A Short Story
DEPARTURE OF AN INNOCENT SOUL
Abdulyassar Abdulhamid
It was one fine Friday morning around eleven o’clock, I was sitting west deep in a wooden arm chair embroidered with cushionary, azure polythene. My feet were leaning comfortably against a plastered, mud wall – in my hands was a hardcover copy of William Golden’s Lord of the Flies. Reposing on my laps were a potty copy of Advance Learner’s Dictionary, a coral bar BH pencil; its tiny, red cleaner clung to the bottom edge, a bunch of keys, and one blue-headed Luky pen lay in wait for its part.
In front of me was a brown puppy in a begging posture, its small tail was waggling from one side to another as would a stalk amidst an earth-shaking gale.
At the very door of the room I was sitting in was my sickly skinny she goat peeping egregiously in a lame attempt to win my attention – unknown to it I was badly engaged in, mysteriously lost, in my reading activity then.
Lost in an island Ralp is whistling persistently; perhaps he has appointed himself a chief, a chief saddled with the affairs that concern “littluns” and “beguns”. With time, no doubt, Jack and strong-headed beguns like him would turn to, someday, Ralp’s courts of high importance…The owlish piggy may end up, as a fragile creature, a prey to bullies like Ralp and Jack. How interesting was the reading!
I instantly heard a pent up jingling seeping out of a side pocket of my black shoulder bag. My right hand did its way into the pocket and fished out a sparkling white, Techo handset. On the screen appeared vividly a six-letter, block inscription: ABBANA. I sat down properly, dialed the answer key carefully and said, “Assalam alaikum”.
“Wa’alaikummussalam”, he answered.
His voice came again dragging with it a bizarre, heavy tone, “Walid has passed away”.
“Wa…li…d”, I stammered.
‘Of course he is dead”, he concluded in a matter-of-fact tone.
‘Indeed we are from the almighty Allah and to him is our return”, I pronounced through gritted teeth.
There descended upon me a gripping mixture of fear and agony. My head started spinning. My breath turned heavier with each step I took. My sight started ridiculing structures around me, whilst the structures undermined my eyesight in return. I moved as would a sleeping walker or a drunk, perhaps a mad on her side.
I quickly gathered my things: books, writing materials, my keys and put them back into my bag; and started strolling homeward. Suddenly my mind went on groping down an old-age tunnel of memory.
Walid, as we all called him, was born sometime after the demise of his elegant, superb sister, to use Conrad’s words. He had both his nursery one and two at Maryam Memorial Nursery and Primary School, Tudun Murtala. Under the auspices of my eldest brother Auwal, who thought Walid needed a better school, I took him one Monday to a newly built, neighboring school, Wisdom International School, just stone’s throw of our home.
Suffering from deadly sickle cell anaemia, his school days was characterized by interwovenly intense competition between two opposing forces: studying and taking school leave, which became indelible stamp on not only the page of his school days but also on that of his life in general.
Of course everybody: friends, brothers, sisters, relations and even our parents themselves called him Walid being the baby of the family, the name Walid was an honorific attempt at concealing his actual name Abdulhamid, the junior, being the family’s bread winner’s namesake.
The most interesting moment I remember about him was on one Eid Fitr day. I was dragging Walid by an arm, moving mosque ward, to observe our Eid Fitr prayer. We were both clad in an iridescent type of clothes; unfortunately that very year, as with fashion which ebbs and flows, the cloth became the subject of mockery especially amongst the younger ones. Walid adopted the mocking words successfully. He sang them continuously with each step we took. In his childish opinion it was in praise of us, whilst in mine a complete stab in the back. Because I couldn’t stop him, I allowed him to make his day and so he did.
His words, actions, smiles – everything about him – and even his tenacious habit to learn and practice kept on pouring into my mind; they hovered as could a lonely, vagrant, little bird. For every single attempt to get the thought off my mind there would appear inscrutable pictures of his memory. I really lost a true, great brother.
I reached home and headed straightaway to my father’s room. There lay upon the floor before my inward sight an innocent soul that was once genteel, energetic and civil. Now he looked stiff and anaemic. His half-closed eyes were a complete replica of “supreme moment of complete knowledge”. He could neither move his fingers nor donate his heart-warming smiles.
I was standing deeply rooted in the centre of the room, when I noticed some strange acts; every now and then someone would come in, took a look at the remains; and retired in a great sadness. Along with me were my fathers, three elder brothers: Auwal, Shamsuddeen and Abdurrasheed, a younger brother, Isah and a relation, Abdullahi pharmacist. All were silent and randomly meditative. Unbroken silence had taken over.
My mother came in swiftly as if from the blues. Everything about her – her countenance, movement – looked withdrawn and dejected. She moved her shaking hands, uncovered the remains in slow motion and covered it again. She screwed up her eyes and went in hot tears, mumbling some indecipherable words. How difficult it was for me to take my eyes off my mum!
An hour or two later, I saw a teeming rows of people walking in twos, trees and some in fours. Leading the rows was four-man group of pall bearers walking as would iron-collared men. In the centre of the coffin they were carrying was the remains clothed in crystal clear white pieces of cloth. Within an infinitesimal fraction of a second I started shaking with fright. A commingling of fear and bewilderment kept on gnawing at my hapless heart; my stomach was so stout and my eyesight hazy.
“Perhaps this will be the last time I will take look at my brother, chat or caper about with him,” I thought.
It dawned upon me at last that such an experience is the end of every breathing soul; no human can scale the height of death. It reminded me of how minute human’s ambition is in the face of death.
