DIAMONDS

It was January, the coldest month, the most gray month of the year. The wind was really fast and freezing that morning. It was white snow everywhere, it had snowed all night.

78 year old Hameed was not the one to divert from his daily routine. Like everyday, he had woken up before the Sun, and had gone out for his morning Namaz.

It was different that day for Hameed. As he walked towards the vast valley beside the frozen lake, he felt his heart trembling, not out of fear, but out of grief. He had never gone to say the Namaz alone; as a child he went with his Abbu, and then with his wife. He loved company, but he didn’t like to talk. He just liked to listen to people say.

But now there was none to listen to, except the sharp winds, whispering death.

He reached the valley beside the frozen lake. He spread his blanket on the ice. He sat hunching on his knees. He felt his bones trembling. For the first time in life he felt scared. He sensed his approaching demise.

He was not like this before. His wife would talk to him, or just walk silently beside him, and he enjoyed her company, her presence, her sweet perfume, the way she pressed his leg everyday before going to bed, her soft touch would make him forget every hostilities of life and he would dive deep into his ocean of dreams, which were never to be fulfilled, but still he liked dreaming, dreaming about his childhood ambitions of rewriting the Quran, the way his grandfather and father interpreted it, but his dreams were left untouched due to the untimely death of his father and his childhood marriage, that brought with itself the unavoidable burden of feeding his family, his family of two – he and his wife.

He opened his shivering palms in front of his face and closed his eyes.

He saw there, on a much younger morning, when he came to the same spot for the Namaz, the silhouette of a pretty girl, that brought coolness to his eyes against the bright heat of the Sun. She was the village doctor’s daughter, Nasreen. He knew her name a few days later, when the doctor came to their home to attend him with his repeated stomach aches. His ears still played the doctor’s voice “Nasreen, can you help him with the ointment?”

He lied there on the bed, with his bare tummy as Nasreen spread the ointment with her soft tender hands. He felt ticklish. He smiled. She smiled back.

He opened his eyes wishing to see that same old days again, the cooling silhouette of Nasreen against the bright Sun.

There was only white. White, white and only white everywhere. No color, no smell, but white.

She talked to him everyday, but they barely ever conversed.

She had the unique talent of knowing what he wanted and needed. Every night he could feel her cuddling up beside him, he felt her warmth, but he barely ever touched her. An unspoken love prevailed between them.

“I love diamonds”, his wife once told him “They look like pretty little pieces of glass, but they aren’t glass.”

He sipped silently into his tea as she went on talking.

“I have only once seen them, on my mother’s eyes, on her dead bed.”

He looked out of the window.

“But as I touched them, they were not there anymore.”

She smiled. His eyes still looking vacantly out of the window.

“It’s all illusion. There is no such thing as diamond, right? They are just cute little imaginations, like fairy tales. What do you think?”

He looked at the old torn sofa, on which his wife sat, he somehow could not put his eyes on her, he just kept looking down, at the sofa.

Hameed bent down on the ice cold blanket after his Namaz. His legs were paining then, his heart longing to hear someone speak to him. He felt a very sharp pinch in his heart, some strong blow of emotions, and he could feel his eyes getting wet.

He sat up and opened his eyes.

His heart gave a leap, he could see right there in front of his eyes, they were there, a few small pieces of diamonds hanging from his eyelids. He screamed out in whisper, “They are true Nasreen, they are true”, his voice shivering in the cold, “They are not illusion.”

His old skinny shivering arms reached for those diamonds on his eyes. He touched them. He looked at his fingers then, it was nothing, just water, no diamond, only some salty liquid.

He got up, tightened his sweaters, folded his blanket and walked towards his home.

On his way back, his view was getting constantly blurred by the many diamonds that kept on appearing before his eyes. But every time he reached out for them, they were transformed into a mere liquid.

“Yes, it’s an illusion Nasreen. You were right. But I have many such illusions with me now. Thank you, Nasreen, thank you, for giving me these illusions since it’s because of you that I am getting these illusions now.

“See more and more diamonds are coming, more and more illusions. Take as many as you want, but please don’t give me more of these diamonds. I give you these diamonds which are curved in my own heart, my only gift to you so far in our journey together…that ended only yesterday.”

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