AFTER THE GUSTING WIND

 

            Everyone was wrapped in a blanket of fear.  The children’s faces were pale and after every gust of strong wind, the color also faded from my wife’s face.  I was trying not to let my concern show, but the feeling of imprisonment in my own house had shot my nerves and it was like fear was knocking on my door. 

            Finally, one night on the television and radio we heard the welcome news that the ‘dragon of fear’ had been imprisoned.  We breathed a sigh of relief.  It seemed like after a long time that I was able to open the window and looked outside.  In the courtyard, the tired moon’s light was shining like blowing sand.

            “Everything is alright, right?” my wife asked.

            “Yes, for now, everything seems alright.  When it is light outside, we’ll be able judge better,” I replied as I closed the window.

            When we woke up in the morning, our faces looked like we had just rested after a particularly difficult journey.  As we sat down to eat breakfast, my wife gave me a list of groceries that were needed.  My youngest daughter asked, “Do we have to go to school today?”

            I laughed and said, “The roads are clear and there is no news of schools being closed, but I think that today you should organize your school work and start school from tomorrow.”

            Usually, upon hearing that school was cancelled, my kids’ faces would light up with brightness, but on this occasion, I could not see that happiness; they were tired of being cooped up in the house for such a long time.

            My wife wrote made out a list of the necessary provisions that were needed and armed with the list, I headed out to the market.  As I was entering the courtyard, the thought that today was different in comparison to the past week or so that we had been forced to endure.  Something vital was missing from the day.  In the courtyard, along with the dried leaves, rays of sunlight were scattered about - the trees and plants once again looked to be blooming in their normal hues – the walls of the house also looked normal – and even the people walking on the streets seemed to be returning to their normal daily activities.  Then why was I feeling something missing from my day?

            I tried to explain to myself that for the past week I had been caged within the four walls of my house, and the difference between that week’s imprisonment and today’s freedom is what is causing this feeling.  Once I get out of the house, everything will be okay.

            There was more activity than usual in the market.  There was a crowd at every store.  There was an inordinate amount of traffic on the streets.  Everyone’s faces had the same expression on their face that I saw reflected in the mirror that morning.

            When I returned home after doing the grocery, my wife had cleaned the house, and swept up the dried leaves and other debris the wind had deposited in the courtyard.  The sunlight dappling through the branches of the trees seemed to me to be like blooming flowers of sunshine on the freshly cleaned floor.

            As I was carrying the groceries into the house, my wife looked at me, and I thought that she had forgotten to include something in the grocery list and now was hesitant to mention it. 

I asked, “What’s wrong?”

            “Nothing.”

            I laughed and said, “If you forgot to write something down, tell me, and I’ll go and get it.”

            She didn’t answer me and started to take out the groceries from the bag and set them in front of her.  After all the bags were empty, she asked, “Is everything alright outside?”

            “Yes, everything is fine.”

            She was quiet.  I glanced at my kids.  They were oblivious because they were playing.  I shrugged and started to read the newspaper. 

While reading the newspaper, I again thought that today is different than other days, although the news in the newspaper was the same news that was reported on T.V. and the radio – just the style of reporting the news in newspapers is different - but I’ve been reading the newspaper for years.  There hasn’t been any change in the way the newspaper reports the news, so why is it that I feel like there is something lacking in today – there should be something, but it isn’t there.  This feeling could not be linked to the newspaper because I had this feeling when I was leaving the house.  I laid the paper aside and looked at myself in the mirror hanging on the wall.  I hadn’t shaved today, but other than that, there was no change.  The feelings of fear, worry, and sadness that had been imprinted on my face for the past eight days were now only a mere shadow of what they once were.  Then what is the reason for my feeling that this day is different from ordinary days?  It feels like that whatever is here today is not complete – something somewhere has been unfulfilled, but what?  That’s the thing that I cannot understand.

“What are you thinking about?” my wife asked me.

What was I supposed to tell her – how was I supposed to tell her what foolishness was running through my head?  I didn’t reply.  But staying quiet is no cure for anxiety.  For the rest of the day, I was busy with small chores around the house.  During this time, I had a full meal, slept for an hour, listened to the radio, watched T.V., talked on the phone with my friends and wrote a letter to a friend who wasn’t local about the previous week’s happenings.  I even checked over my children’s homework and chatted with my wife, but still I felt a wave-like feeling of anxiety.

While drinking tea in the evening, my wife asked, “Did you notice anything?”

I was jumped at her question.  I looked at her in amazement.  Like me, she looked a little anxious and distressed.  How was I supposed to explain the enigma that was troubling me since the morning, this feeling of something being missing?  That’s why I turned around and asked her a question.

“What are you talking about?”

She put her tea cup on the table and slowly said, “Didn’t today feel kind of strange?  I keep feeling like I still have something to do today but I just can’t figure out what.”

