Idaisle: The flight of a bird trapped in the wrong cage.

Inked in the shadow of words while duveting his lashes in-between the pages of A Man into Woman by Lili Elbe, Nehaal lulled his tempestuous desires to be a Helen at least and clamped shut his eyes leaving behind the tortuous snaky streets where Identity was the sole question all above.

In the Hours of idleness I often sketch you 

with the paint of my blood

with the strokes of my love

I wonder do you do the way I do?

He knew he was about to enter IDAISLE-- his most favourite resort where only Neelum ruled his territory and no Nehaal stood in between them.
He stretched his limbs and found juvenile droplets had already awashed his sobs amidst tears and balmed the swollen marks which he had carried after severe beatings from his peers after being mocked as a hermophrodite . He stepped forward and a lake of white crystals reflected his face having all-male side whiskers and pitch-black moustaches hiding his mole glued to the apple curve of his lips. While touching his brawny muscles , He realized the lithe suppleness of willowy feminine muscles had extinguished and he had been transformed into a herculean man ,whose thought he always hated even in dreams.
Buttering with bemoaning frenzy he muttered. "Neelum Neelum where are you?," the word curled up all over the amazingly masculine voice. He found her laying there, gazing up into his eyes as the sun melted in them.
His dilated pupils had worn a wreath of honey fire and the two tiny orbs were devouring on her very soul. Finding her shadow beneath the lake he instinctively ran a hand over the water bubbles, curved those blue dews of his another self around his neck and filled his pitcher to its brim to get baptised in the aura of Neelum . Neelum moved forward and stampeding gust of wind hung open her rosary pink veil, disclosing to his eyes ,her burnt skin scars, ragged holes. She smiled and behind her beautific smile there were cuts, welts and wounds.
The searing intrusion made his eyes roll in their sockets and the moment the water of IDAISLE's lake grabbed him, "Neelum," from a shadow transformed into an echo rising higher and higher above the frothy herd of clouds Neelum flew upwards to some world he never knew. She flew higher and higher until she was a tiny speck of gold against the clear blue sky and then came parachuting down.
By now he could see only Nehaal's reflection in the frozen ice-blue stream where pulpy crimson berries had doodled these verses

After conquering my desirous zones

Or even if I fail to hold my shards

Or if Ganga of this ephemeral love turned me impure

Or if I lost my identity In the transfixed moment of mortality

I am very much sure

With Blind eyes I will to your country come back

Nehaal's surroundings slowly materialized in front of him: the stream, the fresh grass, branches laden with red apples hanging over them. It was as if he was recovering his sight after a blinding flash. Nehaal didn't want to move a limb - or even a muscle. Under his closed eyes, he could vividly see the apples hanging in bunches over them. But he could also hear a cricket chirp somewhere far away in the night. The heavy breaths he heard were his own and nobody else's. He had a mattress underneath, and no grass. He reluctantly opened his eyes into the darkness of his room and wiped his sweat on his sleeve.
Slowly his lips curled into a smile: he had finally found Idaisle where he was Nehaal, a firm man , the way he was born. He could defy human differences and confrontations but he was not supposed to forget that he was created to maintain equilibrium between his masculine brain and a feminine heart and dominance of either could end up into chaos

Copyrights reserved to Paras Ali and Maaiydah Aslam /2016 (The story is a work of collaboration by the two writers mentioned above)