My neighbor, Mr. A., died yesterday. He wasn’t sick or anything like that. He came from work, opened his gate, parked his car, closed his gate and died.
His wife, Mrs. A, found him when she returned from a trip. My mother’s gossip sources had it that she was visiting her sister and was gone for about a week but had returned in the afternoon irritated because Mr. A. hadn’t taken his calls and had failed to pick her up from the bus station. She hustled, bustled and toiled down the street with her luggage, past the incomplete house with the rusted gate, past our house and straight to the gate of their house. In her fury she barely responded to welcome greetings from Baba O., the neighborhood mechanic.
It’s amazing how much neighbors know and see even when they claim to the contrary – unreal omniscience. Apparently, she knocked, banged and then proceeded to hammer on the gate for more than an hour save five minutes rests after every twenty until she finally remembered that they had a spare key buried close to the pillar on the left side of the gate.
Perhaps circumstances may have been different if there was another person living in the house; a maid, a gateman, a relative perhaps. Mrs. A. threw open the gate with every intention to dish it out to her husband any way for his bad behavior. She probably assumed he was invested in football that Saturday. She threw open the gate, plodded in and saw immediately that she wouldn’t be dishing anything soon, not even for dinner. They were married for two years.
I spoke to my mother this morning and this came up when I asked how the old neighborhood was. It gave me pause and disquiet. Our interaction was limited to a few “Good evening” salutes but a part of me admired Mr. A. He was everything I have always thought I could be: young, successful, married to an incredible woman, a balanced hedonist, and areligious, or thereabout. My idea of him was mostly built on neighborhood gossip so it is questionable. They had lived close to me for a little more than a year but somehow, I had seen so much of what I wanted to be in this man, now I’m not so sure.
My understanding of the vicissitudes of life have made me style myself as agnostic. I’m still shaky on this concept but it’s generally founded on the assumption that I know nothing about a god and neither does the next man. I have particularly felt this way because every single denomination, doctrine and religion has an idea of what a maker is supposed to be with all of them laying claim to superiority and not to a lot of sense. Furthermore, I could never understand the concept of eternal punishment or reward from a divine being that dangled it like a carrot and stick deal. Nevertheless, I was brought up in the church and every August the Sunday School manual focuses on the Book of Revelations and assures you that there would be a reckoning from God for that meat you stole or for the time you imagined having sex with your teacher. With so many rules it’s terribly difficult to know if you’re damned, toeing the line or if your white is blameless before Him.
My religious upbringing has made me feel lost sometimes. I feel like I’m in a game of minesweeper – clueless, with many options, one click away from destruction. I imagine, sometimes, that I’m in an orchard with beautiful hanging fruits; colourful apples, succulent oranges and attractive plums. I imagine that these paths available to me and one of those fruits could poison me. Reading the Book of Revelations still makes me feel despair. I have left religion but religion hasn’t left me. Not at all.
So as I sit here with flecks of saliva on the edges of my mouth and hunger in my belly I am afraid. I am afraid because I may be fooling myself even now. I am afraid the Christians may be right and women should really be second to men, I’m afraid the Muslims are right and pork is a sin. I’m afraid of dying and finding out. I’m afraid my estimable, admirable neighbor has “passed on to glory” and gone to find out for certain if there’s really a big God guy and he actually has interest in football. I fear my death lurks; under a bridge, in the shower, inside a taxi, in a banking hall. Soon. Eventually. It lurks so that it may send me to get answers to my questions. Frankly, I don’t want to find out.
I do not want to die. I love living.
