Esha and Isa

Flashback 8

5/6 years ago - Staying put

"Let's have a toast with our mango juice," I said, holding up my glass bottle. "To us, for winning the case only a week over the time we planned to be back in England."

"And to us for the miracle of the fact that I still have my job after my extended leave," Isa replied.

"Victory all around!" Isa and I clinked our bottles before sipping through the straws in them. We sat next to each other comfortably on the bed in front of the fan in our room.

"Esha, I've been thinking,' Isa started after a short silence between us.

"I've been thinking too," I replied.

"What have you been thinking about?" Isa asked.

"Well, I was thinking we should get another poor family to live in this house when we go. But before that, I want to re-do it a little bit. Perhaps build another room and the walls definitely need to be painted again. But it won't be completed before we go back, obviously. So we're going to have to find someone trustworthy to be in charge and make sure things are done as we plan. What were you thinking?"

"That sounds good. Though I have a different idea on what we can build. I made a couple of friends here, the ones who can speak English. I've learnt lots of things about Pakistan, good and bad. There's just one thing that's stayed with me from all that I have learnt. A lot of these parents send their children a couple of villages away for a good education. I thought with everything developing, there would be more good schools around but this village isn't the richest and the parents complain about the schools close by being awful. They prefer to send their kids over a mile away. Most of them can go on buses driven by this dude Khalil introduced to me at the masjid. But apparently, if he's sick and he can't drive them, the kids have to miss a day of school. And the ones that are a little older have to walk there and back with tons of books. It makes me feel bad for them so I was thinking, why don't we open a school here? A good one in this village because you have some teaching experience," Isa said.

"Wow. That's an amazing idea. But how are we going to do that? I only just qualified."

"Simple. We get as many people in the village as we can to help. We put parts of our savings in and when we're back in England, we can collect donations and send them to someone who can take over here," Isa explained.

"It's not that simple. But I like the idea! But aren't we supposed to be going back to England soon because of your work? How are we gonna start such a big project in such a short amount of time?" I asked. I admired Isa's aspirations but reality made this a tough mission to accomplish.

"With faith, Esha. And imagine if it's a success! The amount of reward we'll get will be amazing. Imagine if we start a line of students and every time knowledge will be passed on, we'll get a part of that reward!" Isa said, his eyes wide with excitement. "This is way better than the work we'll do in England. Perhaps we won't make a great amount of money from it, but it'll be awesome for our hereafter."

"Aww, look at you being all thoughtful about our hereafter," I said and Isa rolled his eyes. "I guess you're right. But seriously, this is going to take a lot of effort and work and if we start this, we can't leave it unfinished," I reminded him.

"We'll name the school after your father too," Isa said and that had me change my mind in an instant. "It can be in memory of him."

"That's a great idea!" I replied, feeling excited myself. "But seriously, how are we gonna pull this off?" I asked, deflating. It seemed really tough. We were due to go back soon. I respected how Isa had put a lot of thought into this but we had to be practical too.