2 Minute Worlds

A student asked his teacher about the meaning of dilemma. The teacher explained, explained again, drew diagrams in the dust, compared it to crossroads and forks in the road. But the student just shook his head like a broken fan.

Finally, the teacher leaned in and whispered:

“Let me tell you a story. Maybe then you’ll get it.”

In Nazimabad, outside the AO Clinic, a father and son rode a motorcycle behind a truck stacked with iron sheets. One sheet flew off, as if bored with its job, and neatly sliced both their heads clean off.

People rushed to Dr. Muhammad Ali Shah with the heads in one arm and the bodies in the other, like mismatched groceries. After seven hours of surgery, the doctor stitched them back to life. But when they opened their eyes, the father’s head sat on the son’s body, and the son’s head sat on the father’s body.

And that’s when hell began.

The daughter-in-law refused her husband’s touch. “If I go with the head, the body belongs to my father-in-law. If I go with the body, the head is my husband’s. Either way, I feel like I’m sinning.”

The mother wept too. “If I share a bed with my husband’s head, the body is my son’s. If I share a bed with my son’s body, the head is my husband’s. What is left for me but shame?”

The family tried everything—separate rooms, blindfolds, gloves. Nothing worked. Even a motorcycle ride became a theological problem: should the daughter-in-law sit behind her husband’s head or her father-in-law’s torso?

So, they went to court.

The judge stared at them for a long time, his face twitching. Then he asked:

“When you say Mr. So-and-So, who stands up? The head? Or the body? Because in law, only one of you exists.”

The father’s head answered. The son’s body raised its hand. The son’s head shouted objections. The father’s body thumped the table in protest.

The judge pulled at his wig like it was burning. “This court cannot decide. If the wife divorces, whom does she divorce? If the mother remarries, whom does she marry? Head or body? Husband or son?”

The lawyers began to argue. One quoted religious texts, another cited biology, a third suggested DNA tests. Finally, one lawyer said:

“Your honor, maybe the solution is simple. Let the heads divorce the heads, and the bodies divorce the bodies. Then remarry in whatever combination seems… least sinful.”

By then the student, listening to the story, felt sweat dripping down his temples. His lips trembled. “Teacher… I don’t know. I can’t solve it. My brain is stuck. Who belongs to who?”

The teacher leaned back, smiled a tired smile, and said:

“My son, this impossible knot, this paralysis in your skull—that is what we call a dilemma.”