Death's Life

by B Latif

  Carrying her through dappled sunlight, I walked to the middle of the forest, the deep place where scarcely any sunrays reached.

  The mere sight of it was scary enough to make humans flee. And the most frightening thing was the haunted graveyard, which would give any human a heart attack should they venture there by chance.

  With a gesture, endless gravestones appeared with the names and dates of dead people already inscribed on them. A long path through the middle led across a drawbridge to a somber castle made of ancient black stone.

  Perfect.

  The inside of the castle was tranquil with a bed of grass creating a soft, green pillow, a garden of roses, jasmine, daffodils, and sunflowers, which turned towards the little sunshine that penetrated there, and a cornucopia of fruit trees.

  No wild animal could come there, as it was totally isolated from the rest of the forest.

  No man-made thing existed there. It was all the Lord’s creations.

  When she fell asleep, I went to Aisha’s grave and wrote the words she had willed. I stayed there for some time, although I knew there was nothing in the grave, just a skeleton, her decomposed body, and rotting skin.

  Her soul was gone.

  OBSERVATION No. 9

  “People don’t lie in graves. Graves are the memory of humans who existed once because humans fear oblivion and graves are only a reminder of their existence. Oblivion is one of the greatest, inevitable truths.”

  People come and people go, no one remembers anyone.

  Graveyards are like huge museums. Those who make history become a part of history themselves. People play the part of heroes and villains, or simply extras and then they expire.

  The difficult task is not to make history, but to make a future.

  ***

  She used to call me mama. I didn’t call her by any name, but I used to talk to her for hours, about everything, and she just listened with interest, unable to understand words.

  I never taught her another word. I wanted to but I didn’t know where to begin. She ate fruits, vegetables, and beans, and never left the castle, even by accident.

  When she slept, I went on my duty. My time is different from human time, so it wasn’t an issue.

  The only problem was she was growing up.

  Her clothes didn’t fit her anymore. I didn’t steal anything, I couldn’t. Rather, I gathered the silkworms and made her attire from their silk.

  Now I had something to think about. There was her education and her needs as she was growing.

  I used to lay down with her sometimes and watch her sleep. Just like a mother performs her duties, now I had another duty aside from taking lives… being a mother.

  The most holy and sincere relationship. Humans don’t deserve to have such relations. Perhaps it’s the Lord’s greatest blessing on them.

  I played the role of a mother, looking after her when she crawled, feeding her with fruits when she was hungry, playing with her to make her happy, soothing her when she was hurt, and closing my eyes when she was sleeping.

  Once, I left her to take the souls of some people in Burma. When I came back, I saw her there by the roses, tearing off the petals and playing.

  I sat beside her, taking the rose and tickling her with it. Her laughter gave me pleasure. I promised myself I wouldn’t let her become a sinner. Away from humans, she wouldn’t even know what a sin was.

  “Mama.” She held the rose towards me as if asking what it was, because I was lost in my thoughts.

  I took it and her toothless grin made me smile.

  “Rose,” I said. I frowned at the baby and then at the flower.

  “Rose!” I exclaimed, taking her in my arms.

  Yes, I would name her Rose. It wasn’t a Christian or a Muslim name, it was the name of the Lord’s creation.

  And from that day onwards, I told her the names of simple things, such as birds and flowers, the things we had in castle.

  But most of all, she loved two names, Mama and Rose. Pointing her little finger at me and herself, she used to repeat them. And how I longed for the time she could talk eloquently with me.

  When she turned six, I brought some books for her that I had found in the garbage. One was to teach her English. Another was the Bible and the last one was the Koran.

  I didn’t know what religion she wanted for herself, so I thought it was best if she chose by first studying them.

  Now, she was learning avidly as she had nothing else to do.

  One day, I was sitting inside, and Rose was outside when I heard her calling me, “Mama! Mama! Mama!”

  I quickly went to see if she was hurt. She wasn’t, but was standing by the flowers, her long, silky black hair at her back.

  “Are you alright, Rose?” I asked her worriedly.

  “Yes, Mama?”

  She was pointing at something. Whenever she wanted to know the answer to some question, she just asked, “Mama?” and I would answer her.

  It was a butterfly. I knelt beside her, my white gown covering the grass, and held her arms.

  “Butterfly.” I told her.

  “Flutterby?”

  I laughed.

  “No, Rose,” I smiled, “it’s a butterfly.”

  I saw the fascination in her eyes as she stared at it.

  “Mama, I want a book.”

  “You have one already.”

  “No… I want to write its name in the book so that I can learn it.”

  “Okay, Rose. The next time I go out I’ll bring you one back.”

  She lovingly kissed me on my cheek, “Oh, look, Mama! It can fly! Can I keep it?”

  “Rose,” I began, sitting on the grass and taking her in my lap, “Everything here belongs to you because the Lord made it for you, but He made it free. How can you make it your slave?”

  There was ignorance in her eyes as I put my chin on her shoulder.

  “Slave?” she paused, “Mama, what’s a slave?”

  I thought hard as she wanted me to define it. Maybe I should get a dictionary soon.

