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Encephalitis Lethargica (1915-1926) 2018-till date


Melatonin...; Meta...as in meta verse...N...I...N pills, it's the third time I'm informing you to take a look; you've been into the medical field before my birth.” An agitation covered me, unlike sleep. 

“I know you haven't slept for days; that doesn't give you the right to talk to Mamu like that," Ammi advised calmly.
Ammi was right, oh! She is always right about everything, from the answers in Restoration Period literature to meeting Zee for the first time. I no longer desire to have tea in ministry. 
 
Struggle is a betaal hanging onto us in forms of grief and torture. Some suffer from unbearable sickness, while others experience human betrayal. I struggle with sleep. No, unlike chronic insomnia. 
 
Somebody wants to color their balcony blue and yellow, while the other wants to throw their painting into the deserted pond tied around their body. Struggles shuffle scenarios for individuals. Pierrot is so real that the humans around them in the carnivals seem like players. 
Aren't we all players? Maybe Shakespeare was right. I dislike a few Shakespearean works and would prefer Christopher Marlowe's wisdom in humans dark psyche instead. Brilliant work, masterpiece! Somewhere, we are all Doctor Faustus. Not only Christopher wrote biblical works, but the other revelations—the Vedas, the Torah, the Injeel (Bible), and the Qur'an—clearly state the dark matter of the universe and then that of the human mind lurking above the medulla oblangata or somewhere in the slimey alleys of brains. 
 
A call interrupted my walk to gooey brain, 
“Hie Ekta, my angel.”
“Fatima, how are you now? Did you sleep today?”
“umm! I got some medicine, which I'm not planning to take, but let's see tonight; Allah knows best.”
“Did you eat?”
“Can we talk about Marlowe and Rohinton Mistry instead?”
 
The discussion took more than an hour, and the oceanic waves of thoughts led to Ben, not Johnson. Disconnecting a good conversation is only good when we need a powernap. Sleep no longer visits dreams. I stay awake for a day or five. I linger at the thought of the blessing of sleep. 
I stayed in bed with the thought of a friend's home. The home is no longer a home but a site of man-made disaster, and the father is digging the grave of respect by disparaging his mother. Crying over pillows has become a ritual now. The spot doesn't clean easily; it stays like the arrow shot in the heart by a trustworthy, dead beloved. I no longer write love poems. Why? Oh! My beloved died on July 22, 2023. Sometimes, I hallucinate and watch him knock on my front door. Sometimes his shoes are covered with smashed powder, lipstick stains, and tiny glasses of shattered bargainous perfume. Each time I try to help him with cleaning, he pushes me back. As a punishment or for safety? I scream, pinching my palms, while blood rushes out. I want to ask him if death wasn't enough to squeeze my heart, but graves and grave hearts don't speak much except the scream of silence. Tomato tamatoh!
What a waste of time you were! I texted.
 
I scratch the walls of the letterbox to find the musical box playing up, while I end up admiring the sparrows and Kali Muniya around. The sanity in the rushing heart is provided by nature. 
 
“You didn't even sleep today,” the familiar faces said with teary eyes.
“I wish for sleep to come and comfort me.”
“Oh! Munazza."
“I am sorry."
“Please don't be.”
 
I received another call until I missed it. It was Abhishek Nand and Srishti's video call. I really wanted to attend Divya's and Nand's wedding. Sweetest Bureaucrats 💒. Raise the toast speech lies on page July10, 2024,  delicately in my diary. 
 
“Bitiya, the breakfast is ready; eat your favorite pan cakes. Look, I brought bela and roses for you, and there were many birds. I'll take you there tomorrow, in sha Allah.”
“Abbu, I really want to be a bird.”
“You are a bird; look how tiny your hands and feet are.” Appi cracked a quirky smile and brought another toast to Trey.
 
My eyes, bedsheets, and barzakh (a land of sleep and death) become a meta-text. In literary theory, metatext blurs reality and fiction. 
Am I still sleeping or hearing the honking of weird bikes on the road in a hurry, like milk on the stove?
Having lunch during tahajjud time is pretty normal.
Inform Khadija about the stories of prophets sulking over Cupid and Eros and how stupid the Greeks and Romans are for creating different gods! 
Instead of refilling the ink in the pen, I tried pouring some sherbet into it. 
Did Areema know that hands on steering wheels are 10:10, as in the still watch? Oh! I only like being a passenger princess with ravishing waffles and Medina dates.
The scientific method of radiocarbon dating would waffle on, but it still wouldn't be able to determine the factors that keep me awake. And that's problematic! Sleeping is indeed a blessing; we tend to forget the worries, agitation, and this illusionary world around us. It comforts us. Oh! Actually, I need sleep, not some peaceful musical sleeping videos on YouTube. 
 
The night is getting darker while the thoughts are getting brighter, with haunting memories showered with photons and prickly glitters, so it burns both eyes and hearts. A year soaked by pillows welcomes the rain of grief while the sleep goes into the land of dreams without the aim of returning to the master. Ugh! No more diving into the depths of slimy brains again. Let the stings of the brain be untouched, exactly like the solution for proving string theory. 

What is string theory? Imagine you've got so many ingredients to bake a cake, but they're all strings, and somehow you end up with a cake. Imagine the beginning of the universe like that. But that happened with “Kun Faya Kun!” Ah! We have a whole science to understand the beginning of existence...
 
See, that is how thoughts lurk in dreams while pushing sleep out. Another dilemma..
 
To be continued—or maybe just the end—for a while. 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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