Author: Nodbandag Baloch
Translated by Naushad Baloch
Eyes closed, yet everything is visible. Darkness. A darkness so deep it feels seven layers thick, each layer darker than the one before. A long, pitch black tunnel, and inside it, endless corridors of more tunnels. Half forgotten dreams, thousands of half familiar faces. Who are they? A spinning wheel. A pebble tumbling down a mountain. A whirlpool with no beginning and no end. Broken pieces of a thousand images, a tune the mind can’t quite place, names circling like stars, but no face fits any of them. Whose names are these?
Like a door in a nightmare that won’t open. A scream stuck in the throat. Tears that refuse to fall. A cave the sun has never once touched. A parched land where a single drop of rain costs more than the rarest pearl. Alive, but having forgotten how to breathe. Speaking, but having lost the art of speech. And for what?
Come. To the final edge, where the universe ends. And when you reach that end, the last green leaf still hanging from an autumn tree reminds you why you came here at all.
“Moteshen, čīne yašte tū? Kum te nīm yašti? Nũ wà āpropyāžti mēne kūm wā kanōžk no mēle? Čē lēmbā wārbesk? De či est familyär?”
(“Moteshen, who are you? What is your name? Wait, don’t come near me. How do I already know your name? What language am I even speaking? Why does your face feel so familiar?”)
“Hush. You need to know nothing. We have no more need for language. There’s nothing left to say. Eternity speaks in silence. Learn that language. Speak it. Stay silent, and speak.”
I fell silent. And I spoke.
“I’ve seen that line between life and death. It’s a mirage, nothing more. I saw a continuum, a flow, not a cut. Moteshen, I’ve come to take Aslam back. Take me to him.”
“Whatever you want is always available, free of charge. Only its shape changes. Hold your breath.”
I held my breath.
“Now breathe.”
I inhaled. A hospital room. Bloodied bandages, doctors moving fast, the sting of rubbing alcohol in the air. A bed, and on it a man torn apart by wounds, drenched in blood, barely conscious. I stepped closer.
“No, Moteshen, no. This is the agony of dying. Why did you bring me here? Don’t you know the pain we attach to death is really meant for the living, not the dead? And still you brought me here to feel it?”
“Turn back, right now. Go stop Aslam. Do as I say and he lives. He stays right here.”
“No, Moteshen, no. I haven’t come to change time. I came for a parallel time that keeps running. Otherwise a time born from something impossible would be nothing but a phantom.”
“Maybe. Either way, the nature of things will shift, and you won’t be able to tell the difference.”
“Take me to where Aslam is now. Wait, let me look closer. I thought his final moment would be full of agony. But there’s no pain on his face. No grief either. Why isn’t he angry? Where’s the fear? None of it is there. Only… waiting, Moteshen. What does that mean?”
“Only someone who crossed from life to death without regret knows the answer to that. I’m not the answer. I’m only the medium.”
Then even the waiting left his face. Aslam wasn’t there anymore. A white sheet had been pulled over him.
“Moteshen, what is this sound? For God’s sake, stop it! I want to cry. This sound is tearing through me. Every part of my body is grieving, every hair on my skin is weeping. Please, make it stop.”
“This isn’t me. This is you. And it isn’t just a sound, it’s a song. Every sob caught in a throat, every scream buried in a chest, every tear that never fell, all of it, in one song. This is the Song of Sorrow rising out of a broken heart. My friend, your heart has just lost.”
The Song of Sorrow kept playing. I cried without control. Every tear I’d swallowed since my mother’s womb, all the way to the last fistful of dirt thrown on Aslam’s grave, I cried it all out. Only then did the silence come.
“The bond made from the pain of loss is strong enough to build a bridge between two worlds. Moteshen, now take me to Aslam.”
“It’s a long road. Don’t breathe, but stay alive. Don’t open your eyes, but see everything. Say nothing, but tell it all. Hear nothing, but know everything. Don’t walk, but arrive. Don’t touch, but feel.”
