The inhumanity above 6 feet

I heard the old mother speak, her voice trembling, a quiet plea for mercy that echoed through the fading walls of the home she had called hers for decades. “Please,” she whispered to her daughter-in-law, “stop my son. Don’t destroy this old home.” Her hand pointed shakily toward a small room in the corner, its door worn with age but still holding the essence of the one who once lived there. “This room...this is all I have left of my son, Sheeda. It’s the last thing he left me before Allah took him. My heart cannot bear this pain again. I already buried him once. Don’t make me bury him again.”

Her daughter-in-law, detached from the depths of sorrow, smiled lightly. “It’s just a house. What’s so special about it? We’ll build a new one here, grand and modern. You’ll even have your room, right where he used to be.”

But the old mother shook her head, her tears betraying the quiet dignity she tried to hold onto. To her, this house wasn’t just bricks and mortar. It was the memory of a life lost too soon, of a son whose laughter once filled these halls, whose presence was etched into every corner. The scent of him still lingered in that room. His warmth, though long gone, seemed to radiate from the walls.

She held his belongings close to her chest, clutching them like lifelines, and cursed herself silently for her helplessness. She couldn’t save her son from the illness that claimed his life; it was Allah’s will, and she had surrendered to it. But now, when she could have fought to save what little of him was left, she found herself powerless again. This time, it wasn’t the decree of the divine but the coldness of human hearts that tightened her chest.

How could people be so inhumane? How could they see these walls as nothing but an obstacle to a “better” future, when for her, they were the only bridge to a past she could never relive? This home was her solace, the place where she still felt him. To walk over this ground every day, knowing her son lay six feet below it, was already an unbearable weight. But to watch his memory erased by human hands, hands she had trusted, was a grief she could never have imagined.

Her weak voice cracked as she whispered, “I couldn’t save him when it was in Allah’s hands, but this time...it was within human hands, and still, I couldn’t save him. How can a heart be so cold?” Her words hung heavy in the air, an unanswerable question born from pain no one else could feel.

She walked away slowly, her tears carving paths down her wrinkled cheeks, her frail hands trembling as she held the remnants of her son’s life close to her chest. Each step she took over the ground where he lay, six feet below, seemed heavier than the last, her grief pulling her closer to the earth that separated her from him. The life she had built with her bare hands was slipping away, replaced by a future she could neither understand nor accept.

In her silence, she taught a lesson no one seemed willing to learn: that progress does not have to come at the cost of the past, that the old things we discard so easily are sometimes the only things holding us together.

We all want to build new homes, to walk into the future with open arms. But in our rush to modernize, have we become so eager that we forget the stories etched into the walls of old houses? Do we overlook the hearts that still beat for the memories contained within them? Let us not destroy the homes built by old hands; homes that hold memories, love, and the lingering presence of those who have left us.

Sometimes, it’s the old things that carry us through life: the things that seem insignificant to others but are someone’s entire world.

To walk into the future, we must remember the weight of the past. For what are we, if we lose the very things that make us human?

Ifrah Mushtaq, student of English Literature at GDC Baramulla