Assorted, Muhammad Usman (Pakistan) rana_mutk@yahoo.com
 
Assorted

I’ll tell you of a child, whose name was ‘Hanif’,

Whose father was a drug addict and was known as a thief,

His mother was a woman of honor and was brave,

She didn’t let her children to live in that deadly grave,

They were two siblings in all, a sister and a brother,

About both of them, their poor mother had to bother,

The house of her was nothing but like a jail,

Her husband beat her regularly with a metal scale,

She always thought of leaving him, to go away,

To a place where they could peacefully stay,

But the luck and time didn’t give them a way,

Till one day they managed to go away,

They left their city, even left their state,

And moved to a city of high valued estate,

She worked as a maid, but worked with honor,

This was how she dealt with her shelter,

Hanif was of five and was sent to the school,

His mother made him learn and didn’t give him the tool,

He loved his mother, who sent him to school,

And people say, because of this that she was a fool,

He worked hard, as most of the poor children do,

He cared neither for his uniform, nor of his shoe,

For years his mother worked and worked alone,

But a tragedy waited for her in a sneak prone,

Her youngest daughter, who was than of five,

She got ill of Malaria at the start of her life,

She was taken to the physician, who his best tried,

But failed to save her and the innocent daughter died,

Hanif was of nine when they put her into the grave,

These were the memories which he would have to save,

The time passed as it always has done,

The mother forgot her daughter and looked toward her son,

The only hope of life, the only grin of light,

Hanif was then the center of her sight,

He did his Matriculation in the age of fifteen,

And went for more education and learnt with keen,

He was now in the college and was learning medical,

His teachers said that his abilities were brightly spectacle,

He learnt to fulfill his mother’s dream,

“I will be a doctor”, became his life’s scheme,

His mother worked alone for years that were long,

But every time when she got tired her son made her strong,

But she was old, the mother, was old,

And house matters she than could not hold,

Her strength, her son, though was there with her,

But the burdens than she could not bear,

And just than the idle son, full of determination,

Who was waiting for the results of his examination,

Decided to help his mother and started doing a job,

He worked as a salesman in a Cosmetic shop,

He sent her mother to rest in their house,

She’d done enough and her best without her spouse,

After a month, joy came to their house of straw,

The son got passed and luck had made his draw,

He was awarded with a gold medal and a scholarship,

To learn abroad to complete his study of doctor-ship,

He requested the happy chairman of his board,

His mother was ill and he could not go abroad,

The chairman gave an idea to respect his obedience,

‘If you agree, we can take her under our guidance’,

He asked for time and came back home,

And told his mother what they have sworn,

His mother with glad, to him, she said,

She only needed rest and just a little bed,

‘You should go son, to fulfill the dream,

The dream of mine which you have seen,

I’ll take care of myself, I can still do,

And that is son what I really mean’,

With sad heart and heavy feet,

The time had come to go,

He went to London to study the rest,

Where he was welcomed by snow,

He studied in day and drove in night,

A taxi of a person, who was Asian by sight,

He learnt and worked, with eager and pride,

And in London he met his future bride,

She was English and worked in a firm,

Confident she was, her face was firm,

She was a blonde with green cat eyes,

Her name, I know, was ‘Kim Alice’,

One night at ten, after work when she left,

Hanif saved her from a hand-bag theft,

He took her to the place where she belonged,

And that half an hour drive became whole life longed,

They met many times, beneath the moon, under the Oak,

Where the love built up and with it their lives got soaked,

They kept meeting for a year and more,

They made promises and love they swore,

And than after the completion of his degree,

Hanif was made sent back to his country,

The dream of his mother was than fulfilled,

He bought a home, in city it was built,

The two lived a new life from then,

About old times, if asked, they said, “When?”

Hanif told the story of Kim to her mother,

And she understood what he wanted to say rather,

She said with a smile she knew what he meant,

And that a positive answer to Kim he can send,

Things were not as good as they seem,

The life had challenges on them to teem,

He signed a surety bond in the previous years,

To work for the Government for three consecutive years,

He decided to fulfill this condition,

Heartily he went for his humanist mission,

For three years he stayed in his own country,

And I feel, I am now tired of this commentary,

I will make it brief and make it short,

I will try to collect and tell in a sort,

Well time passed and he left for London again,

But not alone this time, with his mother and his gain,

He planned to live in London forever,

His beloved was there beyond that border,

He married the girl in the church of Christ,

Religion for poor, sometimes, doesn’t matter quite,

In the first year of their marriage, his life got changed,

The loving mother got ill, her brain got strained,

She didn’t become a burden on her son,

And died in the six month of the sun,

In London she buried, in a Christian graveyard,

In the white soil, where the ground was hard,

His loving mother, his life was no more,

The hard working, son loving mother was no more,

In grief, Hanif, sat beside her grave,

He kept visiting her till he had forty days shave,

As usual, the time, yet again, passed on,

And on the grave of the mother there was no one to mourn,

Hanif remained in London for forty-one years,

In all these years he never felt fear,

His name was one of the most reputed people,

Though that had changed from ‘Hanif’ to ‘Russell’,

‘Russell’, one of the most notable doctors there,

This occupation of his had dried his tears,

He came back to Pakistan at the age of sixty-three,

With his wife and two sons who came to see,

The place from where their father had made his fate,

Time, however, could not made his memory fade,

He decided to visit his sister’s cemetery,

There he went to find a shocking reality,

There wasn’t the grave of his sister anymore,

A dual-three lane road had taken that place for sure,

There were no more the marks of his past,

His mother, his sister, his place of start,

He came back to England, which was now,

The only place where he could go,

He passed the rest of his days there,

His heart had tolerated pains and sorrows it shared,

So it could not bear sorrow and pain another one,

And by a single stroke of heart his life was won,

He again was taken after years to her mother,

And lay there, beside her place, in his grave forever,

I also know, a real fact about that crank,

The truth that is, the cross of his grave is blank.

(MUHAMMAD USMAN)