The night of fear

“NATO's alliance forces say that its warplanes killed an unspecified number of civilians during a battle with Taliban forces…”
Click.

“…suicide bomber attacks a convoy of soldiers killing a French soldier and several Afghans…”
Click.

“…Bangladeshi cartoonist Arifur Rahman is detained on suspicion of disrespecting Muhammad through caricatures…”
Click.

“…Coming up next is Bollywood Blockbuster…”
Click.

“The New York Police Department denies a request by the President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to visit Ground Zero of the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York City…”
Click.

“…cyclist Floyd Landis is officially stripped of his win in the 2006 Tour de France and banned from competition for two years after an arbitration panel finds him guilty of doping during the 2006 Tour…”
Click.

“…Britney’s Ex wants legal expenses…”
Click.

“…Due to increasing rocket attacks aimed at Israeli civilians, The Government of Israel declares the Palestinian-controlled Gaza Strip an "enemy entity", and announces plans to cut utilities to the territory…”
Click.

“…the MTV pop icon of the year award goes to…”
Click.

“…Osama bin Laden calls on the people of Pakistan to rise up in a ‘holy war’ and overthrow…”

Click.

The tiny red light faded away, giving out a slight whine. The room was Silent again. And Black. Neither my chair, nor I were casting our shadows on the wall anymore. Another proof of my existence had succumbed to the darkness. With that effortless click, I had made the luminous screen instantly vanish into that darkness, taking away with itself, the images of a bearded man wearing a white turban and a clean-shaven leader in his black suit. But I hadn’t been able to kill all the images with the press of my thumb; they were still there, hovering around me in that dark room. In fact I could feel them hovering right above my head. A pair of bleary eyes, a naked orphan boy, a weeping widow, a dead baby in the arms of her splinter-ridden mother, the earth; red with dry blood, a burning vehicle of a Lebanese MP, a soldier’s mutilated body, and millions of refugees- they all crowded around me as images. I had seen such images in the past as well. They never cried or shouted, they just stayed; they just seemed to wait patiently for me to give them a thought, but every time I had desperately tried to ignore them. I did the same this time again. But they waited for me with a monstrous calm. I didn’t know what they wished from me; they just seemed to enjoy torturing me with their stillness, their eternalness.

I closed my eyes.

Black.

The sudden flash from the matchstick startled the darkness as I brought it close to light up my cigarette. An insect leaped up to the flame from a dark corner, but the flame died out before it could reach for it, and thus it went back into oblivion as rapidly as it had emerged from it.

Red bleary eyes, a naked red orphan boy, a red weeping widow, a red dead baby and millions of red refugees again appeared before me in the light of the glowing red butt.

I closed my eyes again. Black.

A Peaceful Silence had settled in the room. Only I seemed to be breaking the silence at regular intervals as I inhaled an air full of nicotine and exhaled it shortly afterwards, sending out a stream of smoke that blurred the images for a short while.

I opened the door to the balcony and stepped out. Only then I realized that it was night already, well past midnight. A slice of moon nestled cozily in the folds of the soft clouds shining gracefully in the night sky. A frivolous breeze was flirting with the trees, and made the trees blush and gossip among themselves; they swayed and danced daintily with the wind, and the tendrils below whispered in excitement. The gentle moonlight had colored everything on the ground in white. The houses were all quiet; their inhabitants were by then the audiences in the distant theater of dreams. The prevailing serenity was occasionally stirred up by the howl of a starving street dog or the sudden activeness of a cricket.

While coming back in I left the door to the balcony ajar, and through it the soft moonlight came in, wading past the thick air of nicotine, and creating a long trapezoidal white block on the floor. It fell on the curtains and a suffused white light fought its way to the darker corners of the room, busily cleaning up my dark world. Now I could see the time on the wall clock, ten past one; and next to it hang a poster from Andy Warhol’s contemporary art exhibition, and then below it, just above the old gramophone, was a miniature version of Dali’s The Persistence of Memory that I had cut out from an old art magazine. To the other side was my bookshelf with a photo of Tagore placed on it, and farther away was a photo of Che Guevera – a gift from a Leftist friend of mine who had seen some hopes in me. I went up to the old gramophone, something that I had inherited from my grandfather. After rummaging through the pile of records I placed one of Yehudi Menuhin’s disks on the gramophone and positioned myself in the comfort of my armchair. Soon the divine melody of the music started to have the soothing effect that I was looking for.

