Another plate crashes on the floor, making slightly less noise than the voice screaming over it. It’s one of those days again. I hear him screaming and shouting on the top of his lungs, bashing through every single thing he might come across in the room. It’s all in one miserable flow, and the pattern of these events do not differ from the one that has already occurred.
First, sounds of argument come into existence.
Second, the voices..correction “voice”..the voice starts to touch its highest pitch.
Third, the shouting takes the lead with a complimenting crashing sound of something. It is probably glass or something that would make a mess, a sound, and a profound and unbearable painful mess.
Fourth, a scream coming out through a flow of tears and pain.
Fifth, silence.
Another great long gloomy silence. I often analogize it with rainy weather. You see the clouds forming, changing their color from white to black; at times you see them filling extensively in the sky. You hear the grumpy sound of the clouds roaring and sense the storm that will possibly come. Then the rain pours down on the ground making everything weep with the loud noise of the water droplets. In between lightning strikes and after all of this, there’s complete silence.
The only problem with this analogy is this that, when it rains you see everything clearer: the sun rises, and everything seems clean. However, in the event I talked about earlier, when you hear that silence it’s not peaceful, the sun doesn’t rise there, and things don’t seem clearer. That silence is sorrowful.
I hear her crying outside her kitchen door. I hear her struggling to breathe through those crying hiccups. I hear it with the intervals of time; I don’t see it, but I hear it. And only hearing it makes me shiver and think about the brutality she goes through.
Later, I sometimes see her walking down the street alone in the dark, wearing a long veil all over her covering her bare skin. She walks in a lifeless manner but immediately fixes her posture as she senses someone walking by her. It’s been years, and I haven’t seen her face up close. The only way I know her is through the helpless sobbing I hear of hers and the shadow I see of her while she walks outside every night.
On one of these nights, as I watched her; pitying her condition, I decided to get out of my cowardliness and actually go out and talk to her about it.
“It’s something in his blood,” she said. “His father’s best defence and protection for me were putting those marks on my body and making me plead and suffer. It’s ironic though how he..my little boy used to wipe my tears with his small bare hands at one point and now those small tiny hands cause those very tears that he once did wipe.”
A sigh from both sides.
I sat there numb in a process of understanding what I just heard and my eyes just stared at her with some question that I couldn’t word at that time. She laughed. She laughed with her watery eyes. “I know what you’re thinking,” she declared. “I had no one to rescue me…I wish I were brave enough to do that myself..but..” Some unpleasant thought interrupted her speech, and she began to walk to her residence. I still sat at the corner of the street silently. “If I could I would,” she justified as she left my sight.
Several brutal nights passed away, and the noises grew louder, the violence grew stronger and the screams got suppressed longer than ever. Until one night she got mercy from all of her misery in the form of death. That night, I heard the silence again. This silence was mournful. That night, I didn’t hear anyone sobbing, I didn’t see any lifeless being walking down the street. That night I heard nothing, but I saw a funeral. Yet no crying, no guilt, no begging for forgiveness was heard. Not even from the oppressor.
There was a calm. An uncomfortable calm. Not the kind which brings you at peace but more like a calm before the storm.
After a few days, to my surprise, I started hearing all of those noises again. I heard the screams again; I heard the sobbing again. This was different though. It was more brutal. It was a child that was being beaten. It was evident from the screams. It was all over again.
My coward self just existed to the next door, hearing every single violence that was being conducted on some innocent. I didn’t dare see it, but I heard it. I heard it every single time, and I closed my curtains maintaining some sort of privacy that I thought I owned.
“I had no one to rescue me…if I could, I would…” Her words kept knocking for help on the door of a coward man. But still no sign of rescue.
On one of these nights, I saw a rather small shadow of someone sitting on the corner of the street moving back and forth with some sort of panic. She had a swollen eye and uncountable bruises on her face. “Sick bastard!”, I thought to myself. What kind of a sick human does that? Beat the crap out of a five-year-old for god knows what reason! I disgustingly talked to myself.
A few days later, another great mournful silence followed. Another funeral set someone’s soul free. Again, there was no crying, no guilt, no begging for forgiveness.Not even from the oppressor.
A sigh.
I saw the oppressor on the following day, and I dared to look at him directly in the eye. I saw no guilt, I saw no shame, I saw no tears. I saw a dreadful, sick, brutal man, with no dignity and humanity. But something that I saw in him was a reflection of myself. There was no difference between us. He was the oppressor, he was a murderer, he was a man with no guilt, he was inhumane and he was a coward who knew no other way.
And I…? I don’t differ a lot from him because I was the oppressor too, every time I drew my curtains close on hearing that violence, I committed an act of violence too. Every time I overlooked that lifeless shadow of a dying woman, I committed a murder too. Every time I heard them crying through their struggles, I was a coward too. Being in a position of helping someone and not rescuing them… I was inhumane too.
How do you preach humanity? How do you teach a human to act humanely? How do you tell yourself to be human? How do you stop violence? How do you make a change?
Dedication: The victim might be losing the war, but they’re always hoping for a rescue. No one likes to be beaten. No one likes to be disrespected. Everyone wants a rescue. If you’re in a position to help someone, then do it. You might be the last life-saving boat they have while they’re drowning. “If I could I would…” If YOU can, YOU should. There’s no ‘if’. YOU can and YOU should. Humanity must always come first!
