Past few years I underwent some massive changes. My mental health was deteriorating exponentially. I was told that I was being over-sensitive to the surroundings. I was told I needed to be normal, tough and callous.
My gut feeling wouldn’t agree and I would always throw these opinions to the winds.
But the situation escalated, conditions deteriorated. Things went rough. I couldn’t resist mental trauma anymore and gave in to my consultants’ advice. Replacing the air by an ear, I started the metamorphosis.
I stopped writing, stopped thinking, changed my surroundings, my dealings, everything! I shifted my sensitivities and vulnerabilities to other directions.
To name a few ways, football, gym, job, outings and delhi, I gulped every second of my life schedule. I even navigated through some major close happenings last year and somehow came out less harmed.
But my metamorphosis crashed. All it took to break my castle of lies was a no man named Shahid and his bag of apples. Shahid was killed. Killed in cold blood on a Sunday morning. His soul was pulled out. All that remained of him was a helpless body, shouldering with the tyre of a load carrier truck and his bag of apples, spilled, but coloured red by his blood.
Might be that my consultant wanted me to believe that Shahid just died, died like every other guy dies. Might be that he wanted me to believe that I should feast my eyes on the apples that had turned red by Shahid’s blood. Might be that, Shahid was a mere name that vanished like every other name does.
As Mehar Qadri would say, “ I am filling the pages of this notebook. A new name every other day or a few namesakes if I flip the pages over.”
But how do I unsee Shahids body lying in a pool of blood? How do I unhear the cries of a mother who sent her son to buy milk but he came back with blood? How do I turn blind to the house that was raised to the ground in one blink just a week before? How do I stop thinking about those who have no shelter in this chilling cold?
The truth is that this faux fortune is nothing but the delusion of a contented slave. You might deceive yourself for some time, like I did, but there is this one good thing about the occupation that it throws the truth at your face.
You cannot lie to yourself for long. The truth comes your way, one way or the other. You may not vent it out but its there. Its always there, holding a massive space in your conscious.
Occupation is deep-rooted. It’s in the blood. It’s in the nerves that carry that blood. Its everywhere. Being occupied is the manifest subset of being a Koshur. Its an unchanged reality.
The only constant and subsequently the only normal thing here is a dead Koshur. These killings, the occupation, perquisitions, that apple bite, the army bunkers, One ton, Insas, Ak-47, Army, IED, Communication gag, Internet gag all this is the only truth and the only normal. You cannot alienate yourself from it. You cannot escape the imprints. The absence of manifest occupation doesn’t mean the absence of occupation. We are at the centre of occupation. We are surrounded by subjugational elements. It will touch your neck tomorrow or the day after tomorrow or some days after that.
We need to speak out, call out and resist to actually live. These knee jerk reflexes are the saviours of our soul. Don’t render yourselves into an emotional coma.
Remember those, whose emotional intelligence finds no reasonable excuse to live. Those, who speak to occupation in her eye. Preserve the human resource in you without silencing your humanity.
Maqbooz 