Debris of Life & Mind – “Brain Tumor Survivor” Sumaiya Siddiqui’s Dream, Manama, Bahrain
Sharing a dream.
[Text by Sumaiya Siddiqui, photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]
I’m sitting at his feet, weeping silently, while he runs a hand over my head. Dressed in all white and very uncharacteristically but stereotypically wearing soorma, he’s with me in the dailaan of his childhood home in the old city of Hyderabad. There’s a wooden diwan with two bolsters and a cushion between them, in the same spot it has been my entire childhood, perhaps his too. Under a dusty taak that’s still cramped with diaries, newspapers, few pens – some without caps, some without refills there still sits that same mitti ka ghara covered with a steel plate and steel cup on top.
Alive and well in my dream but in reality, gone just over a week prior, it was the first of what would become frequent visits over the next 6 years.
“What am I going to do Baba?” “What’s going to happen now?” I ask between tears.
He rests his hand on my head, it still feels just as warm, just as strong as I’ve always known. I don’t see his face very clearly anymore, I’m not even sure it’s still him, but I know it’s his voice I’m hearing when he finally says, “Ab tum phir se likhna beta.”
Sumaiya Siddiqui, 36, Manama
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