The music continued playing. Black again. Images flashed behind my closed eyelids. Unknown humans. I couldn’t identify any of them. They were all walking down the stairs, silently and despondently, into a dark chamber. They didn’t talk; they never looked at each other. Their dull swollen eyes had only fear in them. Behind them came a group of people, brandishing whips and sticks. Some were dressed in white, proudly displaying the bizarre religious insignias that they carried, and the others were dressed in black coat, with lapel pins, white collars and cufflinks. They all went down the stairways and shut the door firmly behind them. Then suddenly there was a bleating of a goat from the staircase above. A milky white goat appeared. It was a strange sight indeed. It could walk on its hind legs, quite erect like a human, and wore the black robe of a judge, complete with a gray judge’s wig through which its stunted horns stuck out. White strands of beard that hang down from its chin and curled up a bit towards the end gave it an old and wise look. It climbed down the staircase, with an air of dignity, and walked about majestically with its front legs clasped behind its back, seeming somewhat concerned and thoughtful. It walked up to the closed door that lead to the underground chamber, placed its goat-ear against the wooden door, sighed and looked around vacuously for a moment, and finally turned around and went back up in remorse silence. The sound of its footsteps got fainter and fainter, and I could once again hear Menuhin’s tranquil violin. It was wading down the waxy ear canals, tickling the little hair that came in its way, and beat softly against the eardrums, then transferring itself over to the footplate of the stapes, pressing against the fluid-filled ducts of cochlea, stimulating the ganglions to fire, and finally whizzing past all old memories and dark secrets, dashing aside many images and wandering thoughts, searching zealously for its destination- the mind. I wished I could help it in finding my mind, but alas, I myself hadn’t ever figured out in which corner of my six feet body it housed itself- in my head to control all my thoughts? In my heart to make it heavy? Or in my eyes to let me appreciate beauty? Or was it in the larynx to help me speak out? Perhaps in my bile and stomach to send out occasional pangs of hunger? Or in some flaccid organ to arouse my lust? Or did it always wandered around ceaselessly inside the mortal body that had trapped it for a lifetime?

The music had stopped playing abruptly; instead there came a shrill cry for help reverberating from all corners of the room. It was followed by more wails, more screams, and more noise. Sudden announcements shattered the web of melody and they ran amok inside the room, bumping against the walls and the objects, and getting even louder and louder: “...a suicide bomber attacks a convoy..... warplanes killed an unspecified number of civilians..... Ground Zero of the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York..... to rise up in a ‘holy war’...... increasing rocket attacks aimed at Israeli civilians.....Congolese flee from rebel forces.....the high school teenager went on a shooting spree.....Sri Lankan soldiers carried out an air-raid....effigies of the cartoonist were burned in the streets.....Red Cross is alarmed at the growing.....the World Bank has decided to.... the Darfur crisis.....elections held amidst widespread violence....”

Once again I could hear Menuhin playing his violin, but this time it wasn’t the soothing note, it was now fast and violent. Perhaps it wasn’t Menuhin. It was too bold, too aggressive. The notes crashed and thumped on the walls of my room like huge spiteful waves of an angry sea. They crashed and again rose back in tempo to strike with even greater force, like a gale in the mid seas. I sat up straight with my eyes wide open, partly with fear and partly in astonishment; still trying to overcome what I initially thought to be a hallucination. I watched the gramophone stylus as it incessantly produced colorful solid blocks of notations from the grooves of the record, which immediately flew off into the air and hovered above head. A host of red, yellow, green and blue G-clefs, quavers, minims, semibreves and crotchets were gliding inside the room, and some of the restless ones zoomed past my face like blind bats, flying in random directions and jostling against each other. Long strands of black ribbons appeared from a dark corner, shining brightly in the moonlight. They glided through the room like serpents. Five of the ribbons arranged themselves in parallel and were slowly encircling me. And then for each of them, one of their ends started to descend down, forming a helix around me. I stood there perplexed, with the five parallel helixes forming around me. When the ribbons had completed forming the staff, the notations rushed in mad frenzy to occupy their positions on them, they arranged themselves, and rearranged again, and constantly fought among themselves to retain their occupied positions. I looked around me and surveyed the colosseum, full of noisy notations that cheered and screeched. And I realized that I stood amidst them as their gladiator. I wondered who my opponents were- perhaps some wild beasts; agile leopards or hungry lions. Maybe even Death himself.

The vertical shafts were raised and I waited to find out my opponents, and then they stepped out one by one from the darkness. I could see that I knew them well; they were familiar faces… a scrawny man with a pair of bleary eyes, a naked orphan boy with coarse disheveled hair, a weeping widow with misty red eyes, a soldier without arms, a crippled girl, and behind them stood many more blurred faces. They all were moving closer to me. I felt a sharp pain in my throat; it grew more intense; something was strangling me. I felt my neck and my throat with my hands but couldn’t find that invisible noose, and I knew by then that I wasn’t going to win the fight. I got choked, froth appeared in my mouth, my nostrils dilated in a frenetic effort for more air, my body convulsed, blood gushed out from my gaping mouth, my eye balls were almost popping out of their sockets, the whites had turned blackish blue; they perhaps looked double their size, and the veins in them burst opened, spilling out blood. I swiveled in a last desperate attempt to fight my invisible adversary, and gave a violent jerk. There was a loud noise, but I didn’t have the ability left to decipher its origin. I felt the grip relax slowly. I lay on the floor unconscious, gasping fiercely for air.

At dawn I felt warmth on my closed eyelids. I opened my eyes and saw the gentle morning sun in the eastern sky, perched above the bonsai trees of my balcony. Surprisingly I didn’t feel any pain; there wasn’t any sign of a struggle either. The poster of Andy Warhol hung in its place on the wall, the Dali miniature hang below it. Tagore was on the bookshelf, and Che Guevera was holding onto his position with a defiant look. The clock was ticking away. The record cover showing the master holding his violin lay peacefully on the desk. Everything stood as it was before, except for the gramophone that lay broken on the ground. The dented horn had rolled off behind the chair. The diaphragm, the springs and the needle lay scattered on the floor; the broken wooden casing rested against the desk. At a distance lay the tranquil piece of work of a great artist, fragmented in two.