  “Err… obeying somebody’s rules is a slave.”

  “I am a slave?” she asked innocently.

  “Why are you saying that, Rose?”

  “Because I obey you.”

  I laughed.

  “Rose,” I said after a while, “You are my daughter and I’m your mama. Just remember that for now.”

  She looked upset as she had hunger for knowledge, and there were things I couldn’t explain, not yet anyway. Her words were as if there was a third companion with us.

  “You have to take a bath now.” I told her reluctantly, knowing that she hated it.

  “No.” she said firmly.

  “See? You’re not a slave, you don’t obey me,” then I added, “but you have to take a bath.”

  She began to run away from me.

  “Rose! Rose! Come back now!”

  I chased her.

  ***

  “Ooh! That’s my book!” she exclaimed as I held the new book towards her, which had blank pages.

  “Yes, it is, now you don’t have to write on the walls anymore. It looks dirty, right?”

  I loved it. Her, writing on the walls, but I had to organize her. Learning looked fascinating to me. Her small hands scribbled on the walls with chalk, making drawings, writing words. I loved to watch my little girl do it.

  She hugged me suddenly.

  “I won’t, Mama,” then she sat on the grass at once, opening the book.

  The first word she wrote was ‘buterfly’.

  “That’s a double ‘t’,” I corrected.

  Nothing. She kept holding the pencil after writing the word. I waited for her to write more, but I could see that she was thinking.

  “Mama?” she looked at me, the tip of pencil between her lips.

  “Hmm?”

  “What is a butterfly?”

  “Rose, you just saw one yesterday!” I said incredulously.

  “No, in words… what should I write for i
ts meaning?” she looked at me with hopeful eyes.

  I smiled.

  “Beauty.”

  I defined it as beauty, not as a slender bodied diurnal insect with broad, brightly colored wings. I told her this because humans had forgotten the beauty of nature.

  “That’s not B-U-T-Y.” I laughed, “It’s B-E-A-U-T-Y.”

  There was silence in which Rose stared at the words she had written with the end of the pencil between her teeth now. I knew she was unable to understand it, but I waited for her to ask me. When she didn’t, I took her in my lap.

  “Rose, beauty is what reminds you of the Lord,” I explained in the simplest way I could, “it’s what gives pleasure to your heart.”

  “Mama?” she protested this time, “who is the Lord and what is this heart?”

  I placed her on the grass so that she could face me and held her little hands in mine.

  “Lord is the one who made you and then He made all of this for you. Heart is what you feel.”

  She quickly noted it in her book, and I read, Lord: made me. Heart: what I feel.”

  Then she looked at me again, “Mama?”

  “Did He also make you?”

  “Hmm.”

  Then she added something that made me smile broadly:

  “Lord: made me and Mama.”

  I began to make a beautiful plait on her hair. They were long and nice and I hadn’t cut them.

  “I think you are beauty, too,” Rose said after some minutes, and my hands stopped midway.

  “Why?”

  “You said beauty is what gives pleasure to your heart and you give me pleasure.”

  When I didn’t reply, thinking what a hideous figure I was for some humans, Rose looked back at me. To make her happy, I smiled and kissed her cheek.

  “Then, Rose, I think you are beauty, too.”

  ***

  Let’s take another soul.

  This time, a suicide case.

  I’m going to give details because this one influenced me greatly. The girl was twenty-two years old.

  Emily.

  Arriving early, I found the girl sitting on her bed, her fists clenching the sheet and her eyes completely red in a valiant attempt not to cry, glowering at the pen and paper on the desk.

  Opposing her silence, I could hear voices, yelling at the girl perhaps. I couldn’t make out her parents’ words as I was too absorbed in the girl’s tears leaking slowly from her red eyes.

  With her jaw twitching, she sniffed, still staring at the paper and the pen.

  Was she going to write a note or will before dying? That is a typical thing humans do, a tradition now.

  Abruptly, as if she couldn’t take it anymore, she got up, opened the door without touching the pen and paper, and went out on the balcony. She began to climb the ladder placed at one side, going to the third and last floor.

  I raised my eyes to see her. I stood behind her on the rooftop as if I would be the one to push her from there.

  She didn’t jump, she just grasped her scalp with both hands, crinkles at the corners of her eyes as she cried harder.

  Then she kneeled and howled.

  Taking control of herself, she got up again, took deep breaths, and closed her eyes for a second.

  “Okay,” she whispered.

  I frowned.

  She looked towards the sky and her nostrils flared as if she were angry with the Lord.

  Too angry, and she had no one to complain to. Then she gritted her teeth as if she could crush them right then and there.

  If only I could read her thoughts, because I knew she was feeling pain but it’s a sensation I can’t experience.

  I stayed motionless as she closed her eyes. Her parents’ yelling grew louder, calling her name and shouting abuses, and then…

  She fell straight, like falling into an abyss, flying in the air and then slamming the cage of her body on the stone floor.

  Her tears stopped, replaced by blood.

  Now it was time, I went to her.

