Broken Promises
A Father’s Struggle Against Poverty, Illness, and Societal Neglect
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As the sun went down a curve, the false peaceful scene ended in the agony of a crying heart. "Hey, Daddy of mine, why are we sealed up in want? Why am I to suffer without treatment?" These words of hers became a song of immense wretchedness and ruthlessness, sharpening the edge of his soul and making him feel like a worker of great effort but suffering hopelessness.
The image of his chest heaving, only to be followed by stifled cries was interspersed with the picture of Razia, his seven-year-old daughter who was now lying on a bed that was not fit for royalty, with her once sparkling eyes no longer gleaming. It was as if the ever-lengthening lines of sorrow that were now engraved upon her face had cast a shadow on the people of the village as if they were the impact points of darkness in their barren house.
"Doctor told that we need money, Papa, Razia cried out in between sobs, her voice only above a whisper. "However, where will we provide what we need? We are barely getting enough to be able to eat."
A twitch in Rahim’s heart told him his daughter was the one about to break. He reluctantly took in her frail body and wrapped it around his arms; the weight of their misery was too much of a vice for him to bear. "It will sure come my love. I see no doubt we will go through this and we will be successful."
"It's all over", Razia said, in a voice shrill with fear and her body shaking."I feel so alone."
Rahim's face was reflected by the tears that ran down his cheeks as he held Razia's frail body on his lap in his arms. "Solitude is a mask that only idiots wear. They call me intangible my dear. I've always been with you – forever."
The immense pain she was subjected to seemed unbearable and the tears kept falling from the girl's innocent eyes. It was as if they were washing her over and over again. "Papa, why is society turning its back on us?" Her voice, followed by a sob and administered with the flavor of fear and disillusionment, represented the silent screams of the unacknowledged, who were suffering at the edges of our society.
Breathlessly worn out by laborious labor for years, Rahim fought steadfastly to attain medical supplies for his beloved girl. However, the extreme reality that Razia and her family were in could not have been more than seen as the results from her test came back revealing that indeed Razia had cancer. These persons got out of the center of life and had nobody whose ears would listen to them and those who tried to care were numbered.
"Daddy, do I have to die," little Razia sighed sadly, her voice drowning in the groans of her ailment. "Though the cold and the snow might make the outside cold and windy, I still want to go outside and feel the sun on my face."
Her words felt like a dagger in Rahim’s' heart. His heart braked in the middle of his stomach to see how much pain his daughter was going through. That carefully put all he could to offer her gratification he knew it would bring no ease as both of them are powerless against the injustice of destiny.
Razia's nightmares weren't taking any breather and therefore reached their extremes. Her life had gone down a hopeless path and this she carried out in front of her dad with her spirit defeated by the untiring adversity and grief. "Papa, who has the right to deny me the divine grace? Aren't we, we humans, worth salvation of the hearts of the cruel men around us?" Blown with these words of sadness and despair they sounded from their little but highly-valued abode.
A gentle shadow from the door slowly found its way to the floor of the family shelter. Rahim was horrified as his daughter’s life pulled away right before his eyes. Every second they spent going through the pain, every breath they painfully revived gave them the confirmation that in vain they were fighting a much bigger enemy – themselves and the society that had forsaken them.
"Daddy, I'm scared," Razia whispered, her voice barely audible above the rasping of her breath. "Will you be with me when I go?"
He knew well in his heart that this was perhaps the last time he would ever be with her. He squeezed her trembling hand as her frail body fought off the sadness that surrounded them."Always, my dear. Always."
Razia had clutched onto his hand like a magnet in her last breaths, possibly a search for compassion in a world without it. The feeling of failure and regret grew heavier on Rahim's shoulders. All the same, they went on despite the world's insensitivity to their cries for help, to their unheard supplications to God and His omnipresent love.
Before dawn, Razia, the last one in the group, passed away leaving a dumb stillness that echoed with the trembling silence of what had not got an answer. So the heart of Rahim was shattered into a million pieces that could never be put together again, his soul was filled with the grief of unbearable loss and resentment of the reaction of society.
The globe had misplaced its child first and foremost to a disease but later it at the behest of a stumpy hand of cunning poverty too. His anguish and the knowledge that he might never be fully reunited with his beloved, Razia, helped Rahim understand why death seemed like a logical escape from all of this.
And, just like that, as silence and solitude seized upon their shabby walls and patches of old mats, they brought to the fore the unanswered queries of Razia, a mere reminder of the misery of their living in a society that had long marginalized the weakest members of the society.
Even after her demise, Razia, for this grieving father, became the constant ache in his heart, leaving no space for him to experience anything other than grief, every hour of every day of his life filled with memories of her. The laughter that used to be the life of the house now dims like a lost nostalgic anthem of the healthy heart that had been callously stifled way too priorly.
"Papa, why did Ruzia have to leave us? "Aisha, the youngest daughter of Rahim, asked one evening, her eyes brimming with tears. "Will we ever see her again?"
He pulled Aisha towards him and even the helplessness of his self was mixed with the sorrow of this girl. "Razia will live in us forever, my sweet, please let me say this," he choked in his voice filled with great emotion. "Heart to heart and with all our memories she will stay alive forever, not having to say goodbye."
However, despite the words of consolation, Rahim's feeling was very profound as his soul has been burdened with a sort of emptiness of space that can never be filled with any replacement for Razia. The universe out there seemed to advance on and on without regard for his pain, and he asked himself how he held on to something that was already slipping from his hands.
In these peaceful episodes of alone time, he was attracted by the artifacts left by Razia - a worn-out doll, a spreadsheet of holes, and a faded tower made from paper, pinned to the wall. Each memento was an inherently depreciable sign of the cheerful moments that were previously there with the note of the sadness of her absence.
"Daddy, how will it be with Razia, do you think she is now happy?", Aisha asked amidst tears, her voice shaking.
Rahim’s stomach sank into the source of his own Daughter’s question. How was he supposed to say, the unsayable, and manage to make the unbearably touching sting of loss somehow tolerable by mingling it with the hopefulness of the knowledge that it is all temporary and there will be a redemption? " I think so.. she’s my dear", he affirmed in a soft voice as his eyes filled with tears. "She is sleeping in peace.”
But even as Rahim sought solace in the notion of Razia's eternal rest, he knew that his journey toward healing would be fraught with challenges. The wounds of grief ran deep, and though time might dull their sharp edges, they would never truly fade.
And so, as the days turned into weeks, and the weeks into months, Rahim clung to the fragile threads of hope that bound him to the memory of his beloved daughter. In her absence, he found the strength to carry on, to honor her legacy with each step he took.
And though the world outside remained unchanged, Rahim knew that within the confines of his humble abode, Razia's spirit lived on, a beacon of light in the darkness of his grief. And in the echoes of her unanswered questions, he found a measure of solace, a reminder that love, in all its infinite forms, would endure.