For ten years after that I walked without taking a single breath. And as I walked, I saw everything. I saw ten thousand trees bowing before a single axe. I saw a naked six year old child cutting his mother’s throat with a sword. I saw a corpse wrapped in a red shroud, sitting in the homes of the living, wailing. I saw a jester who made everyone cry. I saw a murderer dragging his own executioner to the gallows. I saw a fool from Bohemia lecturing scholars. I saw a dove putting death to sleep on its shoulder. I saw the Devil putting out the fires of Hell with wine. I saw a holy man lighting a spark inside Paradise. And then I saw God, begging in front of His own creation.
“Moteshen, is this Hell?”
“No. Heaven and Hell were left far behind you, back there. We’ve arrived.”
“Where?”
“Where time itself forgets to breathe.”
“Where have you taken me? Why does this place feel so familiar? Where is this breeze coming from, carrying the smell of wildflowers from my homeland? Why do these mountains know me? Why is this stream smiling when it sees me? Why is the shade under these trees so gentle? Why don’t these stones hurt my feet? Why does this feel exactly like my own land?”
“A home takes the shape of the one who lives in it. Maybe this is Aslam’s version of Paradise.”
The Song of Sorrow played again. Every note pulled at the veins of my heart, every beat fell on me like a hammer, and every rhythm squeezed the tears straight out of me. It could only mean one thing.
I turned around. And there he was, smiling right in front of me.
“Do you know what happens to the houses in the valley when the dam breaks in a storm? Do you know what happens to the chicks in the nest when night falls and the mother never comes back? Do you know what happens to a nation the day an arrow finds its Achilles heel? Do you know what happens to a ship caught in a storm with no captain? Do you know what happens to children whose father dies before they’re grown? Do you know what happens to a history left unfinished by its own historian? Do you know what happens to a land whose sky has no Atlas left to hold it up?
You knew all of it. And still you left us and walked away. Why? You had no right to die. You crossed a line you shouldn’t have. Ustad. Sangat. Father. You left the weight of Chiltan on our shoulders, the weight of Shashan on our hearts, and you walked off here. I’ve come to take you back. Come with me.”
He looked at me, calm.
“How could you think I’m gone, sangat? How did you confuse the body with real existence? How did you mistake something you can touch for something that simply is? The body is only a shadow of existence, a trick that makes it feel real, and you took that shadow for the whole thing and decided I don’t exist anymore? My body was only ever something you experienced. If my body were still walking around today, but had never touched your life, never entered your thoughts, what then? What if I were just a bus driver, or a shopkeeper somewhere? Would my body still mean anything to you?
My body is gone from your world now. But what I did, what I left behind, the thoughts, and everything that grew out of those thoughts, all of that is still with you. It’s as real and as alive as any man standing in flesh in front of you. If the force behind a thought runs deep enough, it outlasts a hundred living men. That’s what it means to truly exist. So tell me, how am I gone?
To ask for more than this is just a craving for something physical, a body to carry your weight for you, to bear the load that comes with holding onto an idea. Is that grief really love? Or is it just fear, dressed up, and a little bit of laziness?
As long as even one of you still walks the path I walked, I exist, sangat. And only when that path goes empty and turns to stone, only then will I finally dissolve back into the order of things.”
“Ustad, this thought needs more strength behind it, so it can keep moving and finally reach where it’s going. For that, we need you. If there’s no real difference between life and death, why should we be robbed of your shadow? Your own choices brought you to us. Why cut that thread before it reaches its end?”
He turned to Moteshen. They spoke, in words I couldn’t follow. Then he looked back at me.
“Sangat, you’re still a prisoner of time. You got out, but you aren’t free, and you can’t understand that yet. You don’t have access to the endless web of other realities. Everyone, wherever they are, whatever they are, is only the sum of their own choices. Change one choice, even slightly, and the whole outcome changes with it.
At every crossroads, every choice spins off its own reality, its own parallel timeline, on and on without end. But you can only hold onto one of those timelines at once, while those of us who’ve slipped time’s cage can see them all at the same time. That’s why no one ever comes back. Because none of us ever really went anywhere.
If one of your choices had gone differently, you’ll never know what would have followed. What matters to you is only the reality you’re standing in. So the responsibility for every win, every loss, every weight and every reward in it, is yours and no one else’s. Now go back. Take hold of your own life. And when you reach that threshold again, try to reach it without regret, just with waiting on your face, the way I had.”
“Ustad, what was that waiting for, on your face?”
