The Beauty Within.......

Rafique sat at the corner of the bus avoiding public eye hushed up in that one man seat. It was five thirty in the morning and the bus was ferrying passengers from Kamanpur to Chokdi. Rafique preferred these early morning rides to the town even though he had to report to his workplace at nine; where he worked as a tailor in a small shop where they repaired bags. The morning bus travels always allured him. The cool breeze, the aroma of dawn when the early strips of light meets the earth, the foggy atmosphere, the lush greenery, the pothole ridden roads; all of these gave him an immense sense of peace and tranquility. Some thing which he never found in his twenty four years of life on earth.

Rafique’s life to be summarized in one phrase was just silent suffering. He was born to a poor peasant couple in his native town of Kamanpur. Rafique was born with shockingly absurd features; almost as if he was among the most disliked people of God. He had an unusually huge head which seemed as if it would burst at the temples. The broad forehead ended with two bulging but drooping eyes almost ready to fall off at the sockets. It was worse when he developed his teeth. If his milk teeth were distorted, his permanent teeth became a symbol of ridicule for his classmates at school. His hair grew in patches and fell of before they covered his head. His shoulders always sagged; like they were tired of carrying his head and his hands were thin and bony with veins jutting out like fingerprints. All in all, Rafique was ugly; very, very ugly. If Prophet Yusuf was blessed with half the beauty on earth then Rafique was cursed with half its ugliness.  

His father -if he ever wanted to call him that- was a downright drunkard who spent more money on women and liquor than on the welfare of his family. When he saw his son for the first time he blatantly accused his wife for sleeping with the man next door and threatened to kill Rafique. His mother on the other hand defended her little boy like a lioness defending her cub. To her, Rafique was her son and nothing mattered more. She didn’t care what the world thought about her son. She loved him and that was that. When Rafique was four, his father’s dead body was found floating at the community pond nearby. Postmortem reports revealed he was heavily drunk.

At school Rafique always sat alone; not by choice but by force. Later on it became an act of preference. He didn’t wait for his classmates to distance themselves from him. He would choose a corner and sit there. Throughout his school life, he never made any friends, not even acquaintances. Hell; he hadn’t even talked to half the class when he passed out. His mother –his only comforter- died when he was 15 of a degenerative lung disease. From that day on, it was a struggle for dignity and survival. He didn’t want to study further. He saw no possible benefit in that. All he saw was disgust and contempt in he faces of people he met. Some even showed pity and he hated that. He never understood why he was to be seen as a monster when all he had was a different physical structure. Why was he treated like an outcast, like a leper? Why couldn’t he be accepted as he was; without those shrugs of difference, looks of fright and sympathy? But these were questions Rafique never found answers to. There were times when just the sight of a dangling rope or the kitchen knife at his home gave him heavy suicidal thoughts. But his faith in God never wavered and he fought through these tough times every time they confronted him. He had nightmares of people chasing him down the street with sticks and stones. He would wake up with panting breath and then not sleep for the rest of the night. From his heart he knew that people are not that bad and no one hated him. But his appearance made him such a weak man mentally that he couldn’t take it any more. He saw volumes and volumes of darkness everywhere he turned.   

 After doing all kinds of odd jobs, he landed up as a tailor repairing spurned and torn bags in Chokdi. This job didn’t require him to face people and it made him happy. He was happy he didn’t have to walk around trying to hide his face from people he met. He would come by the early morning bus, when it was still dark and sit on that single seat at the far end of the bus. No interactions. No reproaches.

Rafique was woken up from his usual self retrospecting thought processes when he heard sounds of screeching followed by a booming crash sound. A crimson colored SUV zoomed past them into oblivion.The bus got to a stop. He craned his neck outside. In the still lingering darkness he could make out a figure; a woman, probably a young girl, crouched along the divider in an awkward position with fresh maroon colored blood just beginning to spread out onto the road. A bicycle was lying besides. Someone had just knocked the solitary cyclist and sped away.  It was dark and they were almost in the middle of the forest. The nearest hospital was four kilometers back along the route they had come from. Helping the victim meant taking a detour and heading back were they came from. And no one wanted the headache of getting stuck in law loops trying to save accident victims. Being a rural area, the police often were uncooperative and intimidating. The driver had learned to turn a blind eye to such incidents a long time ago.  The bus started moving forward. Rafique couldn’t believe what was happening.

“Hey! She needs help! She is bleeding!” he screamed at the driver.

The driver turned around and after the milliseconds of frown he gave at seeing Rafique’s face, he said, “This is common here! You know what happens if you try to save them.”

“But she will die..”  he tried to explain. He was shocked to see such coldness from these people. There was no one to support him. All sat there like lifeless bodies staring back at him with indifferent eyes.  

“Go ahead. Help her. Get off and leave us.” The driver said. The conductor shrugged as if to show that his loyalties lied with the driver. Rafique couldn’t make sense of what was happening. He obviously couldn’t leave the girl behind. She was someone’s daughter, someone’s sister. He jumped out of the bus. She was there, bleeding profusely. Rafique knew that the nearest hospital was an hour of walking and he didn’t expect any vehicles at this hour. Bu it was nearer if he took to the forest.

He picked her up and lay her over his shoulders and ran through the forests. It had rained the night before and the land was marshy. His shirt was red with blood but he could still feel her breathe. He was a frail man and this was proving to be a physically draining act. Within fifteen minutes of pacing he could feel heavy cramps in his legs which urged him to stop. But he knew that if he stopped he won’t be able to walk again. He prayed to God to grant him the strength to move on. Then the rains arrived.

Half an hour later it was still raining and Rafique could see the end of the forest and the main road. His heart was pounding like a grinding machine. His heavy head ached. His bony hands were filled with blood. But he still went on. He reached the hospital in another five minutes. Attendants came rushing to him and took away the girl. His eyes blurred. All he could see was a group of people taking her away. Someone shook his shoulder to ask something and he collapsed.

Rafique was discharged two days later. He made inquiries and found out that the girl was safe. He thanked God for His help and left the hospital contended. It was back to schedule as usual for Rafique.

A month later when he returned home he saw the girl waiting outside his shanty with her father. She was young. Maybe twelve years of age.

“You are a tough man to find! What did you think? You can save my daughter’s life and we will never know who it was?” the girl’s father asked smiling.

 He was shocked and surprised at the same time. He didn’t know whether he was happy to see her or would he have liked that she would not have known how her savior looked like.

His first instinct was to hide his face consciously as much as he could. The girl saw this. She moved closer to him. She moved his hands away from his face and touched his cheek. Rafique was taken aback by this behavior. Nobody wanted to take a second look at him let alone touch him.

“You know? They said all sorts of things when we came searching for you. But you know what? They were wrong. All of them. You are the most beautiful person I have ever seen!” saying so she moved closer and hugged him tightly. “ Thank you! Nobody helped me when I lay there dying. Those were the ugly people. God gave you a wonderful heart and that makes you beautiful!”  She was crying now.

Tears flowed down Rafique’s eyes. Two and a half decades of pain and suffering all washed away by this one act of benevolence and love from this little girl. And that was enough. He will never hate his life again. This unprejudiced gesture from an innocent child was enough for him to keep his spirits alive till the end of his life! He closed his eyes and thanked God for the lesson He had given him. He was now ready to take on the world.