“Grandpa! You should get a digital camera for yourself now; they’ve got good mega pixels, you can increase their memory and download pics straight to your pc” his granddaughter would often ask him to rid of his old film camera. But he had always been a conservative, a traditionalist; he loved his old film camera. He had been a professional photographer for a leading magazine for over three decades. Three months back, they finally let him go; “God damn those digital photographers.”

He inserted a film in the camera and finally got ready for his shot of an old tractor emerging from the haze; when he heard a car approaching the bridge on his right. He halted his shot and waited for the car to pass by, but the car stopped and he heard the door open and someone stepping out on the wood-plated floor of the bridge.

He didn’t like it when people would stop to see him take photos; he loved his privacy. But this time it wasn’t about watching him take the shot; he heard a few clicks of the camera from the far right edge of the bridge. Confused; he looked at his right.

Someone with a digital camera had just taken his photos.

(Fiction based on the Photo)
Image ID. ngs0_8160. Available at Getty Images

Every day he flew to the edge of the sky from where he could see the earth down below. With as much disdain as anticipation, he rummaged for human souls burdened with sorrow and trials; and he found them in plenty. War, torture, murder, hunger, poverty, injustice, arrogance, ignorance, pride and hatred; it was all there. And there were victims; helpless … hopeless.

He could cruise that distance of a million miles in as much time as it took for an aching heart to call upon God. But he hadn’t had his orders yet. In all those times of pounding ordeals, he saw not one from his assembly of angels of hope, flying down and ingesting comfort into a broken heart. He didn’t understand the reason for this delay, so he didn’t complain.

One day, in a small African village, he saw faith in angles flying out of the heart of Uzuri. This was painful; it was as if he saw his own self becoming the victim of mercilessness of human race. He wanted to help her; he wanted to show her that he exists, that there is hope. He wanted to bring himself back into her heart, but he didn’t have his orders yet. Sitting at the edge of his painful wish, he looked up towards the heaven for an order. There was none. Uzuri’s agony would continue. As slow as he could move, he walked back to his bunch.

A few days later he went back to see what happened to Uzuri; she was in utter pain as she left her home to an unknown destination. Not having the heart to see it any further, he bowed his head in grief and sat their silently. A few moments passed and he heard some soft steps ruffling the spotless clouds. His orders had come. “Be the angel of hope … for Ezeamaka.”

On his way down, he kept thinking about Uzuri; what will become of her? As he descended on earth and wrapped his wings around Ezeamaka, he caught sight of Ezuri and her family. There were clouds of angel wings wrapped all around her. He smiled and looked up towards the heaven.

Angels were falling from the sky.

Angels, that were supposed to come barging in with unseen miracles of help when a kind human soul was in trouble. She never felt any angel’s steps ruffling the air where she breathed.

She was expecting another child; this was proving to be too much. Six children in equal number of years while there was nothing to live for; no hope for life to exist and Mwamba, her husband, was insistent on bringing more life to a world infected by famine, poverty, disease and civil war. Two of her sons and a daughter had already been taken away by disease.

Some two years back, she named her newly born son Ezeamaka; it meant ‘as splendid as the king’ and it was so appropriate too, for Ezeamaka was a child of extremely good health in a region with its trademark malnourished-children.

Last night her village was burnt down by the rival gorillas because two days back, the warriors from her village had ransacked another village some seven miles away. A disturbed life tasted displacement for a change and she had to leave with her husband and children to a safer place, if there was any.

Ezeamaka ate more than the other two kids combined and they were running out of food. This was not what she had desired for; but did she ever desire for anything? “My son is as splendid as the king, he shouldn’t be with us; only if there were angles I would have left him with them” she thought; and then made a decision.

The gorillas had been chasing this migrating group and were approaching them fast. Before the sun came out, the herd took off towards the north. With a heart that ached more than it beat, she let Ezeamaka sleep and left him there. She carried more pain in her heart than the love she left with Ezeamaka.

As she walked away on a heavy heartbeat, for the first time she heard some voices in the sky.

Ezeamaka woke up only to find himself surrounding by dry land and abandoned luggage. He was about to start crying when he heard the sky roar a gentle roar; he looked up.

Angels were falling from the sky.

(Fiction based on the photo.)