“For completion, sangat. The kind that only shows itself once you step over that line with no regret left in you. After that, nothing else matters.”
A violent shiver ran through my whole body. Sweat broke out across my skin. My heart was slamming against my chest like a hammer.
“Sangat, you need to go back now. Don’t stay any longer or the balance of things will shift. You’re still a prisoner of time, you can’t stay a runaway for long. Moteshen, take him back.”
“But Ustad, what do I tell everyone when I get back? What do I tell our friends, your children, the ones still holding onto hope? Do I tell them I came back with nothing? That I couldn’t bring you home?”
“Just tell them this. Step over that threshold without regret. I’ll be here waiting, and so will everyone else you keep alive in your heart.”
My head was spinning. Nothing made sense anymore. The Ustad walked up to Moteshen, said something I couldn’t hear, then looked at me one last time.
“Go now, sangat. Go, right now. Wake up. Open your eyes.”
I opened my eyes.
Sitting in front of me was an old woman, eyes shut, deep lines across her face like she’d seen every corner of the world and lived through every age of it. Both my hands were locked tight in her fists. She was humming something under her breath.
A disabled child rested his head in her lap, staring straight at me. He didn’t move, seemed paralyzed from the waist down, drool running down his chin that he couldn’t even wipe away himself. And still, he wouldn’t look away from me.
It was December, and yet I was drenched in sweat, my forehead burning with fever. My heart was pounding so hard the old woman heard it, opened her eyes, smiled, and said,
“You’re back. For a second there, I thought I’d lost you.”
And then it all came rushing back to me.
I’d been walking through the broken down streets of Argus when this old woman, sitting at a crossroads, called out to me. Maybe she was begging, or telling fortunes like the other street performers there. The disabled child in her lap had been watching me even then.
“Give me your ring, and I’ll let you meet someone you shouldn’t be able to meet.”
“What do you mean? Someone who’s died? That’s not possible.”
“If I can’t connect you, keep the ring. Deal?”
I thought she was out of her mind, but I had time to spare and questions burning in me, so I figured why not. The ring wasn’t worth much anyway.
“Just so you know, this ring isn’t gold or silver. Some beggar slipped it onto my finger once, as a joke.”
“I don’t want the ring. I want the stone in it. That’s Dur e Najaf, made from rain that falls on the graves of martyrs.”
I sat down across from her.
“Hold out both your hands and close your eyes.”
She took my hands and began to hum.
“Remember, you can only stay there two minutes.”
As the memory came back fully, I checked my watch in a panic. Only one minute and forty seconds had passed in the real world.
Shaking, half in fear and half in awe, I ripped the ring off my finger and threw it at her. “You’re a liar. A witch. A sorceress.”
She just smiled. The disabled child tried to say something, drool sliding further down his chin. I couldn’t make out the words, but his eyes never left me.
“What is this child trying to say? What language is that? I feel like… I’ve heard it somewhere before.”
“We’re Gypsies, son,” the old woman said quietly. “He’s speaking Romani. He’s saying: ‘It changed.”
A chill ran through me at how familiar it all felt. “Who is this child? What’s his name? And what changed?”
The old woman smiled faintly.
“He’s my grandson. Disabled since birth, in body and mind both. No one even bothered naming him, his own parents left him, so I took him in. But ever since he came into my life, God himself sits at my table. He has no name, so I just call him ‘son. In our language, son is Moteshen. So he’s my Moteshen.”
My heart stopped. “What? He’s Moteshen? Ask him, for God’s sake, ask him what changed?”
The child kept staring at me, then struggled through a few broken words to the old woman. She turned back to me.
“He says, as you were leaving, he told you the nature of things has changed.”
“That’s impossible. Whose nature changed? Mine? Aslam’s? Everyone’s? Ask him, please!”
“He’s tired now,” she said, tucking the ring away with a satisfied smile as she gathered her things. “When he sleeps, no one knows when he’ll wake up again. Go find your own answers now.”
“For God’s sake, tell me, when and where can I find you again?”
“We don’t have a fixed address, my child. Sometimes here, sometimes somewhere else. But don’t waste your time chasing us. All of this was only a medium, not the answer. Find the answer inside yourself.”
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