I started writing this a few years back, but stopped working on it.
You can probably appreciate it if you have lived in Karachi, and would appreciate it even more had you lived in it during the 90s, which was a terrible, turbulent and trying time for my city. The unrest and uncertainty of life had become so deeply ingrained that people really didn’t care if they lived or died, as long as they went to work to provide for their families.
This is just a portion of what I plan to write and up to whatever I have written. Your feedback would be appreciated, even if critical.
The story will end here where I end it here. I will not share more with you. For that probably you’ll have to buy a book (:D) if I ever decide to publish it and if someone is willing to publish it. The rest is up to Allah :swt:.
So being inspired and following in the footsteps of sadzzz and Swera, I present to you my writing…
The title, as probably have guessed by now is “Tears of a Prophet”
He had been standing in line for about 15 minutes now. The clerk at the window, oblivious with whom he was dealing with, concentrated on his work. Ali looked around himself, and a certain gloomy, empty feeling came over him. Government-run buildings usually gave him that feeling. The drab colors, the same ‘government worker’ type faces, a laughter here, a typewriter there. Everything about the government seemed foreboding to him. But then, so did most things.
But what was to be done, had to be done, otherwise this building would have been one of the last places on Earth he would want to be in. Also it was noon, and the heat outside, though not exactly being hot, was giving the day a very lazy atmosphere.
With power shortages, the government was shutting down electricity sporadically and without warning in different parts of the city, and termed it ‘load shedding’. The ‘load shedding’ would last somewhere between 30 minutes and more often than not for 1 or 2 days at a time.
Unfortunately for Ali, the ‘load shedding’ was in effect in this part of the city where the office was located. Air conditioning in government buildings was an unheard of thing. The only luxury that most state-run buildings could afford were humongous ceiling fans, which now due to the ‘load shedding’ could not be turned on, and as a result of which flies swarmed over them and formed a crust of tiny black spots on them from their droppings.
It was a kind of day, he thought, that if he were a Mexican, he would be taking a siesta. With his sombrero tilted, leaning his back against a wall in some shaded place, he would be taking a nap. This thought and the surroundings made him drowsy.
He went into one of his contemplative mood. It was during these times that the world would slowly subside and there would be nothing except him and his thoughts. And his thoughts covered the world.
The line moved. His transition from his thoughts to his surroundings, as always, was so abrupt and shocking, that it left him bewildered for a couple of seconds. The sounds, the smells and the sights all burst onto him as cold water thrown on a sleeping man.
The man in front moved a step ahead. The man in front was about half a head shorter than him, so that the top of the man in front’s head was coming up to Ali’s nose.
Ali didn’t notice it before, but the man in front smelled of sweat. It wasn’t the usual sweat smell that comes from someone labouring all day, but the stale, pungent kind. The kind that is left to coalesce under armpits without days of washing. The stench was so overpowering that Ali had to take a step back. As if reading his thoughts, the man in front turned his head and smiled. Ali did likewise.
Between the time that the man in front smiled and him smiling in return, a thought came to Ali’s mind. What if the man in front did somehow realize the fact, that Ali thought he smelled awful. Ali could not bear to hurt someone’s feelings, so he smiled even more profusely, though not too much. He didn’t want to overdo the act.
Ali always had trouble with acting. He would wonder how people would laugh and smile at the merest joke. He couldn’t do it. If he didn’t find anything funny, he shouldn’t have to laugh. To please the other person? No! That would be lying and he was not a liar. A person should always do what comes to him naturally. Any other act is a form of deception and he was no deceiver. Thought he did wish to be able to act. Act naturally. Not having to concentrate on having to work to be natural.
Ah! What bliss it would be to laugh wholeheartedly. He did remember laughing though. As a small boy, playing with his friends, he remembered. That was no acting. That was real, wholesome laughter. What joy could there be that could bring that laughter back to him. Oh, not that he did not laugh. He laughed, sometimes with the best of them. But he knew, and he realized. His eyes were always unsmiling.
The line moved yet another step ahead. There were now three people between him and the clerk.
Outside he could hear the crowd. Their roar audible yet indistinct. He could not understand a word of what they were shouting about. He couldn’t even make out what they were marching for today. Or against.
Everyday throughout the city, marches and protests went on. If it wasn’t for one thing, it was another. Sometimes it was the businessmen for taxes levied against them, sometimes it would be the poor for protesting against the decrease in ration supplies. Whatever the marches and protests and marshes were about, they almost always ended up in violence.
Sporadic fighting between the rival political parties was usual, with ten or twenty or sometimes even more people being killed everyday. Yet the people marched and they protested. Things had come to a point where the people didn’t even care for their lives as long as they could get their wants and needs heard. By anyone.
He had seen violence first-hand. Bullet-ridden bodies with holes through which blood and fat oozed. The faces sometimes with shocked and sometimes contorted features , somehow managed to fix themselves in some corner of his mind. And whenever he heard shots being fired somewhere, his mind would suddenly pop those pictures in front of his consciousness as if saying, ‘Look, more of these’. And then he would have to close his eyes and calm himself. Not so much out of fear or revulsion, but out of pain. Pain for the fact of many more shocked and contorted faces had just been created.
He would think about how hundreds of families have had to see their loved one’s faces shocked and contorted. The pain would give way to anger, and he would get up and start pacing the room. Slowly, the contemplation would begin. The hurried, angered pace would slowly subside to be replaced by a slow, steady and rhythmic walk. The brows which were which were arched in anger before, would gradually attain a melancholic look and then the eyes would close. In this state he could remain for hours. It would be as if he was in a state of suspended animation. And with the inevitable cigarette in hand, he paced, and he thought and thought.
There were now only two men in front of him. The man in front, and the man in front of the man in front.
Ali was getting ready for his confrontation with the clerk. At this point he was thinking how to approach him. He took a quick glance in the direction of the clerk. The clerk hadn’t changed his position nor his expression. He just sat there with his left arm on the counter and writing with the other, attaining a sort of half-lidded disinterest in his work.
The clerk’s head was tilted to one side from which you kind of got the impression that the man was born just to be doing that precise job. It was as if somehow, he had been born on that spot out of the ground knowing his job and did it like an automaton. He looked to Ali the kind of man, that if he were told that somebody is picking his pocket, he would become fury incarnate, raise hell and fight to the death to protect his belongings. But if you were to tell him that there was a man on the street unconscious, help, get some water, he would simply look around and see if someone else was moving to the task. With the same half-lidded disinterest.
Ali was making an assumption, he knew that, and he hated making assumptions. He knew what the Bible said about being judgmental. He also knew what Descartes had said about pre-conceived opinions, not to mention that personally, Ali hated to approach the clerk with those assumed, pre-conceived and judgmental opinions about him. Ali always wanted to approach everyone free from opinionated thoughts about them.
He glanced once again at the clerk. He noticed that the clerk, for all his outward appearance, had a certain kind of automated efficiency. The clerk would look at the documents, mark a couple of points on the paper and then proceed to question the person in front regarding the document. He somehow reminded Ali of a computer, which goes through millions of bits per second, but would stop at the slightest irregularity, and ask the operator on how it was o proceed. Abort, retry, ignore or fail. To Ali that spoke of a keen mind behind all that disinterest and that in turn spoke of wisdom. The wisdom to conceal that keenness behind a cover of disinterest because of the times he lived in. It was a matter of survival, because individual thought meant intellect, intellect in return meant philosophy, and these were times when a philosophy differing from yours was not tolerated.
no story line 
The reason I describe so much though is that unless a good description is given, the reader is lost as to what place to bring in his mind.
