Adieu Mon Ami!

7: 24 pm
Friday August 29, 2008

This morning I felt very good because I restarted writing my novel last night, after a hiatus of about 4 years. What a feeling it was! Writing again the book of my dreams! It filled me with such ebullient energy that sleep deprivation due to power crisis lost to the comfort of my creative spirit. When my friend Zahid came up to visit me at about 10: 30 this morning, I instantly started cheering him up, thinking how very low-spirited he looked. Of course, it was me who was high on my sudden revival of that fiery passion for completing my very own novel. Taking him to have a cold drink at the fast food point nearby, I started to chat with him about what he’d do after he immigrates to Australia. Then came this disastrous news, striking me dumb. One of the waiters at the restaurant said, ‘the dogs roaming in campus were just poisoned by the municipal team.’ It was lightning that struck me. Poisoned! I looked at that young frisky pup that was about to grow into a healthy dog in some months, the one who visited the students sitting in the restaurant’s lawn, one by one; and trusted them as friends. He had no name but only an abstract impression of being a friend; a friend of all he saw there. How innocent and trusting he was, going from one group of people at a table to another, expecting food and a show of love. I don’t know how many people welcomed him, except that I loved him and shared a little of my food with him; stroked him gently on his back and silently assured him that there was one person who did not see him as a filthy little thing whose life didn’t matter. And he had started knowing me as a friend; coming to me from a distance, leaping over my chair in play. And there he was, right in front of my eyes, poisoned!

‘Was he poisoned too?’ I asked the waiter out of my darkness, struggling for my voice.

‘Yes, in minced meat,’ he said. ‘The older dogs sometimes survive the poison but the younger ones die soon.’

So my friend was going to die and I could not do anything. No even express my gear and anger, even in the most benign way. What cruelty! Where am I living? A culture that is so perverted, so nasty, so horribly ugly that an innocent creature is poisoned but the hands that shed the blood of thousands is adorned with gold and bank accounts full of money. I could not rush my friend to a doctor, not anywhere, since there is no facility for saving animals, except for those that meet the wicked demands of food and accessories for their human owners. Even they get slain when they are considered useless. But more horrible and shameful is my culture’s covert abandonment of concern for animals; killing the very spirit to help them when they are in pain; killing the friendliness in us. What a shame!

I didn’t get my lunch. Everything, everyone, felt so ugly; so inhuman and unbearable. All I kept thinking was just wishing my friend to somehow survive this cruelty. But I knew he wouldn’t. I rushed to my hostel room and cried myself out on my bed. It left me exhausted and I slipped into deep sleep.

In the evening, I came back to my office, feeling empty as a drum. I looked about the place where my friend used to walk, sit, and lie down. The place was empty, as empty as myself of my spirit. As usual, I went to take the evening tea in the restaurant and my horrible nightmare was true; he wasn’t there. My heart is wrenching as I write these lines. How can I stop this madness? How can I save life from what has become the greatest threat to it: humans? I feel so helpless, insignificant, and world weary that I think of my late uncle’s suicide as perfectly justified. However, I don’t have the guts to follow the same route. I would rather save myself and shamelessly live on by penning down my anguish and sharing with people who understand.

‘You are most probably gone my friend; killed mercilessly by creatures who are more powerful and much more cunning and wicked than your species can ever become. I am so sorry I couldn’t save you! I read somewhere that consciousness survives physical death. If you can hear me, please don’t exclude me from your list of friends. Thin of me as a dog, an innocent creature who won’t hurt you. I am not human; I am not one of these filthy things. Trust me my friend, just as you trusted me here. I don’t know how long will you live in my memories but perhaps these words will keep you alive to me. And yes, one more thing. I’ll light a candle for you tonight. Just once! Goodbye my friend!’

In humble shame and grief,

Yours,

Ernest Dempsey