1 KHUGRAM

"Wake up Ghani! Your aunt is here, come greet her."

"Ahhh Daada! She's here for you, not for me," said Ghani removing his blanket "I was having such a beautiful dream"

"Oh! So my boy was having a dream.. and what was so nice about that dream son?"

"I was swimming in a jewel blue lake in the midst of a forest. Everything was so calm and just a few ducks were paddling in the water… I guess it was a family of ducks, the mother and her ducklings. Trees were all over the place, full of delicious looking fruits and just when I was about to pick a few berries…. You woke me up!" Ghani replied with a small sigh and got up from the bed.

"Ghani! Leave your imaginations and learn to live in this world of reality." His father sat down on the side of his bed, keeping one hand on his old aching back.

"Ghani! Old age has taken over me, my body can't bear long journeys anymore. I want you to start taking interest in my business."

"You have already earned enough for us to live a happy life, I don't see any need for doing business. Why don't you just sit at home and enjoy a peaceful retired life Daada?" asked Ghani, placing his hands on the shoulders of his father. These shoulders used to be so wide and strong when Daada would carry Ghani on them and they both would sing poems and songs.

"Look Daad! Why do we earn money?"

"To maintain a luxurious lifestyle and to be satisfied."

"What if one is not fond of luxuries and remains satisfied with very little money?"

Ghani asked with a playful smile because he knew his father doesn't have enough patience to argue with him.

"Then he's a bloody slacker like you! Now come outside and sit with us. I had never in my whole life thought that my son would talk like those mad philosophers." Daada stood up with his fists clenched and went outside.

"This is all because of those books, why on earth would someone read a book, don't we have thousands of other tasks. These writers are bloody evil beings" Ghani could hear Daada screaming in the verandah. He went outside, stretching his hands and shoulders with a big yawn.

"Salam Babo!" He said.

"Walaikum Salam! Ghani, you were sleeping till now?" asked aunt Sitara while putting some dried figs in her mouth.

"No Babo! I wasn't sleeping, I was just swimming in a lake with some ducks" Ghani smirked, but immediately made an innocent face when he noticed Daada glaring at him.

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Khugram was a village of around 400 houses, surrounded by mountains on three sides and built on the bank of a stream providing fresh water to the whole population. The people of Khugram were very aggressive, there were a lot of enmities going on in the village, they would quarrel over small and trivial issues. Ghani would look at his fellow villagers and think whether his approach was rebellious or all these people were mad? He could never grasp the intent of people killing each other and spending these brief, fleeting lives with so much hatred. He felt alienated from most of his villagers because of their hostile temperaments.

Ghani had his own library, known as Bal Jahaan, in the far east of the village, where he would spend his whole day teaching kids and reading books." He had such a calm and stagnant nature that the whole village respected him. People would come to his library and read books, but he would never allow anybody to take books out of the library.

"If you want to spend the whole night sitting here and reading this book," he would say to anybody who wanted to take any book with him, "I'll stay here with you, but you can't take this book out of this library."

"But why Ghani?" people would ask, "because I don't want my books to go in our hideous and pathetic world," with his hazel eyes glowing he would say, "I want them to always live here in this Bal Jahaan peacefully far away from the chaos."

People would laugh, but his manner had a definite peace and serenity that they couldn't argue with, soon his love for books was used as an example in the whole village. Folks would confess to their beloved, "I love you the way Ghani loves his books"

It was considered the highest degree of love and affection in Khugram.