what I want. The question is, what do you guys want?” With that, she came down.

Alina

Alina left the stage with a heavy heart. She knew she could not have induced any impact on the crowd with her boring and horribly long effort on a speech she had made. However,  the very next moment, the crowd erupted in cheers.

Coach Green came up to her, and said “ That was amazing!” Gavin also said from behind him “totally!”  

She blushed, “Did you like it?”  

“Yeah!”, they said in chorus.

She just wondered if it would be fruitful.