My name is Rashid. I am in the 8rd standard. I go to the local government school . I am going to tell you a story. Once upon a time, there lived a boy. He lived with his father, mother and 3 sisters in a small house next to a big mango tree. We have a cow and a cat. The cow's name is _ and the cat's name is Chacki. Chacki likes to drink _s milk. He also eats fish. My father's name is Kunji Mohammed but people always call him Mammootty. My mother's name is Ayesha. And my sisters are Amina and Fatima. My father sells bed sheets going from house to house. Sometimes, I ask my father if I can go with him but he never agrees. My mother and eldest two sisters also go to work at some local homes to supplement my father's income. He doesn't like it but knows well that he doesn't bring in enough to keep us fed and clothed. So he lets them go. But they have to give him their salary the day they get it. He is very strict in that. My parents fight badly when my mother forgets to do this and is a few days late. It mostly ends up badly for my mother. She gets beaten by my father. And then she cries. I feel sad, but I know that if I went near her now, I would also get a share
We have lots of plants in our house. We have a mango tree, a coconut tree, lots of flowering plants and some vegetables that my mother grows. Mom will never let me into the vegetable patch because she thinks I will destroy the plants. At a certain time every year, all these plants will have fruit. Then, we get different curries with that vegetable in different forms. There will be pachadi, olathiyathu, mappas and a lot of combinations of the stuff readily available. I and my dad usually eat first, so there is not even a remote possibility that one of these things will get over and I won't have to eat it. Whatever, mother has made, I have to eat. i t gets better during festivals like Id or Ramzan. Then my father will buy meat. It is usually chicken or beef. Then the food is really tasty. Amma’s beef biriyani is very famous with everybody in the neighbourhood. Ramzan is also a time of good food. All the adults have to fast throughout the day and they can’t even swallow their spit. But that doesn't apply to me and my younger sister yet. So we sleep when the others get up in the morning to eat. And when we wake up their remaining food will be there. Who doesn't want to eat samosa and dates in the morning. And then we would go to school. There we would eat whatever Amma had packed usually rice and some curry that she had put together. And then when evening came we would go to the mosque to pray. I being a child don’t have to pray. Me and my friends just play around till the prayer gets over making sure our parents don’t see us. And then comes iftar. All the good stuff come out then. Sometimes, neighbours and relatives invite us to their house for iftar. And whoever makes it there is sure to be lots of variety
We have 2 months holiday once every year in April and May. In the beginning, all of my friends are here and we play all day. We play cricket and football in a small ground in our neighbourhood. Sometimes we even play Robber-Police and hide and seek. It is lots of fun in the beginning but then we start to get bored. And then people start going to visit their relatives. By the time it becomes May, almost all the other children have gone to live with their grandparents. But I can’t go like that because all my grandparents died before I was even born. My sisters who have met them tell me they were really nice. They would not scold you and they would buy you lots of chocolate and other nice things. They would even buy you new clothes for my sisters’ on their birthdays. They once even gave them some money to when my sisters went to the local fair for them to buy whatever they wanted.
Another big highlight of the summer holidays is mangoes. It is in May that mangoes become ripe. And if your house has a mango tree, you know what I am talking about when I say it is one of the best times of the year. And we certainly had a mango tree. And there was lots of flowers on it. But when the time came for the actual mangoes, there were very few mangoes. And a lot of the mangoes that did come had works in them. And some were too high up in the tree to be plucked. So we waited for them to fall down. We would then pick them up and give to our mother. She would peel it make it pieces and give it to us to eat. We would do the same for most of the mangoes even if some birds had taken a bit or two.
One Friday in May, we got a call from my grandfather's phone. Somebody was calling to tell us that he had had an accident. When he was walking down the street, a scooter had come and hit him. He fell to the ground and had been taken to the local private hospital. When my father heard this, he rushed to the hospital as fast as he could. The hospital staff told him that from the blood test they had conducted,they had a doubt if my grandfather had a growth on his leg and that they needed to do a scan.. We couldn't afford to take him into a scan at the private hospital and so my father and his father went to the Medical College hospital. They got the scan there. They said it would take some time and asked my father to come back to the room after and hour. My dad went to the canteen and bought his father his lunch and asked him to wait till he could go to the scan room and get the result. When he came back, I heard my dad talk about a man very sick man who was waiting outside the scan room next to him. My dad felt really bad for him and prayed to Allah to save him. He got the scan result and went to the canteen to eat his lunch. And then they went to the doctor. The doctor told them that the growth was nothing to worry about. And then they came home with this good news.
For the next few weeks, life went on like normal. We went to school, my dad went to try and sell the bedsheets and my grandparents lived happily. And then one day, my father got sick . First it was just a cold. And then he got a fever and seemed confusedThis was bad news though not a cause for concern. We had enough stuff at home to eat with my mother and sisters going to work and all. But when my father's sickness became worse we were worried. We didn't think he would die but it would take a lot of money to treat him. When his condition got worse on the 4th continuous day, we called the hospital. And they sent a group of people in white to take my father. It was one of the most frightening days of my life. And then we got the news. My father had the Red fever.
