Read it Live
dedicated to promoting budding poets, writers and bloggers

The dim yellow light from the lamp skeptically spread across the cold, dark room. I sat at the desk with my hand magically sliding over the snow white paper with an ink wand. That’s what I lived for, for recording the twists and turns of my life in the curves of an S, the highs and lows in the rise and fall of an M, the mistakes made over and over in the perfect circle of an O. Yes that is all I lived for, to see words coming together and coming to life.

I switched off the light as I heard steps approaching my bedroom door.
“Reeha, are you there?” my mother slowly knocked and whispered through the keyhole.

I waited a few seconds before I answered in a thick, sleepy voice that, by now, I was an expert at faking, “Yeah…sleeping ma.”

“Oh, okay. Sleep well, dear,” she said, feeling sorry she’d woken me up.

I waited to hear my mother’s bedroom door softly click shut. I would normally have turned the light on and continued to write but I didn’t feel like it tonight. I thought I heard an owl hoot outside, though owls were not found in this part of the world. I looked at the moonlight that sieved through the frosted window and fell on the Persian rug, animating its patterns. The moon was barely visible through the long, bare branches of the tree that grew outside the window. It was that hour of the night when the Sandlewood Girl would wake up and everything would come to life. The trees transformed into monsters, dancing in the wind with long, thin, shriveled fingers reaching out as if to strangle you. And then I thought I heard a cock crowing. “Nocturnal idiot!” I tried joking with myself. A cock crowing…what for? Betrayal or a change of weather? But the weather wasn’t changing, it was dead cold outside and it was supposed to remain dead cold for many more days to come.

I sat there in the darkness, my elbow resting on the cold, almost wet surface of the table and my chin resting on my hand, remembering the first time I had written a story. I was ten years old when I came running up to my mother and showed her the creased scrap of paper I’d written it on. It was about the colour Red. If I thought a little harder maybe I could recall it all, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to forget the story and my mother’s angry face forbidding me to ever write again- the fear in her eyes that I did not understand until many years later.

All through my academic life, my mother did everything in her power to keep me from writing; I was made to join a sports club, a cooking club, a stitching centre, a gym; to participate in public activities, protests, walks, rallies, fund raising, working in NGOs and finally to take up Interior Decoration, a career that was furthest from any form of writing. But the harder she tried to stop me, the more the forbidden fruit tempted me. So I started writing at lunch break during school hours, through the long bus rides home, in those precious few hours when I was sometimes left home alone, at work whenever I could manage some time. And, of course, at night, when everyone slept.

And then I became addicted to it.

I could not survive unless I had some sheets of paper and a pen ready in my bag. I used to attend social gatherings where I would be writing something on a piece of paper under the table whilst having a conversation. I’d have full stories written at the back of my books, on the plastic covers of my notebooks and sometimes even on my forearm. I gave myself to writing as freely as sand gives itself to the washing wave. I would marvel at the way words would come together and make sentences. The sentences would then dance and rearrange themselves into a pattern, forming a story. I would relish seeing words, like individual knots, coming together to weave a story. Each knot, each word, insignificant on its own, yet absolutely essential for the others. I would wonder at the beauty of those slants and curves that could record something as transient as life itself and immortalize it. I made writing my sanctuary from this world of chaos and helplessness and sought refuge in the one where I controlled everything.

And here I was today, 27 years old, a published author with four books including a best seller to my name, hiding from my mother! I couldn’t tell her that those books she loved, the Rubina Shah she admired for her writing, was her own daughter. I wanted to share my world with her, to tell her about the ideas that dwelled in my head, about the characters I’d been busy creating, about the stories I’d been busy writing. I wanted nothing more than to tell her the truth the day my first novel was published, or the day when the fourth one became a bestseller. Oh, how I’d wanted to end this game of hiding and lying the day she said to me, “There’s something about the way this woman writes, I feel like she knows me.”

I thought it was the most unfair thing for my mother to do to me. To keep me from sharing with her what I was most passionate about and, consequently, keep herself from feeling pride and joy at my achievements. When I was young, I sometimes thought of her as the book eating monster. I would be speechless when she would say things like, “I won’t take you to Joyland if you still have that pen in your hand after you’re done with your Math homework,” or “I’ll stop giving you pocket money if I see you spending it on books!” I waited for years for her to explain to me the reasons for her intense dislike for writing but that was a topic not open for discussion. I needed answers to questions I could never ask.

