IT was hot, humid and one of those mysterious moonless nights when the mind boggles. A forsaken soul soars over the valley of meaninglessness, in search of an identity for a trivial existence. At the precipices of innumerable doubts, we precariously hang onto our beliefs and doubts.
I was wide awake in my dimly illuminated room, in the bachelors’ hostel. For no obvious reason, I felt the presence of an alien around me. I couldn’t see him. I remembered that I had bolted the room properly. The hostel for bachelor government servants, like any other government building, is well-protected round-the-clock by six armed guards. Intrusion, and that too at the dead of night, was improbable. I was not delirious. But, I did feel presence of someone in my room. It was a curious inkling.
I got out of my bed. Load shedding is not a new phenomenon in Karachi. In the flickering flame of a dying candle, nothing appeared distinctly visible to me. As I carefully moved around, I realized the unfamiliar presence of an invisible stranger in the room.
“I know you are in my room,” bewildered, I spoke aloud and asked, “Who are you?”
“I looked for you desperately in the family quarters,” I heard someone speak in a distinct voice. Instead of replying to my query he said, “Why have they let you stay in the bachelors’ hostel?”
“I am alone. I have no family,” I replied, and in the same breath asked, “Why do you ask?”
He asserted, “Because, I know you are not alone.”
“I am alone,” I insisted.
“Man, all along his existences, has never lived alone even for a solitary moment,” he remarked and added, “We all live among an inseparable family.”
“I do not talk on behalf of others. As far as I am concerned, I have no family. I am alone,” I informed him.
I heard him take a deep breath. He said, “We all live along with our family of dreams, joys and sorrows, fears and hopes, beliefs and disbelief, cherished and abhorred memories, desires and dismays, and love and hate.”
“It is an abstract definition of a family. I do not subscribe to your views. I am alone — alone like a lone wolf,” I said.
He paused. I realized that he had come closer to me. He asked, “Do you love Aina?”
He baffled me with a personal question. I said, “I do not want to discuss her.”
“Weren’t you once deeply involved with her? The way you have reacted betrays that you still love her deeply,” he said.
“Please, for heaven’s sake, don’t talk about Aina,” I begged of him, and said, “She is someone else’s wife. I do not want to disgrace her.”
“Have you ever thought of possessing her physically?” He asked.
I promptly replied, “No. Never ever.”
“Disgracing someone is subservient to our mean desire for grabbing, snatching and possessing the person who doesn’t belong to us,” he remarked, and continued, “Do can you disgrace someone with your love when in return you do not want anything from him or her, not even a casual glance of affection!”
“Sufis revere within, not without. Sufis are forbidden from exhibitionism. Silence nurtures everlasting love,” I told him.
“When you have carved out a permanent place for someone within you, then how can you claim you are alone! Doesn’t someone reside permanently with you, within you?” he asked.
“I don’t understand why you are discussing all this with me!” was my baffled remark. Then, I impolitely asked, “How come you are intimately conversant with my personal life?”
He said, “An alien always keeps a watch on you.”
Annoyed, I asked, “Are you some kind of a local or a foreign agent?”
He calmly replied, “Haven’t I told you I am an alien.”
I asked, “What brings you to me?”
“I have come for registration.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Aren’t you employed in the office for the Registration of the Aliens?”
“Then, you ought to have come to my office, not here,” I told him and added, “Please go away. Leave me alone.”
I heard him sigh. He did not talk.
“Are you listening to me, alien? Come to my office tomorrow morning. I’ll register you,” I said.
“The problem with me is that I am an invisible alien. I can see, but others cannot see me,” he said. After a short pause he added, “Don’t you think they might send you to a mental asylum if they saw you talking with no one in front of you?”
IT was hot, humid and one of those mysterious moonless nights when the mind boggles. A forsaken soul soars over the valley of meaninglessness, in search of an identity for a trivial existence. At the precipices of innumerable doubts, we precariously hang onto our beliefs and doubts.
