Invading Her Empire
It was morning. Nayaab lay wide awake in her bed. Her eyes stuck at the ceiling and her hands joined on her belly. Her 19 year old eyes were tired of shedding the blood. The oceans under her eyes grown darker. It was 10 a.m. Already since she had started to replay on her mind, the past 8 months of her life. How she had started the year with enthusiasm which slowly turned into deadly despondency for her. She dragged herself out of the bed and stood in front of the mirror. She could see nothing but a 60 year old woman with wrinkles representing her long endured life, her tangled hair portraying the mess all the years brought to her. This reflection broke into a hundred pieces and withered into the mirror when her mother suddenly opened the door.
“Did you take those sedatives again?” Her mother roared, “Time and again I have come to wake you up, when will you stop making me suffer? Mrs. Amina was again here for no reason and didn’t spare a chance to take a dig at me while asking about you.” She slammed the door saying, “When will this girl stop putting our family to disgrace!”
Nayaab stood still, her heart carrying all the guilt of the world for the sin of being in depression. Before any other catastrophe, she was the victimized by authoritative verbose of the world around.
She stood still for a while looking for a virtual exit door from this world. She was reminded of the other two times she tried to end her life, but survived only to bear the brunt of humiliation more. She closed her eyes and gave her thoughts a pause, ‘an exit door’, she thought. All of a sudden she was reminded of the advertisement she had come across in the newspaper days back, of counseling session at Mental Health Help Organization in the heart of Srinagar City, organized by the leading female psychiatrists of the Valley. She had no plans of going there but she could find no other way to take a day off her mother’s bitterness. She put on some unwashed clothes from the closet and left just like that. She boarded a local passenger bus to reach the destination.
“Your daughter is in major depression. The overdose of the sedatives has made a fatal effect on her brain. If it is not stopped now, she can go in coma for a lifetime”
The bus stopped suddenly to pick a passenger, making her jerk and the memory drowned in her eyes, of her psychiatrist telling her parents for the first time about her mental health. She was drowning in her thoughts, her inner self screaming out for help. As she tried to regain her shattering self, she realized that the passenger, who boarded the bus a while ago, a man, in his mid-thirties, stood beside her and was trying to get a hold of her hand with his little finger, while breathing hard into her ear. It sent shivers down her spine. She struggled to stand still with tears flooding her deserted eyes.
“Please be comfortable, young lady.” The man said while grinning audaciously. He knew he had a catch.
“She will be, only if you are kicked out of the bus!”, a woman mostly in her mid-twenties replied, waking up all the passengers from the dire sleep of ignorance towards the man’s acts, until the man was asked to get off the bus, by the other men and women boarding the bus.
“It’s okay; you can stand at ease now. You shouldn’t be afraid.” Advised the woman.
Nayaab, who was still in miserable wonder, could not get her eyes off her.
“My name is Rudaba. Do you too have to board off at the next stop?” She asked.
Nayaad got back to her consciousness and slightly moved her head in order to express a nod.
Rudaba replied with a smile.
Both of them got down. “If you will remain weak and do nothing against this kind of abuse, more girls will fall prey to the starvation of such men. Do not let them consider you the food for their lust.” She patted her shoulder and bade a goodbye. Nayaab lowered her gaze and could not say thank you to this few minutes old friend. Nothing seemed to inspire her; she couldn’t help herself fall out of the flashbacks from the back of her mind. She waited until Rudaba, as she remembered her name well, was out of her sight.
She walked in the same direction so as to reach her destination.
Numb and nervous, she felt both at the same time as she entered the room full of young and middle aged women. She dared not stare at her until her eyes fell off at a young, brave woman sitting in the audience. To her great shock, it was Rudaba sitting in the session with the victims who had come to the session. The session started and women took turns to narrate their survival stories. None of them could help fight back their tears. Some were victims of domestic violence, some suffered of loss of loved ones, and some had died of betrayals, some mourning their depression and the worst of all, some were victims of sexual abuse.