I was 20 years old when I could wait no longer. I went to the only other person I knew would know it all, my aunt, my mother’s sister.

I swore her to secrecy and asked her why my mother disapproved of writers so strongly.
She answered my question with a question of her own, “Reeha, what do you know about your father?”

I thought that was irrelevant. “I know a lot about him. I don’t remember him quite well but I’ve seen plenty of pictures. People tell me that I look a lot like him. I know he was 15 years older than mom; they got married when he was 36 and had me when he was 37. And that he was a writer.” She was right, I didn’t know a lot about him, but how could I? He died when I was five and my mom never talked about him.

“Do you know how he died?” my aunt asked me softly. I could see that glint of sadness in her eyes.

“Brain hemorrhage,” I said, pausing a little as if to consider the truth of the fact. “That’s what mom told me.”

“Yes, she didn’t lie to you. He did die of brain hemorrhage. But he died because he wrote.”

I thought that was the silliest thing anyone had ever said, even sillier than my mom’s disapproval of writing. Then my aunt told me my story, the greatest of all the stories I’d ever heard or written.

“Sarfaraz was a very nice man. When Ayesha married him, everyone thought it was a match made in heaven. For the first year, they were like all newlyweds…happy. Until Sarfaraz started writing. We saw Ayesha becoming unhappier by the day. He wrote and wrote non-stop. He wouldn’t talk to anyone, he would sometimes not leave his room for days, he wouldn’t sleep at night and sometimes he wouldn’t eat for days because he didn’t have time. He had to write! In that short span of five years, he published ten novels and a collection of short stories. His ever increasing fame and wealth did nothing but break my sister’s heart, whom he had claimed was the one and only love of his life. Ayesha knew that wasn’t true, the demon that had taken over him was his only love. Reeha, have you ever looked into the eyes of a madman?”

But she continued with a cold sigh before I could answer, “Sarfaraz fell sick when you were four. We didn’t know what was wrong with him. The doctors said he thought too much, his mind was clattered with more than it could handle. They said he lived multiple lives simultaneously; he lived the life of each one of his characters. Sarfaraz said he needed to write; he needed to give life to the voices he heard inside his head. He would get up in the middle of the night and scratch words on the wooden bedside table. He talked in his sleep. He talked about Demons and Fairies and creatures far removed from reality. Sometimes he’d start laughing when he was sitting all alone. He started calling you Sally, the little girl in the novel that he could never complete. The doctors kept him in an isolated room, far from books and pens and papers. They didn’t allow him to write. They said it could kill him. I think it was the other way round. What killed him in the end was not writing, but the fact that he couldn’t. Reeha, he wasn’t fit to live in this world anymore, he’d made too many of his own.”

The cold draught coming through the crack in the window jolted me back to reality. I pulled my shawl closer around my shoulders and tucked my feet under my legs. So that’s why mom hated even the possibility that I wrote. She couldn’t stand being second on her daughter’s priority list as well. I could understand then. I could understand that fear I’d seen in her eyes when I’d shown her the story about the color Red. But why was I being punished for mistakes my dad had mad? How could my mother be so sure if I started writing, I’d turn out like him? There were a million writers in the world; everyone did not lose their mind. I knew I was obsessed with writing but I wasn’t going my father’s way. I knew I would never put anything before my mother. I had been a good daughter and a good companion to her through all these years. If I had proven myself to be good at both, being a writer and her daughter, why couldn’t I come clean about it?

I was sick of living multiple lives. Was that not what happened to dad? I knew writing would not drive me crazy, but if I continued living this life of guilt, I would surely lose it. My mother had her fears, which were understandable given her experience, but she also needed to accept what I had chosen to become. I had chosen to take up my father’s occupation but I wasn’t going to become my father and she needed to know that.

I switched on the lamp and put away what I was writing. I pulled out some new sheets from the drawer and wrote the title of my next book: To Mom, With Love…

Chapter One:

‘I’m tired of living a lie. I cannot be both Reeha Sarfraz and Rubina Shah. I am Reeha, 27. And I’m a writer!’