The Call of the Conscience

“Will this be the third time when the call of my conscience will prove wrong?” Jahangir thought to himself as he walked on the crooked dusty path of his village set in Afghanistan. The path was crammed with pebbles of various sizes and the paper like soul of his chappals made his feet sour, but the joy of the service he was doing over powered the pain. The weather was rosy and the winds pushed him forward towards a new life.
His mind made a Rewind to the time when he was a part of the Militant Group. He was a carefree individual with no taboo and restrictions. He fought aggressively and slept beneath the blanket of sky.
A time came when his leaders were annoyed by a woman in the village and that was the time his conscience failed him the first time, the very first mistake of his life. She was a young lady with sovereign thinking and had a fire burning inside her to change the pitiful condition of women due to the innumerable bans imposed by the Militant Group. Her name was Sakina. She was a single mother of a daughter, Alisha. The mother daughter spent a peaceful life in the outskirts of the village until the day Sakina decided to change the fate of the women of the village. She was repeatedly warned by the Militant Group to stop her activities as they were not in favor of women empowerment.
The messenger of the Militant Group was Jahangir and fortunately or unfortunately that was the time when his conscience failed him the first time. He made the mistake of falling in love with Sakina. The times when he visited her, he couldn’t help but fall in love with her every time he listened to her speak about her paradigm. He adored and respected her thinking and wanted to support her and eventually it made him commit his third mistake. For him, those were the good times, when he met Sakina’s daughter and spent time with her. She was intelligent like her mother and radiated pure innocence. Ali always visited her with small parcels of barfee. She loved him and he cherished the moments he spent with her. Meanwhile Sakina’s socialist activities grew and she made some women join her group.
But the picture perfect life soon had blotches all over it. Even though Sakina was repeatedly warned, she never relented and so the poignant day came when the whole village was gathered and Sakina was shot dead in the head. The whole village was left devastated by this incident. The women of the village were scared to the core. Alisha couldn’t comprehend the circumstances and now her only hope was Jahangir. Jahangir was shattered and broken. He was infuriated and made the toughest decision of his life. He defied his leaders and left the Militant group and committed the second most severe mistake of his life. His conscience failed him the second time. Was this an indication by God that nothing works against his will? That nobody survives against his wish?

Jahangir left the Militant Group and went straight to Sakina’s hut. He knew that if he was too delayed then everything will be destroyed and his life will slip out of his hands. He took a pair of scissors and hurriedly cut Alisha’s hair and made her look like a boy. It was the third time that he was listening to his conscience and he feared failing it this time too. But he went ahead and followed the path of the unknown. He had a distant image in his mind of a life that he wanted to live, as a father of a child. He wanted to work hard and give a bright start to Alisha’s life. He did not want the shadows of his past life to touch her daughter in any form, he wished a life devoid of fear and he was going to make it true.
So Jahangir actualized the toughest decision of his life by leaving his village. He had not given much thought to anything in particular. He was madly following his conscience and making it a reality. He walked the path of exit from his previous life and his face showed a hint of satisfaction. But he only had one dreaded qualm at the back of his mind, “Will my conscience fail me the third too?”