By then we knew what the Red fever was. It was all over the news and all the people in the district were very, very scared. Only about 10 or 20 people actually got the disease but the disease scare had basically turned out city and the surrounding areas into a ghost town. All the shops were closed, most people remained home and life generally came to a standstill. Our schools closed and we the children would have been sent to live with our relatives if we had anybody somewhere else. But we didn't, so we sat at home and watched TV or slept. I thought that it was very boring. But when it was discovered that my father had Red fever, life became worse. All of us children had not been near our father when he was sick. But my mother had. So when he was taken to the hospital, she was also placed under observation and the children were sent to live with our grandparents. When our parents were taken away, we the children were very, very sad. Yes, we had my grandparents, but our parents weren't there. The day the white men came will always be one of the worst days of my life.
My father had been sick for 4 days. And he was visibly getting worse. And my Dad also somehow knew enough to keep all his children away from him during the time of illness. Only my mother could go into the room in which he was lying. We were all very afraid of our father. He did not really have an issue beating us once in a while. So even in the time of his illness, none of us had enough courage to go into a room he had told us not to go into. Our mother seemed worried every time she came out of the room. Father’s condition was becoming worse. The first day he only had a cold. Then he had a high fever, and then sometimes would start shaking violently like he was possessed. We didn't see him in that situation. We heard the sound of the bed shaking and we called mother. She went into the room, took one look at him and called the hospital. Something tells me I am not missing anything. After some time, an ambulance pulled into our courtyard. A group of people dressed in white came out and went straight into my father’s room. And came out with my father on a stretcher. He looked very, very sick.His skin was white and he was considerably skinnier. I don’t know why mom didn’t call the hospital before. Not that that would have helped. Red fever has a very high death rate. That was the worst my dad would ever look and that was the last time we would look at him. They took him to the ambulance. And then asked my mother to get in. She had looked after my father. She also may have the disease. My mother called my grandparents, told them what was happening, asked them to come to the house and get us. Turning to us, she told my oldest sister to wait till our uncle's came and then go with them. Having said goodbye to her crying children for what could well have been the last time she would see them, she calmly turned around and got on the ambulance. Some women I have in my life.
My uncle and aunt came and took us to their house. Life changed drastically. Before, some people would come to our house every so often to talk to us. Even after the crisis situation started, people would at least call us from their relatives homes. Now even that stopped. It was as if we were the scum of the earth and talking to us even on the phone would spread the illness. I really did want to return the favour when they came to us during the flood time. But my mother is way too nice to allow me to do that. She says that judging is Allah’s work and we needn’t do it for him. Only Abdullah, my best friend in the world, called to even confirm if we were all right. He wouldn’t visit us of course but then who walks around with that kind of a death wish. Also he was at his uncle's place. And so we ended up being isolated from society in a ghost town.
We stayed with our uncle's family for quite a while. It was some of the worst days of my life. Both my parents had been taken away from me and I didn't know if I would ever see them again. Also nobody was willing to even look at us. Our parents were diseased and so were we. We dealt with it the best we could. That is to say, we sat at home and wept. I as a boy is not supposed to cry. But I couldn't really care less. Sadness was so deep that I could literally feel the pain. I didn't want to live anymore. I knew that I had to live for my parents and my sisters, but I didn't want to. I took a knife and cut myself. It felt so good. Not good, more like relieved. My emotional sadness was now physical. My aunt saw me bleeding and tied it up. We would normally just take me to a hospital. But not now. Nobody wanted to go to a hospital if there was a way around it. My uncle and aunt got really worried. So much that they took me to a shrine and got me blessed. I didn't want to go but there wasn't really any choice. Still, I argued and whined with my grandparents for a long time, but they had seen enough to decide that I was "possessed". And so they dragged me to the shrine. Having done this we came home.
The next day came with news. Good news. My mother was alright. By some miracle of Allah, She had not gotten Red fever. And she would come home the next day. This was a great relief for all of us. But my father was still critical and was getting worse. The day we put him in hospital, he had such a high fever that he got something called a seizure. By the next day, he was already vomiting everything he ate and drank. By the next day, blood was in his vomit. And by the next, he was in the ventilator, barely being kept alive my machines. The disease progressed fast and there was no cure for it. Eventually, six days after he was diagnosed with Red Fever, My father died.
We were not allowed to bury my father by ourselves. First, there was talk about burning the body. It was supposed to be the safest thing to do with it so that the disease wouldn't spread. But the mullah of our mosque objected as did we. There was an epidemic going on and we understood that we needed to be careful. But in Muslim tradition, burning a dead man's body is to desecrate it. So we insisted that it be buried. Eventually, we got our way. But nobody was allowed to go anywhere near the body. The doctors brought it in in a blue body bag wearing their white suits all the time. The mullah stood some distance away and prayed and when the time came, the men in white lowered the bag containing my dad into a deep hole in the ground.
I was heartbroken to see my dad go and we all cried a lot. And we got a lot of time to grieve in peace. The land outside was empty since everybody was at home afraid of catching the fever. We had already done a lot of our crying when we came to know that he had the disease and we were too tired to cry anymore. We had gotten our mother back and we were willing to take what Allah had given us and move on. All my sisters had to go to work if we had to eat. And I had to go to school to study hard and make my father proud. He had done a lot for me in his life. Now it was time for me to pay him back.