Abdulyassar Abdulhamid
It was one fine Friday morning around eleven o’clock, I was sitting west deep in a wooden arm chair embroidered with cushionary, azure polythene. My feet were leaning comfortably against a plastered, mud wall – in my hands was a hardcover copy of William Golden’s Lord of the Flies. Reposing on my laps were a potty copy of Advance Learner’s Dictionary, a coral bar BH pencil; its tiny, red cleaner clung to the bottom edge, a bunch of keys, and one blue-headed Luky pen lay in wait for its part.
In front of me was a brown puppy in a begging posture, its small tail was waggling from one side to another as would a stalk amidst an earth-shaking gale.
At the very door of the room I was sitting in was my sickly skinny she goat peeping egregiously in a lame attempt to win my attention – unknown to it I was badly engaged in, mysteriously lost, in my reading activity then.
Lost in an island Ralp is whistling persistently; perhaps he has appointed himself a chief, a chief saddled with the affairs that concern “littluns” and “beguns”. With time, no doubt, Jack and strong-headed beguns like him would turn to, someday, Ralp’s courts of high importance…The owlish piggy may end up, as a fragile creature, a prey to bullies like Ralp and Jack. How interesting was the reading!
I instantly heard a pent up jingling seeping out of a side pocket of my black shoulder bag. My right hand did its way into the pocket and fished out a sparkling white, Techo handset. On the screen appeared vividly a six-letter, block inscription: ABBANA. I sat down properly, dialed the answer key carefully and said, “Assalam alaikum”.
“Wa’alaikummussalam”, he answered.
His voice came again dragging with it a bizarre, heavy tone, “Walid has passed away”.
“Wa…li…d”, I stammered.
‘Of course he is dead”, he concluded in a matter-of-fact tone.
‘Indeed we are from the almighty Allah and to him is our return”, I pronounced through gritted teeth.
There descended upon me a gripping mixture of fear and agony. My head started spinning. My breath turned heavier with each step I took. My sight started ridiculing structures around me, whilst the structures undermined my eyesight in return. I moved as would a sleeping walker or a drunk, perhaps a mad on her side.
I quickly gathered my things: books, writing materials, my keys and put them back into my bag; and started strolling homeward. Suddenly my mind went on groping down an old-age tunnel of memory.
Walid, as we all called him, was born sometime after the demise of his elegant, superb sister, to use Conrad’s words. He had both his nursery one and two at Maryam Memorial Nursery and Primary School, Tudun Murtala. Under the auspices of my eldest brother Auwal, who thought Walid needed a better school, I took him one Monday to a newly built, neighboring school, Wisdom International School, just stone’s throw of our home.
Suffering from deadly sickle cell anaemia, his school days was characterized by interwovenly intense competition between two opposing forces: studying and taking school leave, which became indelible stamp on not only the page of his school days but also on that of his life in general.
Of course everybody: friends, brothers, sisters, relations and even our parents themselves called him Walid being the baby of the family, the name Walid was an honorific attempt at concealing his actual name Abdulhamid, the junior, being the family’s bread winner’s namesake.
The most interesting moment I remember about him was on one Eid Fitr day. I was dragging Walid by an arm, moving mosque ward, to observe our Eid Fitr prayer. We were both clad in an iridescent type of clothes; unfortunately that very year, as with fashion which ebbs and flows, the cloth became the subject of mockery especially amongst the younger ones. Walid adopted the mocking words successfully. He sang them continuously with each step we took. In his childish opinion it was in praise of us, whilst in mine a complete stab in the back. Because I couldn’t stop him, I allowed him to make his day and so he did.
His words, actions, smiles – everything about him – and even his tenacious habit to learn and practice kept on pouring into my mind; they hovered as could a lonely, vagrant, little bird. For every single attempt to get the thought off my mind there would appear inscrutable pictures of his memory. I really lost a true, great brother.
I reached home and headed straightaway to my father’s room. There lay upon the floor before my inward sight an innocent soul that was once genteel, energetic and civil. Now he looked stiff and anaemic. His half-closed eyes were a complete replica of “supreme moment of complete knowledge”. He could neither move his fingers nor donate his heart-warming smiles.
I was standing deeply rooted in the centre of the room, when I noticed some strange acts; every now and then someone would come in, took a look at the remains; and retired in a great sadness. Along with me were my fathers, three elder brothers: Auwal, Shamsuddeen and Abdurrasheed, a younger brother, Isah and a relation, Abdullahi pharmacist. All were silent and randomly meditative. Unbroken silence had taken over.
My mother came in swiftly as if from the blues. Everything about her – her countenance, movement – looked withdrawn and dejected. She moved her shaking hands, uncovered the remains in slow motion and covered it again. She screwed up her eyes and went in hot tears, mumbling some indecipherable words. How difficult it was for me to take my eyes off my mum!
An hour or two later, I saw a teeming rows of people walking in twos, trees and some in fours. Leading the rows was four-man group of pall bearers walking as would iron-collared men. In the centre of the coffin they were carrying was the remains clothed in crystal clear white pieces of cloth. Within an infinitesimal fraction of a second I started shaking with fright. A commingling of fear and bewilderment kept on gnawing at my hapless heart; my stomach was so stout and my eyesight hazy.
“Perhaps this will be the last time I will take look at my brother, chat or caper about with him,” I thought.
It dawned upon me at last that such an experience is the end of every breathing soul; no human can scale the height of death. It reminded me of how minute human’s ambition is in the face of death.
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