Act 1 was when she called him and they talked. He was living in his false world of idols with their deceptive images. She was the one who put pearls of passions into his dark and lonely life and he started floating in the heavens wanting nothing except her by his sight and to make her happy all the time. She also felt the same way, she also liked him ..... maybe she also loved him. But that was what her script also wanted her to do, that was what her director wanted her to do, and she was just a poor actress, a puppet whose strings were in the hands of her writer and director.
Act 2 was when they met each other. They would have given everything for a blissful moment like that. The gods let them fall in love with each other. And they, foolish actors of this play started living in the sand castles of their dreams and desires not knowing that sand castles are destined to fall down sooner or later. And when they kissed each other, they can’t describe what they felt at that moment. It seemed to them that all their life had been narrowed to one perfect point of rose coloured joy. Her kiss was so sweet that he thought he was drinking wine from the cups brought down from heavens. And when he kissed her, she trembled all over and shook like a white daisy in a beautiful spring evening. She was looking so pretty just like a cupid who wounded him with her innocent smile and the blushing redness of her face. He said he loved her, loved her like nobody had loved anybody before. And she, in the lust for fame and obsession for power never thought that he really meant whatever he said about her. He wanted her to fight against Fate their director and run away with him forever to a place where love exists, where sun still shines. But here, her script wanted her to walk away from him. He wanted her to stay forever in the castle of their love. And she wanted to stay in their castle ..... "forever". But she was just a poor actress, poor dummy, intoxicated with the requirement of her role in the play walked away leaving him sitting all alone waiting desperately under the growing shadows of the evening sun with only the scattered sand of that broken castle of their love and went to live in her new castle of strong but hollow walls of money, power, obsession, lust and fame.
In Act 3 he was snatched away from her. He was never to come back. He was going forever from her life. He cried that he loved her, that he wanted her, that he needed her. But she was too obsessed with her script, with her performance, with her false world of fame and fortune that she let him go away leaving herself nothing but her wrong and selfish pride. Materially speaking, she did a right thing; she only acted according to her script. This is the way every good actor should do.
Well, the play was a huge success, obviously it had to be a big success because she put everything at stake in it, even her life ..... even her love. Everybody was happy with her. She was a big star, a big celebrity now. Her script writer Miss Destiny and her respectful director Mr. Fate congratulated her on her remarkable performance. She was nominated as the best actress and got the biggest award an actor could get. That award was entirely justified because she was a great actress ...... maybe the greatest, so great that she let her selfish self play with her true self and played it so well that in the end she even forgot her own self, her own being, her own existence. She was famous, she was successful, she was a LEGEND! .... but she is not the same person. She knew that she had lost herself when she let him walk away from her life. She knew that she loved him, but now she only regretted that why was she so much involved in her material desires, why didn’t she love him. Now she realised that how miserable and helpless was she delivering her damn cursed lines just like the director wanted her to do.
Now she had everything in life and could do whatever she wanted to. But she felt that she was not even doing justice with the characters she played. One day she was Juliet, but a Juliet without a heart to love her Romeo, because she let him love walk away from her life, the other day she was, Helen of Troy, but a Helen who deceived her own self with the horrible painted mask of hypocrisy and lies. She felt that a part of her was missing, a part of her that could never be the same. She now realised that she had sold her soul to the devil for a few miserable pennies. Her peace was gone, her heart was sore and she had to find it never and never more.
She begged her love, the only hope of light in her dark and lonely life to come to her, come and rescue her from this endless depth of inferno in which she was burning in the flames of her shattered images and broken idols. She knew that she made a mistake and was manoeuvred by Fate who led her act perfectly according to her character but in this course she lost the most precious thing she had: Him.
She cursed herself that why did she not realise that he loved her all the time, why did she prefer her performance, her acting in the play which was nothing but her lust, her obsession over him who was her life, her love, her first and the last reason to live. Why did she take his love, the time she spent with him for granted and never paid any attention to him and never believed and trusted him.
Now that he was no more with her she treasured the times they spent together. She remembered that he was so close, and she let him go so far, far away .... ‘forever’. She cherished that moment when she looked in his eyes for the last time and found in his eyes endless depth of love and hope, surrounded by the tears of heart break and sorrow overwhelming all other emotions. Now she regretted that like a fool she watched him disappear into the crowd of non-believers and she realised that he made her believe in love, he made her believe in life, his memories were the force which kept her alive when she was burned and broken.
She dived into the oceans of time and looked for him in its endless depth;
She walked into the mist of despair to seek his aroma near the rivers of belief;
She stepped into the wind of changes and searched his soul in the ruins of all ages;
She begged the Devil from the blazing flames of hell and the angels from the blue
skies to see the face of her love before she dies.
Like a traveller, she wandered to the places where she used to be with him and cried his name in the thin air only to hear the echo of her lonely voice saying, "Please come to me, please rescue me, I promise I’ll be there always for you, I’ll do anything for you. Just please for my sake, for once, for us, take me away from this deceitful stage and give me strength to shred this script which has given me nothing but betrayal and barrenness. Save me from the cruelty of Fate, my director. Take me away from here. I want to see what you see, love what you love, be where you are".
But he never came back ........ he was gone forever, everything betrayed him ...... even his life!!!
ALI AWAIS.
