For the first time, I felt I had no power. How come my words change the world—a nation? I was a book; I had limited words, not guns, sticks and hands to slap and clench. For years, as a book, I had taught about society, nation, development, resistance, but then I wanted to address what a book should say in sorrows for being away from its readers.
Who knew how hard it was to be in the hands of people who did not even know my worth? Somewhere in the shelf at a home, and sometimes on a flat ground, filled with dust and newness, my owners enjoyed on a table right in front of me – either using the phone or having a party and cheering up. With a thousand other books out there, I had been on the table, listening to the words people said.
They held me as if they had never read a book before. They read my title, the first four pages and discussed my contents. For them I was important. For them I had power. Not just me, thousands of books enjoyed being in warm palms of little boys, girls and senior citizens. I did not know whether it was heaven for readers (who found us) or us (happy to be read); however, it turned out to be a hell for both.
Some people did not love our heaven and constructed a hell that divided us—readers and books. The wish to reach more and more readers ended just after they knotted the shawls that became our cage. I heard our readers resist, question and try hard to free us, books, for the first time.
No matter how loudly readers shouted and marched to save us, they failed. That was all because of having no power, neither the readers nor had we have it. Maybe, the power was in alliance with the people who separated us and hated us, surely it was.
They gave us a new place where, instead of readers, we found silence; sometimes, instead of shelves, we rested on the flat ground.
“Is this the place where I awaken people?” A red book by my side stated. “So, are they not ready for what we teach or is it the readers they fear the most?”
No one answered. To myself, I said that they were afraid of both.
I had been with hundreds of non-readers, and I did not regret it; however, with each passing minute in the tightly tied blanket, I worried why were they wasting our time while thousands of readers awaited?
What if I were under the shady trees, in front of a crowd who chose the right book? What if, in the hands of the students, I thanked them, as I had lacked them in the cage? It would have been a change. Readers would not have wasted their time saving us; rather, they might have finished reading us.