WHILE TRAVELLING ALONE IN JEDDAH

WHILE TRAVELLING ALONE IN JEDDAH

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Once upon a time but not very long ago.

When my grey was not so grey

And the black was not sophomore.

On a bus journey that I made twice.

The mornings passed with a book in hand

And the evenings cried for company.

It is on one such journey, one day, that I met you.

One day the Bus halted at Sharafiyyah and you boarded it.

And occupied the seat next to mine.

You, still a student in high school were going to Aziziyah for tuition.

We spoke about each other.

I asked about you and also the trivia was discussed that comes with being a student.

It was the same bus which we shared around the same time...evening 4.30

Everyday you would sit next to me…

I would wait board the bus from Balad and later would keep my office bag on the seat next to mine,

In order to keep it booked for you, so that I could have that 30 minutes of conversation with you.

Everyday I would pick up a topic and listen you talk.

You would talk, talk and talk. I must tell you that I enjoyed it very much.

You kept me company, if I am not mistaken, for a couple of months.

I felt I had killed boredom along that route..

But then before the acquaintance could move forward

and made us unlikely friends …Your school closed.

The tuition got over and you rather moved.

My routine came back to square one.

I longed for company on that route but

Dreaded I could lose one if I found.

Some days after, I stopped using the bus

And somehow sometimes your memory did ply on that route.

Years passed by and very little remained of your memory..

Your very marked Gujrati Lingo was one among them.

And somewhere an honesty in you that had struck me then.

Years later when I saw you in office today

while you were sitting in a corner of the room,

I turned back twice to recollect what my memory had stored all these years.

I could still see that teenage student through your deceiving beard and long hair.

I asked my colleague about you..’This guy is IISJ, Gujrati?’

He said yes.

Today I asked for the sheet that you had written as part of the interview process.

I could see the creative you, your honesty intact.

You didn’t recognize me… how could you ?

I had aged beyond recognition and had lost lot of weight.

I feared that you may not recollect those bus trips.

I still do…but I had to write to you…

Had to write this..

”Some people we meet

Some we lose,

Some are defined,

Some are vague.

None remained, neither friend nor an acquaintance.

What remained is the ghost of those bus journeys”

Had to shake your memory and see if there exists

Even a faintest memory of those years passed by.

Though Inconsequential,  it will bring an end to the bus journey.

This city which never sleeps

This city which never sleeps
It moves like a ghost
Joining with them my phantoms
Make merry all night.
They dance and rejoice
While I watch them in horror
Waiting for sleep to take me away from them.

Talking all night,
Seldom arguing over what could be
Had it been otherwise
Strengthening my doubts
Rarely silencing them
I reach for the quilt to turn away from it.

Shadows of the neighborhood
All out with daggers of rebel
Shouting in defiance spilling blood everywhere
The moon is stoic, the stars afraid
Silent as bystanders witnessing a fight
I screech but my voice is hushed.

Near dawn they huddle together
Charting out the plan for the next night
They disperse then as the embers of light emerge
While I lie there after taking forty winks.
Moments later the sky is clear
though secrets staying out of sight.
Till comes another night.
This city which never sleeps.

The Courtyard of Peace.

You may have walked your whole life on a path; Quiet with a resolution as firm as a mountain, as silent as the dark night.

But one day, suddenly everything changes, we don’t know how and when, but we emerge a different person out of it.

This incident is a marker of change in me and the place where this has happened is the most peaceful city in the whole world…Madinah.

Every time I have been there it has brought an awakening in me.

My early years in Jeddah were marked by great turmoil and insecurity; Whenever it would be too much to bear, I would go with my injured soul to Madinah to heal. I would stand in the courtyard right opposite the gate and ask questions which kept bothering me from time to time and for which I had no answers.     

The heal would come and I would rejuvenate myself and get ready to face it over all again. It was a dream that I had one night in Madinah when I, with Huma and Kaleem who was just more than a year, had visited to pay our respects at the Prophets’ (SAW) tomb. I had dream't that I am walking the courtyard of Masjid-e-Nabawi  with my wife, child and pushing the wheel chair in which my mother was seated. I was going through a difficult time then and had no whim of this happening any time soon. I had no idea that how could I make mother come here while I was still struggling to make ends meet. Two years passed and while things improved for me, the dream slept in the inner recesses of my mind and never came to surface until the day I was pushing the wheel chair in which Mother was sitting and Huma walking beside me. It just struck me then that I had walked this path before. It took me a while to recollect that this very place and mother had appeared in my dream two years back. The dream showed itself then and a lightning ran through my own physical and emotional self. The dream had in fact fulfilled right then.  I sent my salaams to the Prophet (SAW) while my faith reaffirmed itself.

Gradually life changed and the anguish also kept changing faces and came to me each time in a new form after providing relief from the existing one. Life tested me more often than not and I faced them to my best possible. But what remained constant in my struggle was the hope that whenever I visit the city of Madinah with my injured soul there would always be hope for healing and strength for the next challenge.