ILLUMINATIONS OF MALADY CONTINUES

Than Karin stopped sleeping.

He became a wanderer at night

He explored his life like a bad movie, 

Watching all the disturbing scenes one by one

over and over...

He simply stayed awake all night...

He wanted to sleep but he couldn't...

He became insomniac

Insomnia of love

Fever of love

Couldn't sleep without him

Whoever that,"Him" was...

He had to have him in bed with him

That smell of flesh

That warmth

That heat

That heat of love in a hot country

Where he only felt the scorching heat

But no heat of touch

No heat of smell

No heat of contact

He wanted to sleep with that ivory colored flesh

not kill it...

He will look at his gun next to his hot cot of a bed

The gun which was the only companion of his night

Of all nights

With which he was supposed to kill the love'he cherished,

knowingly,

unknowingly

who knows

All he wanted was to sleep

and not sleep alone

because he couldn't

any more...

no more sleep alone.

He wants a companion

A man companion

A man whom he also want to destroy

kill...

He wants to sleep with the one he wants to also kill...

Karim could no longer sleep at night

He was now declared,"Insomniac."

But for him

It was lack of love

And love only

Karim had a fever

A fever of want

A fever of sleep

A fever of lack of sleep

Just a fever of desire

Intense desire...

Desire and its fear kept him awake all night...

ILLUMINATIONS OF A MALADY CONTINUES

Then Karim woke up

He was sweating profusely

His head was feverish

His heart was throbbing heavily

His temples were pounding with anticipation of the same dread

which he had experienced so many times before...

The same nightmare of entrapment 

 Which he has been dreading since his adulthood...

Always appearing in the form of nightmares...

He can't leave the place he is in...

Can't get out

Can't escape

Trapped...

Always this feeling

Being late for some thing...Something important...

Can't get out

Can't get there in time...

He will fail

Fail in everything

Everything he will encounter he will fail in ...

Doesn't take much to go on...

Make an effort to go on...

Go on....

Go on where?

Where to?

To hell and back

Maybe...

Certainly...

To hell and back

Hell is the night mare

And back is after he wakes up and is 

Relived that it was only a night mare

And why this night mare is persistent?

That's been the search of Karim's life...

All his life he has been fighting this feeling of being trapped

Trapped by his circumstances

Trapped by the poverty

Trapped by his shyness to approach people who could help him

Trapped y the love of his family

Trapped by the moral obligations towards his family

Trapped by the sense of duty

Trapped by the self sacrifice 

Trapped by his desires

Trapped by his own sexuality

Trapped by his fondness for boys

The guilt

The tremendous guilt he feels if he ever

 Try to do anything good for himself

He can do a lot for others but not for himself

Trapped by the sense of generosity for others

 But the sense of stinginess for himself

Trapped by the sense of martyrdom...

When he wakes up he is relieved as usual

"It was just a nightmare."

'But what a nightmare!"

"But why?"

He has been asking this question for so long now...

He is thirty two years old

He has no lover

Neither a man nor a woman

He loves woman

But not that way...

A different way of love for women

Like sisterly love

Like motherly love

Like a love so intense towards an intensely beautiful woman friend

But towards a man?

He feels differently

His heart flutters so fast when he sees a man

 With whom he would love to exchange

kisses .....

Just the idea, mere idea of that makes him feel 

He is going to collapse with the sense

of sin...

Sense of sin so heavy a burden like a marble slab 

On his chest crushing him with all

kinds of moral ambiguity and guilt that he feels

He is crumbling to smithereens long before he 

Will ever have a chance to even touch a man that way...

He thinks he will die a virgin...

How can he disappoint his family

His society

His ambitions

His duty to produce a heir to the family to keep their name alive

Poor or not, his family is very honorable...

How can he bring so much dishonor to the poor father

 And grand father and his mother and his sisters...

His sisters will die as old spinsters

No man will every marry them if

They find out that Karim desire men...

No, he can't do that to his poor sisters

They have to be married and have children

What is a woman if she is not married 

And is not taking care of her husband and children?

Maybe after all his sisters are married,

Then and maybe then he can love a man...

How long would that be?

Maybe he would be forty by then

Or fifty even...

Which man would love him when he is fifty years old?

With no shape and no muscles to be proud of...

He has muscles now but he is not proud...

People find him very handsome...

Handsome, dark, tall, lean, well shaped, strong....

But he loaths himself...

He can't desire like the others

And if he desires like the others, this tremendous shame

And sense of ominous danger falls upon him...

Why does he feel this way?

Why is this burden his responsibility?

What is it?

This concern for the other?

The family

The humanity?

Is this the burden of love?

Is this the burden of shame?

Is this the burden of un-fulfilled desire?

Why does he desire men?

