A VIEW FROM THE CEMETERY

And there stood I, beside my grave

Watched all them lying, with all but crave
Not always was it a sight to see
While bodies lied there, the souls hung free
And as they entombed, what looked like a boy
His gleaming soul came jumping with joy
And far beyond what we heard was a scream
One struggling to break through like through a bad dream,
And all at once, we stood in vain
Watching the soul suffering in pain
Not unusual it was when we heard him say
He would do better if given one more day,
There was no good but the bitter truth aghast
What all had remained now was him with his past
And behind these walls, were they all lost in the glory
Little did they know, reaching its end is their story!
                               -Zirva Shabbir

BETRAYED BY THE ODDS

All my life, I have always had trouble convincing people and I have always ended up as a liar, not to mention I am a terrible liar. First, I have been through the exasperating interrogations that, seriously I am neither mad nor depressed. But then I don’t blame them, it’s not really helpful to say that you are totally alright when your RB face clearly negates your statement, leaving you looking like planning to land a punch on someone’s face. True, I have landed countless punches on people’s faces in my head but as long as I am not leaving black eyes or bleeding noses behind, I am pretty much covering my tracks.

Second, my sarcasm has brought its own troubles. People don’t usually get it, some get offended. Sarcasm is an easy shot to get away with things you wanna say, especially to the ones who don’t get it. But well, there comes a price. Like when you actually compliment someone, and they “really” know you, they won’t be convinced. And if somehow, miraculously, they are convinced that you sincerely meant it, they would go like “whoa there, how did that happen?” And you eventually don’t feel like complimenting them anymore.

Third, when I have to pretend something, that’s a fail that leaves an impression, and not a very nice one. I know how to smile but let’s just say it’s not my best asset. So if once in a while I might try to betray my mind, my expressions betray me back. You can say it ends up as a lose lose situation every time. In case I have to force a smile, it comes out as so forced, or maybe it doesn’t come out at all, anyway, once again, the person is not convinced that I am actually a nice person who is as betrayed by the rude expressions as much as you were hurt by them. Okay, I might have stretched the truth, a little, at the nice part.

But besides these troubles, there is another struggle I have been through, for a while now; trying to convince people that I don’t study. Now, I might sound like a typical drama queen, and my results might support the statement. Although my graph has been going down and the university had a nice, fun time, messing me up, but my convincing skills improved or so I’d thought. Because this time I had them almost convinced that I am going to flunk and there is no otherwise. And that was no lie. But… I’ll leave it up to you to guess the rest.

Well, I have seen the drama queens who keep ranting about not studying a word. And there is a fine line that differentiates me from people like them. Like, I don’t have a hanging face when I say I am gonna  fail, I laugh when I screw up because I screw up real bad.  And if I do fail, or get bad marks you can see “I don’t give a damn” clearly printed on my face. True, I once made it to the nerdy list, though I was the last in it but who cares? I am probably kicked out from that now.

 But I guess, you can’t always get what you want. People will buy what they see and they certainly don’t see the truth and the odds never come out in my favor and I appreciate that because passing a test you thought you failed, well that is a blessing.

THINK LOGICALLY.

History is repeating itself. They say it’s the worst incident since 9/11. Once again, the name of the entire Muslim community is being dragged through the mud. What they fail to see, is that we have been through much worse. They think those people were killed because of being “gay”. Our more than 160 children were killed, what for? Being students? There is no Anti-American agenda here, there is only anti-Muslim agenda. If any of this were true, if Islam were the religion of violence, if the whole race were the terrorist, use your common sense you wouldn’t even be here today. Your ancestors would have been all dead, there would have been nobody left alive. Islam has been prevailing for 14 centuries, this hasn’t been happening for 14 centuries. This all started in the past two decades or so. Don’t be blinded by everything you see, don’t fall for everything you hear. Islam has nothing to do with any act of violence.

#Orlando