The Last Cigarette Mujtaba Farooq

The Last Cigarette 

Mujtaba Farooq 

mujtabajourno@gmail.com

When I saw him pouring the ashes from the tip of his cigarette into a small steel bowl — fair enough to call an ashtray — my mind didn’t just see a mere act.

I could see his index finger patting the cigarette’s neck, just a few centimetres away from the red end, and how softly the butt was held between the thumb and middle finger.

I stared into his good eye — the one that didn’t stare back.

From this distance, i could sniff and see that it wasn’t him who was sitting and smoking, but rather a corpse — still beating, still inhaling smoke in exchange for memories that had devastated his consciousness.

Everyone around him was staring too. some had already built their first impressions — cruel, judgmental — they must have assassinated his character and labelled him immoral.

I was sure this was happening. i could see it in their eyes.

A mother was making sure her son wouldn’t catch the odour of smoke, whispering warnings in his ear — perhaps guiding him on what not to do, or simply, what a bad man looks like.

Some men, seated on chairs, wore navy-blue suits and dark-brown shoes pointed enough to dig the earth — yet not grounded. Their wrists held rolexes that ticked silently, but still could be heard. Their eyes revealed something: pity mixed with satisfaction. Somewhere, they were happy they weren’t him.

College girls held their scarves close to their nostrils, as if there were rotten meat near their feet.

I must say — a silent man is nothing but rotten: his dreams gulped by insomnia, his desires trapped in the thorns of livelihood, his strength betrayed. The odour was not him — it was the fragrance of sweat evaporating in unconscious puffs.

There were schoolboys too, different ages, mostly teenagers, staring at the cigarette butt clenched between his fingers — just to catch the name of the brand. Perhaps these kids were already victims of modern classism, and would calculate how much respect they could rent from their decency.

He took puffs with his eyes closed, lips pressed — his breath sounded like grief finding its way through the nostrils. I wasn’t sure if he heard the whispers, but if he had, he might’ve pressed the cigarette against anything — perhaps even his own skin — just to silence them.

He was bizarre, hardly caring for his own existence. He barely knew where he was sitting — or perhaps he wasn’t sitting anywhere. I must say — he was the ghost he was only thinking about.

He choked several times, dry coughs, but his eyes were not dry — they were dark red, as if a war was being fought inside them,

with bodies lying everywhere, drenched in blood, without hope of anyone coming to take them away.

On his face were marks — scars — imprints of slaps, the slaps of life. Yet there he was, holding his breath, breaths that did more damage than the smoke itself.

What could have been the tragedy with him? Or was he the tragedy himself? I could do nothing except stare.

I wanted to look away — to see anything but him —but the odour kept hitting my reflexes. This time, I looked away from his hands and towards his feet.

He wore black boots with wired laces, tied in a hurry — or simply with carelessness. A few steps would unlace them, and he might fall. I guess he already did — his knees were covered in sand-dust arcs. I was sure he was bleeding beneath the pants. Yet he was committing the same mistake again — he must fall again.

His ignorance to everything was attractive. I’m sure he was bleeding beneath the skin, but all he did was take another puff — no other gesture, no other cry. This was the only cry.

There was mud around his boots, as if he had travelled across wet graves and slipped there several times. But I couldn’t bet on it — even in a grave full of dead bodies, he would have been the most dead. Maybe he came after burying himself.

On his right side was an umbrella. On his left, a sunflower wrapped in black paper. And outside — it wasn’t raining. Was he mad? or was he seeing something we couldn’t — a hope?

His cigarette was nearly finished. He crushed it in the ashtray softly, as if he wanted to be kind to the memories that were now ashes.

I could see a sense of relief on every face around, but his wrinkles stayed the same. He reached for his chest pocket, took out the cigarette box. When he opened it — there was just one last cigarette left.

He smiled - perhaps because it was the last of his grief.

A bad man was about to die — a man judged for his wounds, his courage, his grief.

He didn’t pull it out. He saved this rebirth for another moment, for different people — perhaps for himself.

The last cigarette would kill an identity he was not.

After it, he would be someone else — unjudged, unknown.

He got up and left few biscuits on the floor. He was staring at me too.

I don’t know where we were, or who he was, or who all these people were. But i knew the moment — not the man.

I ’m glad I was a dog.

(Disclaimer: The act of smoking in this short story serves as a literary metaphor for compulsion and helplessnes. It does not promote or romanticise smoking.)