When Rome was burning...
Ali Moeen Nawazish

This is the story of a bifurcated city, schizophrenic country and a bipolar society. This is the story of an evening like many others, where the sun set on the innocent and guilty alike, strewn across ravaged roads and glittering carpets. This is the story of the city of lights a few evenings ago.
I imagine a writer, sitting in his balcony overlooking the city. He spreads his gaze across and sees in one part of the city, the dead were being counted to be buried, while in another, the wedding gifts were being counted on a table. The one list exclusively of the poor and downtrodden, the other filled with the names of the rich and powerful. In one part of the city, a celebration of life, and in another, a festival of death.
He sits and ponders at the stark contrast. What it must feel like to be at either place, like two alien worlds separated by an infinite dark space, and not just a few roads, blocks and buildings inside a city’s walls.
He wonders what it must feel like to witness a tragedy of this proportion. To walk through calamity, to see it, smell it, hear it, and to experience the painful notion.
He imagines the screams filling up the clouds of dust, carrying the muffled cries of agony and despair. Some scream for the first time, and some for the last. Everywhere there is blood and debris; human remains, limbs, faces and fingers. He imagines being there, standing still as the dust comes at him like an ocean wave, being deafened by the harrowing noise, watching bits and pieces of broken lives falling down all around him. He imagines being too stunned to move. To hear the cries of help all around him; to be rendered deaf and blind by the sheer magnitude of the horror. Why did this happen? What did they do to deserve this?
The questions keep circling and spiraling in his mind as someone pushes him out of the way to follow the cries of the wounded. He is brushed aside as the horror has left him helpless. The momentum involuntarily takes him forward, he tumbles on through the thick, black air, looking for some sign of life in the ruin. It smells of ash and gasoline, it smells of steel and sulfur, it smells of destruction.
He imagines walking around dazed and confused. He imagines tears trickling down my cheeks as I take in my first sights of hell. He imagines collapsing on a cloven pavement, sitting there cradling his head in his hands, hearing the sirens in the distance grow louder.
He imagines people calling out names, so many names, each one spoken like it was the most precious thing in the world; He imagines seeing corpses dragged out from the rubble, and he imagine them being put on the ground, sullen faces looking down at the burnt and scarred remains.
He see a hand twitch, but does not see the body to which it once belonged. He sees hair and bone, clots of flesh simmering in warm and scarlet blood. He desperately tries but sees no life. He sees broken chairs, shattered mirrors, and shattered souls. He sees little rebellious fires sprouting up in this and that cranny. He sees life at its worst, at its saddest and most horrible end.
Then he imagines hearing a voice, weak but not distant, He imagines looking around, and using his arms to fan away enough of the smoke to see where the voice is coming from. He imagines the panicked thoughts racing through his head; is it a child crushed under concrete? Is it an old man clutching on to some memoirs from his past? Is it a youth pleading for a chance at life?
He wades through the terrifying blackness, and imagines coming across a girl, blood dripping from her head, huddled under a half collapsed staircase, but she’s not calling out for help, not calling out to him, nor anyone. Her voice has been silenced by what had just unfolded. Her spirit broken.
He then moves to the other side of the city where he wonders what it must feel like to be part of an opulent and extravagant nuptial ritual. What it must feel like to brush shoulders with the living, for only those with money and authority can truly be said to be living in this country.
He imagines the lights and music, a lavish entrance, a grand stage. He imagines guests arriving late, bearing tokens and presents, smiling unapologetically, He imagines handshakes being exchanged, the women hugging and kissing; names, titles, ministerial designations being thrown in the air, which becomes heavier and heavier with the musk of privilege and power. He imagine the bride and the groom to be taking center stage, imagines a hundred flashes of cameras going off one after the other. He imagines the laughter and hands coming together in appreciation or jest.
He then imagines phones ringing, messages arriving, stone faced attendants whispering into languid ears, another tragedy has occurred, a nation awaits condemnation at the very least, and holds some small, faint hope of reprisal, well, it can keep waiting till the ceremony’s done, they’re sure.
The ceremony was concluded. The festivities were done. The couple ushered into their new life, while the nation still waits.
Not even a visit! Not even a visit to see the faces of the dead, and the faces of the ones barely living!
I imagine the writer of this poem, sitting on that balcony that evening looking out at the carnage that is Karachi, and the indifference that engulfs it’s elite, and I imagine him penning these words down, to so aptly to describe what has happened.
“I want to know—
When Rome was burning
and Nero was playing his flute,
who were the people there for it all?
Who had his ear turned to the flute?
And whose eyes
glimmered in the light of the fire”
Zeeshan Sahil
The writer is Youth Ambassador of Geo and Jang Group.
Email: am.nawazish@janggroup.com.pk
Facebook: facebook.com/ali.moeen.nawazish,
Twitter: @AMnawazish