by: Farhan Tariq
In the silence of the night, an old dervish was sitting in the city square. Two mirrors were placed in front of him. One mirror was shining and the other was covered in dust. People would come, see themselves in the shining mirror and leave happily. But the dervish would say to every visitor:
“Just look in the other mirror too, maybe you will see your real face there.”
For three years, protests, long marches, shutter-downs and political tension had continued in this region. Every dissenter was sometimes labeled an “agent” and sometimes a “separatist”. Then one day it was realized that perhaps the meanings of words were no longer what they were written in the dictionary, but what the powerful wanted to write.
It felt as if the voices of twenty-seven million people were being weighed in the scales of the interests of a few families. The question arose: if demanding one’s rights, justice, employment, education and better governance is separatism, then what is the definition of unity?
There were only twelve palaces in the city of the story. The doors of these palaces were always open, but only for power. They had the best schools in the world for their children, while the roof of the government school on the corner of the street leaked every time it rained. For them, the law was soft wax, and for the common man, a stone wall.
A laborer would sweat from morning to evening, but at the end of the month, he would have only enough in his pocket to start worrying about the next month. On the other hand, the list of privileges, allowances, protocols, and amenities in the halls of power grew longer every year.
Darvish then raised the mirror and said:
“Real separation does not occur in lands, but in hearts. When the distance between the ruler and the people increases so much that one is in the neighborhoods and the other is yearning for basic necessities, then separation is born in society before borders.”
The people of the city were silent. Someone asked softly:
“So who is the separatist? The one who asks questions, or the one who refuses to listen to questions?”
The dervish smiled and said:
“History will decide this, but remember, nations do not break up due to disagreement, they break up due to injustice.”
And in the last watch of the night, the two mirrors were placed in front of each other. Now each person could see both his own face and his own character.
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