The story Of Saeeda and Ahmad~It’s a morbid but a true story

It’s a morbid but a true story. You’ve got to read it till the last word to find out what happened. It’s a story taken place in our parents’ village, which they would often tell us, but the rest I have made up_ a bit of creative work.

• TITLE: The Story Of Saeeda And Ahmad

As a child, I liked to sleep in my grandfather’s room. His room had two beds, topped with mattresses. The beds were placed beside the eastern wall of the room in a way, that Dada’s king-size bed tail would face my single bed head. To his right, a table with a lamp lay next to the bed. Further right, stood a study table with an old set of computer atop. Behind the study table, stood a cabinet holding six shelves. I had stowed my books in the bottom shelf, which now and then, Dada would bring me from the bookstore. I would finish them almost as quickly as he could buy me.

   He used to tell me lots of stories himself. But I hated his scary stories. I would hold my breath during these stories, a dev attacking a village, the earth trembling with each of his footsteps, and then it would take all the misbehaving children. So behave well my boy, he would tell me at the end of the story, or the dev could attack our town. These stories did scare the hell out of me, a ten years old boy. But not out of my twin siblings, who are three years younger than me. They would burst in the room, bouncing up and down, cheering, ‘story’s time, Dada, story’s time’. I would sometimes put on Dada’s headphones, so I couldn’t hear him telling those scary stories to my siblings while reading my books.

After offering the last prayer of the day in his room, Dada slipped into his blanket. He propped up on the cushion, pulled the blanket up to his waist. He then fumbled for his reading glasses on the table beside the bed, without even looking at it. Ah, there he found it, at last, put them on, and opened the book to the page he was reading.

   No sooner had he opened the book than the twins creaked open the door. They scurried across the room towards Dada’s bed, their heads down, all melancholic. Both crawled under the blanket, nestling their little heads on either of Dada’s thighs. Dada put his book aside.

   “What’s the matter, you little kids?” He said, stroking their hair.

   “Mom has told us off not to eat candies,” Khadija said, seemingly a lump rising in her throat. “She says it will damage our teeth. She even slapped us.”

   “Your Mom is right. Candies do damage your teeth.” There Dada was, with his typical self, of teaching kids, what to do, and what not to do. “But your Mom has done a pretty nasty thing, slapping you on your little soft faces.” He consoled them but to no avail.

   “I will tell you your favourite story,” he said, took off his reading glasses. But I knew what sort of story he’s going to tell, and was already heading for the headphones. As I leaned over to pick up the headphones off the computer, he looked at me, knowing what my real problem was and said: “But this time I’m about to tell you a real story of my village, the story of Saeeda and Ahmad.”

   I snatched my hand off the headphones as if it burned my fingers.

   I want to listen to Dada’s village story, I told myself. Want to listen to every detail about his younghood, and his childhood, if he could go that far.

   I sat on the chair. Looking at him, I saw his face beaming, the growing grey stubble on his cheeks changing position. He nodded at me.

Dada took a deep breath in as he started the story. “Long time ago, when I was around twenty-two or three years old, our village, Faizabad, used to be one of the quiet and serene villages in many. In early summertime, You looked around, and you saw greenery everywhere: green weeds of wheat dancing in the cool breeze, poplar trees bordering the edges of the fields, their leaves rustling all along. The children would play hide-and-seek and pick fruits of peaches, oranges and apricots when their owners took afternoon’s nap in their respective gardens. Among them was a young little girl, her name Saeeda.

   “One-day Saeeda’s mother became fearful when Saeeda didn’t retrieval home until the daylight decreased to an orangey sparkle. It wasn’t until the curtains of dark fall on Faizabad, that the Saeeda’s mother informed on his husband when he returned from his farm, all tired. He said a bit indifferently that she might have been gone to their neighbour’s house. And she replied Saeeda always returned home before sunset. Anyway, her father started looking for her in every house, asked anyone who would listen about her daughter, but in vain. So his close relatives and some worried villagers took their kerosene oil lanterns, searching her in the fields. I, too, took our lantern hanging from a hook in the wall. Its flame flickering, when I sprinted off to the melee of people thronging around the fields.”

