I love the distant Azan in the rainy dawn, wrapped in my blanket with a blurry twilight hovering outside like a drenched piece of paper. The smell of damp earth leaks through my window and I can feel it intoxicating my senses, embedding the comfort of laziness with its petrichorous bliss.
Such mornings hold the essence of peace, but if the rain stops, everything slides under the morbid blanket of melancholy, like it happened today. The world refused to give me the peace I was looking for. The rain stopped along with the Azan. Now a soggy cold twilight roamed around my window. The warm comfort of my blanket failed to put me back to sleep. So, I got up from my bed, made a cup of coffee with my sleepy hands and came to my balcony with it.
Depressing blue dawn. Water dripping from the leaves. Every now and then, a swift wind swayed by like the sigh of a disappointed god.
I looked around while taking sips of my coffee. No one is visible in the street, on the roofs, trees. No one in the sky. Only desolate phantasmagorias.
Suddenly I noticed a sharp screeching coming from somewhere below me. From my 3rd floor balcony, I saw a crow on one corner of the street. Its drenched dark appearance reflects the wet pitch road.
The crow was screeching. It was very annoying. Sharp “caw caw caw cawwwww” echoed, shaking the fabric of the gloomy dawn, sending a wave of irritation through my insomniac dream. But I didn’t feel like going back inside. Instead, I stared at the crow and tried to find out why it was not moving. A closer look made it apparent that the crow is hurt. It probably has a broken wing or something. And the screeching is probably its way of letting someone nearby know about its pain. I don't know if anyone was alarmed by the sound, but I felt nauseatingly annoyed with its tone of despair. I felt an urge to mute the incessant noise.
I took the last sip of my coffee and walked toward the door. After a while I found myself standing before the damp road.
I stood there looking at a dog trotting away with the throat of the screeching crow between its jaw. The paralyzed body of the crow hanged helplessly in the jaw of the dog while its head still effortlessly screeched the message of misery.
I kept staring with my sleepy eyes as the dog ambled away, and the screech faded further bit by bit.
Abdullah Rayhan is a student of literature at Jahangirnagar University.
