NAEEM (Part 1)

Idiots! I’m surrounded by idiots!

One is a victim of bedroom jihad.

One a victim of the idea of jihad when he has no idea what it is.

One trying to win jihad.

Where does that leave me I wonder.

Mummy was right, there are more stupid people in this world than wise and more cowards than brave.

She came to find a husband? What is she? A princess that her prince charming would come save her or fight for her in all his bald, bespectacled glory? Idiot!

And my prince charming, the bomber, doesn’t even know what he’s got himself into, going to fight it seems. I am so glad Abba said no to his marriage proposal. I’m 18 and I’m a man, and your daughter is 15 and a girl. What sort of proposal is that? Argh!

And my time is just not coming. Oh some powerful force, if you do exist, just get this ordeal over with, please. Atleast guide that day-dreaming idiot to bomb our hold-up cell instead of going and damaging the West. Bet he doesn’t even know what it is. Must be wondering who it is for all you know.

I can’t believe Nina condones the killings of those two innocent journalists or the pushing off the building of those four gay men and even chopping the hands of some men as a consequence of their disobedience to the law. I mean where does she get off to say that there is always collateral damage involved in the creation of a greater good. Who told her that? Her “Armaan” or her “God”?

Nadia always told me to be quick to learn and slow to judge, but it was just so hard to refrain and too easy not to. My mother’s fiery spirit taking over my body, my soul and my mind now.

Stop with the Mommy already, Nadia would keep saying. Yes, we get it, you’re young, a lot of things that have happened to you that don’t normally happen to teenagers your age around the world, yes you were not given a fair chance and yes this is hell. But we are all going through it and guess what you’re not the only one, there are girls who have had it worse than us.

So we’ve been raped a couple of times and yes those scars won’t leave our bodies or our minds, ever; but atleast we have not been at the receiving end of rape 30 times a day that it becomes impossible for us to pee or bent over backwards literally to such an extent that our backs have broken or have our hands cut off. If they died after that, it would have been sweet relief, but they have to live that way, endlessly. Are you forgetting almost Mrs. Chief?

So stop whining! We’ve had it easy and we don’t know why. What makes us different from them huh? It sure isn’t your judgment or your age or your mother. She was scream whispering by this point.

After what seemed like hours of silence, I finally got the courage to ask Nadia, “Hey Nadia? Do you think we’re heartless to think that those who died in these circumstances have had it better than us? Don’t you think we’re monsters? That they’ve made us monsters?”

“Again with the pity party huh? What did I just say?...” Her voice almost audible that the other girls were beginning to look at us.

“No. No. Not that. Calm down. I’m saying by normal, worldly standards.”

“Which world child? This is our world now. What do you think that we’ll be the same and prance around the fields of your outside world if, if, we happen to escape from here? Never. This isn’t like prison you know where you go in, have sometime to think, reconcile and come back to the same messed up world that has been waiting for you, ready to embrace you in her arms. This is the mad house/slaughter house where our thoughts, our mind, our souls, our very beings are minced into tiny, tiny, pieces and fed to these ravens, leaving us dry and bony into this world.

What are you doing thinking, no, no, dreaming of a world outside this. You insane huh?”

“No, I was just thinking and I think you’re wrong, I am going to get out, we are going to get out and we are going to set right the world that has been wronged for not just us but all girls.”

“Huh we? No way child, no way girl,” She sneered at me. “I’m dying here. I have made my peace with it and I suggest you do the same. My kids are safe, my husband is safe and soon I’m going to be safe in the hands of death.”

“No… You gave up too easy…”