INCREDIBLY MESSED UP LIFE OF KARIMA ULLAH CONTINUES

CHAPTER TWO

"So I insisted that people, other people must be treated in a respectful manner.

I thought if we treated them nice they will treat us with grace.

Because my mama told me, "Child, no matter how evil people are, they are still human and human can make mistakes, so you need to treat them like natural born human beings and not animals."

And I would ask mama, "Mama, even if I treat them kindly, gracefully, with great respect and they still treat me poorly, disregard me, disrespect me, what then?"

And mama would say," Don't worry.  You will be rewarded in your next life."

'My next life mama?  My next life?  What next life?  And what about this present life ?"

And mama would say,"THis present life is temporary.  Its transient.  You are just passing through."

'And what about other people? mama?"

"What about other people?"

'The people we have to treat nice all our lives at the expense of our own self sacrifices and self

abasement."

And mama would say, "God will take care of you in heaven.  God is aware that you have been kind to others.  Its not being wasted.  God will reward you."

"I want to be rewarded here and now. I am a little girl like all the rest.  I want my toys also instead of always giving it to others.  Always thinking of the other.  Always treating others.  Always thinking of
the, "OTHER"  Who is that other that you are training us for to sacrifice our lives for.
What have they done for us that we must go through this kind of humiliation to abuse our selves
and never ever take care of ourselves with this Unseen, unknown promise of this  Un present god who will after our deaths will reward us.  We are young.  We were just born the other day.  Now we must already think of our deaths.  Why mama? why?"

But of course I won't dare say that to my mother.  Of course I won't dare hurt her feelings because I loved my mama more than anything on this earth and beyond.  My mama was the kindest, nicest, loving, caring person on this planet of other nasty human beings.  Of course I didn't know how nasty other human beings were till they completely damaged my entire life but actually it was because of the martyrdom of our religious, god fearing, self sacrificing mother who put every one above her and never took care of her self and never taught her children that they come first.
She never told us that this world is vicious and its a jungle and other aggressive animals will all eat us up alive and they did because we were not watching over ourselves and no one else was watching over us. From the very early age we gave up upon us.  We never knew that if we let go of our lives, lives will go away and never come back....Never come back.  Lives are like jilted lovers who have been hurt because of the ill treatment , of the unjust treatment of their love, their kindness and the hurt they accumulated in their hearts because we were so busy insulting them like we insulted our own lives.  We always preferred  others, we always thought that the others were better than us, smarter than us, richer than us, more cosmopolitan than us.  We always thought that others were better equipped to succeed.  Others had a golden secret of success and we forgot all along that it was actually us, us who were smarter than others, kinder than others, more sophisticated than others, more educated, more handsome,
more talented, more giving, more affectionate, more well read, more knowledgeable  than all the others in our lives.

But we gave away everything we had to that, "OTHER"
Our knowledge, our education, our time, our love, our kindness, our spirit, our youth, our career,
our wealth......
We just gave it away.  For one reason or the other.  We threw it away with our own hands .
We threw away all our talent, all our knowledge, our golden, secret key to success to the undeserving, unkind, uncaring,  selfish, evil other and they took it with open hands.
Actually we threw everything we had into the others lap.
I guess we must be victims.
We must be.
Thats the modern definition of people like us.

"VICTIM"  A bad word in the West.  A very bad word in the Western culture where eventually all of us martyrs ended up.  But we never knew the meaning of that word when we were growing up.  We were just god fearing children of god fearing parents who never moved to the West and in our culture the victimhood is considered a moral value, a good thing, a pious thing, a great test of human goodness.  At least thats what it meant to us but trust me there were many in our culture who understood the meaning of such a word as, "VICTIM"
They had lived in the West.  They were cleverer than us.
The taker is always more clever than the giver.
They took, we gave.
Now we have nothing to give ourselves.  We have nothing left for us.  Now we hate our selves.
We hate our selves and we hate that, "OTHER."
But we certainly hate ourselves more for allowing that,"OTHER" to ruin our lives.
My life has been completely ruined by that, Invisible, that unseen, that user, abuser, selfish
"OTHER"  who never really forced me to do anything for him or her except in a subtle way took advantage of my naivete, my provincialism, my kind heart, my generosity of the spirit and my fear of god and what ever was falsely promised to us by the spirit of my parents especially my mother.
My mother is now gone to the other world where perhaps paradise was promised to her and where perhaps she is in that paradise finally, but not me.  I am still living and I am still trying to figure it out how not to be such a victim martyr and its not working.  I , Karima Ullah has to undo my whole life's work to do something for me to ease my conscious for my own mistakes which I would like to say were made innocently.
But life is ruined never the less and that is my fault.  Yes it is my fault.  No matter how much I want to analyze it, no matter how much I want to figure it out.  No matter who I blame, my mother, the other, the culture, the spirit of the time passed, no matter who and no matter waht, life of Karima Ullah is ruined and this is all about that ruined life...that very precious, golden life which got ruined by this or that.
This most unimportant, "THIS" Or<"THAT" turned out to be so important.