Bleeding Edge

I have something to ask you.

Please give me an answer here:

Do we have the right to bring a child into such a world as this one that we live in now?

Zaira was surprised; her face darkened; she opened her mouth to answer, but I put my hand on her lips and stopped her.

Shut up and let me speak, because I am a man, and it is difficult for me to speak my mind on this subject that goes straight against everything that I believe in, since I want my seed to propagate on this Earth and yet because this earth is so full of terrors that sometimes it feels like if you touch your children — they are so frazzled and fragile, they will go to pieces…

Don’t ask me what and how, even if you want me to prove it; but I know for sure that this world and all its people are going off the cliff, and it seems like the bus that we entered in Peshawar driving into Afghanistan and the bus-wallah, was driving along the edge of the rim of a Rocky Mountain, taking a tight hairpin turn at full tilt, and the explosion shook us up into a cloud of dust..

Still, you held my hand into a tight white knuckle ball onto your heart, where your breast throbbed — knowing that there is no escape, but a crashing death in a river of blood and then we will drown in the swift waters beneath…

Woe to the children to be born.

Still as you crossed your arms, I remember that moment of serene slow time when the bus had lost touch with the earth and gravel of the skinny road and we blew-up and then plunged sideways into rumbling rolling nothingness, with nary a scream to be heard from anyone.

Nothing else.

Nothing else.

Not even a prayer to be heard.

Yet, before you left, I wanted to tell you these words, just so you know…

I wish our children had been born; instead of sheltering into your womb that was crushed in that crash.

Afterwards I was staring at you still smelling your perfume — but you had changed, and your face was now sharp, crooked, like steel. Your lips were sloppy, yet stretched straight out like swords; blending small puffs of blood, and your eyes were looking far away, behind my shoulder, without tenderness.

I reached out for your hand, and slowly caressed one by one your piano fingers made for pleasure, but best suited to hard tasks. And I curled up in that wreck, as if I wanted to become a serpent, and carefully without breaking any of your shattered bones — I embraced the whole of you, wanting to bring you back. But you remained still, far from caresses and cares of this world.

Still I stayed there, even though the stench of death had started to offend my nostrils; and promised as I kissed your bleeding mouth; we will fight on.

We shall fight on to make a better world for other people’s children.

We won’t let the world get lost, we will do our best to restore the virtue that is gone, and that’s why you should not leave me.

But don’t ask me why I didn’t ask you to leave … at the beginning of that journey.

That is my debt.

I’m not lonely, as many are in the world hurting. A world hurting like me, has many scattered souls, who don’t know, they are lost…

I will find them, and gather them together; the good and honest, same as the dishonest have gathered with the bad guys …

And we will organize ourselves too, and we will not leave the world drowning in blood again.

And that’s why I’m leaving too.

I waited for you to speak; but you had sealed your lips and your eyes were still and hard.

And that’s why I’m not leaving.

Perhaps thats why you don’t dare to tell me to leave.

Zaira darling — stay with me and we will work for our son, for the sons of all the people; we will work for them to live in a better world…

Why aren’t you talking to me?

We are quiet for an eternity together.

The last eternity.

The last embrace.

The last goodbye.

And in a little while longer — we shall meet again:

I don’t want to live and yet I don’t want to leave you.

That’s my curse of indecision.

I put her face on the pile of dusty sleeves, slow and with both hands as she held my gaze with the steely eyes of the dead, strongly.

I wrangled myself free from the wreck and got off the bus touched by Evil and yet left unscathed except from the blood trickling from small wounds caused by the breakage of the windows.

The thick drizzles of blood that had fallen, had coalesced into dark stains of earth and showed patches of colored countries on the map of an unknown earth, separated through borders of different people’s blood, whose DNA had marked the soil without fixed borders; soil-sweet, on a harsh earth, yet, full of tenderness, mercy and liberation from the mortal coil.

Still, behind the roofs of the mountains, surrounding this river, a cry was heard beating the heart against the land and groaning.

My mind was sweetened; as I looked over the dead, softened with immense compassion, as I saw more than any man can imagine — and it was then, that I just felt tired.

I collapsed and felt the weight of the world and trauma washing over me like a curtain of snow driven by billowing winds making their way through screaming willow forests.

So this is what death looks like.

Many neglected bodies, of people who could no longer live, nor die, and committed suicide … by allowing their souls to escape the pained, mangled bodies of our earthly existence.

Still, no noise… but the rush of wind and chimes of pack animals distant and far.

Woke up seeing the setting sun, and gathered strength by feeling my limbs and legs akimbo.

And as I was leaving upwards, and still weighing the best way to reach safety — I stopped and turned back and reached into the bus for her hands, and stood with her long after the dark, kissed and caressed her face hoping that she would open up her arms into an embrace…

Somewhere in my mind — I heard her say: “My child’s gonna be in heaven with us” and she squeezed me to her chest with untold affection.

I had died that moment.

Yours,

Dr Churchill

PS:

From my upcoming book: “Allah-u-Akbar — Memoirs of an Accidental Tourist in Hard Places.”

Chapter 3: “Disrupting people’s lives has always been the Empire’s only use.”

“And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth.”

–George Orwell