Pandora's Box

She walked silently to the closet and brought out a small, battered old trunk. As she placed it in front of her, she contemplated just giving it to the 'ruddiwala' without opening it. But as she sat in front of it, her legs folded beneath her, staring silently in the space; she changed her mind. The time had come for her to open it. She had been keeping it safe, hidden away, all these years; blocking it completely from her mind. It was an art she had somewhat mastered over the last few years. She could block everything...a young girl in her teens crouching behind the couch, trembling, trying not to pay attention to the loud voices outside, waiting desperately for her father to come home and listen to her; he would believe her; he knew she always told the truth. She had blocked the dark, gloomy night when she was running towards the main road, crying hysterically, looking for her mother; and the day the cruel hands of death wrapped around her father and engulfed his entire existence. She had blocked all that and more... like the day she felt so helpless and alone and humiliated that she turned towards the one being who would listen to her someday, when she fell on her knees and bowed in front of that supreme being and kept telling herself 'Allah hai, Allah hai' (God exists). She had blocked all that, yet a part of her remembered that there were two trunks hidden away; one in her closet and one in the deepest, darkest corner of her mind. It was time...
She blew the thin film of dust from the surface of the trunk and opened it slowly. The musty smell of wood filled the air as she started taking out the contents one by one...some old photographs of people she loved but were there no more; some old school reports and grade sheets, nothing but straight As, they made her smile; a minty green shalwar kameez, her father's; a letter from her mamoo (maternal uncle) written in 1977 when he was in Dhaka; another letter from her older mamoo written from Riyadh, she was the apple of their eyes, why wouldn't they write to her? So what if she was so young that she could barely read. And then, she saw them; lying in the bottom of the trunk, as if they didn't want to be taken out, gazing silently at her lifeless eyes. It was almost as if they didn't recognize her; she was not the same girl who had put them lovingly in the trunk. She had turned into a woman with many facades; no one seemed to know who she really was; whoever she was with, she would be what they wanted her to be. Her eyes had the look of a warrior who had lost the battle but was still not willing to admit defeat.. She looked at them with cold eyes, went through the words and realized how empty they sounded now. It was then that she decided...she started taking them out one by one and tearing them ruthlessly until they were lying in front of her in an untidy heap. Those words of love meant nothing to her anymore.. She didn't need them, she didn't need them anymore...