Her feet had long forgotten the soft feel of a pair of comfortable shoes or even remotely fashionable sandals; her only comfort was that wooden plateau that would bend a fraction to take the load off her heavy feet. It had been 9 years now working in the city of concrete, carrying the baskets of bricks, sand and helplessness.

Everyday, after a long day’s hard work and on her way home, she would sit in a broken seat of a bus thronged with porters and masons who smelled the smell of their burnt out hearts, she would think of quitting it all. “Today I go back home and never come back; this is all too much for me. My daughter is growing into a woman now, she will be 14 in a few months; I need to spend more time with her.”

The next morning, a rotten drowsy voice would wake her up, “Hurry up you lazy soul, we don’t want to miss the bus; I don’t want to pay for the rickshaw, its too damn expensive. This cursed Government of ours is good for nothing; and so are you, you lazy woman, wake up; I need breakfast.”

That day was more painful. A nail was hiding with a purpose under the thin surface of a sand floor and penetrated into her left foot as soon as she stepped on it. There was no time for treatment; she put some mud on her wound, laughing in her heart as she thought of a day before her wedding when her future husband sang her a song promising her he would spread petals under her feet; she kept working. Each time her left foot touched the harsh surface of the wood, a tear and a smile would battle their way into her eyes; but she would hurriedly lift her foot again to minimize the load.

“This is it, I am not coming to work from tomorrow, I am tired, cant you see?” during the lunch break she finally gathered enough courage to say it to her husband; who, lost in his own thoughts, agreed to her idea. She was surprised, but only for a while; a comfortable lightness eased her shoulders and she started smiling.

Sitting in the bus she kept thinking about the freedom that would be dawning tomorrow morning. She smelled no burning heart anymore. At night she spent good time with her daughter and son and in the late hours went to bed.

She was about to fall into the land of intoxication when a thought struck her mind like thunder; “My daughter will be 14 in two months, and in two years she will be of age to get married. A wedding has its asking.”

It was work tomorrow.

“God damn your soul, you little useless woman, whatever you cook tastes like meal from hell” it was a trademark compliment she would often get from her husband who couldn’t tell the difference between the taste of his rotten cigarette and the meal she cooked for him. In the beginning she tried to cook better, but later she only added more silence to her response.

He worked as a mason in the city of Dhaka along with thousands of other construction laborers; while she took care of the house. That’s how she knew her life now. He always thought she didn’t have much to do, what she did wasn’t hard work. “I lift bricks all day long and all you have to do is to cook a decent meal and God dammit you can’t even do that”, she would quite often sarcastically lip-sync his ever so repeated taunts.

When she was young, she loved wearing fragrances of all kinds. There were times when she couldn’t afford to buy even a cheap perfume worth only a few Takkas, but then there were flowers that she would pluck and settle them into her thick dark locks. In some peculiar way it made her feel good about herself.

He only smelled good on the day of their wedding and after that it was all so unbearable. There were times when she thought her brain would suffocate to extinction but it didn’t happen. Ten years and seven child-births later, she had learnt how to live amidst all the unbearably stinking days.

“I am sick and tired of my God dammed work; I can’t pay for all of you. From tomorrow you will have to come and work with me” she knew she would have to treat this order with a silent affirmation.

Before going to bed that night, she had asked her mother to take care of her children while she was away. Lying on her bed, wide awake, a wandering thought of fragrant days visited her again. It had been so many years that she couldn’t even recall the memory of how those stale jasmine flowers smelled. A thick stinking smell of cigarettes coming from her pillow gave her waking company to the other end of the night.

Next morning she joined a couple of dozens more women carrying piles of bricks on their heads moving up and down that haunting skeleton of an under construction skyscraper. Her supervisor briefed her about her work and she was on it.

As she approached that pile of bricks, a warm wave of smell stemming from the wet pile of bricks welcomed her. She suddenly stopped and tried to inhale that thick grainy fragrance coming from a clumsy pile of bricks; this was better. This was much better than the smell coming from piles of dirty clothes and sweaty presence of an abusive man. A smile scrolled onto her face.

She stepped forward, picked up a pile of bricks and rested it on her head. While moving towards the steps, she thought, “and that’s what he considered hard work.”

Her smile kept her a fragrant company all day.

…………………………………………………….

(Fiction based on the Photo)

Image Source: The News: Islamabad/Rawalpindi Edition. July 25, 2005.