November Rain
“Recite, in the name of the Lord thy Creator, who created Man from clots of blood”
One
“Praying again he is. I am being so indifferent while he keeps on standing on that jetty never wanting to let go his hopes. I wish I am that strong, bolted with courage to fight the terror”, a frantic note creeping into Kassim’s gravelly-yet-soothing voice.
“Our motivation has crumbled, my brother Kassim. It was long time ago, remember? Farid’s grieves had subsided, Kamal had rested his shoulder benevolently not to recall passing sorrows upon resurrected from the silent pain. Ameena gained her confidence in the swamp of uncertainties. Almost everyone had woke up not to mingle in the tormenting atmosphere we’d been living all these years”, Aziz sounds deep, restraining the throat from choking the air.
“May Allah shines His mercy on him and puff his exasperation away”, Kassim pats on Aziz’s broad shoulder and walk the path home his legs carry. Aziz catches Kassim’s stroll hastily with small steps not to fall down in the ill-lit uneven ground surface. Near dark it is that birds chirping piercingly – signaling to the others that they are resting, loaded with foods in their nest, enjoying the scene of the dusk with their offspring dancing to be fed. Every single soul on Earth is celebrating the feast to welcoming the night, the moment when all tendencies come to a point of union and contentment.
Hussin’s buttock glued to the soil-brown, tarnished wooden jetty. His bare feet nailed. The jetty is an old wrecked structure which pillars were erected 2-armspread from the shallow river base and the physical shape tatters it does not round anymore. The constant immersion in the water and the hardworking termites had ruined it gradually over time. They had abandoned the dock but Hussin never tried to. He barely moves from the spot he’s resting except for the time when he hears the appeasing voice of Munni calling for beseech to Allah – then he will slowly lift his weary torso down bit by bit to the steep cleavage of already-made stairs to the spot where he will banish the dust that covers him, where he will gargle, seep his whole furrowed face thoroughly, his bone-like hands, foreheads, part of his ears, and finish with a soak from ankle down to his toe – a few inches away from the tip of the Ganges River.
With the leftover energy he has, he will then clamber back up the steep, slippery cliff to his resting spot, straighten his noticeable septuagenarian body and devotedly encumbers in the God’s calling. Five times a day Hussin exuberantly do his undeniable obligation and he never failed once to perform since the very first day he was there until now, which makes the complete circle of a fortnight.
“O’ God, the most merciful and compassionate which from Thou I cometh and to Thou I shall rest, there’s no other God I shall beseech for it’s Thou that let me breathe. I pray upon you Thy Creator for I shall hope that my son is placed among the pure, for him to wash away the sins he’d commit. I pray for Thou Allah to free me from this burden that entangles, I pray for Thou Allah to send my Rafeeq home, I beseech upon….” and Hussin’s lethargic, melancholic prayer chanting endlessly until he wakes up to see himself being bathed by the hot India’s sunrays.
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