An American playwright writes, “We all live in a house onfire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to lookout of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it.”
Exactly the same way, we all in this part of the world livein a valley on fire. And, we all are helplessly watching the fire gobble up usslowly. We are badly blocked. Cornered in a chaos. So much so, our heritage andhistory is becoming highly flammable. We cannot pull anything out of this fire.What is more, our Gen Z is getting vulnerable. Even while you read this, theyare getting tortured and killed…
Their time past, pulled down
Cracked and flung to the fire
The fact is that the fire here never douses for good. We cannever stamp out this fire. It rages off and on. It is not a baptism of fire.Whenever our identity catches fire, we tend the blaze and try to give the kissof life to embers. We roar. We riot. And we write. Endlessly. In vain.
We are painting with fire. With fire brush on a slice offire. That’s why, the fire in Kashmir only burns. It does not illuminate. Itobscures. It does not purify. It perishes. The fire here discharges darkness.It spreads thick smog of suspicion. It is shrouded in mystery.
Of course, it is not Aatash-i-Namrood, which was trounced byProphet Ibrahim so bravely. It is not the fire, which Prophet Musa saw in thevalley of Tuwa. In reality, it is the fire, which after flaming for thousandyears in Persia was suddenly extinguished on the day of birth of Last Messenger(PBUH). But ironically, it continues to rage here. The fire of ignorance andslavery.
Fighting this fire, we fight no real freedom. We don’t fightwith fire in the belly. We are no fireballs. We fight no selves. We fight noone. We just become emotional and turn weepy. Some of us hide. A few reveal.Many find themselves in the line of fire. And several others have too manyirons in this fire. It all, finally, results in worst self-pitying andforgetting everything forever. Quite quickly.
But the fire remains on. All of us contribute in flaring upthis fire. We hang fire. We look for vague reasons to hold on to our illusions.We do not look within to locate the shady side. We play with the fire that hasharsh lessons to draw upon.
Yes, the loss and agony is miserable. The smoldering sceneis disturbing. Our sense of belief and belonging is razed. We are searching thecharred history in the debris. What colossal misfortune than this for anynation!
We did start theFire. And we are ceaselessly feeding this fire to burn us into ashes. Let usconfess that we can’t quench this fire at the first spark. A spark neglected,is gradually burning down the whole valley. It is getting furious. It isgetting scary. It has started sucking in more of us. Years back, a spark atrevered places like Chrar-e-Sharief Shrine and Islamic Library at Hazratbal hasswelled up in to an inferno. The blaze is making everything blurry.
Bottomline: Before the fire devours us entirely, we need tofight it out fearlessly and honestly. If we can’t speak out the truth, let usnot fall prey to speculations and schemes. Straight way is the best way, and weneed mystical fires, not the self-destructive ones, to light up our difficultpathways. And what better than reverting to divine help to seek guidance andmake a distinction between Fire here and hereafter— “They will long to get outof the Fire, but never will they get out there from; and theirs will be alasting torment”( 5:37).
May we be rescued and pardoned!