Chapter II: When A Man Dies

Thank you, people, for your great comments on Part I. After I blogged it, though, I began to find it disgusting, embarrassing and hard to read, but nevertheless, I shall press on. Installment 2 - bring on the criticism.

Ahmed could sense that he did not have long left to live. Even as his shallow breaths gurgled in his lungs, he could feel the surrounding air take on a different quality. It was as though everything around him had gained life, the life that he was losing. The inanimate sparkled with vivacity; the living had acquired an inexplicable luminescence that glowed beneath their skin. He seemed to be peering into another dimension, seeing crystals floating in the air around the room, reflecting icy-blue lights on every surface, breaking through the dimness and revealing all that he thought he had forgotten. To him, God had sent him the heavens, and put the stars within his reach. The dark shadows that had hovered over him for weeks had finally left him, and suddenly he felt the need to share this experience with the people he loved most.

But when he tried to speak, his mouth only emanated a low groan. With his mind, he beckoned to his daughter, whose ever-watchful vigilance managed to detect the inconspicuous waving of his fingers, resting lightly on the off-white bedspread. She quickly came to him and kneeled by his head, held his hand. “Yes, Baba?” she asked, her eyes wide with expectation and fear.

Ahmed slowly, painfully, turned his head to look at her, and saw his own big brown eyes gazing back at him. If only he could speak! He would tell Mariam how precious she was, how good a daughter, a mother, a wife. Because of her, he had come to know the love a man could feel for his daughter and he wanted to thank her, to share with her how she melted his heart at every moment. His eyelids fluttered weakly, and she raised his fingers to her face, touching her alabaster cheek with his yellow nails. Ahmed slathered thick saliva over his dry, cracked lips, preparing to speak to his child when Shahina’s face suddenly appeared beside their daughter’s, rough and dark in comparison. In her eyes he saw the same iciness that had lain there for almost forty years, though fear had temporarily blunted its edges. He breathed, Shahina. Still, only silence emanated from his lips. He needed her to know that their marriage need not have been the prison she had always imagined it to be. He loved her, and it was this selfish love that had made him force her to stay because he could not live without her. He wished she could have allowed herself to grow happy with him, to be gentle with him, so that he would know the tears staining her cheeks shared his pain and warmth. Instead, he had hardened her soul and caused his oldest son a most unfortunate childhood.

But in this moment, he could not allow himself the slightest regret. He was beginning to feel light, weightless, as though his essence was no longer subject to the pull of the Earth but had gained authority over itself. He could feel himself disappearing; first toes, then legs, then hips. Abdul! Where was Abdul? He was panicking now; his unsaid messages burning holes in his chest as they fought to escape. He scanned the many faces that now surrounded his bed, looking for the familiar black eyes set above a hooked nose and the strong jaw that belonged to his son. The boy was now a man, but he still hurt like a boy; that hurt must not find its way back to Shahina. Ahmed knew that Abdul would do as he was told, would obey the last wishes of his father, even if his father asked him to do the impossible: love his mother. Finally, Abdul’s face pushed through the crowd. He grabbed his father’s left hand. “Baba?” he said, half-pleading with him to stay. Ahmed looked, and he tried again to speak.