Staying back on that old leather chair, the creak unfolded its age. The beams of sun leaked through the lactic work of the window, painting the walls of the room. On the contrary, the aura of the room and the rays of the sun were like a complex plot of trying a harmonious resolution. Elias, a tall but composed artist, was eager to enrich his canvas, and I was perhaps his subject.
“Can you hold yourself for some time?” Elias demanded.
I had no option but to obey for the reason I was about to get translated on the canvas, yet my neck was willingly disobeying the call. At times one has to obey even when disapproval seems genuine. I stationed my neck like an ugly iron rod, ready to get hammered. Being a subject of the artist, one has to reduce himself to a mere idol, leaving the brush to work. He was moving his brush, and I had my neck cemented for the reason that the portrait that was under process would relax my grandma. She would always gaze at me for hours together; perhaps she would in my eyes find my grandpa. She would call me ‘a duplicate of Grandpa.
Those gentle brush strokes, those watchful eyes, and my stiff body were gradually making a mark on the canvas. It was his movements that captured my moments. I was just another idol settled in my own temple to let my grandma enjoy one more day to peep through the portrait and find a moment of solace, for she had lost her husband in a car accident.
As I had nothing to do save sit idol motionlessly, I kept thinking how grandpa had lost his life. My eyes were itching, but I saw something—a shadow like a moving mist. The mist soon turned into a portrait before my eyes.
“Grandpa,” I wished to yell, but for unknown reasons I hold back my voice.
“He can’t be grandpa,” I whispered.
“Surely, I am,” he responded.
“But you died in a car accident,” I asked.
In that portrait, he seemed a lively human being. Smiling and energetic.
“Car accident,” he paused.
“I was killed; it was not a car accident,” he completed his sentence.
“Hay, now you can move your head,” Elias shouted.
I was eager to see my face being translated through colours. But my colour had already faded. I looked like an ordinary man in the portrait. For the first time, grandmother in my mind was erased and replaced by my grandpa.
That night I presented the portrait to Granny; she only smiled, leaving my eyes cascading down the cheeks, my forlorn fountains.
As I looked back to her, she stopped me, but I dashed out of her room. Early in the morning at the breakfast table, I found a letter reading, I killed him because he killed my two-day-old daughter, your father’s only sister.
By: Muazin Mir
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