MONOLOGIC DIALOUGE BETWEEN A
MOTHER AND THE BRAVE HEART
AREESHA LATIF
Mother: OH brave heart where have you gone? No, don’t whine I haven’t eaten
anything yet, I know you would ‘not eat anything alone. You always want me
around in the dining room. Oh don’t you? I am still waiting for you to come home
, staging against the door fringe , eyes hovering the pavement for a trace of
you to be found? Oh brave heart where have you gone?
Come back here your mother awaits, Oh how many times I’ve told you not to stay
out for long? Have you forgotten the promise you made and the promise I made for
the promise you made? Come ache dear heart worse thoughts are warming its ways
into my head and my chest aches like thousands of needles being pierced onto my
raw heart making it more vulnerable with each prick.
Oh No, are you Alright? My heart is battering in my throat tell me you are fine?
Talk to me, say something, cry, scream, shout, lament? Why don’t you see you
silence is like a claw tightening itself around my windpipe, Making mama
breathless.
They say you are gone a little too far now. They say they killed you? No, my
dear heart I don’t believe them. How could those monsters kill you? You were
only 7 my son. Your father, he doesn’t talk anymore. He sits all day on his old
squeaky rocking chair in a stone like manner at time his face is veiled behind
his book but most of the times He is idle, lost in his thoughtless trance. He
says he is resting for he is having rough days. I know like always, you father
son are hiding something from me.How can he rest with that pained frustration
pined onto his face and raged pain edged his reverberating voice? He seems
slipping away from us each day, little by little, tinge by tinge. No darling, he
isn’t angry at you. Just come back. He loves you like I do .He won’t say it but
he misses his Golden boy..
My head is pounding with rage my dear heart, I could’ve come I little earlier to
pick you up. I could’ve saved you? But what sort of a person you are in soul?
You never howled at waking up early in the morning and going school? You
could’ve denied, I could’ve listened. Alas sick feeling of horror and
nothingness now cradles my heart. How could you be so brave? Did you know what
it all already? Did you know about those blood thirsty monsters?
How full and joyous you seemed before going to school on that daunting day and
how that blooming big smile crouched your lips when I agreed to celebrate your
8th birthday just the extravagant way you wanted in the following week. Oh my
little flame of hope won’t you be here on your birthday? I am sorry for not
coming onto terms before. Noo, it’s not that I don’t love you. DON’T dare think
that ever again. I just wanted to buy you something big and reliable instead.
How could I be so stupid and absurd? If only I knew you would become silent like
this I would’ve traded every fiber of my being to see laughter sparking in your
chromatic eyes.
I now know not what to do my boy to bring you back right here. My being is
dissolving into its own outlines. My chest bleeds for your embrace, oh why you
use to resist when I would lean to hug you?Ahh my naughty angel.
I try to cry and shout and scream but nothing, nothing comes out as I open my
mouth. The back of my throat now house nausea all the time. My skin has grown
convulsed as if it’s going to crawl away and my eyes-Oh they had been empty of
all the dreams since the day you left. Is this why you left? My brave son?
Brave Hearts:DearMother, Don’t cry I am here for I am gone but I am not dead. I
feel fine, safe and sound here now just like I would feel behind the cascade of
your arms. I and 135 other little warriors tangled with devils wrath and placed
an end to that clamoring thunder like day, just that you know, you and baba
could stay safe.
My dear mother my courage dwells in you. Don’t rumble apart for you are a mother
to a martyr and a wife to a ghazi. I won’t be there now to nag you and baba
mischievously, and you would not have to cast me a warn some glance that is a
sheer indication for me to be on my best manners but I’ll be always there, right
there in your heart. Burning like an unfathomable flame which no monster can
flatten.
Tell dad I am sorry, I know he is disappointed in me, I was supposed to be
brave...Brave son of a brave savior of the nation. He always taught me to have
high resolve and Spartan courage. Ammi , baba’s every bedtime story that he use
to narrate me of his military exercise tenure would warm my innards and deep
down I always wanted to be like Him. How much he was loved? I think a lot
because every time I use to go out with him everyone knew him and respected
him.Ammi do you know even once the unit’s barber chacha told me that I have my
father’s face. Haah nice chap he is, he used to say he would’ve minced me with
dad and salute me instead if only I was tall enough like him. Do we really look
that alike?
But baba…I am sorry ammi but I don’t know how he have gotten to know that I
cried and mewled under my breath when I was shot in leg for the third time until
they shot me in my chest. Three bullets in a row, I breathed my last at the
thunderclap of the last bullet. I know I shouldn’t have cried or screamed. I was
supposed to be brave. How could a son of a warrior, a guardian, a savior cry?
But ammi I couldn’t control or resist this time. It hurted so much. The blood
that came pouring out of my paralyzed body made me feel sick until later my body
grew numb and nothing felt anymore no hurt, no pain, no wound.
You shouldn’t cry as well baba won’t like it, what will baba think?
I’ve never told about this to anyone yet but I have to confess now it kind of
tatters me a bit to know my country is once again being subjected to political,
cultural, moral unrest? Is my memory already faded to ashes? Are we forgotten
yet? Forgotten like calm after hurricane or dissolved like smoke after fire? I
and 135 other lilies that were yet to blossom have erupted our blood in this
soil for the generation to come , tell them my dear mother not to let go our
sacrifices vain, not to let this green land bleed all over again. Our blood
shall be avenged and to that unity and resolve is the only sane way to subdue
insanity.
I don’t worry now because I know baba and those brave men in khaki’s won’t let
these ferocious beasts at peace until each of them dies out of misery or thirst.
They’ll always stand tall fostering every adversity onto their chest for the
sake of this pious land, my beloved Pakistan.
Be safe my dear mother I am right here, here in your heart... If only you
remember...