After listening to what she had to say, I felt that hiding what I was feeling wasn’t right.  Both of our thoughts were circling around the same thing and the best thing to do would be to openly discuss it and maybe come up with a solution to what it is that is bothering us both.  Maybe we could pinpoint exactly what is missing.

“Yes, since opening my eyes this morning till now I’ve been feeling that someone or something has been missing that used to be here night and day but I can’t figure out who or what that can be.

“Maybe we are feeling the absence of those people who were stranded here due the weather conditions, whose fragrance was in the atmosphere, but today… No, that sadness is within our hearts and it is not hard to identify.  This feeling is totally different.  You went out, did you speak with anyone?  Did anyone mention having similar feelings?”

“No, I didn’t speak to anyone who felt like we do.”

We stayed quiet after that.  She became busy doing house work and I was occupied with my thoughts – my thoughts were like waves, ebbing and flowing – I thought that forgetting is one of the better qualities of human nature but oblivion is a disease.  Every moment lived in the present gives birth to an event to be recorded in the annals of history and becomes a date to be remembered.  Some people are only concerned with the present, they neither reflect on the past nor look forward to the future and this is a type of disease.  But then there are those people, who while living in the present, still reflect and contemplate both the past and the future, these people are the essence of today.  But where are these people?  They are too occupied with the pitfalls and evils present today.  There are many hands ready to feed you poison and we all recognize them, but where are the hands that feed you the antidote to the poison?  It doesn’t matter if the person attacking you is a friend or a foe, you still get injured and hurt, but if the person treating you is experienced, then you heal faster.  But those people who are not experienced, those are the ones that are treating us and they treat us like their toys. Is there no experienced person who will clean our wounds thoroughly and then treat it so that it heals properly once and for all?  Otherwise, this slowly dripping poison will make our wounds so bad that they will turn into a form of cancer; and once this happens, the inexperienced people treating us will absolve themselves from blame saying that the fault lies with the patient and their wound.  Cattle in herds run towards verdant green pastures and eat with a single-minded determination, but there is always one or a couple of the herd that keeps an eye out for any sign of danger – do we have such an individual amongst us?  Whatever I am thinking of today, I will not think of tomorrow.  These fleeting thoughts unconsciously affect our hearts, but then as they leave, they also take with them whatever feelings or heartbreak they evoked – eventually, people learn to have patience.  The ashes of time keep collecting on our sorrows.  Today, some unknown web of anxiety has spread itself all around us; by tomorrow, the links holding the web together will weaken and begin to unravel – my thoughts will be free.  I just hope that this web will not reappear and threaten to choke me again.

I was disturbed by these thoughts until well into the night.

The early the next day, as I was leaving the house to drop my kids to school, I was once again confronted with the same thoughts that were troubling me yesterday.  I turned back and glanced at my house.  The tall tree in the courtyard was swinging drops of sunlight on its thick foliage.  The scene was a familiar one.  What was missing?  Still ruminating over this, I went ahead.  I dropped my children at school and went to work.  There, my colleagues were talking about the present situation, expressing their own views.  I also joined the conversation and forgot about the thoughts that were troubling me yesterday and this morning.      

When I reached home, the sun was collecting its day’s earnings.  As I was knocking on the door, I realized that besides the damage that was done to the city, there was something that happened that affected me personally – more particularly, it had something to do with my household, because my wife also felt the same agitation that I had felt.  This made me more agitated than I was the previous day.  After expressing your sorrow and purging yourself of the emotional upheaval, your heart feels lighter.  But the anguish that comes with pain, that is weightless, yet infuses itself into my very existence, how do I rid myself of it?

My wife opened the door and her face had the same signs of agitation on it that I had seen yesterday.  As I came into the house, my wife asked, “What’s the city like?”

Before answering her question, I sat in a chair in the courtyard and watching the kids play replied, “Like a wounded animal, it is licking its wounds.”

She wasn’t satisfied with my answer.  After staying quiet for a few moments, she asked, “Would you like to drink tea out here or inside?”

“Bring it out here.”

While handing me my cup of tea, she softly said, “Even today I felt like there was pain in my body but couldn’t figure out where or how much.”

I knew that she also was trying to identify the source of our anxiety that we had been trying to figure out since yesterday.

We were sitting across from each other, sipping our hot tea and then she turned around and said to the children, “Enough playing, its sunset and it is beginning to get dark outside.  Good job, come on, lets go in.  Co…” She suddenly stopped like a radio that dies suddenly when the light goes out.  I looked at her.  Her face was pale and with fear-stricken eyes, was staring at the trees.  Unconsciously, I followed her gaze towards the trees – the swaying branches seemed to be brushing of the hand of darkness.

“Did you see that?” she asked in a mesmerized tone.

“What?”   I looked up again.  When I saw nothing, I looked at her and her face was pale like a yellow autumn leaf.

In a languid tone she said, “Today – there are no birds in the trees.”

I was startled – this was what was missing since yesterday!