In the evenings, after the day's work was over, Shabbu would sometimes step outside the village for a short while simply to ease his mind. But whenever he did, his mother would insist that he return home early. Perhaps that was why he hesitated to go beyond the village or stayed away for only a little while. Her words had become deeply etched in his mind. Whenever he sat outside for more than ten or fifteen minutes, he would immediately remember his mother's warning: "The times are bad. Come home."

He often sank into the depths of his thoughts and wondered what his mother was really trying to tell him, something he had been unable to understand. "Am I doing something wrong?" he wondered. He examined himself carefully, searching his own conscience. Then he said to himself, "No... there is nothing like that..."
"Believe me, I am no better than a prisoner. Whether the sun rises or sets, it makes no difference to me... I have hardly ever been able to observe the world outside. Meeting friends is out of the question. Even visiting my maternal uncle or aunt is forbidden to me. I only manage to go to school two or three times a week. The rest of the time, I am confined within these four walls. And whenever I dare to speak... the answer is always the same: the times are bad."
These thoughts gradually took root in Shabbu's mind and made him increasingly stubborn. There was a noticeable change in his behaviour. He began to argue more often and to doubt everything. So much so that he even began to question his mother's affection for him. He desperately wanted to escape the suffocating atmosphere of that prison... far away, very far away, into open spaces where he could breathe deeply with his arms wide open.
Meanwhile, this sudden change in Shabbu's behaviour left his mother, Reshmaan, deeply troubled. She became both agitated and anxious. Her greatest fear was that Shabbu might somehow discover that she was not his real mother. When Reshmaan had taken Shabbu into her care, she had placed her hand on the head of his real mother, Fatima, and sworn that she would never reveal to Shabbu the truth behind his father's brutal and inhuman death.
Reshmaan could never forget the helpless expression on Fatima's face, the face of a woman whose husband had been murdered with unimaginable cruelty. Perhaps that tragic scene would remain before her eyes forever: on a dark night, Ali, asleep in her arms, was riddled with bullets by a group of unknown gunmen.
Fatima had always cried out against the brutality inflicted upon her when, in a desperate struggle between life and death, she tried to take her wounded husband to the hospital. On the way, she came face to face once again with the same gunmen, who had been lying in wait. They watched as alertly as beasts of prey, determined not to let any attempt to save Ali succeed.
Fatima's final effort failed when they tore away the temporary bandages from Ali's wounds and kept dancing around him until all his blood had drained away. And so, Ali's lifeless body was finally left in Fatima's hands.
Fatima had always possessed the courage to face life's trials bravely. But what had happened to her was beyond her strength to endure. She had been robbed of everything; her entire world had been taken away from her.
Now she wanted only one thing: to see Ali live forever... immortal... Amar.
She wanted, at all costs, to protect the child growing within her womb, Ali's unborn child. Perhaps that was why, at the very moment of his birth, she entrusted Shabbu to Reshmaan, knowing that the child was Ali's last legacy.
Above all, she wanted Shabbu to live without revenge, to live a life free from hatred and bloodshed, so that violence and killing would finally come to an end. She wanted revenge itself to disappear from the world.
She knew what it meant to be a mother. She did not want any mother to have her child torn away from her. She did not want any wife to lose her husband. She did not want any sister to lose her brother.
She wanted only this: that her Shabbu should live like a human being, and nothing more than a human being... so that humanity might remain alive and Ali might remain Amar (immortal).

Email:------------------ yousufmir555@gmail.com