Nayaab, expecting Rudaba to advise all the women who had come there, with her powerful words was shattered into a zillion pieces after Rudaba talked about how her uncle had sexually abused her when she was just 13, confirming nervous disorder.
“I am 26, and my doctors have concluded that I cannot get married because of my complications. I have no regrets, I was a child. I don’t consider myself a victim, but rather, he was the victim of his starvation, who fed himself on my existence. He had two children of his own, one being his daughter, but he was blinded by his salivating manhood. I am a Writer now, I write to become the voice of the women, who cry in closed rooms. Who seal their lips because the society will only judge? But we all need to remember. Before we think too much about the society, we should know that it is not going to come and lick your wounds, but it will only salt them. Screams rumbled the room as she began narrating her story.
There was a huge round of applause amid sobbing. Numb Nayaab, finally shed a tear, mourning along all other women. She chose to not to speak out her story, but listen, until she absorbed every word they narrated.She tried to gather her pieces by recollecting what broke her. She decided to not to carry the guilt anymore. While everyone else left, she stood there. Blankly staring at the empty chairs which a while ago carried pounds of flesh but tones of sufferings.
“Sexual abuse is a death to an existence.” Rudaba concluded. After she saw bite marks on Nayaab’s neck and understood her agony.
“Only if we choose to let it live!” Nayaab corrected.
ShifaMasood
12th E
Live in “Day –
tight Compartments”
In the spring of 2015, I picked up a book and scanned a portion that had profound consequences on my life. I was worried about passing the final examination. Twenty – one words from Thomas Carlyle that helped me lead a life free from worries: “Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand”.
What I urge is that you to learn controlling the machinery as to live with ‘day-tight compartments’ as the most certain way to ensure safety. Get on the bridge, and see that at least the great bulkheads are in working order. Touch a button and hear, at every level of your life, the iron doors shutting out the past – the dead yesterdays. Touch another and shut off, with a metal curtain, the future – the unborn tomorrows. Then you are safe – safe for today! Shut off the past! Let the dead past bury its dead. Shut out the yesterdays which have lighted fools the way to dusty death. The load of tomorrow, added to that of yesterday, carried today, makes the strongest falter. Shut off the future as tightly as the past. The future is today. There is no tomorrow.
Did I mean to say that we should not make any effort to prepare? No. Not at all. But I will address to say that the best possible way to prepare for tomorrow is to concentrate with all your intelligence, all your enthusiasm, on doing today’s work superbly today. That is the only possible way you can prepare for the future. Please remember this prayer for the future. Please remember this prayer always in your heart: “Give us this day our daily bread”.
Remember that prayer asks only for today’s bread. It doesn’t complain about the state bread we had to eat yesterday; and it doesn’t say: “Oh God, it has been pretty dry out in the wheat belt. Lately, and we may have another drought and how will I get bread to eat next autumn or suppose I lose my job – Oh God, how could I get bread then? No, this prayer teacher us to ask for today’s bread only. Today’s bread is the only kind of bread you can possibly eat.
Happy the man, and happy he alone, He, who can call today, his own: He who, secure within, can say: “Tomorrow, do thy worst, for I have lived to-day”.
“Every day is a new life to a wise man”.
Aaliya Masoodi
12th E
Know your own enemy
Battle is not a fight between armed forces always. You can be all alone and still be fighting a battle; a battle within. Look around you. They are not just people. They are stories. Every person has his own story of the battle she/he is fighting. The battle within you will lead you somewhere. The conflict within will have a fruitful consequences.
Just wait. Just let time take care of you. Questions will be answered. Doubts will be cleared. It will get better. You’re not alone in this but all alone in this.
What you feel may sometimes be annoyingly difficult to put in words but you should know how you feel. That is what you need. You will solve it all. Hatred towards self will complicate the web of the conflict. You can either use this conflict to help you grow or let the venom of it consume you.
You don’t have to feign happiness because you are allowed to be sad. But remember, in the end, happiness will come to you. Your happiness isn’t in any other person around you but in you. You create your own happiness. You will win the battle you are fighting. Victory will knock at your shaking door and you will be proud of it.
NimraKirmani
12thE
