The Gun

The Gun


There was something sinister about having a gun in the house. Whether it was the way just the thought of touching the cool metal aloofly sent chills up her spine or the fact that its presence meant it would one day inevitably have to be used, Yasmin didn’t know. All she knew was that there was a small pistol snugly tucked away in the top drawer of her mother’s side of the nightstand. Yasmin and her mother Nazia lived alone in a two story house in the better part of the city. Previously, Yasmin had thought if she never crossed the bridge that connected the bad and good parts of the city, she’d be safe. Four years after moving to the place, however, her point of view had changed drastically. No place was safe. Bandits were running free on streets, hijacking cars, stealing mobile phones, holding people at gunpoint for jewelry, and heartlessly killing anyone who resisted. Outlaws would barge into any house they thought was accessible enough and would rob the residents of every last penny of what had been earned with honest blood and sweat. Yasmin didn’t feel safe anywhere she went. She had stopped using her mobile phone in public places and would take a different route to and from college every three days. She was super jumpy when she had a lot of cash on her, and never kept all of it in one place. Bank trips were the worst, by far. Whenever Nazia had to withdraw cash for the month to pay bills and salaries of the servants, Yasmin insisted she wanted to go along. Her reasoning was that she was a lot sharper than her mother, and would keep an eye out for any strange men on motorcycles who might follow them home. Yasmin was also a better driver than the man her mother had hired for the job – she drove just as fast but more efficiently and knew how to dodge someone in pursuit. Deep down, though, Yasmin couldn’t bear the thought of staying home and not knowing whether her mother was safely on her way home or not, and even though it terrified her to make those bank trips with Nazia, she almost always opted to go. Even in her own house she felt the need to be alert at all times. They had gotten a security system installed and made sure they locked all the doors leading outside at all times. It was suffocating to live stealthily like some kind of felon on the lookout, even though she hadn’t done anything incriminating. Yasmin had been brought up in a secure environment in a foreign country where she hadn’t had the slightest of worries. Forget having to get a gun, she had never even thought twice about walking out of the house, alone, in the middle of the night to throw out the trash! The only comfort Yasmin had been hanging on to was that in a few months she would get out. She was almost done with her last year of college, and if it weren’t for the fact that she would be moving abroad to her husband (to whom she had recently been married) right after, she would’ve probably parted with her sanity a long time ago. Still, nothing made her feel right about the gun they now possessed. Even when every corner of her mind was filled with butterflies and sunlit thoughts of the sweet, sane future to come, something about presence of that gun was menacing. Nazia had gotten it on the insistence of her elder daughter Salina, who lived abroad with her husband and child. She called often, and almost always insisted that her mother should move to a safer country, especially since Yasmin was about to leave soon. She had finally convinced Nazia one day, arguing that she wouldn’t have to use it on anyone, but she could at least fire a blind shot outside the window to scare robbers or bandits away incase the house was ever under their siege. Salina had even said that she would get one for herself, just to be safe, but since she had a small child in the house, a gun would just be an accident waiting to happen. Nazia had mentioned the idea to her younger daughter, but Yasmin hadn’t expected that her mother would actually have the guts to get one. One fine day, Nazia had sat in the car with her driver, and asked him to take her to a dealer, where she had acquired a fake license and bought a small pistol along with an extra box of rounds. That day, when Yasmin had come back from college, Nazia had drawn the curtains of their room, switched off the lights, locked the door, and opened the top drawer of the nightstand. Yasmin’s first reaction had been laughter. She’d thought her mother had gotten a toy gun to scare away burglars. However, even when she had sat on the bed and laughed at her mother, she had had a nasty premonition. She’d always heard people talking about keeping guns for protection, but she supposed that once it was there, all the bad things happening around her would suddenly become a lot more real than she wanted to believe. Perhaps that was the reason why she held her breath every time she passed the nightstand. If she didn’t breathe the weapon into existence, then maybe all the news about the deteriorating and dangerous conditions of the city wouldn’t be real. She’d even imagined having to use the gun. On days leading up to an exam, she would sit on the sofa in the lounge, a book lying open on her lap, stare at the tiny print of the photocopied pirated version of the textbook till it was all a gray blur, and day dream about the situations in which she’d have to use the gun. The daydreams usually went something like this: Yasmin is in her room studying, and Nazia is in the kitchen downstairs, preparing lunch. Suddenly, a loud banging on the door throws the quiet afternoon into a panorama of panic. Three armed men have beaten up the driver and are demanding to be let in. The cheap locks installed into the doors by the underhanded builder