"Be safe my dear mother I am right here, here in your heart..." For The Grieving Mothers

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Mother: Oh, braveheart, where have you gone? No, don’t whine I haven’t eaten anything yet, I know you would ‘not eat anything alone. You always want me around in the dining room. Oh, don’t you? I am still waiting for you to come home, staging against the door fringe, eyes hovering the pavement for a trace of you to be found? Oh braveheart where have you gone?

Come back here your mother awaits, Oh how many times I’ve told you not to stay out for long? Have you forgotten the promise you made and the promise I made for the promise you made? Worse thoughts are warming its way into my head and my chest aches like thousands of needles being pierced onto my raw heart making it more vulnerable with each prick.

Oh, no, are you Alright? Is my heart battering in my throat telling me you are fine? Talk to me, say something, cry, scream, shout, lament? Why don’t you see your silence is like a claw tightening itself around my windpipe, Making mama breathless.

They say you are gone a little too far now. They say they killed you? No, my dear heart I don’t believe them. How could those monsters kill you? You were only 7, my son. Your father, he doesn’t talk anymore. He sits all day on his old squeaky rocking chair, in a stone like manner.

At times, his face is veiled behind his book but most of the times he is idle lost in his thoughtless trance. He says he is resting for he is having rough days. I know like always, you father-son are hiding something from me.

How can he rest with that pained frustration pined onto his face and raged pain edged his reverberating voice? He seems to slip away from us each day, little by little, tinge by tinge. No darling, he isn’t angry at you. Just come back. He loves you like I do. He won’t say it but he misses his Golden boy…

My head is pounding with rage my dear heart, I could’ve come a little earlier to pick you up. Could’ve saved you? But what sort of a person are you in the soul? You never howled at waking up early in the morning and going to school? You could’ve denied, I could’ve listened. Alas, sick feeling of horror and nothingness now cradles my heart. How could you be so brave? Did you know what it all is already? Did you know about those bloodthirsty monsters?

How full and joyous you seemed before going to school on that daunting day and how that blooming big smile crouched your lips when I agreed to celebrate your 8^th birthday just the extravagant way you wanted in the following week.

Oh, my little flame of hope, won’t you be here on your birthday? I am sorry for not coming to terms before. No, it’s not that I don’t love you. DON’T dare think that ever again. I just wanted to buy you something big and reliable instead. How could I be so stupid and absurd? If only I knew you would become silent like this I would’ve traded every fiber of my being to see laughter sparkling in your chromatic eyes.

I now know not what to do my boy to bring you back right here. My being is dissolving into its own outlines. My chest bleeds for your embrace, oh why you use to resist when I would lean to hug you? Ahh, my naughty angel.

I try to cry and shout and scream but nothing, nothing comes out as I open my mouth. The back of my throat now houses nausea all the time. My skin has grown convulsed as if it’s going to crawl away and my eyes-Oh they had been empty of all the dreams since the day you left. Is this why you left? My brave son?

Brave Hearts: Dear Mother, don’t cry. I am here for I am gone but I am not dead. I feel fine, safe and sound here now just like I would feel behind the cascade of your arms. I and 135 other little warriors tangled with devils wrath and placed an end to that clamoring thunder like a day, just that you know, you and baba could stay safe.

My dear mother, my courage dwells in you. Don’t rumble apart for you are a mother to a martyr and a wife to a ghazi. I won’t be there now to nag you and baba mischievously, and you would not have to cast me a warn some glance that is a sheer indication for me to be on my best manners but I’ll be always there, right there in your heart. Burning like an unfathomable flame which no monster can flatten.

Tell dad I am sorry, I know he is disappointed in me, I was supposed to be brave… Brave son of a brave savior of the nation. He always taught me to have a high resolve and Spartan courage. Ammi, baba’s every bedtime story that he used to narrate me of his military exercise tenure would warm my innards and deep down I always wanted to be like Him.

How much was he loved? I think a lot because every time I use to go out with him everyone knew him and respected him.Ammi do you know even once the unit’s barber chacha told me that I have my father’s face. Haha nice chap he is, he used to say he would’ve minced me with dad and salute me instead if only I was tall enough like him. Do we really look that alike?

But baba…I am sorry ammi, but I don’t know how he has gotten to know that I cried and mewled under my breath when I was shot in the leg for the third time until they shot me in my chest. Three bullets in a row, I breathed my last at the thunderclap of the last bullet. I know I shouldn’t have cried or screamed. I was supposed to be brave.

How could a son of a warrior, a guardian, a savior cry? But ammi, I couldn’t control or resist this time. It hurt so much. The blood that came pouring out of my paralyzed body made me feel sick until later my body grew numb and nothing felt anymore no hurt, no pain, no wound. You shouldn’t cry as well baba won’t like it, what will baba think?

I’ve never told about this to anyone yet but I have to confess now it kind of tatters me a bit to know my country is once again being subjected to political, cultural, moral unrest? Is my memory already faded to ashes? Are we forgotten yet? Forgotten like the calm after the hurricane or dissolved like smoke after the fire?

I and 135 other lilies that were yet to blossom have erupted our blood in this soil for the generation to come, tell them, my dear mother, not to let go our sacrifices vain, not to let this green land bleed all over again. Our blood shall be avenged and to that unity and resolve is the only sane way to subdue insanity.

I don’t worry now because I know baba and those brave men in khakis won’t let these ferocious beasts at peace until each of them dies out of misery or thirst. They’ll always stand tall fostering every adversity onto their chest for the sake of this pious land, my beloved Pakistan.