   Dada shifted on his haunches and peel the Khadija's head away from his thigh_ who’s now snoring_ laying it onto the pillow next to him. He then pulled the blanket up to her chin, dabbing it as though you dab mud into a hole. Faizan, his eyes wide awake, now hugged his knees in Dada’s blanket, eyes glued on Dada's face.

   “Jalal, go to the bed and wrap your feet,” he whispered me. “It’s too much cold”.

“So where was I? Ah, yes.” He went on. “We looked for her everywhere. We found her a lot. We did so many efforts. But we couldn’t find her and headed back home empty-handed. On the way back, I heard Saeeda’s mother crying softly, saying something I couldn’t understand through her sobs. It was then, that a man in the melee said that he had seen Saeeda last time when she was climbing a mulberry tree along with two other girls_ Bahadar’s and Zaman’s daughters. Until then Bahadar and Zaman were sleeping. That night I couldn’t get sleep, turning over and over again, thinking of the Saeeda’s chubby little face.

   The next day when I woke up I listened to the weird sound. I quickly slipped my feet into the slippers and burst through our wooden gate. What I found was a large crowd outside Ahmad’s house_ a Gujjar who had been in our village for like 6 years, who not even owned the house he’s living in_ down a few houses from our house. People banged hard on his door, and with open palms. I discovered from one of the people in the crowd, that those two girls climbings tree with Saeeda had given away Ahmad being responsible for her missing. People kept pounding on the door, screaming at the top of their voices to open up. People thought of breaking the door, and the next moment, the wooden door flying in the air, splinters of wood spraying here and there. As we broke into the house, we only met silence and emptiness except for a bundle of forage, a sagging string cot, a pair of rug with frayed edges, and a pair of chickens clucking from a chicken coop in one corner of the house. Two buffaloes along with a goat were gone, so were the other goods of daily usages from Ahmad’s house. I stepped on brown raw dirt, outlining differently from the other ground. By then, police arrived minutes after we entered the house. Inspector Gul Shah also happened to be my second uncle, investigated Saeeda’s father_ who broke into fresh beads of tears_ about the details.

   “Anyway, police arrested the suspect along with his son, just after the beginning the next morning, from his fellow Gujjar house_ ten kilometres off from our town. Uncle Gul Shah told me they hadn’t told them about the whereabouts of the girl as yet, after beating them for two days. ‘very tough guys he and his son are!’ I remember uncle Gul Shah remarking. Then after a week or so, the uncle told me, that there were some journalists from various newspaper agencies supposed to come to their police station, and Ahmad’s going to confess everything before them.”

I went to the police station the next day early than those journalists. They reached in the late morning. Now all was set for Ahmad appearance, making a show of it.

   “Then I heard a jingling sound. A sound as though a harlot coming to the party to dance.

   And then they entered. Ahmad and his son twirling the corner of the balcony, with policemen behind each of them, clenching their restraints. Their restraints like the bells of cows returning home in the evening with their owners grabbing hold of their ropes. Their clothes were tattered, their bodies a patchwork of improvised bandages and festering wounds. Ahmad was a lanky man with a flowing beard. His nose was like the hawk’s beak. His colour a dark brown. His hairline receding. And his son, hardly even fifteen years old, was as dark as night in short.

   “Ahmad took a seat on a chair, wincing as if nails had been driven into the chair. His face and forehead all bruised. His son seated next to him, his father towering over him.

   ‘Take us through the whole thing, Ahmad.’ A journalist demanded him, scribbling something on his pad.  ‘What had you done to Saeeda.’

   Ahmad gave him a tired look, a look of absolute disgust. Beads of sweat ran down his temples. He then crooked his index finger and wiped the beads off his wounded brow. Cleared his throat and said, his voice came out as very hoarse: ‘I was digging out roots of poplar trees, which my neighbour had allowed me in return of getting his trees cut. That’s how we live. Cutting trees of others and getting their roots in return, burning them as fuel. Sometimes they pay us a little. I also even sell my buffaloes’ milk. Anyway, I had been working till late morning, when I saw three young little girls. They tried to climb a Mulberry’s tree, but couldn’t. Started hurling stones at fruits, but nothing so much fell. That’s when I sensed the opportunity. I reached a cunning plan. I always do come up with cunning plans, except this time, which turned out to be my bad luck. Anyway, I came up to the girls and picked out a beautiful chubby girl, whose arms were as fat as the two other scraggy girls’ arms combined. Thus, I knelt before her and asked her if she would like to go with me to my house, where I had plenty of not only mulberries but also strawberries and mangoes jammed into a tin box. She smiled a beautiful smile, and that’s what I hate the most. I hate beauty. I want to eradicate it from its root. She then nodded her consent. Thus, I took her finger and led her towards my house, leaving the other two in the air of unfairness.’

