Am I a Good Man?
It was a different kind of day for the man. Wiping the tear
of his face as he had wept himself to sleep last night, he started to realize
that today had to be treated like any other day, to get over his recent loss.
He staggered out of bed and averted his eyes from the pictures of his young
daughter and all the flowers and sweets that he had received in the past few days.
Even though the man was always kept to himself, he had always cared about his
daughter, and with her mother passing away from an illness a year ago, he had
to be both parents to a lower-middle class family which he couldn’t afford. He
had recently started to doubt himself: am I a good man? Recently he had started
to feel as if his own doings had led to the ordeals he had been encountering. After
the passing away of his wife, he became cold, and stopped talking to his
neighbors, scolding his tenants for no good reason. He didn’t communicate with
his daughter as much after that and he blames himself for her passing away,
thinking that maybe it was the broken heart that took her away. But from now on
he had decided that he would change his demeanor, and have a friendly attitude
towards anybody he comes by. The man knew that he was trying to compensate, but
even so he felt that – no matter how strange it may sound – his arrogant
demeanor had led to a karmic retribution on his one and only loved one. And, so
after dressing up for the office, he set out foot of his door to be a changed
man.
The first thing he did after locking the door behind him was
to pull up ahead of his tenants trying to desperately flee from his line of
sight and give a big grin, and walked right past them without mentioning
anything about the mold growing in their apartment. He had noticed that
particular beggar in front of the bus stop, but in the mean streets of Islamabad
nobody gave a damn about the thousands of peasants with their hands stretched
out. This beggar had noticed this man didn’t pay for all this time, and in
contrast had snickered that the beggar’s shortcomings in life. Not that he wasn’t
grateful, but he didn’t like it one bit, as if it were some bad omen for a man
to change so quickly.
The man gave the beggar 100 rupees, and stepped on to the
bus with a big grin on his face. He felt that he was doing some good about his
recent endeavor. The bus to work was a long one, and it stopped on the way to
the inter-city bus station which was always jam-packed with people in this arid
environment. The sweat trickling down his forehead was like the man’s conscience
was being cleared. Then the man noticed a certain person sitting in front of
him wearing a jacket of all things he could in this weather. He didn’t think
much of it, but at the inter-city bus stop he paced frantically for the exit.
As soon as the doors opened, he was out in a dash but had dropped some sort of
device. The man, feeling as if this was another chance to redeem himself had
without a second doubt picked up the device and walked out of the bus to follow
the stranger.
*
The stranger sighed with a gasp of relief, it was finally
over. He had decided that it was enough, and even if suffocating with this
contraption stuck to his chest meant that he could be free, then so be it. He
decided that he would leave the city, the closest bus stop being a two minute
walk away. He knew what he was doing was unimaginably selfish, but he knew his
young sister would want him to escape and live the rest of his life in peace
and not for the remaining evening he had left in this world. The entrance to
the station was only a few steps away, and with every step he was second guessing
his decision whether to go through with his escape, which would inevitably lead
to her death but even if he were to go through with their instructions, there
was no guarantee that they would let her live regardless of his actions. Then,
at the foot of the entrance to the station, someone poked him from behind, with
his hands on his knees and panting furiously. “You dropped this!” he said
gasping for breath. The stranger looked at the device, and he knew. Although he
hadn’t lived for very long considering he only just became a teenager, he knew
that this was fate, and he was absolutely certain now that he couldn’t abandon
his sister. The boy replied, “yes thank you uncle for bringing this back to me”.
The man asked him “son, are you crazy that you are wearing a jacket in this hot
weather?” The boy smirked at the man and with a slight hint of anguish in his
voice he responded “I think I am”.
*
The stranger darted of in another direction without another
word, and the man lost sight of him in the hustle and bustle of the station. For
a young boy with such a big belly he sure walked really fast. The man realized
that the device he had picked up was a phone, as if it had been taken apart and
put back together with additional circuitry sticking out from the sides. One
thing that stood out was the beeping red light but the man didn’t care too much
for that as he felt that he had done his good deed for the day, even if it
meant being late for the office. So he waited for another 30 minutes to jump on
the next bus to work in the congested streets of Islamabad.
He reached his office, with an apologetic look on his face
to avoid being scolded by his boss and being coerced into doing extra work and.
But that didn’t happen. The boss looked at him with a look of agony on his face
and said “have you heard the news?” The man was surprised, he had never seen
his boss in such a fragile state. The boss took of his glasses with his
trembling fingers and looked away and pointed at the television screen in front
of them. “Look”. The man was terrified seeing his boss in such a state, but
then he realized that all his coworkers around him were looking at the
television as well and looking just as disgruntled as his manager. So he looked
up and was in shock at what he saw. Written on the bottom of the screen in
bold: THIS JUST IN. He saw the devastation that had been caused by what looked
like a suicide bombing. The manager, who couldn’t hold it in any longer,
whimpered “my wife was there…”. The others were in no better state.
Then it hit the man and he had all pieced it together. He
sat down slowly into his cubicle chair and realized the chain of events that
had occurred to reach this state. He walked out of the office and looked
frantically everywhere for the nearest police station. He knew what he had to
do, even if it meant that he would have to remain as a suspect. But he didn’t
care, his most prized ‘possessions’ had been taken away from him and he didn’t
want other people to suffer as well. If whatever he says to the police can help
to prevent this in the future, then so be it. He thought to himself and how
silly he had been for not realizing that whatever he had believed in was total
and utter bullshit. There was no karmic retribution, and after seeing what had occurred
on TV, he started to doubt his belief in God. He started to doubt his new
change in attitude and began to question himself, with one very important
question he had in mind.
“Am I a Good Man?”
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