By Mushtaque B Barq
Next morning, he left too early, God know where?
After his returned, I found him altogether a different creature. His looks were furious, his limbs stiffed and from his forehead streams of sweat were oozing like morning dew from the curls of leaves. In his voice an additional element of guttural heaviness which I mistook as a change much seen in the boys when they attain maturity. But soon my guess was thrown into bits when all of a sudden he regained his normal accent. One thing that we noticed became peculiar of him. His gazing at the sky continuously and seemed in conversation with someone hard to imagine. His hood appear mysterious, he was a different being when hooded and normal and stupid without hood. It seemed to me at least that his hood was like a switch, when on he could see things and when off; to him the sky was what it appears to any normal human being.
He cried, “Oh! The watch man.”
We looked around, he was whispering something. Before we would rescue him, he felt unconscious. It was now a worry for us. But before we could do anything, he regained his senses and sighed, “Poor watch man.” The intensity of pain was well marked from his face; there was certainly something too heavy on his nerves. The agony was mysterious, the façade had something to tell and from his eyes burning charcoal like terror was not only hostile but was also brutal to the extent that I tried to stay off from his gaze.
We ignored him for the reason we had nothing to prove and he simply surpassed our wits for he had enough proof to prove us wrong. Between this new development and our expectations, he was a superhero when hooded and just a mass of muscles and bones before us. But then how and why he got the power to ‘see’ things disturbed us both. Many theories and hypothesis we guessed, till he announced, “Never pull my hood.”
In the meanwhile, there were shrieks and cries outside the apartment. “Take him to hospital”, someone shouted. I came out and found the watch man dead. I was frozen and but something ensured me that my son had either seen his fall or he predicted it. My better half as always had the final word. “No, he has not seen anything, but certainly he cried in advance”, she ensured.
We consoled our son. Late that night, he was again out in the balcony gazing at the starry sky. We joined him, nothing awkward we noticed save his eyes. There was something horrible in his eyes.
I pulled his hood and he seemed an ordinary boy in the balcony.
“I warn you not to pull my hood”, he shouted at me.
“What is in the hood”, she asked.
“Without hood it is impossible to locate that red start in the sky”, he declared.
I failed so does she to locate any such star.
“Where is the star?” I asked.
“Look mom, that red star I can see even in the broad day light and its light identifies the one who has to die”, he declared.
“Oh! Do you mean you can predict future”, I asked.
“No, I can’t predict, I can tell you when and where people will die”, he announced.
The ground slipped from beneath my feet, a shiver of terror ran through my spine and the sweat ablated my vitals, I stood there like a stupid person for his anticipatory cry was a proof of his accuracy.
“Who is going to die?” my better half asked.
God knows why on earth she wanted to know beforehand the fate of people. I warned her not to believe him but then before I could arrange words on my lips, my son cried again, “Oh! No.”
“What happened son”, my wife asked.
His eyes were eccentrically bright. I couldn’t gaze at them for there was certainly a devastating image of some serious scene. His hands and legs were trembling like an autumn tree when the merciless wind dashes the signboard to the ground reading: Plucking is prohibited but wind can’t read.
Late that night the news flashed… Seventeen school kids lost their lives due to food poisoning.
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”
