Flying Birds

Do I know you? Asked Hoopoe; to the strange bird with a long tail and enormous height. The bird replied, “don’t you?” Overwhelmed with the presence of this magnificent creature, hoopoe reiterated, “Who are you?” the bird replied: “I am Phoenix”, and added further “, remember me?” hoopoe was dazzled already; it stumbled little “oh oh .. my Majesty, how do I have the pleasure meeting with you?” Phoenix smiled and turned away, jumping to the next branch from the hoopoe to see a silver moon, “you didn’t recognise me” “I … I didn’t expect to be visited by….” “Do not worry, and look at that moon”, interrupted Phoenix. “Did you create the moon?” asked Hoopoe, Phoenix laughed, and it laughed hard, “why do you think I have created the moon?” “My mother said so,” replied hoopoe. Leaves started to rustle as a gust of air blew and surpassed them. Hoopoe felt like a child. “This night has some secrets within”, – Phoenix turned to hoopoe and looked into its eyes, “something you must remember, look into yourself and burn yourself”,- advised Phoenix. Hoopoe closed its eyes for a second, and Phoenix disappeared as it opened in a blink. Hoopoe stood a while, gazed at the moon, and tried to remember something that it had forgotten: "What is there below the moon” a giant structure with an irregular shape. “I remember it, mount Qaf,” hoopoe said to itself. A sudden excitement is enlightened in it. “I have been there, didn’t I? asked itself, thought continued “, but why am I not remembering it?”

“It’s like a lifetime has passed, and whatever I saw there is just too hard to remember, but this mountain, mount Qaf……… what happened there?- Hoopoe question to itself, a question which will change its life …… once again.

Readers of this encounter must be thinking about what happened to our beloved hoopoe and its ecstatic meeting with Phoenix once attar told us in his Conference of Birds. My answer is, “same thing which has happened to all of us; we forgot.”

What You are Afraid of?

Chapter # 32 what are you afraid of?

I was walking on the street, it was night, around 11 pm, and intermittently cars were passing by. It was a one-way road, and cars were coming from behind. Street lights were dimmed, many were not lit, the night was smoky and cold, headlights of Cars were making shadows sometimes on roads looked like some giant walking in front of me, and sometimes it appeared in the smoke. 

To both sides, there were residential apartments when I heard a voice; “what you are afraid of?” voice was shrill, and I knew I had heard that voice before. I stopped and looked around; from very distance, one car was coming, I looked in front of me at the ground where I saw my shadow as big as a giant, and slowly it was becoming smaller, and the time came when it disappeared into me as the car passed by. Who said that- Ghosts? , apparently, I shrugged that thought and thought it was my hallucination. I started walking again now I was more careful as the thought of an unknown voice had already made me nervous. The hairs on my hands stood up. Coldness started gripping my legs, and my long shadow again started contracting in me. I heard the loud engine noise as it came nearer, I turned around, and it hit me and threw me up in the empty air. I saw my body hitting the ground while still up in the air. I heard again, “What are you afraid of?” As I was scared, I shouted, “Who are you?” I was still falling, but the ground seemed to be much further. “What are you afraid of?”  I responded, “I am afraid now,” when a voice said, “You are scared of heights”- I will die. I cried; my eyes were covered with tears, and I was screaming. Voice said, “Stop crying- you are already dead if you don’t know what you are afraid of” with this, I hit the ground.

I opened my eyes, my cheek, and to a certain extent, my lips were touching the cold floor of my home. Did I fall off the bed? It was when I realised it was a dream. I was bleeding from the side of my upper lips and tooth. 

(An extract from my writing: Story of our lives)