Astral

I’m not worried as to where my astral body will go after my death, but getting worried as to where I’ll be buried once I’m gone? I searched for a Muslim graveyard in New Bedford, then onwards in Boston. It doesn’t exist. I phoned the Muslim Centre there today. Let’s see what answer will they give me?

I wasn’t bothered earlier, cause I had told my children to take me back to Pakistan, and bury me alongside their father in his ancestral village. A step aunt got buried alongside my late husband, despite my telling everybody there. My place was gone.

Last year when I went to visit, I was all set to enclose a space towards the foot of my husband’s grave, trying to ensure that I would get buried there eventually. I gave up that dream once I encountered my evil step brother in law, and his greedy ways. I don’t want to see him even after death. I want to be a million miles away.

Now the question arises: where is my burial space?

…

Astral

Write a new post in response to today’s one-word prompt

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/astral/

Next Door

This is the third time I am answering the same prompt. The first time I wrote about my neighbors in Peshawar. The second time I wrote about my neighbors here. The neighbors are the same, there is no change there, except that right next to us our neighbors have changed. They are South Africans with two small kids. They have rented the house from the owner for the duration of their stay here.

For the third time I will write about the six years we lived next door to a graveyard. We (father, my siblings and I) lived in an army allocated rented home. One day father announced we would soon shift to our new home. Our stepmother had not arrived yet in our lives. 

We were excited envisioning a grand home. Imagine our surprise and dismay when we found out that our new house was next door to a graveyard. Disappointedly I asked father, “How could he buy land next to a cemetery? And couldn’t he leave as it is, and buy some place else?” He didn’t answer. 

And who listens to an eleven year old when an adult had made up his mind?

We sulked and refused to live there. Our father closed his ears to our protests. The time came when we shifted to our new home.

When it was night time, and everyone was asleep I was deathly afraid of going alone to the bathroom. I would wake my younger brother Salim, and ask him to come with me. It was nice of him not to refuse. Asleep on his feet, he would stand sentinel at the bathroom door till I came out.

Disturbing pictures of shrouds wearing dead coursed through my mind. I was convinced sooner, or later those beings were going to hold me, and choke me. Unspeakable terror would fill my heart.

After our father died the house was sold, and now it’s only a memory.
Daily Prompt: West End Girls

Every city and town contains people of different classes: rich, poor, and somewhere in between. What’s it like where you live? If it’s difficult for you to discern and describe the different types of classes in your locale, describe what it was like where you grew up — was it swimming pools and movie stars, industrial and working class, somewhere in between or something completely different?

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/west-end-girls/