By: Muhammad Faheem
It was early spring when the campus was all carpeted with red silk cotton flowers: as red as the cheeks of a bride on nuptial night. The sun rays were reflecting while hitting the petals of the red blood flowers on the ground. There was a professor of fair height crossing the last phases of his third decade of life with a lock combed to the right side of his forehead wearing a vase coat and shalwar kameez with traditional shoes. It was he, the professor, who was explaining to his book-worm pupils how to be stylish in language by shedding light on various aspects of language use, style and stylistics.
While writing on the whiteboard, he heard the rustling sound of flowers. In the meantime, the door swung open and a gust of wind blew into the classroom along with the scent of Gucci in the form of a cool breeze followed by a statuesque lass. “May I come in, sir”, she said. “But you are already in” the professor replied. The lass raided like a cop sat in the front row and attacked the young professor with a bunch of naughty questions that made him blush yet make a wide smile. “Ah! Here you are indeed asking the right questions, but at the wrong time for I have already taught what is bothering you”, he said. She murmured taking her torn register out of her purse.
By the end of the lecture, when the professor opened the register for the names to be called, his gaze sat upon her like a dove over the nest. She was embroidered with aestheticism– the angels employed all the art and craft skill. Dupata was hanging over her face touching her pointed nose like clouds curtained over the crescent moon in dense winter nights. Peeking through the pores of her cotton staller, “Oh professor, you didn’t call my name. Ain’t a part of the class?” she uttered. She was a shrew in tone yet the mellifluous sound like a nightingale fainted the professor stuttering in response said, “You are a new face here, aren’t you?” “Yeah, I’m. It’s my first day here with you.” She replied. Professor murmured and asked, “What can I call you, madam?”
“I’m called Zara from Adina. A village steeped in history and tradition, the shawls of which are printed with red dots having a history and mystery in itself depicting bravery.” her presence in the English Literature class added a layer of diversity to the discussions. Tall and fair with piercing pop eyes, she possessed an ethereal beauty that enchanted the Professor and shackled him from the very first day.
Zara was the only girl in her village who belonged to a well-read family; her father, Mr. Ali, was a renowned medical practitioner and businessman in the United Kingdom. Her family—two sisters and two brothers—were like characters from a Brontë’s novel, each with their hidden desires and unspoken longings.
The professor went home and by midnight having a mug of doodh patti chaye in his hand opened The Hungry Tide novel and started reading it. The novel discusses the story of first-sight love which happened at a Delhi railway station where Kanai falls for Piya in his first sight. Professor couldn’t think of Adina’s lass for a while. She was lying over his mind like a groom on his red bed waiting for his bride “Mooh Dekhai” on a nuptial night. His fingers were touching the pages, but couldn’t consume lexemes of it for he was entirely lost in her thoughts imagining her out of the window smiling at him; indeed, it was the moon whose light was sparkling like that of Zara.
The professor, a man of letters and quiet contemplation had always found solace in the dusty corners of libraries. Being an emeritus professor, his tweed jacket bore the weight of countless hours spent deciphering cryptic manuscripts of linguistics. Chomsky was more than a dad to him. English was flowing like the currents of a river or hungry tides at night. He was a man of routine, a creature of habit until the day he met her.
Zara, the enigma that would unravel his carefully woven existence, glided into his life like a sonnet whispered by the moon. She was a vision—a tempest of contradictions. Her fair, porcelain skin seemed to absorb the sunlight, casting a soft glow upon her features. Her eyes, oh those eyes! They were the colour of storm clouds, brooding and mysterious. When she spoke, her voice carried the cadence of forgotten ballads, and Professor found himself ensnared in their melodic web.
Days went by and the professor’s nights were getting worse while days tormented. Their interactions were fleeting yet profound. Zara’s essays danced between brilliance and melancholy, her words weaving tapestries of longing and loss. Professor left cryptic comments in the margins, hoping she would decipher the subtext—the yearning that transcended mere literary analysis.
One mist-laden evening, as the moon hung low like a silver lantern, Zara sat under the open sky to the moon reading Pride and Prejudice. From nowhere she took out her cell phone and texted the professor. “AOA, Professor. It’s me Bright. You remember it, right?”
