A road to nowhere..

3. The Good News

The door closed behind me with a slight cracking voice.

"Ah, you need repair. Just as me. How similar we are. Tangled in the world, with the hope of getting healed one day."

A sad smile found its way on my face.
I turned around to face Mom. I had felt her gaze on me.

And just like always, she didn't interrupt my vague, random thoughts.

"What's up Mommy dear?"

I tried to cheer up my voice.

"I was baking pizza so that we can have it together. Don't tell me you've had your lunch in some restaurant."

"I hold my life very dear to me. So I avoided all the aromas in the way home."

At this, we both laughed.

"So what did the principal say?"

I knew I had to answer this question sooner or later.

"He said that the Australian University for which I applied 3 months ago, has selected me on a scholarship."

Excitement surged in my voice.

"Wow... I just don't know how to express my happiness... Oh Allah..."

Tears sparkled in her eyes.

"Mom..."

I wrapped her in a warm hug. Her fragile structure sobbed.

"Oh Aziz, I'm so happy...I'm so happy for you...my son, my life."

And before I could realize it, moisture found its way in my eyes.

Life gives you those rare moments in which paradoxical things coexist. We both had wet eyes and smiling lips in this precious instant.

"Mom, I'm very happy. But you know, this smell of burning, which I can predict to be coming from oven, isn't a pleasant one."

"What."

She pushed herself away and ran to the oven alarmingly, only to find the partially baked pizza in it. She glared back.

"Aziz, when will you get mature enough not to make such jokes."

"If this is what keeps you from crying at such moments, I guess, these jokes will keep coming."

She shook her head. I laughed as I climbed stairs to get to my room.

"Come quickly. Pizza is almost ready."

"Okay Mom."

I yelled.

......

They say, you only live once. But if you work it right, once is enough. And the whole problem lies in this "work it right". For a lot of things, we can never be completely sure if we are working them out right. Most of the times, we just follow the right path, with the hope that we end up finding ourselves at the destination. And this time, I felt as if life had challenged me again, to work it all right.

....

"Dear Allah Taala,

Is it okay not to be okay at times? Is it okay to be lost, to have gone so far away that when i look back, i can't see my foot-prints on the sands of time?

Dear God, in this beautiful world of yours, i have lost myself, somewhere, in the midst of these sunrises and sunsets, i have dropped my existence. Like a child who drops his treasure in a playland, and when he feels its absence and looks around, it is nowhere to be found. Do you know who that child is? I feel it is me. Do you know what his treasure was? I feel it was my essence.

Dear God, i don't feel like belonging to anywhere or anyone. When I peep inside my soul, I find a hollow, a big deep one, that seems to have engulfed me.

They say You love everyone. I hope I'm included in that category of everyone. I hope you own me, like a renowned Painter owns his painting, despite knowing all the flaws and loop-holes in it.

I hope you look down at me, silently, from above the Heavens, and you smile back when I look up and try to cheer myself up. I hope I hear your soothing voice, telling me it's going to be okay, when that hollow takes over me and I can't hold back my tears.

I hope when I sit quiet, silence surrounding me from everywhere, I hear You, saying that You understand what I am going thorough.

Dear God, I believe very strongly, that despite anything and everything, You Shall keep guiding me, keep loving me, keep consoling me, and keep understanding me. And one more thing, I also have a faith that my love for you will keep prospering, whatever the circumstances and wherever I be."

I closed my diary. It was a letter to God, I would write very often. Though He Listened, and He did not need my words to know what was happening in my life, yet I would scribble my emotions on paper. It gave me an unparalleled relief, a sense of liberation as the chains of grief around me would break. I would feel as light as a feather, free of all the burdens of sorrow.

.....