The Cynic

“How did she..?” “She had cancer.” “Oh...I’m so sorry!” I smiled. Sorry. Sometimes I felt envious of people merely for having this great comfort. They could be sorry about Suhana’s death. Just how sorry could I be? About having seen my best friend of fourteen years die? * It was seven months ago when Suhana’s first reports came in. Diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, terminal stage. By the end of two months, she stopped attending school—the constant chemotherapy having taken its toll on her general health. Her sleek, long, brown hair had begun to fall off in large clumps. Many nights, she would call me and cry and obsess about how her hair was going, “It's coming out in fistfuls and I don’t know what to do!” She would cry incessantly, and I would console her for hours on end. Every time I met her, she looked a little worse—the dark circles, the fatigue, the recurring nausea. I know she knew that she wouldn’t live much longer—but I also realized that she lived on my persistent...

"Zoya, why don't you wear those green danglers of mine? I think they'll go perfectly well with your lehenga!" Zoya beamed at her mother. She had always adored those earrings! So dainty, so delicate, she thought. And Ammi is right; they'll look gorgeous with my dress. Zoya pulled out the earrings from under the mattress of the bed she shared with her mother. Her mother smiled as she put them on and examined herself in the mirror. "Ammi! These earrings looked so much better when you wore them. Why don't you wear them anymore?" The smile drained off Amina Rehman's face. Often such innocent questions sting your heart more than anything else in the world. And the pain is unbearable. Zoya's father and Amina's husband Shauqat Rehman had died fighting the Pakistani forces in the war of Kargil. He had laid down his life trying to save two of his subordinates- Kashmiri Lal and Tej Chand. While the duo survived, Shaukat took the enemy bullet in his ...