By Mushtaque B Barq
The stillness of the night was violated. Violation in this part of the globe is an excuse. In the masquerade of custodians, hooded men roam in the heart of the city where nights are no more significant save sirens of ambulances or gun shots. “Why they put the hood on”, my nine year son asked me. He had seen men in hoods. He had heard of the men wearing hoods. I often put off his unending questions, but today he seemed obstinate to split my lips, which I did but only to evade him.
“Under the starry night, why should one wear a hood?” he asked by elongating his swan like neck. I just passed this question to my better half. She is the one who passed the infection of dodging into my nerves and I in reciprocation surpassed her. But today my son kept repeating “Why they put the hood on”, and in one pretext or the other I was able to slip from him clutch.
“Dad, come on tell me why they put the hood on?”
Curiosity is a mad dog that barks and bites mercilessly. Poor me! I had to calm his extremity. My better half is always ready with ready wit. She came to my rescue and politely puts in the picture the readymade answer. “To save their heads from being blown up by skull breaking chill.” The answer brought back the stillness of the night on the suitable shelves where it serves the best. The calm settled on his cheeks and his neck seemed stiff. How long one can maintain the calm when unrest is an evergreen shrub to ask for fresh dew? And my nine year old son who apparently emerges as an undemanding leaf on a low limb, watching all and catching all. In the attire of a leaf, he knows what kind of stuff I wear so to settle his intricacies.
“But what for in the summer?” the churning movements of his stomach vomited one more time the half digested stuff. Ah! These questions. I declared, “Curiosity is not at all a mad dog but indeed a crazy monkey that jumps irrespective of limbs and lines.”
She was eagerly waiting to be rescued, but I feigned slumber. A pinch on my poor arm was enough to understand her being exhausted of readymade answers. “They do it only to hide the foreign bodies from the stars” I came up with this answer.
“Foreign bodies”, he frowned, his neck once again stretched out like an elegant swan. After a while his belly once again churned out what was left in its recesses and he asked, “What are foreign bodies?”
“When someone leaves traces of shampoo in the head while bathing, his hair lures foreign bodies”, she responded.
“How these foreign bodies look like?” his belly hardly knew how to control the eructation. Now before she could prepare the answer in the laboratory of his wits, she passed a hint to me which we often used to do to calm his mental acrobatics. “Crimson”
And I pumped a good litre of blood into the capillaries of my cheek to feign anger. It worked again. He pushed his coiled body under the blanket. We heaved a sigh of relief. The code words are the lethal missiles to push the enemy back into their barracks.
The silence again stretched its mighty wings and sheltered us. But how long a bee can maintain quiet. His stir changed the locale of the room. It started with her sobs and my feigned severity disfigured the jigsaw puzzle of my face and I felt a shiver down the bony cage.
“Green”, she broke the silence. ‘Green’ between us has been a friendly code to ease down and to be friendly. And ‘crimson’ the opposite of it. Getting the green signal, I placed my hand on his head and brushed his hair gently. The feeling was beyond words. My stiffed fingers after a long time felt the serenity of silk. He responded without wasting a second. “I have only closed my eyes, but the rest of vitals are still in insomniac mode”.
“Why do they wear hood” giggled us both but my better half had perhaps till that time concocted enough sumptuous morsel to block up his belly. “They wear it because hoods hide their ears”. “Why they hide ears”, he softly uttered while pulling his head out of the blanket.
She laughed and so did I. But he was still wandering in vacancies. A gentle caress and a smile worth millions from my better half engrossed my son to the extent of deep sleep. Stirs ceased, snoring took over and natural anesthesia lulled me like my wife into its calm bosom. May be during mid-night or predawn I heard something, a scratch or so, hard to remember. It was feeble and hence it failed to disturb my sleep. Early morning when I rolled by hands on to feel him, he was already off the bed like my better half. On the table at breakfast, he had put on a hooded shirt. He was looking like mysterious creatures. His head was still, like his eyes fixed and unmoved. He was gazing at the morning sun and hardly noticed me. I even tried my hand on his toast and grabbed it easily. It was hard to get his toast otherwise, but he seemed unaware of everything like mentally retarded patient.
I knuckled my better half to take notice of him. She smiled and ignored me. Looking through that wide open window, nothing than usual was on to greet my eyes, but for him there was something he only could see, it was hard to get. With a cool long sigh I left. Something was eating me up. I was curious to get his story but he was too clever to leave the faintest clue behind. Whenever he would come out of his room, his hood was the first thing that would irritate me. I once tried to pull it off, but he looked straight into my eyes and I felt a shiver from the stem to my roots. These eyes had planted a threat into the soil of my soul. I was terrified. But for the reasons better known to my slackness, I derelict the development without drawing any consequences. A neglected spark I left in the sac of my silliness.
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 Khar” and “ Songs Of Sochkral”
