Chains of Glass- Part 4

"19, 19 had died in that bombing. 17 of them were adults, probably parents. 17 parents had been blown into bits, ripped apart, piece by piece, mutilated like some insignificant lifeless toy, like my glass box. And something had whispered in my mind then, “Only 19?”

I threw up.

It had taken them thirteen hours to piece my mother together."

(Continue reading Part 3 here, or skip straight to Part 1)

Have you ever wondered, when you look at where you stand, how exactly it is you got there, as if it were impossible for you to trace your own steps? How you ever felt, while you stare out a window, as if everything beyond was completely unfamiliar, no matter how many times you might have witnessed it before? Have you ever pondered, as you examine your own partial reflection in the glass, who it is staring back at you, as if you’ve never known that person to begin with?

It is not like I had once never imagined who I’d be, where I’d be or what I’d become. It is just that now that I am here, ten years past, nothing is like I ever thought, or could ever think it would be.

Standing behind glass had once been my protection. It’s funny how they had once thought, how I had once believed that would somehow shield me, us, from the brutality and suffering we felt defined everything without. Had we forgotten, or had we simple not known then, that seeing that pain and misery we cringed about could never protect us from feeling it? Or had it never occurred to us that the venom we wished to escape couldn’t somehow creep through the glass and find its way into our souls as the very apathy that allowed us to witness it all unfold each day as nothing but hopeless bystanders?



Bricks lie where swirls of dust storms had once danced. Gravel covers the earth that crumbles of rock, debris and destruction had long claimed. Concrete sediments over footsteps that had once trodden the path, usually as they scrambled away, far far away from here.

Now, new ones cover it instead- fresh, firm and determined. They move in the opposite direction, in singles and pairs, no match for the droves that once preceded them. Yet progress is slow, if not painful, but as they cast a sideways glance at the window through which I see them, and we share a split-second’s smile of true, pure relish- we both know then, that no matter what lies ahead- no one shall ever have to scale those mountains alone again.

Banksy's iconic 'Balloon Girl', one among a series of wall paintings to adorn several streets of London since 2002

-concluded-
Bushra Ali

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Chains of Glass- Part 2

"I hadn't grown up in a bubble; I was raised in an enormous oblong glass box. The extraordinary thing about this glass box was that I could see everything of the world without. But to that world, I was completely invisible. The box was impermeable, it was impossible for me to shine in the radiance that showered around it. The glass simply reflected its bright glares. None of the beams reached within." 

    

(Continue reading Part 1 here)

Pavel Guzenko- Eyes

The glass box had a connection. Several connections actually, and they all involve cables, electricity, radio waves and machines. They call this connection ‘media’. The media were our eyes.

For the most part, these eyes consist of a large, blank white mass called a cornea, which has no meaningful or obvious purpose. Then they have a large, spectacular iris that can change both color and shape- this is for the idle talk, often of the unnecessarily overrated and celebrated, which surrounds the pupil. It is the pupil that is the real deal, a massive black hollow in the core of it all. It can see nothing but that which is shown into it and that eventually becomes its temporary focus. Another extraordinary thing about the pupil is that the image formed on its wall is always upside down, never upright, never straight. Yes, the media is an eye, just like an eye.

I would watch through this eye, all the pain, sorrow and suffering, all the evil, brutality and savageness, all the pomp, show and drama.

But just as my heart would bleed when my sight unexpectedly wandered there, just as I could feel the lump grow in my throat, just as my body would numb and my blood would freeze, I would feel something, something that doesn’t allow any of it to actually happen, something that makes it all just a mere whim of my imagination, something that makes it all fake…

Relish.

When a plane crashed into the World Trade Centre, my first notion was excitement, not anxiety- but borderline exhilaration. I was eight, and it was then that I was introduced to ‘terrorism’, ‘attack’, ‘bomb’, and ‘war’, I was introduced to the world outside.

And to think in that first split second of introduction, I had relished it.

To read of so many lives lost at once- I shook my head mournfully, even joined in throwing horrible curses at these ‘terrorists’, perhaps even felt like cursing, even felt the genuine sympathy, grief and horror. But only much after I’d felt the relish. Maybe, a little too late.

I didn’t realize it then. It had been drowned in the series of events that followed. Our peace was threatened for the first time.

And there was a crack on the glass.

It always brushed past me, so smoothly, I dismissed it as soothing. It was, undoubtedly, relish always is. It was only when it brushed too many times did it strike me. When I saw the first bombs of a new war crumble the shattered pieces of Afghanistan from the safety of my glass box, then Iraq. Then, when I saw through my eyes all the other cold wars and old ‘disagreements’ resurface between nations, known and unknown, I felt it in me, the hope, the relish, the want…for more.

I never really believed it was evil. In fact, it was human. Wasn't it?

All this time the glass cracked, and I began to notice the cracks, too, my eyes could see them, somehow I had a feeling they were causing it, helping it- my eyes, those eyes.

And then, suddenly, out of nowhere, there was a gaping hole in it, as if someone had neatly cut it out. And that someone kept coming back for more. That was when our ‘kind’ got threatened, us distinct people- bearers of the glass boxes.

And just like them, my glass, my protection, my invisibility was getting weaker, endangered.

Yet what haunted me even more, what haunts me even now, was that even when I heard their blood had been spilt, they were being torn to pieces, mutilated by those bombs, and when I would read their numbers in the morning, those of my neighbors and alleged ‘companions’- though why it shouldn't matter for all the other innocent blood was beyond me- even then I felt the brush…the relish…the pleasure, 

“19? Only 19?”

…the disappointment.

(...to be continued...)
- Bushra

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Chains of Glass- Part 1

Sometimes, several times, I think I saw evil in me.

I hadn’t grown up in a bubble; I was raised in an enormous oblong glass box. The extraordinary thing about this glass box was that I could see everything of the world without. But to that world, I was completely invisible. The box was impermeable, it was impossible for me to shine in the radiance that showered around it. The glass simply reflected its bright glares. None of the beams reached within.

But that never really bothered me, I was too busy looking outside. There was too much light inside the box already, and the glass just trapped it within. And almost always, it fluoresced.

Yet, sometimes, many times, I think I saw darkness- outside, inside, and either time- in me.

If I had had a desire, even just a slight yearning, to shatter this glass that interposed, like I wall, between me and this world outside, this glorious existence that I could only see, sometimes smell, almost taste, but never feel- it wouldn’t have been sinful.

It’s not sinful to crave what you don’t have. It’s human. For as alluring as this world was to me, I knew, and I could tell by the lust in their eyes, that this invisible sanctuary of mine was something they could die for, and they did.

In that was my sin.

When I was a child, the bad times drifted past. I later learned there were several, but my memory could hold only a few. Those it did, I accepted. It didn’t matter whether it was losing a parent or moving into a large glass box. I simply accepted, maybe a little too easily.

In our world, outside the glass boxes scattered miscellaneously, there are always bad times. Or in other words, times are always bad. As you grow, you become more sensitive to pain, to sorrow, to despair. There is so much of it to feel in this world. Too much. It’s unbearable.

Wars were raged, are raging and even now, are promised to be raged, from north to south, east to west. Then when they get bored of their enemy, the wars still rage, this time north to west, east to south. Peace is nowhere, not in any country I’ve heard of. Their wars only rattled the serenity within our sanctuary of a glass box. 

(...to be continued...)
- Bushra

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