kalopsia
By: Mohammad Abdullah Ahmed
Tags: Music, Creative, Fiction, Happiness

“Ishaan! He’s not here yet! He’s not coming!”

I opened my eyes and sat up. My little brother was pacing around, the epitome of excitement and impatience. I sighed and laid back down under the tree’s shade. “Kiwali, calm down. He’ll be here soon,” I said tiredly, repeating the same words I said every day.

“But what if he doesn’t come today?” insisted Kiwali, sitting down next to me under the dried-up apple tree. I ignored him and shifted around, trying to find a comfortable position.

The apple tree. I remember when we were younger the three of us would play all day long under its shade, acting like heroic soldiers marching off to battle or imagining having enough food to stuff ourselves silly. The tree was our sanctuary. It sheltered us from the excruciating heat of the sun and the weekly struggle for subsistence.

“Ishaan, he’s here! He’s here!”

I stood up slowly, dusting the sand off my worn clothes, and looked around for him, Kiwali’s voice ringing in my ears. And there he was, adorned in his splendid uniform, lugging along with him a dark case. ‘Is it a gun?’ I thought. Surely they wouldn’t give them weapons at school, would they?’

There was a big smile plastered across his face. As he walked up to the old apple tree, we anxiously waited for him to say something, but he just kept on grinning at us.

“What happened, Aarain? Tell us! Tell us what they taught you at school today!” demanded Kiwali, jumping up and down, the only lively sight in the vast, arid desert.

Aarain was one of the few lucky kids who had been selected to attend the small school outside the village. Every day, aside from harvest months when the school would be closed, we would wait for him to come back and teach us what he had learned. It was amazing how much people learned there. Some of what Aarain tried to teach us was very tricky, such as English. The exotic words would get stuck in our mouths and never come out the right way. But Kiwali and I loved every second of it. It was like discovering piece by piece the world that was out there, beyond the village and its crops and dusty roads.

I looked at Aarain, more than slightly envious of his good fortunes. “What happened?” I asked suspiciously. “You’re even happier today than you usually are.”

“It’s a surprise, Ishaan. After the lesson, I’ll tell you,” said Aarain, beaming. The three of us sat down on the ground in a circle under the shade. I handed Aarain and Kiwali a few rocks we had selected long ago, the best to write on the ground with.

Aarain began to painstakingly draw lines and squiggles on the ground, and we did the same, attempting to copy each one as it was. Many of them were alien to me and Kiwali, but a few we recognized, such as ‘P’ (a parrot) or a ‘U’ (a bend in the road).

“Today,” Aarain declared with a hint of self-importance, “Miss taught us a poom…no, a poem. It’s called ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,’” he said, trying to remember. He pointed to the first line and sang the poem, a distinct joy in his voice. We sang after him, losing coherence but carrying roughly the same tune. He pointed to the next verse and explained what it meant, a tribute to the magnificent stars we saw in the night sky. By the end of it, Kiwali was running around, singing bits and pieces of it at the top of his lungs for all the world to hear.

“Aarain! What’s in the box?” I asked him eagerly. He smiled again and swept his wavy hair back like he always did when he was feeling proud, and said, “The teacher gave it to me! She said I have to give it back tomorrow but I can play it for the village tonight. I’ve been practicing for ages!” He pointed at the case.

I looked at Kiwali, confused, and said, “But what is it?”

Aarain stood up and opened the case with great care. He pulled out a gleaming piece of wood, four strings pulled tight across its elegant length, its color a dark, rustic orange. “This is a violin!” he exclaimed, as we looked on in awe. Its simple beauty could not have looked more out of place in the sandy dunes and harsh skies of the village.

Kiwali reached out to touch it, hesitant, as Aarain watched on, reminded of his own reaction when he had seen the instrument. “I’ll just quickly play it for you and put it back,” he said.

“It plays music?” I asked, dumbfounded.

“Yes!” said Aarain proudly, grinning even wider.

I couldn’t fathom how such an object could produce music. In fact, my very conception of music was limited to the muffled songs that would sometimes play on Grandpa’s radio, back when it used to work.

Aarain hefted the violin onto his shoulder and tucked it under his chin. From the case, he took out a dull rod and touched it to the violin’s strings. A harsh sound emanated from it that hurt my ears. But then he leaned back and started to play, the fingers of his left hand wrapped around the head of the instrument, eyes closed and body swaying.

A pure, sharp sound filled the air around us and flooded our hearts with joy; it took us up and away, to the sunrise and to mornings after sweet dreams; to the scent of rain and to playing hide and seek with childhood friends. For the briefest of moments, we were inexorably happy, as if the music had revealed to us all the invisible beauty of our world.

Aarain rocked back and forth as if the music flowed through him. When he finished, there was a deep silence, as if nature herself had been lulled to sleep by the mellifluous crescendo. The three of us stood still, utterly content. The violin made us believe that we had a future besides growing crops, that the world out there waited to pull us into a soft, sensuous embrace. It was one of the finest days I can remember.

Music is a language spoken all over the world and maybe even across the entire universe. It has the priceless ability to break all barriers between people and help them rejoice in their joy or be comforted in their pain.

For a great many people like Ishaan, Kiwali, and Aarain, it is a shining beacon of light in a world otherwise dull and grey.