Dating : How to Stop a Thousand Azrahs

Food waste is the world’s dumbest problem

“Khalid! ”my mom screams from the kitchen. “Come here!”

I roll out of bed, grinning. I should be angry, I guess. And also scream something like “Fuck you, mom! I don’t want to!”. At least, that’s what teens in American movies do. I’ve been watching a couple of those lately and I love them. Rashid showed me a secret entrance to the private cinema, and we have been sneaking in there, silently chilling in the back seats.

But I don’t feel like screaming “Fuck you!” at my mom; I’m just grateful that she is strong enough to shout.

Lately, I’m grateful for a lot of things, like the fresh food I get to eat every day.

“Bismillah,” says mom, with a smile on her too-thin face. She still looks tired — from last night’s shift — but she smiles anyway. “When things go wrong, just smile.” That’s her mantra, and sometimes it works.

But it didn’t work that time, five years ago, when Azrah died.

“Did you sleep well, Khalid-beta?”

“Yup,” I say feeling a little guilty: she didn’t sleep well. She didn’t sleep at all. “How was your work?”

Her face opens in a big, joyful smile. She loves her work. She loves the good feeling that comes when someone gets their food-pack. “Delightful.”

I glance at the bowl of cold milk, full of cereals. “Nice. Can I…can I eat now?”

“Of course, beta,” she says, leaning forward and kissing me on the forehead. “It’s all yours.”

As I eat, grateful for the feeling of fullness I get with every bite, I start playing with the flaps of the cardboard box that lies open on the kitchen table.

Food-pack, reads the large green print, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

It’s been two years since mom has started working for Food-pack, and four years since the company has opened its first branch in Pakistan.

One year, I think every time I see that logo, only one year earlier and Azrah would still be here, with her crooked smile to brighten up every day. And even if Food-pack did everything it could, I can’t stop being angry at them. Why had they waited? Why?

I still remember the day it all happened. It was a Tuesday, and on Tuesdays, I always stayed at home, with Azrah. She was sick that day. Actually, she had been sick for the infinite entirety of the last months.

“Kha Kha!” she had called me, somehow managing to find the strength to curl her dried lips in a smile. In this, she was exactly like mom. “Hungry.”

“I know,” I had replied; and indeed, I did: I knew what it was like to feel your stomach aching, pleading you to eat something. Anything. Just eat. But there was nothing to eat, and Azrah was too small to eat dirt.

I wince a little at the thought: it seems so disgusting now, with a bowl of delicious milk and cereals on the kitchen table. But back then it wasn’t so disgusting — back when to appease the monstrous hunger we would take actual dirt from the dry riverbed and mix it with some water. “The smoothie of the devil,” dad called it. The devil took even him.

“Relly, relly hungry!” she had rolled desperately on the bed, and looked at me with her big, blinky eyes. I loved those eyes: they were always open on some universe other people couldn’t see. But that day they were faded, extinguished by the harsh world.

I still think that He was just jealous. God, I mean. He was jealous to have sent an angel to us. So He took her back. He took Azrah. He took my joy.

I hated Him. I knew I shouldn’t. I knew I was supposed to love Him with all of my soul, but I couldn’t. He had taken Azrah from me, I would take my love from him.

“Allah knows what He does. Never forget that. Never lose your faith,” mom always said; but it couldn’t be true: If He really knew, if He really cared about us, then why the hell did He take Azrah? Why not me?

One single tear slides down my cheek, just kissing the edge of my mouth before I brush it away with a quick jerk of the hand.

When Azrah had started crying, her eternal smile ultimately washed away by the cold ocean of pain, I had given her the last few drops of freshwater I had collected the day before — after walking for hours under the burning sun. And I had helped her drink from the crippled plastic bottle, even though my throat felt like a tender patch of heat, like someone had just put a desert inside me. And I had done everything I could, but still… But still, she had died.

It is so easy. Dying, I mean. One second you’re here, and then…POOF. You are gone forever.

“Amma…” I begin, my voice trembling a little. “Why did Azrah die?”

“Uhm?” She tries to act normal, but I can feel the melancholy creeping down on her, overwhelming. “Azrah?”

“Yeah. Why wasn’t Food-Pack here? Why was she hungry? Why did dad die? Why didn’t anyone help? Why?” I can feel the powerlessness in my voice, the irrefutable knowledge that the thing has happened, and I can’t do anything about it — except asking questions no one will be able to answer fully.

Amma purses her thin lips, and slowly exhales. “See…when…when Azrah died, Food-Pack couldn’t be here: they were fighting against the government, trying to convince them that bringing food that would have been otherwise wasted to countries that needed it, was not an anti-patriotic waste of money.” Her eyes are now veiled, her eyelids slightly closed, as to squint in the past. “Someone thought that it was better to waste all that food, instead of giving it to other countries…”

“But…” I take another spoonful of crispy cereals, “…if no one was going to use it, why not give it to us? It’s so easy!”

Amma smiles. “Sometimes I think that the world would be astonishingly beautiful if kids ran it.” Her voice drifts off in the air, soothing. And I can feel the pain in every single syllable. The pain of a mother who has lost her daughter. The pain that doesn’t have an ending. The pain that doesn’t fade away with time. “They said that it would cost too much money to transport food to needy countries.”

I glance again at the cardboard box, with its big green logo printed on the brownish surface. “Is it true?”

“Yes, it is.”

“And then?”

“Then there were discussions on how much a human life is worth. And how much thousands and millions of lives are worth. There were a lot of protests in the streets and they realized that letting millions of people die wasn’t a choice. Some of the most amazing people met together and organized a massive operation. With donations fueling from every part of the world, the Food-Pack company was funded. See people deep down are good and want to do good. When there are passion and vision, no hardship is great enough. ”

The spoon falls in my empty bowl with a soft Pling. “Right.”

“One year earlier,” she says, her eyes now tearing up. “Just one year earlier, and Azrah would be here. But enough of that” She coughs, as to clear her throat from the acid flavor of the memories. “The thing is that they finally came here, and I started working with them to distribute the Food-Packs all over the country.”

I look at her smile, and even my lips curl up. “And now we all have food on our tables.”

“Not all. Never assume that if you have food, automatically everyone else has. Sadly that’s not true. Other people need our help in this country and in other countries,” says Amma, shaking gently her head.

“Is this why you’re working hard every day?”

She nods. “Yes…every second lost is another Azrah. And I can’t stand it.”

“But we will find a way out, right?” I can’t bear the thought of having hundreds, thousands of other Azrahs.

She smiles again, and takes my hand in hers. “We will, Khalid, we will. We are humans: we always find a way out — in a new, glorious world.”

That day, sitting in the little classroom, all I do is think about this new, glorious world; and how easy it would be to create it.

After all, If I can imagine it, I can create it.