Standing there I asked myself what life was and who I was and I got a reply I didn't expect, I was in a conversation with life or just my subconscious I never got to know. If I was still standing or long fallen I didn't know. All those dreams, did they still mean something or were they gone just like me. I blinked my eyes as I got back to reality and heard the announcement, "Please recite the Dua for Safar", the Daewoo attendant said. I repeated it after her.
The journey had started. I was leaving it all behind and I will never be the same again I promised myself, I will never cry at things that happened before I sat in the bus. How could I? I asked myself. How could I leave it all behind? The city where my oldest memory was a four year old me holding my mother’s hand walking in heavy rain, which I realized very late had been a construction of my own imagination and not a real one. I did not remember how it began, life in this city, I just knew this was home. I had grown up on the streets of Gulshan-e-Hadeed. I had gone to school here, I had made my childhood friends here.
I remember moving down the stairs at school in the breaktime and I had to find my sister because that day Amma had a ten ruppee note and she had given it to her and told her “Share it with your brother”. She bought 2 samosas and gave me one. That Zohaib as he took his samosa from her hand, would he be happy as I waved him Goodbye leaving for Lahore? or that boy who along with his friends crossed multiple roads and then crossed that big ground to reach the other side having a lot of fears, fearing what if someone hurt him but so curious about exploring it alone, Would he be happy if he saw me sitting in the bus leaving for Lahore? As now his bigger self wanted to explore an area 1200kms away from home. What if someone hurt him?
I wish I could take it all back, I wish I could rewind and stop my mother from putting me in Beaconhouse, I wish I could tell her no don’t do it. The Zohaib sitting in the bus reciting the Dua for Safar is hurting. He is waiting for His father to come running and stop him, tell him not to go. He wants Osman to race his Grande pick Saad up and reach Daewoo Al-Asif and tell him no he was important enough and they would hate it when he was gone. He wanted his grandmother to tell him she was sorry for breaking his dream of having a successful livestock business. He wanted Junaid to take a bus from Mirpurkhas and reach just in time and tell him he wouldn’t survive without his brother. No one stopped me. They said travel safe, They never said travel happy.
Nobody understood why I took a bus ride of 20 hours and not a plane for 1 hour when the price difference was just three thousand. I wanted time to think, I wanted to prepare myself. I wanted to cry over not what I had lost but what I had left. The city I had called home for 21 years behind me as the bus finally started moving and all hope of return vanished. No one came. I lay in my sleeper seat as I saw my 21 years flash before my eyes. Why was i doing this to myself? Will this help ease the pain? Was I too broken to be fixed? and if I was how would I ever make a home in another city? How would I ever explore it? I took pieces of my heart that day and that kid in me again looked up. He did not want an iPhone, he did not want love. He just wanted to go back home. He thought what if he returns and the city does not remember him? What if nothing ever becomes same again?
The AC vents were too harsh straight on my face and it was almost hurting and yet something was burning so bad inside I wanted that cold air to cool it, to somehow ease that pain. I closed the vents as I curled up and dozed off to sleep maybe when I wake up I will be home and Amma will bring chai and say "Wake up before it turns cold, I won't make you another one."