BY AFSHAN NABI (MBG/III)
afshan.nabi@ug.bilkent.edu.tr
Part 3: On Caring Deeply
This is the last part of a three-part column about my summer in Kashmir. You can read the previous two parts online at http://bilnews.bilkent.edu.tr/category/opinions/.
It has been a month since I was in Kashmir, my burning homeland, which at the time of writing (October 22) remains shut down for the 105th consecutive day. The anger and helplessness that plagued my soul, and bound my mind, have started to give way to reason.
I remember again, why I love being there…
We have a cat. My father calls him “byari saub” which translates as “Mr. Cat.” He is small, with dark fur, likes warm milk and biscuits and meows continuously to remind my father to feed him, whenever it is time. I want to pet him while he is sitting in the sun, lazily, as cats sit, but he is shy; he curls around my father’s legs, but runs away whenever I approach. Over the next few days, I bring him his meals and he begins to tolerate my touch.
I visit the house of my youngest cousins, three boys and a girl; the oldest boy is six. The house is loud, messy and alive in a way that only houses with kids are alive. There is always some kid getting into trouble, throwing stuff around, eating the wrong thing, crawling onto the stairs, getting stains on their clothes….The kids eat the biscuits I bring as if eating biscuits were a wonderful adventure. I do not know any adults who eat biscuits with as much pleasure, and pride, as kids do. Maybe that is why childhood is beautiful: biscuits, like most other things, are sweet, joyous adventures. The youngest—the girl, who has just started walking—keeps smiling and offering me a biscuit. But when I reach out my hand to take it, she puts it in her own mouth and laughs; she is incredibly clever and happy for a kid her age.
Though it is hard to make a real choice, my favorite among all the kids is my cousin Tabasum’s son. He is intelligent, kind and well mannered; it is ironic that I like him best among the kids because he displays the qualities of an adult. But later I figure that it is not so strange to like him for his adult-like qualities, since he still has the untainted heart of a child.
My grandma, who has been sick for the past several days, is feeling better and comes to visit us. She eats well, talks a lot, sits in the sun, waters some vegetables, and is cheerful in general. However, she is obsessed with her death; she measures everything by it. Time seems to bother her; I can tell that the two years that I will take to finish college feel like infinity to her. She loves my mother fiercely, and through mother, she loves me. She is a calm old lady, not fussy, not noisy, good company, adventurous in her own way; I think she is beautiful. I hope she dies without the slightest touch of pain, whenever her time comes.
I remember the evening we drink three types of tea, eat, talk for hours about small things and pray together. When we decide to go to bed, I realize that it is only 11 p.m. Time lingers here, in this lost valley.
The house we are in, like so much else here, is comforting, yet intimidating, and home to me, no matter where I go. The peace, the quietness my soul feels here is unlike any other I have felt. There is some magic asleep here, something otherworldly about the beautiful, empty house.
I have been blessed with the greatest gift that can ever be given to a human being: the gift of life, a privilege of existing with sensibility, intelligence and grace. I am blessed with a beautiful, loving family. Supple hope ties together my dreams for the future; curiosity flitters wildly, trying to fathom the shape this life can take; the past sits glowing warm and orange like the setting sun in my memories. I have experienced the greatest delights in the box of my ordinary life.
Outside this box, however, there is deep suffering that is out of my power to remedy. The challenges we face are, as a whole, enormous. But rage eats at the mind, and helplessness decays it. Sorrow will continue to haunt me, but I cannot let it steal away the joy that my soul feels every morning I wake and every night I go to sleep. My love for my home is an irreplaceable part of me. I want to put back all the pieces that are broken, remove all the pain clouding life. I want to see the children back in schools, the light restored to those blinded, the dead brought back to life, the frustration, anger and powerlessness of a people wiped away. But I am only human.
Unlike the seasons, or the waves in the ocean, or the paths of the sun and the moon, we are not bound to one nature. We are wavering, like the flame of a candle; there is order and disorder within us. The human capacity for viciousness strikes, at some point, an unnamable vast fear inside all of us, and yet we all know what it is like to be treated with kindness, graciousness and love. We are not perfect; but there exists, within us, strong emotion that leads us to great lengths to achieve what our minds believe to be the highest goals. We have the power of free will, strength of mind and a persistent conscience.
With these weapons, surely I can do more than just exist? Surely, I can choose, at every point, “the way of grace,” and the consequences of all the choices I make over my lifetime will culminate, so that I can leave the world better than I found it? I might not be able to change the world abruptly, and banish all sorrow; but if I can just care deeply about my home, and spend a part of my life trying to improve it, surely I can achieve something, even if it is infinitesimal compared to the scale of the universe?
Will that be a life well lived?