Naked

By Dr. Aheed Khan

A dark night cringed on the campus under a starless night. Being bereft of the stars in the night sky wasn’t a very unusual phenomenon for the small town botany professor but it hadn’t been very good lately.

“If only I could end this paper today”, he said sitting in his peach painted room. A half burnt cigarette balanced itself on a metallic ashtray, a wine glass adjacent to it and a small fern plant on the window in front of his study. He liked to look at the sunlight hitting his books; he didn’t care if it was always the evening sun. He couldn’t afford the apartment in which the morning sun could grace his rooms. In his defence, there was nothing bad in the gloom and Sheheryar was a fan of gloom ever since he came out to his family.

Often he looked towards the window, searching for the same koel who talked to him when he was a kid. He used to wake him up every Saturday until his 21st birthday. But ten years had passed since then. He’s older now. The koel had not returned.

*****

One night Sheheryar was working on his thesis. His tired eyes switched back and forth into the textbook. It was about to rain. He heard another thunder in the 3AM darkness and then someone knocked on his door.

But who could be knocking his gloomy door at 3 am in this damned night, he thought.

Burning up another cigarette, he moved towards the door and asked in his deep voice “Who the hell is there?” But he only heard whimpering and an eerie silence.

He watched through the peephole, and was taken aback. A thin, young man around twenty-two, naked, wet and drenched stood there. His face was lit by a small bulb outside the door, which revealed a perfectly chiselled jaw and a beard which was left trimmed on the upper lip, his eyes were hazel and as water dropped from his wet hair over his chest and down towards his stomach and groin.

“Can you help me?” he asked feebly.

“Apologies”, he said, still in awe, “Come in. Here take a towel. I was about to make some tea. Would you like to have some?”

“Sure”.

Sheheryar went to his kitchen and started boiling water. He couldn’t help but notice a red tattoo of something written in Pashtun on his right buttock. He was overtaken by this sudden and inappropriate infatuation but he wasn’t to act on it. He offered him chai and asked him what had happened.

He looked into Sheheryar’s eyes and with a gentle bow of humility, he said, “I work at McDonalds in the nearby market. I’m from Himachal and here for a few weeks to get some money to open a restaurant in my village. I got robbed and I woke up in the garbage can near the University. I saw the light of your room, and…”

“It’s ok. I’m Sheheryar. I’m a Botany professor here. Where do you live?”

“I was crashing in a small room provided to me by the manager, but I need a house to rent. I appreciate you helping me. I’ll be gone in the morning.”

“Don’t worry. I'll help you.”

“Thank you so much”.

The storm was no excuse for Sheheryar for any distraction. He didn’t sleep that night. The next morning Sheheryar found his clothes stacked on the sofa. The boy had left.

***********

Sheheryar felt absolutely amused by the fact that although he wanted to kiss him the moment he saw him but resisted so much that he didn’t even ask his name. Sheheryar later went to McDonalds to ask about this particular boy, but there was no information on the description.

Another week ended and Sheheryar sat in his study, alone, smoking his last cigarette for the day, smoking and worrying if it was a hallucination.

It had started drizzling again. Somehow a single restless night had made him realise all the things he could have grabbed just by claiming them at the right moment, but he didn’t. He had many regrets in his life. Life had not taught him to break the norm. Life had taught him to following the right things, not taking risks, planning everything ahead and although he had a successful career, he had enough regrets to fill many botany books.

Nature disagreed one more time with Sheheryar. A similar knock was heard on his door. He could never think of something so monumental happening again. But it did. As he opened the door, he saw the boy again – drenched, naked, smiling back at him. His dry and thin sultry body with the perfect chest and almost well-carved legs stood in front of him once again. He looked on the little droplets that had settled momentarily on his locks but slipped now and then on his back and abdomen.

Sheheryar could not let go of this moment. He went outside, on the portico, and kissed him, long and deep. It was no time for any regrets or distractions. He allowed the rain to fall down on him this one time. He held his hand and brought him inside, gave him a towel and kept looking at him as if all his answers were in his naked body.

“It’s not a very professor thing to stare, Professor”, said the boy.

“Oh pardon me. I…..” Sheheryar apologised, embarrassed.

“I thought you’ll never do this”, he smiled back.

“I never asked your name”, Sheheryar asked with a similar smile.

“My name is Zaryab”.

“It’s a beautiful name. Let me kiss you again on that.”

*******

Sheheryar’s life couldn’t have been any happier since that day. Zaryab stayed with him. Often going back to Himachal on the weekends to meet his mother. He used to come back every Monday or Tuesday with abrasions on his back, sometimes on his chest, sometimes extremely starved, and sometimes extremely tired. But Sheheryar never asked about them.

“I have so much to tell you. But I’m afraid I will lose you if I reveal them”, he said one night sitting beside a small fire in their backyard.

“Then don’t. Let me see you now. I don’t need anything else.” He hugged him. While playing with his unkempt hair and inhaling them as he rested his head on Zaryab’s shoulder, he said, “It seems I have always loved you. We might move from here to the capital. It’s much better there.”

“You are so foolish Sheheryar. I regret that I have made you blind. What if I leave you and never come back?”

“Until then maybe there’s nothing as too much of it, now is it?”, he smirked.

“You’re unbelievable”. He smirked back.

“Yeah but that tattoo on your back is even more breathtaking. What does that mean?”

“It’s Pashto. It means music. I had always loved music. Let me sing you a Pashto song”.

The fire sent magical spurts into the air as Zaryab sang the most melodious song Sheheryar had ever listened in his life. “It speaks of a trapped king who kept waiting for his love and died. Only to have found his love when he went to heaven” said Zaryab, “isn’t it beautiful professor Saab?”

*****

A year had passed. It was February again. Zaryab had gone away to his home. Sheheryar sat in his study once again, a wine glass at his side, reading a book by Murakami. He had stopped taking the pills. He received a phone call from his Khala.

“Sheheryar, Allah! Please come here. Urgent! I don’t know how! He’s bleeding! I’m scared…”

Sheheryar didn’t even lock the door and rushed.

Zaryab was naked and bleeding from his head. “I heard a loud thud. I thought it was a koel. But then he appeared. What sorcery! What magic! He is dead now Sheheryar. Dead!!”

Sheheryar couldn’t listen to her sobs anymore. He found a small note in his study when he was done with the funeral.

Zaryab had written it.

“My love.

Please don’t judge me for what I’m about to tell you. I might never come back from this trip again. Don’t try to find me. I might not be alive. My time has come. A koel can’t live so long. But I’m happy I did, and that too with you. Do you remember we used to talk then you were a little boy? I have loved you since forever. I convinced a Djinn to grant me human form and some years so that I could love you and be with you. But I’m a sinner. I fell in love with you, against my nature and against everything. I lied to you. But I don’t care anymore. I have lived a lifetime with you. I’m glad I could touch you the way I wanted. Don’t smoke any more my love, and don’t take those pills. You were the music of my heart. You’ll always be. Now I die in peace. I will always love you.

Thank you for your love. I’ll find you in heaven again.”

Sheheryar sat on his study table, in his peach painted room, with a smoke in hand, a wine glass adjacent to his books, and a whole lot of gloom to cry on.

By Dr. Aheed Khan