Cartoon

Muhammad Shuja crept into the room. As always the room was dark. For a second he thought of turning on the light, but then realized how his father gets distressed by lights, so he changed his mind. As usual, his father was sitting on the bed staring down at the floor. His white shawl hung down from his head and shoulders, touching the corner of the bed. A deep silence engrossed the room. This silence was not of peace; it was the silence of fear, a fear that’s felt just before or after someone’s death.

Muhammad Shuja came close to his father and crouched beside his bed. He placed his hands on his father’s withered and shaky hands and whispered, “Papa, please help me. Look how worried I am. What has happened to me? What kind of a disease is this? No doctor has a cure for it! When I try to tell people about it, they start laughing, as if I am telling them joked. But Papa, You are my father! You have known me since I was born. I am 50 years old now, why is this all happening to me now?”

“You know papa,” Muhammad whispered in his father’s ears, “I have a cartoon that lives inside me. A real, living cartoon. He sings he dances, jumps around, and makes funny faces. Papa he looks exactly like me, he has my features, my habits, and he suddenly appears within me from nowhere.” You know when I first saw him papa? It was when I was coming home from the mosque; I was reciting prayers on the chaplet that you had given me. Suddenly, he appeared before me and started clapping really hard. I felt that his tail grew longer and his face became like that of a monkey’s. It felt that he was mocking me; he said, “You pray so hard, but you still are a monkey, just like me.” It is true that I am a sinner, it is true that like all men I am a victim of my desires too, but I have suffered expedience, so I greed for luxuries and I tend to become showy. I know I have wronged others, and I have conspired against them and I that I have taken bribes. But don’t I also pray day and night?

And when I recite the Quran early in the mornings, he comes out of me and becomes a parrot. He then squawks at me and says that even if I read this book, I am still no different than a parrot. He tells me that I’ve got no interest in what the words in the book mean. Papa, when I fast, this cartoon becomes a worm in my empty stomach and beats it like a drum. He says that my mind is just as empty as my stomach. Papa, you tell me… if my neighbor goes to bed hungry, how is it me who is to be blamed? I fast because I seek the heavenly streams of milk. Please tell me papa, what does this cartoon want from me? Papa do you know what he did last night? Last night he brought a one-sided scale, and then started shouting at me. He said, “Your life is just a grocery shop” and then he burst out in laughter and vanished away. Then he reappeared as a demon and screamed, “One side of the scale weighs your prayers and the other, your demons.”

Papa I get very scared of him. Why don’t you say something, what do I do papa? How do I get rid of this cartoon inside of me? Please tell me.” Muhammad Shuja broke into tears.

A little later, his father lifted his head. Muhammad Shuja saw tears in his father’s eyes, as if he was struck by some deep sorrow. His father said crying, “Son, why are you asking me all this? When I am myself a…”

All of a sudden, Muhammad Shuja realized that his father’s face was just like that of the cartoon.