When he is a muslim?

Isn't it forbidden in Islam to love men?

Is he a bad muslim?

Is he a muslim at all?

Is it all pretending?

Should he sitsdown with his father and grandfather and all his clan

and declare,

"Listen, I desire men and that's that."

Can he imagine what will happen at that precise moment?

Perhaps the sky will fall all over him and them 

And that would be the end of many generations...

Right there and then and the story will end 

And he will be so proud in death...

But if the sky doesn't fall and

Kill every one in an instant,

Then what will happen?

They will shoot him with their powerful guns 

And than shoot themselves 

or stab him seven times 

like the whole clan stabbed Ceaser...

After-all they are Pathans, Pushto speaking Pathans of tribal areas...

WITH THE EXTREME SENSE OF HONOR AND MANHOOD.

"Guess what, the only son of Pushtoon speaking tribe 

of Amnunstan, the real Pathans, the only clan left 

In the Hindu Kush mountains of South Asia

And that son will never have a son himself because he is gay."

'Imagine that!" "Just Imagine that!"

"No, I can not do that..."

"I can never do that..."

"I can never desire and fulfill my love for a man."

'I can never confess my desire openly....Never."

"I am a Pathan"

"I speak Pushto"

"I am the heir of a proud clan who has to produce many more proud Pushtoons."

I am the muslim soon to be the head of a fierce, Pathan clan 

fighting for their honor, their land, their women, their country."

"I AM A MAN WHO IS FORBIDDEN TO DESIRE ANOTHER MAN."

"I am a proud muslim man, a proud Pathan."

"My desire, my fever, my anguish, my passion for a man will 

Make me a weak man, 

A man who trembles at the sight of blood and war,"

"A weak man who only desire beauty

 And aesthetic of beauty,.

 Who hears violence in every cry for love,

 Who dies for a kiss on the lips of desire,

 Who cherishes the taste of love even after his death."

"No, I can't be that weak man.

 Full of beauty and devoid of violence."

"I have to fight a war...I have to kill my enemy

 Who is coming to kill me."

"I can't love, I am not ready for love,

 I want to love a man and I am not ready.

 And no one is ready for it either.

  My tribe, my family, my religion."

And that's what keeps Karim awake and anguished

 Every night and when he sleeps 

He has his constant night mares of obscure and abstract nature 

 Snakes running after him 

And daggers drawn at him by the sea urchins 

And all kinds of horrible fires engulfing him and burning him to mere ashes...

His love of man is the only thing he desires 

And desire passionately and 

That is the only desire he wants to completely destroy.

ILLUMINATIONS OF A MALADY

"For the human beings and the ordinary

circumstances of life, merely reserve a kind smile

which dispenses you to connect with them." Camus

The malady of Karim had been that he tried

desperately to connect with lots of human beings

and all ordinary circumstances of life, failing terribly

in his own important endeavors and ambitions of his

own life.

How could one pay such sincere concern to every fake

expression of false warmth and false promises of friendship

made by the false human beings of this planet?

How could one be so naive like Karim and still expect to achieve

even the slightest rewards of life?

His life was devoted to un-necessary worries about who said what

and why whoever said whatever whoever said?

Analysis of these kinds, mindless and pointless examinations

about people and their utterances took all Karim's energies away.

He couldn't concentrate on his own concerns about his own

ambition, he didn't even know what his ambition was after a while.

He was most of the time wallowing in his self pity and victimhood while never

realizing that he has now become a complete victim of his own supine

intelligence and wasteful activity of worrying about his relationships

with the fellow human beings while in reality he had absolutely no

relationship of any kind with any one.

People were just using him when they needed to talk to someone but they actually were the

most selfish people he had ever encountered and he never knew that.

He must be the most trusting and naive person who was ever born.

It was him who out of his confusion and bewilderment of not knowing

how to live in the world was always available for lots of people whom

he called friends, but actually he had not a single friend. He was just a simple fool.

He stupid little fool.

A stupid big fool. He was a court jester without a king, without a court and without

a pay check while all the people who were using him to pass half an hour of their time

for their own tongues to practice gossip in case the tongues might get ossified were

rich people who often ridiculed him for the lack of skills in particular of one which

taught him not to make a single dollar..........he had no skill of making money

but he had the skill of making people laugh and was literally an un-licensed therapist.

After talking to him people would declare how relieved they felt and how the heavy burden of depression and sadness has lifted from their shoulders and now they can go back to their

ambitious schemes to make tons of more dollars while Karim would feel extremely depleted

to do anything constructive. But all the time he blamed himself that he had nothing constructive to do instead of realizing that he just helped people lighten their daily emotional burdens just by listening and sincerely talking to them and giving them his precious time unconditionally thinking that those were his well wishers and intimate friends while they did nothing for him.

