Mushtaque B Barq
“What colour do you prefer?” a voice asked.
I opened my drawer to pick out the two poster colours, black and brown, and displayed them. One represents what I was inside, and the next is what I intended to be. It was late night, and I was tired of my overused complexion for the reason that the darkness had laid its table on my occupied face. My mirror only displayed what it was meant for, but I was always hopeful to make it read my transparency too. But with the passage of time, I realised mirrors demonstrate only what we love to see. The sheen of it never encourages the dreams we carry beneath our unaddressed breasts. It can never put on its face the grief and gloom of our aspirations. The colours of emotions vary, so it took me a while to realize that colours matter. It wasn’t just about my black confinement but about my brown, which I wished to carry on making a mark in the world. The red and yellow I had already exhausted, like the green and blue of my imaginations. The brush and box only added frustration to my already frustrated state of mind. I looked at the mirror again; however, the sheen had already lost its surface. And all my colours were my imaginations only; there were no stakeholders.
From the days of my being a pick of the bunch in kindergarten, this brown was all I was living for. The reason was obvious. The art teacher would often avoid black, and I was the one to notice her keenly. This black and brown were the two extremes of my little cosmos, of which I was a night sky and the half-broken moon. But in the class, my buddy teacher would pass a wink. Her wink was pink, and I would often mix her pink with my brown to make it a new colour. I was always looking to name that new colour, but my black would keep spoiling it. This new combination would inspire me at times, yet it would haunt me like a wandering witch.
In my vacancies, I would often curse my colour box for the obvious reasons. Its white and orange would often torture my black and brown, and its crimson would often remind me of the fallen yellow. These colours would never paint my blank canvas. I was a dot of curse by my black; I was a ray of hope by my brown and a naughty moment of buddy teacher. In the vicinity of my half defined truths only crows, owls, wasps and haphazard locks would escort my unexplored black to lure me. A serene blackness gradually entangled me and I realised the importance of being blank in the beauty hard to define.
Every time this black would perch on my window like a nightingale holding its breath to confer upon me a rhythm that would keep the bird alive, and soon the nightingale nursed the territories of my little world to let the eagle open her breast to confine my eagerness. On those mighty wings through those endless abysses, my darkness was the only source to let me observe the vast unknown of the self. In that unimaginable darkness, The Pen on the Table had drafted my fate, which I could not perceive for the reason that the black ink on the black table was visibly invisible.
“If it is my fate, why can’t I read it?” I asked.
A wasp on the black rose stirred and responded, “You need to apply Kohl.”
“Where can I get it?” I asked.
“Go and fetch it from the Kiswah,” a voice echoed.
Within my heart, I raised a wish to go to Kaaba to fetch a bit, but then my beats lost control, and I could feel the battering of my heart against the chest wall, hands trembling, and the entire frame melting like unruly wax under the candle. A strange situation, hard to explain and difficult to relate, and in between a wish to paint this happening. At times, one turns insane when he fails to haven his broodings for the rest, either to pass on vitriol or to appreciate the creed that binds one to hammer home the message.
Then the day spread its light just pierced the belly of the clouds and the mountain behind my house displayed a rainbow. A bow that had no black or brown.
It had the colours taken from my colour box, leaving my black and brown for me to spoil the show. The hues and shades of my imagination were confined, like my carved-up hopes. The dreams that were coloured gradually changed into a black sky, and the grass land of my little innocence altered into a colourless haze, and I was entangled in it.
Then the night dawned upon me: why sins are curses in black. I nursed this poison.
Was it an illusion or reality? I asked.
Then slowly the rain stopped and the arch of hues disappeared.
My sweet blacks and sour browns, which played a vital role in making my haphazard personality, were once for all lost in the rainbow that day. The rainbow of my world has but two colours: the black of my being and the brown of my beauty that I wish to be, and in between them, the colour of love was pulsating and it over took the both and merged them like life and death.
On the page, the agony looks like a narrative, but when it leaks from the depths of the heart, it adds charm to the suffering, and then the colour of the suffering makes the life so vibrant that the rainbow just bows before you. When the colours surrender, then only the reality shall prevail.
“I am dark, I am reality, and I am the only colour in totality”
“How?” I asked.
“You have been nursed in the womb, where light hardly pierces through, and you shall be dumped in the grave where the sun fails to reach,” the voice answered.
I realised that black is not colour but the only reality that holds in its breast all the rest, making the light to be recognized and acknowledged. I understood why my art teachers often avoided black. I smiled for my ignorance, but my hanging eyes cascaded satisfactorily for the reason unknown to me, making my inner darkness unread what had been forcibly engraved on it. The erasing was painful, but not severe. The black birds on the limb of awareness had already returned to my darkness to wink at the light.
Mushtaq B.Barq is a Columnist, Poet and Fiction Writer. He is the author of “Feeble prisoner, “ Wings of Love” and many translation works are credited to the author like “ Verses Of Wahab
