Here and there
Word count: 1623
Dear Ashes,
Dont fret friend, I am fine here. I was glad to receive your letter. I feel that I can share the burden of my thoughts with you. Even if it may take you weeks to write a letter and months for me to write one back. Sometimes I wonder whether a day has gone by -between a paragraph- or a week. Our English teachers are probably turning over in their graves as we speak.
The times are harder for Muslims here and over there, you said. I live amongst them and find their society to be fairly ordinary. I am always surprised to hear people criticise a Muslim tailor there for what a Muslim butcher did over there. I know a doctor here and a doctor there who share the same ethical viewpoint. I know a lawyer here who is just as crooked as another lawyer over there. The arms dealer over here sells his wares just like he does over there...
My daughter is still an aid worker over there. This one time, she sent me a box of photographs taken by her fiancé. These photographs made me wonder about the world I live in. I thought to myself: why does a mother have to pray to her god to ensure her child lives through the day? I wonder whether I should blame the god she believes in or the society she inhabits.
I know there are 'some' 'Muslims' over there who want to take over what we have over here. And I am at a loss to explain why that is... They live in the war torn part, and we, put simply do not.
And then there are people like Hashim. He is a person from here who now lives over there. He wants to keep the flames of war suppressed over there, and hopefully extinguish it someday.
I have this dream. I wish to get up one day and find no news of an active war. Every morning, I get up, switch on the television and wish there was peace here, there and everywhere. And I wake every morning, watch the news, and sit silenced.
These are my neighbours, I say to myself. One of my neighbours is raping a woman, whilst another is giving the rapist a pardon, whilst a third is laughing at this 'backward society'; a fourth is getting angry; the fifth is asking for more light on the matter, and the sixth is debating the third and the fourth, in a coffee house...
Yesterday, a woman came running out of church. She had been lit on fire. The passerby who covered her with his shawl and made her roll on the floor was a Muslim. The doctor who treated her was from over there, born to Hindu parents and was herself agnostic. Her treatment was funded by an atheistic well-wisher who had given to a charity run by a Jewish organisation. The man who put her on fire was her husband and he was a person who had no religious affiliation. And this entire human chain, was uncovered by a Christian reporter....
I took my weary bones to a school last week. There was a child there who raised a very good point. We drink from our wells here, and we drink from their wells, over there. We pay our water companies almost triple what we pay their water companies. The water we import was supposed to be excess water for swimming pools and sprinklers for our gardens. It costs more to import water from over there and yet it is cheaper. The child asked: why do the people over there charge less?
I didnt know the answer then and I dont know it now. Perhaps we wield more power here than the folks do over there. Perhaps they need the money more over there than we do over here. Perhaps there is more demand here than over there. Perhaps we have more capital, spending power and consumer choice. Perhaps this shows that capitalism works better for some people more than others. Perhaps... Perhaps... Perhaps.
When I asked the child what she thought, she replied: Its because they are all uneducated idiots over there. They do not know about market theories and/or forces. They allow us to play one of them off the others. And they do not stop fighting to live their lives. If only they would stop their corrupted ideologues, raise their education standards and stop this sword fighting.
I asked her whether we incur any social injustices on them. She shook her head. And I knew I was done...
I've fallen to being quieter these days. I rock to and fro on my rocking chair; I sit just outside my front porch. I smell the aromas of curry in the air. I watch the rain fall. I watch the people pass by. I feel old. I remember my youth, when I had the motivation and energy to challenge the system and brainstorm ideas to improve the quality of life. The quality of life for one child over here and a mother over there. A father over here, and his daughter over there.
I've grown a beard through laziness. And by extension, I have grown a little deaf, am mute for long periods at a time and somewhat blind. I am alive...barely. I can unearth a tear...I can cry... It is about as much as I can do these days...
There are some over there, that think we right here, do not care about the people over there...but they are wrong...
This morning, I got up from my seat and took a two minute walk over to their side. I had to pay the soldiers a fair bit but that was okay. They treated me like -the senior citizen I am- wanted to be treated like. I needed the support of my walking stick and the walk was a little painful but that was also bearable.
I have seventy five years under my belt, and this was the first time I had walked around my entire neighbourhood. It is an understatement often repeated, but it ought to be said. It is one thing seeing pictures in the news and another experience walking through the alleyways.
I looked at their broken houses and bombed out apartments. This was less than a hundred metres from where I lived. This was where the people who were causing us misery lived. I saw the poverty stricken school, the open drains, and the filthy clinic. I met a Muslim youth who brandished his AK44 in an attempt to intimidate me. I stood upright, firm, resolute and did not utter a word. He laughed in my face. I knew the fool was embarrassed well before he walked away. I want to say that idiotic gun wielders exist both here and there. Although here is now there and there is now here. I wonder, what would have happened, had I been born over there and not here. I mean...you know what I mean, don't you?
Tomorrow, I hope you wake up a slightly better version of yourself. Five years from now, I hope the world is a better place. And if you are the person that makes that happen, I sincerely would have liked to shake your hand and thank you in person. Alas I fear that I will not live to see that place, but I hope that you do and that you live your life gracefully in that place. I hope you have children who are good, and more importantly, I hope that they get to breathe in free air. I wish you a find good partner to share that life with.
I was completely floored when you told me that I have seen my wife less than fifty times in twenty seven years. Twenty seven years. Good god! Have I ever told you why she went over there? Quite simply, she chose to return to the house she was born in and help her neighbours until the violence rescinded... One day became a week. One week became a month. One month became twenty seven years and counting.
After nearly three decades, I have finally relented. But alas it is with great sadness that I say dear friend, that the doctors give me less than the weeks left in the year. I havent told the Mrs yet. Although I dare say, she already knows or feared the worst. It was she that sent for the doctor.
I realize now that, perhaps this letter will reach you after I have left for greener fields. It has been three months in the writing as well. The Mrs tells me that you are to come today. I am in an odd place right now. I know how my story turned out... I feel that had I had the energy, I will have been capable of writing a million words describing here and there and all the plots in between.
{Tear stains make part of this sentence illegible to read} go to your headstone happy, I say. Can you write this on mine please? :
There will be some of you that do not believe that wars end. They do. There will be some of you that do not believe in love lasting. It can. And there are some of you that have lost their faith in humanity. And for you I have these words - often repeated by teachers all over the world. Endure. Do good. Better yourselves. Spread peace, not hatred. Burn ignorance, and turn to light. {Illegible} Books.
I suppose that is it for now. This is goodbye by way leaf then.
Take care,
1396
