Distant Friends

pain, guilty and support

WARD; ARCADIA STATE HOSPITAL- SOME MOMENTS LATER

               Mamush still with her ailing daughter, the Angel of death came from the top most authority’s command, the Almighty, to pick His creature and relieve it from the suffering.

             Anjali was getting ready to go, but how was she doing it? She was lying beside every weight and sin that did so easily beset her, and she was getting light for the flight. Being a religious woman, Mamush saw it and knew that the end of term of her daughter’s life clock had ticked. She made a final plea to Anjali, “Say, I believe in the Almighty God and prophet Muhammad as His messenger.”

             That statement was the declaration, the gate to Islam. Anjali repeatedly said it weakly as she marked a full stop to her life. With tears streaming her chest making it wet, Mamush placed her hands on her daughter’s face to close her eyes. It was a goodbye until eternity. She was sure that she would never see her daughter as she used to see her when the sun rises. She got that feeling that someone struck her with an arrow to her heart, the worst pain she had never experienced before, a mother losing her only daughter, just on her way winding up her high school education.

               Mr. Ram received the news as a shock. He felt guilty for not being too careful to the responsibility of her only daughter. That served him heavy blow, and surely Anjali was the love of his life, but he only expressed his love via words, and not through actions.

               They say in death, all things become clear. Mr. Ram now knew it was true. Standing beside her daughter’s bed in the ward, he felt a bitter clarity he had never known. His religion spoke of empty promises and he never had ample time with his children. The mortuary attendants gave him a form to fill in. They had already started picking Anjali’s lifeless body to the mortuary, but they were stopped short by Mamush.

              “She cannot go to the mortuary. She is a Muslim.” Mamush told the mortuary attendants.

             “We are sorry madam. Sorry for the dismay too,” one of them replied.

                The confusion that Mr. Ram had, it felt like a million bees had entered his head, and he felt like it was swinging. His mind reeled back to those previous moments, the days where he never visited her daughter when she was in Silville Academy with no genuine reasons. There was her daughter’s name, Anjali Ram, but he knew it made no sense. The word had no life, and now, the cruelest fate made him see her daughter. He wished he had paid better attention, he did not yet think life as fragile. Surely, we do not know the value of something until we lose it.

                             Anjali’s uncle, Rohit, received the sad news in sobs. He cried bitterly and felt sorry for her, though death is the only path that awaits everyone. Rohit boarded a plane from his city of work, Angels to Arcadia. Many relatives were informed and made the journey to Arcadia, in readiness for the funeral.

 

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