Laila.

Meet Laila, from Kabul. Chronologically speaking, she is not the generation as I am. Yet, from the story where I met her, she seems as real as I am.

Laila was born in a Kabul of peaceful times. She went to school, learned what I do, aspired to change the world - like I do. On the frivolous side, she had friends with whom she discussed the most mundane details like they were evidence for ET life, like my friends and I do. She had a fetish for timeless poetry.Time flew when her friends were around and stretched when they were not. She had emotions, feelings that I identified with. Then what is so different about us? Just that one day, her beautiful world came crashing around her. But mine has not (will not, I hope). 

I understand that Laila is only a fictitious character, that too, born a good twenty years before me. But what about all the young girls trapped in war-torn countries, their hopes and aspirations crushed by missiles like the dry leaves that are crushed by the shoes, shoes and wheels? Aren't they all Laila(s)? 

Their brains work the same way mine does. They have the same longing for love, affection and care that I do. Maybe more than I do. They have the same feelings of hope and aspiration as the rest of the world. Their hearts beat the same way that ours do. Only perhaps, in a kinder, nobler manner. Yet, here I am, voicing my thoughts freely on a global platform, and the many Lailas, who are oppressed into an ruthless, opaque bubble where they go unheard.Why? 

Don't get me wrong, I am sure thankful for the life I live. I just wonder why I have been so fortunate to have been born in a peaceful land, at a peaceful time while those who have not, have not. Surely, there is nothing that differentiates us. Calling it your previous life's karma is just an easy way out. So I do not have an answer. Not yet, and I doubt I ever will. The best I, rather we, can do is get across the message that our hearts beat together, as one, for our hamshireh around the world.

P.S.: Laila is one of the protagonists of the novel "A Thousand Splendid Suns", authored by Khaled Hosseini. (And hamshireh is Persian for sister.)

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