The Crescent

By Fehad Masood Kunroo

“From the moment you loved me, my lamp has given more light, my notebooks have blossomed, things have changed. I have become a child playing with sun. A Prophet when I write about You” –Nizar Qabbani

LAST Eid, I conferred a fathomless gaiety to unbosom my vivacious Eid greetings to my every close associate. I fervently coveted and supplicated that this Eid unfolds ecstatic and fascinating events for everyone in their lives that would fulfil everyone’s hankerings and desires. As the crescent was sighted, and people started celebrating, someone somewhere in the neck of the woods, down the line hadn’t had its glimpse since existence. His crescent hadn’t been sighted neither in the ruin of his soul nor peace of his heart yet. The tale goes back to the dry veins, creeping dreamy days, the days of heart-breaks; to the nights when someone wakes up from death, gasps for breaths, tames his mourning heart with the darkest and the gloomy nights around.

Lacerating and lugubrious days when one is in dire straits, he had the crescent as the only companion of life when waking up in the middle of night was as scary as a man being buried alive; it had been a comrade in joy and ruins, troubles and of course had been a healer. But it had never been sighted yet.

As the course of despondency faded, things grew well with days of happiness and breather all around; everything seemed surreal. Silence and ease, at the shore of a river, the gentle calmness was the order of life, but on occasions there were months with unshed tears in the heart, bruised inside, holding the ordeals of life with a lump in the throat — all as the crescent had disappeared from life, under those dark melancholic clouds. It was as if rain of hopelessness had been poured over. The only hope was now to dream of a crescent because that is what had kept him alive from all those excruciating days and times. In dreams two entirely perfect matches blended in so perfectly that if they were ever separated, it would have been an injustice to nature.

But for how long was this reality to be dreamt? — A looming question.

Every dream has its own reasons, it was not just a dream in reality, that was being imagined while the crescent had suddenly disappeared below the clouds, but what the dream in reality had in it was, how the life would be because from cradle to grave the crescent was considered as the only companion. As she had disappeared, visiting him in dawn and dusk never stopped, in dreams, even after disappearance.

Silently, over that course, as if words had lost their essence, even in that dream of reality and period of blockade, when even every inch of motionless air and the pepper permeated breeze and the fragrance of roses used to send an “Ok” and best wishes with the hope of getting them back someday. At nights, the twinkling of stars signified an ok from the other side, even hoping, looking at the sunset every day was of significance — hoping the alluring eyes too are looking at it so the eyes are meeting. All this developed a bond that transcended every understanding and language, through hundreds of miles away. It used to be an appearance of joyfulness in disappearance; as if she lived (lives) here for eternity. It used to be a dream in wakefulness. It used to be even the best of times, in the gloomiest of nights, to think even of The Crescent, because even the thoughts and the password protected folders and oaths and promises every night were laws of his life; from the constitution framed from the Defender’s paradise.

While jotting it all, the tapping of keys on this Keyboard, the inability of describing every feeling, everything beyond the bowls, happens then and even now. The writing to the crescent, shining the brightest among all, in the gloomiest of the nights because it was all that withered away the storm of pain and melancholy. As they say, the beauty lies turning the flames into something pulchritudinous, in this blooming spring, slowly yearning for the clouds to fade away, the soul and the body hankered for the sighting. Slowly the dream turned into reality started to bud, the clouds under which the crescent had hidden herself started to fade away, after a lull. It had been a long lull, an entire span of summer and autumn — the wait was over. It was on a cold winter night, when stars turned shiny, started twinkling brighter, the crescent had started coming out of the melancholic clouds, it had been out with gleam and splendour. Truly, it was the cure to every unhealed wound, it was the same reliever to a desert dweller, chasing a mirage but finally quenching the thirst after pursuing it for long.

It was a present to an erstwhile laden heart. It was unison of two sublime and joyous souls now. But yet, it had just, seemed framing out from far, only monitored, but hadn’t yet been sighted closely. A long span passed being afar, but the wait was somehow over — through thick and thin — it was just as the sun had gone down the horizon and the yellow tepid sunlight was off the radar. It was an event that left one speechless, it was just like the ordeal of a mother holding his favorite child in the womb because to her there is nothing greater than carrying the life in her womb.

It felt like eloping with a forever, when the eyes met, the deep ocean eyes that held moments of cradle to grave. The second the crescent was sighted, everything changed, the whole universe was shattering its beauty and essence into two souls. The separation and yearning had been so long that the re-joining felt like the sky kissing the surface of Earth with all its aura. The crescent moon changed everything, the night was young carrying an old soul on its shoulders but the appearance of crescent brought daylight to the darkness that had prevailed in for years.

The way the night felt was the best feeling for a traumatized soul. There was nothing new about the night, just the crescent that the night had longed had finally shown. Was it just like an epoch that will remain like this till eternity?

The heart-throbbing, henna patterns on crescent and the brimming smiling face. It was a forever in a forever; every shard of the quiddity was cheering the sighting forever. The hearts were talking and the time had frozen all around. It was like being interwoven into the very fabric of each other’s soul — inseparable and indistinguishable.

Everything was flashing. The gaze tormented the eternity of longing, turned all the grief into magic and love and that’s how the night went giving up all the sorrows while having the gaze at the crescent, in reality, imagining in dreams. The universe was static and two souls were reuniting into one. It was against all known laws of nature that the souls dwelled into each other by just a look of forever and that forever existed in each other’s eyes. Back, hankerings were answered, with cheerful faces. Finally, Eid-e-Milan and Eid happened for forever!

“Just in case you ever foolishly forget; I am never not thinking of you” –Virginia Woolf

• The author is a student of IMBA at Islamic University of Science and Technology Awantipora

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