“Ahmad got a bit tired by describing a long story the way I am now.” Dada said, stretching. He belched, putting his fingers across his mouth, rubbing his eyes to ward off sleep. “The rest I will tell you tomorrow. You will have to go to school as well” But on our persistent insist, he said: “okay, okay. I will finish it. Keep your calm. Where was I? Oh yeah. After that Ahmad sighed and went on.

   ‘I swung the door open to our house, where my son was putting some fodder before our buffaloes. On the sight of the girl, I felt my son mouth become watery. I winked at my son. I pointed the room to the girl, and walked her towards it, my son trailing behind. I unlatched the door and stepped into the room. Once we were inside, the girl immediately sensed something different. She must have smelled the odor of blood. As a matter of fact we can’t, we can’t smell the odor in our room, as we are well accustomed to it now. Anyway, I saw her cringing. Her eyes flited around the room and that’s when she caught sight of a mutilated head directly staring at her. She surely was forming a scream, but it couldn’t get out. At last she shrieked with such a force, I thought she would rip open her throat. My son quickly rushed toward her with rag and silenced her second shriek before it came out. He then tied up her hands behind her back. I was poking my ear, which was ringing due to her piercing shriek. I grinned down at her, tears of mercy streaming down her cheeks. She was still shrieking all the same, but this time with muffled ones. I wanted her to scream, if it hadn’t been for the neighbours, who could hear her screams. I wanted her to beg for mercy.

   ‘She buckled to her knees. We left her that way, tying even her feet together. We cleared the room of everything: daggers, axe, and a pair of scissors. We didn’t want to risk anything, leaving her with any of such thing. We left the room, latching the door behind her.

   During early evening, we reentered the room, my son with a lantern in his hand. She lay still on the ground, no muffled screaming, no begging for mercy. I jabbed her in her ribs and thought she’s dead. But then at the same time, dead or alive, either one serve the same purpose. But when I closed in, I saw specks of dirt flying by her ragged breath. I turned her over. She slowly opened her eyes, all groggy, not responding much. And that’s good. Makes my job easy. I drew the dagger out of its sheath, put it to the girl throat. I moved the dagger back and forth on her throat with such force as if I was moving a saw on a hard thick wood, my face splashing with her blood. She breathed so hard as if something had clogged her throat. Sprayed my face with fresh blood every time she breathed. She kept breathing hard, her throat slit in two, until she was motionless. My son was expert at the rest of the job. We wanted to make a dinner of her meet.

   ‘It was until later, when I realized I had made such a stupid mistake, leaving those two girls behind, as a witness. I became aware of the villagers’ search for the girl. Thus We stuffed the girl remains in the middle of the house and put dirt over them. We left, all along with our stuffs, before late midnight.

“Why would you do such an inhumane act?, I remember one of the journalists asked him. And Ahmad replied: ‘Hunger makes you inhumane. Makes you forget about moral values. For instance look at this man.’ He pointed with his beard at the man in police uniform. ‘How his belly is straining against his shirt. He must have gotten fat by taking so much bribery. I saw anger flashing across the face of policeman. He lifted his baton all the way back over his shoulder and landed it on the side of Ahmad’s shoulder. Ahmad didn’t even so budge as though the baton was just an ant’s bite to him. ‘Both literal and figurative drinking of people’s blood are the same.’ These were his final words as I can recall.”

I had to pee so badly and didn’t think I would hardly make it to the bathroom across the house. The story had aroused in me an unfamiliar terror and shook the words out of my mouth: “Dada, I am afraid you will have to accompany me to the bathroom.” He pushed the blanket away and wrapped his shawl round his body and held my finger to walk me out. “Your stories don’t have any morals.” I thought of my story books on the way down to the bathroom, which contained so many stories like thirsty crow and greedy dog which surely did have moral lessons at the end.

   He broke out in a suppressed laugh on my remark, for he knew his outburst into a laughter could awake others in the house.

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