  When she opened her eyes, she could only see me, standing over her like the ghost of her past. She looked at me with malevolent eyes. I think she recognized me.

  It wasn’t her home now. We were in a different place; white, light, but no sun, no floor, no sky. Just nothingness. Emptiness. In between me and life.

  “If you would have come yourself, I wouldn’t have committed suicide.” She said with a tinge of venom in her voice.

  I remained silent until I could give an appropriate answer.

  “You are blaming me for the life you had,” I told her calmly.

  I wasn’t looking too ugly or too scary. She had sins, but she had virtues too. a balanced soul.

  She was still crying, “I am blaming God.”

  I frowned. It wasn’t a pleasant response for me. However, I had patience.

  She continued, “But how would you know? You’re not a human.”

  How rude.

  “Can we talk?” she asked.

  “About what?”

  “About life, my life…”

  “Why?”

  “Because I need to be heard, at least once. No one has ever listened to me… maybe a catharsis, because I don’t want to say these things to God… sit down, please.”

  Her request was obsequious. I went towards her, my silver robe sweeping behind me and sat beside her.

  She licked her lips, tasting her own tears. I waited for her to begin the conversation, and when she finally did, I could sense the deep pain in her sobbing, “I was just fourteen when I started writing.”

  A small hiatus and her trance. I looked at her.

  “Will God hear any of this?” she asked, casting her eyes on me.

  I shrugged, “Don’t know… maybe… we are in nothingness.”

  She nodded in approval, “Good, even if I am angry with God, I don’t want to hurt Him with my words.”

  I wanted to tell her that she had already hurt Him many times in her life, but it was of no use, she was dead now.

  “When my sister told me mother that I was writing, she beat me with a stick, ordering me not to write again. She said a poor family can’t afford luxuries,” I could see the disturbance in her eyes, as she looked at me, “Do you know what I mean, Death? Do you understand?”

  It’s awkward to be called Death.

  She couldn’t call me cruel, the grim reaper, or the end because I was just myself to her. I was Death for her, and it had no meaning.

  “This was the stick that broke my bones, and she was about to cry again, resisting hard, her words broke me. They broke my soul…”

  I couldn’t say anything. She must have presumed I was a good listener, but the truth was, I didn’t want to talk.

  “I had to study hard to be a doctor, and I did. By the age of eighteen, I had secured top grades, but what always gave me pleasure were the {sic} manuscripts I’d written and hidden in the closet. My parents… always… always discouraged the idea of being a writer. I had to make money, and how could I do that by not being another Shakespeare? So, I had to stop it.”

  She paused, not allowing the words to pass through the dry corridor of her throat.

  “And I did. I did because there was God who wanted me to stop, and I didn’t get a single opportunity to get my manuscripts published. I became angry with him for not giving me the chance. So, I tried what my parents wanted me to… as I knew my parents had sacrificed their dreams for me. Then because I couldn’t confess the mental torment I was going through, I felt constant pressure on me.” She gulped, “besides I failed the test.”

  There was a long pause, and she kept staring at the white nothingness at her feet.

  “They didn’t beat me this time.” she told me, then raised her eyes, “But they started killing me with their taunts.”

  Silence.

  More tears.

  Helplessness.

  It looked as if humans were only capable of this in hatred, pity and desperation.

  In this case,
I couldn’t make out what it was for her. But hatred came to mind first.

  “I hate it when parents make children their own personal property and vicariously impose their lives on them, as if they were allowed by God to do this! When young, everyone thinks they know what they want to be in the future. But later, they are held back by a negative force. And that force is…”

  She cast her eyes on me, quite suddenly, with a devious expression, “is parents! It makes you do what you are capable of rather than what you are excellent at!”

  Then came her pity:

  “God makes us free creatures. But every man is a slave to another man. We spend our lives for others only. All of it. First, unwillingly, and when we can’t stand it, then we willingly devote ourselves to someone, thinking we are doing it for ourselves, but we aren’t! It’s just a way of comforting oneself!”

  And finally came her desperation.

  “I would rather do what I’m excellent at than what I’m capable of. I can become a teacher, a doctor, an artist, or a pilot… but does that mean I will reach the height of that profession? No! because it would be tiring work for me and being myself would be a pleasing job for me that I would never get tired of it!”

  She wiped away her tears on her sleeve and then, as if she had wiped away all the past as well, she looked at me.

  “Will it hurt?” she whispered. “What will happen after this?”

  I replied with as much indifference as I could muster, “I’ll take your life away. Then the angel will come to take away your soul.”

  She nodded and it gave me an impression that she didn’t want herself to be an open book anymore, “Will it be painful?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not more than I had in life,” she said sarcastically. Then she added, “Why? Why will it hurt?”

  I smiled. How oblivious the humans are with their doings on Earth. When the end comes, they don’t remember the cause of the pain.

  Why will it hurt…

  “For your sins.”

  She bit the inside of her cheek, “My sins… and what exactly are my sins?”

  “Well… according to your religion, Christianity, committing suicide is a sin.”

  She remained calm at this, “Is this the part where I tell you I didn’t kill myself, my parents killed me.”