Bubble

Having the kind of last biryani at hostel made me hold the glass of coke tight, as if loosening my strength would make this moment slip forever. Though, I have tested this often, when I tighten my grasp, it only makes things more slippery. Still, I hold tight the last pieces of string pulling away. This Thursday, today, has a lot of pseudo-Deja vu vibes to it. Today we were officially notified to leave hostel in the next few days. Just like before… this same year… but it seems like at least a year ago. Until that Thursday, the world revolving me around was different, and gladly or sadly it has not been the same until today. Now this Thursday, is like a cycle on its first repeat. As if the first blow of self-check was not enough, there is more to shatter. It is like stepping in an ocean, knowing we will die. The sand beneath our feet becoming deep with every step.

Are we in a bubble? that we just can’t see past settle in past, and not become present again and again?

I saw a vlog of a tourist named Drew Binsky in Afghanistan, it was a little bit like reading Khaled Husseini’s novels. His objective was to show that 33 million people do live in Afghanistan. They do all other things that humans do. They need to earn to feed their stomachs, they send their children to schools, they smile, they eat, have daawats, have wedding parties… they keep doing what they can. In a gist, they exist. They live, while the rest of the world acts ignorant of their existence.

At the end of his day, he went to an old brick house and got his picture taken by an old man from a hundred-year-old camera. It wasn’t just the camera that was a hundred-year-old, that man’s whole place and the characteristic walls, carrying a gazillion scars of its past, twinned with it. And everything in his house that was visible, looked like being caged in past… at least a half century old past. There was just brick brown and dust coloured stuff. It hinted of success once. That old man was living in a time capsule. A reminder of how war can cage cities of cities in a bubble. And this bubble never lets the clouds of sorrow dissolve. Inside the bubble, purity is conserved, time is captured, past remains present, and future never dares to come. But tourists like him try to burst this bubble, they squeeze in the message of hope and thus, future to the caged birds. Birds caged for their beauty, and for their flying with freedom might scare some others.

Thursday or no Thursday, bubble we are all trapped in.

Peace.

By Madeeha Rehman