Dear Wafa...

Twenty Nine

Dearest Wafa,

It has been a long, long time since I last wrote, I am sorry. I wanted  to write a dozen times before but was unable to do so. Before I tell you why, let me say this: I saw you in a dream recently, a few days after what would have been your 28th birthday. You were the same girl that I knew but a little older, and you had almost recovered from your sickness (how I wish it were so in real life!) and I was somewhere between then and now- not my thirteen-year-old self but not my present self either. I think it is kind of a repressed wish fulfilment happening in the subconscious. I have been either terribly busy or super tired all the time for the past few months that I hardly feel like myself anymore. But in that dream,  for that little while after I woke up when it felt like it had been real, I was myself once again. Your mother and sister were there too and you weren't very ill. We just talked about something that I can't recall, but I didn't mention my kids or my present life at all.

This is significant because the reason why I have been so busy/ tired/ unlike myself is my kids. The last time I wrote, I was pregnant with twins. Now, my babies are almost two months old. It's a boy and a girl this time. So now I am a mother of four, Alhamdulillah. But every blessing is a test and every test a blessing- I am going through one of the toughest phases of my life. I haven't had a good night's sleep for months. My husband is abroad and if it was not for my family's help, I would be insane right now. It's hard to bring up kids on one's own. My boys need their father right now. But not everything goes as we plan and we just comply to the Greater Plan that we can't foresee.

Also, the world itself is in chaos right now.  There's been trouble brewing in the Middle East as usual. As for India, we have had enough of this fascist government and their spokesmen spouting nonsense. Now they are set to divide the country on communal lines (Islamophobia, obviously) and people are on the streets in protest. The whole country (the thinking half, at least) is ringing with cries of Azaadi. If things go as the new age Nazis plan, then we will soon be turned out of our homes, labelled as Doubtful Citizens and sent to detention camps.

So all in all, it is not a good time to live in. If this letter appears disjointed or broken, then it is just a reflection of my present reality. I don't know when I can write again.

PS: It was nice to see you again, even though it was just a dream.

Lots of love,
Nasoo.