Zerafa: A Modern Fairy Tale

By Tooba Rasheed

Parenting is one heck of a task whose heady highs and mortifying lows have a profound influence on the lives of children. Parenting mistakes however minor need to be realized and rectified before they leave permanent scars.
Zerafa, the first born to Omar and Zareefa is a special child whose specialty keeps her from normal schooling. Zerafa manifests her ability not through the use of words but colors, avant-garde. The coming of Zunaira, their second child, alleviates the suffering of the parents for she conforms to the normal in every possible way. She is schooled but soon Zerafas influence begins to tell. In order to save their normal child, the parents take a hard decision to separate the two; one of them is sent to a boarding school.
While Zerafas talent is unleashed with time, Zunaira unable to come to terms with the separation withdraws into a shell. She rebels against her studies only to be mistaken by her mother as being pampered. The mother-daughter relationship soon turns sour. The story delves deep into a childs psyche to unveil parenting mistakes. Read on to know how the parents realize their mistakes and whether the scars get permanently sketched onto the psyche of the children. Or is there any mystery revolving through the plot that sets the fairy tale in motion and settles it on that score?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing India
• Release date: Mar 8, 2017
• ISBN: 9781482888652

Tooba Rasheed

Tooba Rasheed (b. 1991) from the troubled lands of Kashmir, works for Cenveo Publisher Services at its Delhi office. A graduate from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University with degrees in English and Sociology, she is into feminism and writes passionately about family issues. Brought up during the decade of turmoil in Kashmir, she is a keen observer of the effects K-issue has brought on the psyche of children in particular. This is the maiden’s maiden attempt at novel writing. Tooba also likes to put her anguish on canvas and in rhyme.

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Copyright © 2017 by Tooba Rasheed.

ISBN:      Softcover         978-1-4828-8866-9

                eBook             978-1-4828-8865-2

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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www.partridgepublishing.com/india

Contents

Acknowledgement

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Acknowledgement

T his book is an individual effort only in its building up as a narrative. The text is a collective result of comments and reviews I received from my teachers and my friends. I wish to thank my teachers: Mr G.R Malik, Rtd. Professor, University of Kashmir; Mr Ihsan Malik, Associate Professor, Central University of Kashmir, Mr Majid Jehangir, Iqbal Memorial Institute, Kashmir; my family away from home Shivani Salhotra and Smriti Joinwal and my friends for their constant engagement with the editing and revises: Ann Susan Aleyas, Assistant Professor, St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University, Mir Auqib Afzal and Sarah Jacobson. Apart from the serious comments, I cannot neglect the dinner table conversations with my sisters, Dhuha Rasheed and Nashra Imtiyaz about the characters of the novella who happened to be a part of our lives these months and developed through it. I am very thankful to one and all for making it a success.

Tooba Rasheed

February 2017

To,

Amu and Abu

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One sheds one’s sickness in books— repeats and presents again one’s emotions, to be master of them.

-D. Herbert Lawrence

Chapter One

O n a wintry dark night a woman of great luck and fortune gave birth to a girl who had an unusual charm that sat upon her face all around and endorsingly so at the corners of her mouth. Her mother was bewitched at the first glimpse of her child who was supposed to fill a space in the imaginary future her mother had crafted for her for the past several months. When she held the wheatish faced baby in her arms, a heaviness climbed up her shoulders through her veins. She felt a warmth of emotions of a mother towards her child when she experiences motherhood for the first time. The baby in her arms was a mark of the fact that she was capable of shaping, sustaining and simulating a life. The charm of the baby was characteristically unusual that caught her in such a manner that she exclaimed Zerafa! The name didn’t only literally mean ‘charm’ but had a proportionate impact on the persona of the baby. Thereupon, Zerafa not only started showing the charm she inherited but with age a new prismatic spirit of her name showed forth.

Zerafa grew like magic, a spell with an unbound spirit of a free bird, the depth of an old wise soothsayer, and the vision of a sea voyager to whom sea is the home and land a sojourn. Her company included no boy… no girls either. She played with butterflies the run and chase, with glow worms the hide and seek and with bats the blind man’s bluff. Much before gaining speech she earned immense first-hand knowledge through the creatures of Allah. Her world gave more space to creatures who had a language that only they could speak and she could understand. This mutual understanding helped her deal with situations when she was part of the world of human beings like her but the beings who did not share the best part of her experience–of mutuality and of love that she learned from the lower beings. Her small hands captured the insects in the grass that tried to mount each blade and unmount it with great efforts, offering them a smooth plane to enjoy but slip. Such is the law of physics and the principles of philosophy parallel it. The smoother the plane of life looks, the harder it gets to go against its frictions!

Zerafa lived a happy childhood with her family—the creatures closer to her being. Her gifted presence in the family was not just welcome but something beyond a longing; it was an unasked wish fulfilled. Her proximity to Nature was an observable mutuality debarred of words, an unspeakable affinity. Never can a person achieve such deftness to capture a butterfly as she did; a child of sixteen months. Her world was the one she had control over. This was her world! She belonged to Nature and its currents nourished her like a sapling. She flourished more than she grew, she blossomed more than she developed. She would open her fist to catch a morsel offered by her parents like a Venus plant and create a magical sight holding the crumbs as if a crow perching with its snatch of flesh.

When Zerafa was two and a half there was an addition in her world of wonders. One more creature that she could mutely speak to and gesturingly converse with. It was her sister, Zunaira. She turned Zerafa’s fairy world into vivacity and life that marveled her to the end. She made her conscious of things she previously had undermined and was now forgetful of many a thing she previously showed a penchant towards. She would pluck beautiful flowers and scatter them on the grass where she found their beauty more appealing. When Zunaira was born, Zerafa took a handful of pink, red and yellow petals for her mother as a gift. This was how Zunaira got her name—the flower of the Paradise. This time, Zerafa’s father made the remark when Zerafa held her soft and small hands full of flower petals near the baby’s face. The name was soon agreed upon by one and all.

In the first few months of Zunaira’s growth, Zerafa brought her petals to touch. Scolded by her mother for harming the flowers, Zerafa never felt the guilt in her heart and so did not stop doing it but when she found reluctance in Zunaira towards them she interpreted it as a wrong-doing. Then on the flowers lost their grace and bloom for her and Zunaira replaced them. Watching Zunaira in her cradle was more engrossing than any garden full of roses, lilies, tulips and bluebells could be. She had the glow and grace of all in her cheeks contained. Her mouth was softer than the petals of lotus; her eyes were like two moths in the bed of flowers shining as if calling to be searched, itself searching the depths of curiosity in the black hole. Her eyes introduced Zerafa to a whole new world of secrets, where a glimpse played a spark sending down its powers to her lips—she smiled. An enigmatic smile of a child like an inkling to the secretly shared moments of amusement between the child and the angels. No cat would make her happier with