will never hold the burglars out. Suddenly the doors give in, and Nazia screams for Yasmin to run to her bedroom, lock the door, and call for help. Yasmin obliges and catches a glimpse of the invaders barging into the lounge and grabbing Nazia by the hair. Nazia has started reciting verses from the Holy Book and one of the men is running up the stairs to get Yasmin. He rasps on her bedroom door, yelling threats. Panic-stricken, Yasmin opens the upper drawer of the nightsand and pulls out the weapon. As she falls into the corner of the room farthest away from the door, she cocks the gun and aims it at the door with one hand, while with the other she tries to call someone – anyone. Her tears are making it hard for her to see the key pad, and her fingers are hitting all the wrong keys in their spastic state. Suddenly the door flies open, and a middle aged man with an unkempt mustache and staunchy, stained clothes falls into the room. Yasmin pulls the trigger, shooting the man square in the face. She hears Nazia screaming God is great over and over in the background somewhere, but there’s a sharp ringing in her ears. She recovers quickly, and cocks the pistol again, ready for use. It’s her loyal friend now. She must retake control of her house, her territory. Yasmin barges out of her room and shoots the first thing she sees moving. It was the other burglar coming to investigate the gunshot. Two down, one left to go. Her mother continues screaming as Yasmin cocks the gun one last time and points it over the balcony overlooking the lounge. She shoots the third intruder who had been holding her mother hostage. It’s over. Her mother runs out of the house to summon the neighbors, and Yasmin stands at the balcony, victorious, and spattered with blood. Other daydreams had been about her becoming one of those girls on the news who’d been gang-raped and going on a rampage to find the perpetrators and avenging herself, and a minority had been about her shooting down anyone who had behaved disrespectfully with her mother. She hadn’t shared these day dreams with her husband or told him about the gun, fearing his dissent for it. He would try to convince her to get rid of the gun, and she couldn’t possibly explain to him why that was impossible, not on the phone at least. He had, nevertheless, felt a change in her. He would often try to inquire about the strain in her voice, the hollowness of her conversation, and the sudden aversion to the sound of firecrackers going off at a wedding nearby. The truth was that the presence of the gun had surrounded Yasmin’s heart in a thick, unyielding, mist of dread. She had begun to obsess about the gun. She’d pulled the drawer open accidentally one day while searching for some batteries to put into the tv remote and had stood staring at the shiny little firearm for a good twenty minutes. At some point during that time she had had an overwhelming urge to pick it up and feel its weight in her hand, to hear the sound of the barrel spinning. She’d wanted to see the bullets, each in their metallic burrows, eerily awaiting their grand exodus. The scariest part about the gun was that it repulsed her just as much as it drew her in – she was afraid to go near it, yet fantasized about using it. It was like an axe falling towards her from up above but one that was so intriguing and beautiful she just had to lift her head and look at it as it came right at her. After more than a few complaints from her husband about her distant attitude on the phone she decided to try harder to ignore the gun. She avoided going into her room and started sleeping in the guest bedroom. College kept her busy for most of the time, and any free time she had which could potentially be plagued by thoughts of the metallic fiend was used up in progressively harder levels of sudoku. Eventually, Yasmin became accustomed to disregarding the ominous presence. The only time she was vaguely discomforted by it was when she was offering her prayers, at the end of which she would pray for protection against all that was malevolent. The time flew by; the extremely short winter came and went; mock exams arrived and were conquered, and finally the first signs of spring began to show outside. It was easier for Yasmin to become oblivious to the gun during this time. She was almost done with her final exams, after which she would be leaving the country, forever, to join her husband. It was what both of them had been waiting for, especially Yasmin, since she would finally be able to breathe free. She was grateful that no burglars had shown up at her door, and that Nazia and she hadn’t been assaulted or robbed in the streets of the unpredictable and dodgy city. All trips to the bank and market had been uneventful, albeit nerve-racking. Nobody had snatched her phone, car, or jewelry at gun-point. Although accounts of unfortunate events had besieged the newspapers and local as well as international news channels, somehow Yasmin and her mother, Nazia, had managed to make it this far without a scratch. The much awaited day came, at last, and Yasmin busied herself with sorting through her things – packing those she wanted to take with her and throwing out those she thought would add to the clutter she and her mother had collected over the years. There were old yearbooks she had wanted to go through, heaps of artificial jewelry to sort, and a whole cabinet full of old text books and notes that she had once thought of organizing. There was too much to do suddenly and no time. Yasmin could only feel the tiniest pang at the thought, however. Her train of thought immediately turned to the life awaiting her. She envisioned what her husband’s face would be like as he greets her