In the middle of his sprint from his father's angry grip, every sight and sound, the sofa, the fan's whirl, the door, his mother's shriek - everything dissolved into a thick white fog. The only thing he was certain of was the floor under his feet. Gravity him inside its bossom as he fell on the floor and hugged the flatness of the tiles under his chest. His father felt smoked three packs of cigarettes burdened by the guilt of what he had done to his son as no doctor could figure out what was wrong. And then one day, just like that, visions and sounds seeped back into his vacant eyes and ears. It happened again a couple of times. Once when he was sitting on top of a senior in school in the middle of the cricket ground. He was about to hit him again but he saw blood gush out of the boy's nose. The next second he was trying to hug gravity in the middle of the white fog. He could feel the swift trajectories of the punches in the small whiffs they produced right before they landed on his chest and stomach. By the time the headmaster came Hashim was unconscious and without oxygen. This time it took ten days for the aimless ship of his body to rise out of the fog and hit the dock of normal life. It became obvious that extreme emotions reduced him to this condition. Rage, fear, shock. After a few other episodes he learned to communicate by writing alphabets at first in his mother's hands and then on the dinner table, living room walls, TV screen. He would spell "water" and "out" and "poop" and his parents would obey. He also learned strategies to speed up the process of anchoring the ship of his being out of darkness. Left with not much but touch, smell, and taste he realized that extreme sensations of pleasure could resurrect his sight and hearing as well. Once during one of these long, ling nights of his life that lasted two weeks his mother returned home after pilgrimage to a far away shrine. She brought back a silver taweez that had selected verses of the Koran folded and sealed in it forever (---). Lying in aimless languor, feeling the wooden bone of a sofa's broken arm, he smelled her before she even stepped out of the car. He ran outside to feel and smell her bossom wrap around his cheeks in that signature halo that only a mother's hug can shape.

"My boy. My beautiful fragile little woody-wood pecker," she whispered as he smelled her. And in the soothing pleasure of the moment his ship anchored itself by his bed and he saw his books sitting on his desk waiting for him and the gleam in his mother's eyes - he was back. A few other times he buried his flushed face in a flock of dewey roses and peonies in their backyard and hurrahed! as he suddenly began to see and hear again.