The tiny idea of freedom

By Dr. Hawar Moradi:

Little by little the darkness swallows the light of the day. Motionlessly the day goes towards a certain death and every life during the day, as by law, transform into another way of being. Every single being loses color, shape, and the way of existing and simply stop moving. They all die, when the night comes.

The one tiny tree just by the river remains in the same place. The green color of the leaves is slowly covered by the darkness of the night. Soon it is not green anymore but dark as the darkness of the night. The green leaves freeze suddenly as soon as the sun goes down far in the horizon. The water that rushes through the tiny capillaries that are spread all over the body of the leaves, suddenly stops moving. The tree and its roots stop being alive. The darkness slowly starts to alienate the tree from its shadow. The tree becomes alone. The sun kills the only friend of the tree. The sun kills the shadow of the tree. The shadow disappears with the disappearance of the sun. After this the tree is left all alone in the heart of the darkness of the night.

There is a brown goose that is lying under the sun on the surface of the river. Suddenly she makes a move, and sees how the darkness is getting closer, as if she sensed it before seeing it. She slowly starts to warm up her wings. All of a sudden the goose start walking on the water with her wings beating faster for each moment until the very tip of her feet leave the water behind. At that moment the water too remains as it was. There is no movement, nothing to keep it moving any more. The disappearance of the tip of the goose feet forces the small waves one by one to lose the fight against gravity and the waves, as if they faint slowly fall down on the surface of the water. The waves too become lifeless when the tip of the feet leaves the river behind.

I am standing just nearby with hands deep in my pockets. I am part of all this transformations. I have been standing in the same place for the last hours. How long I don’t remember. I know that I too must stop living soon and start to exist. I too must stop being me, when the night comes. I can feel how my thoughts start to fade away. My eyes slowly become filled with tears till my vision get blurry and the skin starts to sense the darkness touching the small tiny grey hairs on my eyelids. I know that there is no way, completely alive, out of all this. I too, have to accept the existence of the night. I too have to lift my existence above the surface of the ground. I too must move and make way to the wind since it can’t pass through me. I too have to lose someone. I will lose myself but not myself, I lose my shadow. The sun took her away from me.

For each moment the darkness comes closer to the thought that is “I” in this moment. I start to sense its presence. I need to free myself, but how? I too, like the leaves and the waves, have become lifeless, and will soon slowly be falling down to the ground. Soon I will be not higher then the small sand corns that are under my feet. I have stopped to live and right now just exist without any movements. The only alive thing that remains in me is this feeling. This thought of freeing myself, that has become I. Without moving my eyes I start to look around, as if trying to find a way to escape from the darkness. The darkness is coming from everywhere. It’s already too late.

I could run, or just close my eyes. I could think about this entire happening as if it was a dream. But these options are not there. My legs are not I, nor are my eyes. I have lost control over them. They are I but at the same time not me. There is no contact between I and me. I have become this small wish, thought, this tiny idea of freedom. I simply have vanished as being me, and become the tiny thought. Sooner or later that will too disappear. I have to save this thought. I have to save me.

Time passes by, but I don’t feel it. How could I feel the time when everything around me and even me is frozen. The time too has died. The sun killed the light. It killed my shadow .The darkness killed the tree, the stones, the waves one by one. There is some one to blame here, some one is the one who killed everybody but still did not kill everybody. Since only someone started the killing, the rest were killed by each other. Yes, the darkness is the one to blame, and maybe the sun. The shadow too left me behind, and the tip of the leg of the goose took the life of the tiny waves on the river. Yes, for sure there is someone to blame here. Who to blame?

Suddenly I realize that there is no time to think about all this. It is not important. Who to blame is less important than to become free, the emancipation. I need freedom; I need to free what ever is left of me The wish, the tiny thought that has become me, and this tiny thought is going to survive with any means necessary.

He must be cold now. I am inside. The door is locked. The darkness can’t enter here. The little candle is lightening up my whole being. There is life everywhere here. The curtain is dancing to the sound and movement of the wind. The light from the blaze of the candle is moving and making different shades on the wall, giving it colors, shapes. The blaze of the candle is giving the wall a way of being.

I am wondering what is going on in his mind, how does his hands feel, and what does he look at in the darkness which is outside.

I took myself away from him. I liberated myself. I did what I thought I would never do. I, the tiny thought, left me, my body behind. I got myself out of the shell, out of my body. I left him where he was standing, in the darkness. I slowly through the tiny pores in my skin left my home and escaped. Inside him I left everything to the darkness. I left everything that had formed me since my birth. I left the norms, which told me what to do and not to do, or not to do what I was supposed to do. I left the traditions which had frozen me so that I could see the time move, since they had made me immobile. Those traditions that had bound me to the time that was, not the time that is or will be. Even God I left behind, since God could not have a place in the tiny me that I became, when I became the tiny thought. That tiny thought, that feeling of freedom could not have place for God, since with God I would never be free. You see, if I had listened to God, I would have never slipped myself away from the darkness since, after all, GOD says that everything happens because of God’s will. Beings start to live because of God and they die because of God. Well, the tiny thought wanted to live, not to die as God had planned.

Now I move, I tiny thought is thinking again, it’s flying around, looking again for the sun; it’s free as the light. I am everywhere. I move with the time, it doesn’t pass by me any longer. Sometimes I don’t even notice it. I exist to live again, waiting for the darkness to come once again.

Hawar Moradi is a medical doctor currently living in Norway.