Graveyard
All on a sudden getting awake in the morning, I got stunned seeing, the whole earth had become a great graveyard. Each house was, as it were, a grave. In that grave, all were whispering about ill tidings. They were trembling in fear thinking about the oncoming death and famine. Alas! When had these men been alive? I had seen their ghosts walking on streets long since. Seeing them, I had shouted, 'Ghosts! Ghosts! ' Listening to my shout, the bastard civilization had burst out into laughter.
It was darkness all around. In that silent compact darkness, the dead people were frequently getting awake to see whether they were alive. Someones were peeping outside putting their faces at windows. Their eyes were blazing like those of the tigers. Perhaps, they had turned restless to listen to the last whistle of Ishrafil's trumpet. How long can a man stay in a grave! How long can a man leap owing to the intolerable pain of life into a freaking fear like a slaughtered cock!
Walking restlessly I asked myself, Where am I? Am I still rotating like a top into that same earth, which I rejected once and fled away on a ghost-loitering night? I said to them, ' I see, you are living in a weird robbers' hamlet! How foolishly you have opened all the borders and taken theives-miscreants-gangsters-scoundrels in! How can a man live in such a hell? ' Listening to my words, they chased me with swords and spears. Running I climbed the peak of the Himalayas. Standing there, I shouted to the whole world, 'Brethren! A one-eyed monster is sitting on your necks. He is hypnotising you, sometimes by the name of democracy, sometimes by socialism, sometimnes by religion. How cleverly he is drinking your blood setting needles into your body! Pleasantly reject the world that has made the strong working productive people submissive and the idle intellectuals, living like parasites, the disciples of that monster. Leave the world that has made the shameless, showing bodies like es, sit on the most honorable seats and thrown the shy polite sages like torn rags into the dustbin of negligence. Reject the world that plays tricks with the honest and the truthful. Rejecting, come all running; let us go all together into deep forests.' Listening to my call, they went back to their beautiful iron cages laughing.
I say to myself, the earth which is full of so many life-killing viruses; where truth has no value; where only deception, disease, shock, death, hunger and the cruel laughter of oppressors hiss like a cobra lifting its hood; where poison is in air, the foams of sin in water, epidemic in soil, beastliness in man and perversity in woman; why are men so agitated and anxious of that earth? What a grave-life each man leads, though not dead! Nevertheless, there is no love into their hearts, no tears into their eyes as if they were dead rivers; they have no faith in immortal life, resurrection and the day of judgement; into their eyes and hearts there lie only the greed of life full of lust and the blue horror of death. Round the clock, they remain blind like beasts to sensual pleasures. They contemplate, 'Alas! Where have we to go in the long run leaving all these happiness, fame, money, wealth, property and huge power? Where is the destination of our lives then-- the lives that, like wine, make us mad for the illusion of earth? '
I contemplate myself--Will ever these dead men get back their real lives, the lives where there are truth, sacrifice, love and soul, in that soul the waves of faith make sound like a turbulent river, listening to that sound the red-billed peace-birds come flying from the bank of eternity to fill the villages and cities of earth with songs?
Copyright ©
Sayeed Abubakar
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