at the airport. She pictured her apartment; just the way she’d left it the last time she’d visited for a week, yet different, more welcoming somehow. She imagined meeting her neighbors, making new friends, bringing up a family, and finally settling into a normal life. Lost in gleeful thoughts, Yasmin let her fingers absently brush over something cold and hard in the drawer she was sorting through. She jerked her hand away in horror. How could she have forgotten? Her mother had mentioned that she wanted to move the gun to another, more discreet location a couple of weeks ago. Yasmin realized she mustn’t have gotten the chance to do so yet. The pistol was still there; unused and gleaming like a vicious monster. Yasmin momentarily mused over the fact that none of the ways she’d dreamed of using the gun had ever been realized. The sudden pang of disappointment she felt surprised her, and brought back with it all the fears and haunting thoughts that had encompassed her when the gun had first arrived. Almost like an afterthought, a kind of destructive curiosity filled her. Yasmin had always been a staunch believer in closure. She believed no question should be left unanswered, no argument unsettled, and no curiosity unexplored, especially if one was to move on and start a new life. She summoned courage from every last corner of her heart and every extremity of her body, drew in a deep breath, and picked up the pistol. It was surprisingly light, contrary to what she had expected. It felt cold and hot at the same time in her hand. Yasmin spun the barrel open and looked at the round of bullets in place. They looked a little let down, sitting cold in their little holes, deprived of their searing glory. She spun the barrel close again, letting it spin for another few seconds to hear the rapid clicking sound. She had finally fulfilled her urge, yet she felt her closure with the gun hadn’t been achieved. Yasmin bravely stared down the funnel of the pistol. She had a crazy image of a bullet zipping out at her face, and immediately turned the direction away from her face.. Before Yasmin was ready to put the gun back, she pulled the trigger back. The sound of it clicking into place was the final element she had needed to finally be able to put it away. She realized she was playing it dangerous, but she knew how to release the trigger without firing a shot – she’d seen it in movies. Yasmin put a thumb on the trigger to pull it back and release it. She’d had enough, it was time to put the gun back and continue packing – she had a flight to catch in ten hours! A loud banging on the terrace door suddenly startled her, and the pistol seemed to explode in Yasmin’s hand.


The two men who had jumped onto the gate and climbed up to the terrace of the house silently crouched outside the large stained-glass window. They could not see anything clearly through it, but one of them had spotted a shadow going down the stairs. They had been observing this house for the past two months, and knew that a woman and her daughter lived alone here. After some investigating, they had found out that the daughter had been married the year before, and was about to move abroad. They had definitely hit the jackpot. Not only would there probably be wedding jewelry in the house, they could possibly have some foreign currency too. The larger man of the two, the one with the unkempt mustache, discussed the plan of action with his partner in hushed tones. They had been supposed to find an open window or door that could lead them in, but that had becoming impossible – the windows had heavy bars running across them, and the doors were always locked. They only way they could get in now would be to startle one of the women inside enough to get them to open the door. They waited another few minutes, just to be sure it was the younger one of the two women upstairs; younger ones were always irrational and even stupid. The man with the mustache got up, then, and with all his might banged on the terrace door. No sooner had he done that, they heard the loud crack of a gunshot from inside. The two men had been armed, but mostly it was for enticing fear, and the thought of a confrontation with an angry, armed resident was enough of them to abort their plan. Terrified out of their wits, the men fled the premises, running as far as their stamina would allow them to. When they knew they’d come far enough, the two men stopped and argued about how it was the other one’s fault for overlooking the tiny fact that the two women owned a gun. Another house, another time, maybe, they decided eventually. Next time they’d make sure they knew everything. That evening, the man with the unkempt mustache turned on the small television in his tiny cramped up room. He turned up the volume to drone out his wife’s nagging in the background. The woman never stopped to think how hard it was to earn (or steal) money around here nowadays. As he flipped through the blurry channels a news story caught his eye. There had been a strange tragedy at the very house they’d attempted to rob this morning – the daughter of a respected family had shot herself in the neck and committed suicide. The incident had been a shocker to friends and family, who had been torn apart by the news. The man with the unkempt mustache turned off the television and turned his head around to look at the single room he shared with his wife and seven kids. It was untidy, unbelievably cramped, and they were still eating the lentils from three days ago. A strange comfort settled over the man. Whatever their life was, it must be better than those wealthy folk, he thought – they might have all the riches in the world, but he was still a lot saner than them.