When he needed them they were never available...They won't answer the phone. The Voice mails always announced their unending important business MEETINGS they were always in and couldn't pick up the phone to talk to him.

They were never available till they would have their own petty concerns or gossips to deliver

to themselves while they wanted a listener....Like a garbage bag for the garbage to be thrown in and thrown away without any attachment or a second thought....

Well how much emotions do we go through while we are throwing our garbage away?

That's how the so called ordinary circumstances and ordinary so called, "Human beings." treated him. But it would be fare to say that Karim let them be treated that way.

Was it deliberate?

No. It was not. Karim was more sophisticated a person than that but he didn't know he was allowing himself to be treated that way. He never understood the word,"Victim" It never existed in his dictionary. He thought he was just kind of heart and sensitive towards other people at the

expense of his own time and needs.

He was educated, kind, feeling person but he never knew how to live in the world with clever, cunning, hissing, poisonous people who actually never left him alone either. He was for sure serving some of their purposes that they won't completely let go of him.

He became the bate on the fishing rod's hook.

And than one day he woke up. Woke up and stayed drowsy for a long time. But when he woke up he realized that something was wrong. He didn't understand what was wrong but he knew something was and all of a sudden all those people and their smiles seemed fake to him.

Though those smiles were utterly fake to begin with but Karim had never realized it before.

He was not one 100 percent sure still but something about them and the streets they lived on and their offices from where they made tons of money seemed not pure....

This feeling of uneasiness was of a new kind. He has gone through the pangs of consciousness before but of a different kind....

He felt that he had been used and it was him who allowed it and Karim didn't know that ....

No, not yet. That will take a long time and than knowing Karim, a tremendous regret will overtake him and he will curse himself and go through self hatred of a different kind and waste the rest of his beautiful life which was half wasted already..............

But where did all this come from? This personality trait....He lived in the West, he was educated in the West, he was smart, came from good family, kind, hospitable, generous, god fearing, ambitious....

How come with all those qualities he became the victim of the West?

He was also lacking in some thing considered very bad qualities in the Buddhism....

Selfishness, cunning, self determination to advance while knocking everyone out of ways.

never worrying or caring for anyone except himself, never be honest, never be sincere, push forward and knock everyone who is in the way out of sight. Punch them in the face if you have to and than claim self defense...And get out of every situation as smoothly as one take a single thin hair out of the melting hot butter.............

Even after waking up Karim had a long way to go and he didn't know which way that would be...

Even when he is all alone by himself, Completely isolated from all the hustlers of the world finally, Karim wouldn't know which road to follow. That was Karim's tragedy. That was Karim's malady. Karim had wasted too much of his precious time with utterly useless human beings and utterly pointless activity with them from which he gained a big fat zero..............

Karim failed in how to manipulate a life in his and only his own direction.

Karim suffered from a malady.

rbage to be thrown in

MALADY CONTINUES

And one day he woke up

From the deep sleep that head injury has put him in

He woke up

And there was nothing there

Nothing to smell

Nothing to taste

Nothing to touch

Nothing to hold

"Where Am I?"

He asked

There was no answer

Because he was nowhere

Not even in his own head

His head was a vacant lot of

Lost memories

And was also full of the loss of those memories

'How can that be?"

He questioned himself

"How come that be?"

"No one around...Nothing to smell.."

"Why am I awake?"

"Why Is this senseless awakening?"

"Who is holding my head in for breaking?"

"But its already broken, almost broken with all the contents lost"

"Lost and vanished forever"

"Why even I exist?"

"Do I exist?"

'Who am I?"

'What malady am I suffering from?"

"Is there something called a, malady?"

"Yes, they told me, it exist, the malady and I am suffering from it"

'And it has nothing to do with the head injury either"

'The malady was already there"

'Before I fell"

'Fell and was knocked out"

'And years passed"

'And than more years passed"

And than I woke up"

"But not from the malady though"

Malady was my heritage"

'It will be my heritage till I die"

'But I am already dead"

"Some one told me I am already dead"

"Why did I wake up ?"

"To inherit the malady"

"But I already have inherited it"

"Perhaps I woke up to take it with me"

"Where am I going?"

"And why am I taking the malady with me?"

"Because its mine"

"That's all that was mine"

Nothing else was mine"

"Why would you want anything else when you have such a gift already"

"Malady is the greatest gift"

"Ask the ones who don't have it"

"They have nothing"

"Nothing"

"Nothing to show when they are dead and gone"

"People talk about the malady long after the death"

'Otherwise one is not remembered when one is gone"

"Thank god for the gift he bestowed upon you"

"Imagine! what would you be without your malady?"

"A normal person"

"A very normal person."

"A bore"

"A real bore"