Professor was suffering from a shivering fever panting when his phone buzzed. He dragged the message from above seeing that it was an unknown contact and put his cell phone under his pillow. The man who always taught his people to refrain from what he was suffering. He made fun of love letters written by Keats to his beloved believing that it is not as practical as linguistics. A man who was once a bookworm is now a couch potato; a man who was a bookworm is now a thinking machine; a man who was a fighter fighting ferocious fighters in the field is now facing a fast fever and is on the bed. Professor’s mom knocked at his room and entered with a pale face like a storm fading away thatches from the ploughed fields. Putting her shaky cracked hands over the forehead of a professor “Oh my Hitler son! What’s bothering you?” she said.
Professor replied wearing a wide smile on his face, “Neither doctors nor their medicines treat me; indeed; I’m suffering from an incurable disease which set a tone to my last breath.”
“Shut your filthy mouth up and go for an Alp with a glass of hot milk and only complete bed rest can make you stand again.” The old mom replied with a mourning voice.
“Mama, there is only one person who can treat me, but she will never do so because if someone once comes to know that you can’t live without them, they will never let you live,” the Professor replied. His mom left the room angrily. After the phone buzzed a couple of times repeatedly, he took it out suddenly losing his marbles and opened it. He saw that there were a couple of messages from an unknown number, but they made his night. It was like Gabriel brought him the revelation of his beloved. Since he was a stylistician, he could inhale the scent from lexemes of messages that statuesque Zara.
“I shall be absent for a week on behalf of my elder sister, a biochemist, marriage to aunt’s brother-in-law; you too are invited if you could make out sometime, but I do know you won’t join us due to your busy schedule,” She said. The statement was as a rocket fired over Gaza from Israel that devastated his heart into pieces.
It was morning again as usual when he attended the class standing to board like a body dragged from the casket. The week went by and his health got even worse. It last Sunday came for which he was impatiently waiting as an infant for mama to be breast-feeded. He took a shower, wore a new dress from his wardrobe and sprayed a perfume named Gucci flora. It was around eleven when he left for Zara’s village Adina located in remote Sundarbarn village.
Professor was greeted by a young guy in his early eighteen with golden curly hair, tall heightened like a master copy of his sister. “Hi, sir. Myself is Basit, Zara’s bro.” the young lad uttered. Professor shook hands with him like lost in his world of thoughts “Oh yeah! How do you do, Basit? How is life treating you?”, the professor asked. The chitchat continued at a lunch table where Basit showed him and greeted the groom, and Zara’s father who had just come for the marriage ceremony of his beloved daughter from the UK accompanied by his little angel daughter of fifth grade and seven years old youngest son who were the Xerox copies of their father. Almost the entire family along with the professor was sitting at a ten-chair table gossiping and enjoying the meal.
A guy with a long moustaches and beard appeared from nowhere and said, “Good afternoon, dearest uncle.” Zara’s uncle introduced him as his only nephew further adding that he looked after him since he lost his dad when he was only five. In the meanwhile, he just opened up the discussion while biting chicken wings that would be an addition to his family as a son-in-law soon.
Professor engulfing the spoon of biryani hurriedly asked him for the word son-in-law choked in his.
“We were tying the wedlock of my daughter last night, we sweetened the mouth and named Zara after him. I shall be leaving soon for the UK and being the only breadwinner of the family and father of three daughters and two sons I had to release the burden from my head, and in my next visit back to Pakistan, we’ll be sending her off, Inshallah.”
After hearing his conversation, the professor’s body froze, his throat dried, and his hand took hold of the plate he was having the meal on. Since it was not less than a doomsday to hear that Zara was named after her cousin in a Jirga a night before.
The fork that the professor had in hand for the meal simply stabbed exactly over his Adam’s apple and the blood was running as a flood from his throat which made the entire table red. Worse and worse his voice grew murmuring on his cracked lips, “Zara, my supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Zara”.
In the meantime, Zara arrived with shouts on her pinkish lips like petals and grabbed the professor with red mehindi hands from falling on the floor. She put his hand in her lap stopping the blood from his throat with her Dupata but the blood-like flood was unstoppable. “What’s wrong with you young swain?” Zara asked. “You couldn’t become mine for you shall never become of him too; you were the world to me but your dad has put fire to my lil. World”, he uttered stuttering. After hearing this last message from the mad adorer, she grabbed a knife from the table cut her throat and said, “Oh my naïve mad lover, let God himself be our witness that I fulfilled my promise and hope to be meeting you in paradise eternally.”
