Adam And Eve

Ghulam Nabi Shakir

There is nothing that I can call my own.

The darkness moved a pace or two forward; the surroundings getting chilled still more. Heaving a long sigh, I looked towards the skies, into its limitless expanses; the refreshingly cool beauty of the eyes began scattering fire.

'There is nothing that I can all my own ... The wingless birds of my thought came back only to flap their wings around me.

The heat of my burning feelings parches my mouth dry at times, and sometimes I warm my chilled ice cold body with my breaths.

I am now grown angrily cold to my own self. Beyond this, my eyes cannot make out anything. This is due either to my eyesight having spent itself out or to the real picture of life being too dim for perception.

That is why I was running and thus came across many people; everyman being like me, all presenting to eyes a plight similar to one reflected on my face, my reflection in their eyes and that of theirs in mine. What can I do for them or what can my extended I expect from them?

"That very arid desert as far as your eyes go! The outcome of entire life nothing but a desert, and all this closing on me! I am moistening my parched lips with every drop of my blood: I am thirsty from the beginning of time.

I am all alone. There is nothing that I can call my own. The darkness moved two steps forward, and the surroundings are chilled further.

An age went by since I saw her. There opened a dent in the flint like breast of the night and the howling wind came in, and something like a shadow like flickered in the room.

I saw myself in her eyes. The pulse beats thousand of thoughts stopped and the environs throbbing with life fell lifelessly inert like a paralytic on its side.

"Come here, I will take you along”.

I held her silken pliant hands in my own as her words pierced my bosom.

"Come here, I will take you along.” she repeated.

"Where"? I did ask her a question.

It was the morning of a queer day, when she by no means knew what an evening was like, nor did l come to think of it on my part.

All our senses but one had fallen dead in the warm cozy bed belong to you and you are mine", a long chain of dreams and wing of the kohled eyes.

The cool refreshing soothing affection amidst a hot summer of marble-white body, and the fetters of the enchantment of black hair.

All this belongs to you, all this belongs to me

The darkness of night, the silent and tranquil moments, the scintillating stars, all these were witness to our mutual pledge.

We were passing our days like primordial human beings. The blind and lame of the society! Both of us laughed an uproarious laugh at the blind and the decrepit.

The dark and refreshing cool night was a magic-castle for both of us where it was impossible for anybody to tread.

One day as she set her nude being to be taken on the table, the familiar fragrance of her body left its piquancy in my blood. While my eyes blazed fire and my breathing quickened with the unwanted rapidity, our silent witnesses were watching us stealthily

The winds brought the tidings, a frightful scream made itself audible from the dark heart of the night, the silent and tranquil moments raised muffled but fear-stricken hue and cry. Sniffing my whereabouts, my senses nosed a queer hart odour, as if a son of mankind had set his toot in a fairyland

We cast our eyes on each other, I saw her nude existence. Something like some sense of outraged honour in a long passed historical character emerged in us; apprehending their pallid and shrivelled up faces, my blood boiled.

I pulled out from out of my bosom a hidden rusted sword and said to her, 'Don't you worry'. But again her naked existence came into my mind.

She, too, in all probability, was pointing to this. I hid her by wrapping the blanket of my own being around her, and heaved a sigh of relief

The surroundings were now all the more surcharged, all our guards were perturbed but eager to watch the pass we had come to.

From far off came the sound of a staff set for walking. The sound gradually neared and a weak man with a stoop stood close in the dark.

“What on earth are you doing this"? supporting his hand firmly on the ground, he said to me.

I cast a look on him from head to foot ... a black line of a shadow was there putting me the question.

"I am doing what Adam did to Eve".

“You are aware of what came of that”'? he said, raising his staff the air.

"I know that God's wrath descended on Adam"

"Do you then want that to happen again"?

"That will never happen again". I said.

"If the world is peopled by men like you. that will surely come to pass".

"But what do you think of this woman"?

I lifted the blanket of my being slightly aside, and there flew away the Eve beside me with a flutter in the shape of a sparrow, and I wrapped my lonely existence back. The black line burst out laughing at me.

The darkness of night, the icy chilling night.

There is nothing I can all my own. I am all alone. From far away I look deep into the pitch dark of the night, straining my eyes for something.

The burning heat of my feelings sometimes parches dry even the moisture of my mouth, and at times I warm my chilled ice cold body with my breaths.