My journey has come to its end. I have come so far, searching for the meaning of life, yet I am not quite certain, whether I should label this quest a noble one.

It all started on a cold, rainy day of December when I first have seen the light of the day. My first impressions of this world were by no means congenial. The inclement weather made my fragile bones shiver in an uncontrolled motion. The fumes that emanated from cars hang above my head like giant mosquitos, trying to suck the blood out of me. I tripped on my knee, as I was endeavoring to dismount from what seemed exactly like a grey heap of fur. I suppose, that’s where my parents left me. Despicable! I knew I wasn’t born for any good, for the very people that brought me to this life, had renounced me long before I could make sense of my surroundings.

Knowing that I had been abandoned adds no fun to being alive. It cuts deeply into my heart, when all I have ever wanted was to meet a human, to feel their warmth and to be closest to their hearts than anybody else. I wanted to be sheltered from the sun, the rain, and the ugly, goblin-like fumes that made my heart so weak.

I had been traveling all around the world, seeking their sympathy, and asking for shelter. My supplications went unheard; they evaporated in the murky air, and came down again as thunder, upon their heads. Humans are such selfish, and arrogant creatures, they only care for themselves. Yes, of that I am certain.

Behold! I am no wise man; I know nothing about climate change, or about the poor that perished in hunger, whilst others slept on floating beds. These people harvested the wreck they have sowed.

I am the harbinger of joy and misery. When the earth saw what good I had brought to the oceans and trees, it beamed in anticipation. The salubrious morning breeze caressed my bare skin, and its mild warmth engulfed my heart like a magical mantle, while the birds fluttered and tweeted in merriment. The very sky above chanted in tandem with the snow-white clouds. I knew I was loved, and I cherished all the elements of nature.

Humans mistook me. They took me for a fiend and closed their doors in the face of my deplorable state. Yet if they loved their families, why did they go out every day, unprotected while they fought for stupid toilet papers? At this point, I cannot decide who is more stupid. If they could not love those with whom they shared blood and flesh, enough to renounce their vanity, how would they love me? What a fool I was, to suppose that a greedy man, whose sheer aim in the world was to fill his stomach and quench his gluttony from the grail of the Last Supper, would care for me!

In few months, the two-legged creatures were no more seen roaming in the streets. Serenity filled the air as few people would emerge from their dens, feigning ignorance of the perils that surrounded every step they treaded on earth. In the morning, they would leave the house muzzled in cheap masks, and in evenings, they would all disperse and the streets would wear on a post-apocalyptic air.

The dismal winds that howled from the East, carried me to a small village. Men were everywhere in the streets. They idled around in corners and made jokes about some deadly virus that had killed hundreds of people in the country. “I have had enough of this humbug!” shouted an old, haggard-looking man, as he threw a burning cigarette on a bush of brassica and small buds of poppies. “Do you think that this bloody virus would beat a man like me?” he stopped for a second, and before the other men opened their mouths, he cut them short. “I have endured all sorts of diseases; Malaria, Leprosy, Tuberculosis, you name it!” With this, he wiped his thick mustache in triumph and let out a proud croaky choking sound. They all halted and looked at his mustache in bewilderment. It somehow gave the impression that he had not laid a blade on his upper lip for more than a month.

I admired the man’s courage. When the hour struck six, I followed him to his house. It was so different from the other houses that I visited before in the city. As soon as he stepped on the threshold of his front door, a left pair of sandals came waving at him in the air, followed by an angry, sharp feminine voice: “What do I say every time? Wipe your dirty shoes on the mat before you enter, you idle, useless man!” The man-made no effort to start a new quarrel with his wife. He wiped his shoes and made his way towards the living room. As he sat with his wife, they started talking excitedly about how the danger was soon to be over. In every house I visited afterwards, I heard people repeating the same story.

Humans have paid too much high a price for their rapacity. Pitiful! They never learn a lesson, until they too shall die when the very forests and trees they have neglected, turn into vengeful flames that no amount of ocean water can pacify.

The death knell is ringing at my door, as I lay here, paralyzed and grief-stricken. Hot weather makes my lungs very weak. The air has become unbearably stifling that I started losing sight and hearing simultaneously. Despite the searing pain that is tearing my lungs apart, I have come to accept death, over a disgraceful life. After all, isn’t the world already on the verge of destruction? I do not claim to be a fair judge of this matter. I am a mere onlooker, waiting for my own impending doom.

 

Ghizlane Elguil