Bourbon on the rocks

Page 9

14.March 1993

Dear Leila,

The Quran always says, "Everything has its reason for happening." At times I want to understand why God, this mighty God does what it does. What is its reasoning for putting me through this handmade limbo I now am faced with? I do not understand why I feel imprisoned in my mind and why my son feels like he is sinking beneath the ground. I do not know what is happening I feel so lost, Leila. Everything feels like it is piling up. Did you know this about Danial and did not tell me? Did you keep this part of him hidden away from me so I would not figure it out? Why Leila? Did you do it to protect me or to hurt me deeper? I feel hurt, Leila, this behavior of yours keeping this deep and dark part of Danial hidden. If you knew which you must have, you spent more time with him he was your student and son.

Love

Your angel, Mustafa

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Danial is transferred to a clinic where he will receive help, while I sit here on this bed tracing the tracks, and marks left from his body and the restrains. As my fingers trace the areas, tears flow out of my eyes automatically. Almost like a river inside me that has now cracked through the rocks of my mountain.

I feel so closed in and like there is a tightening in my chest that clutches around my heart, as it claws into it filling my body with this stream of negative and dark blood that does not match. The blood, now leaving me dying here. As I hold the fabric of the duvet close to my nose, inhaling the scent that whiffs of it and laying down, wishing to see a better tomorrow hoping to understand what Dr. Williams meant with Danial not being my biological son. I do not understand how that came to be. I must speak with Danial momentarily. Does he know?

---------------------------------------------------------------------

The sky was clearing up. I sat linked to a wheelchair where a needle had some clear juice flowing into it as I watched the outside world through the closed windows. I was in the living room where most patients here at "Saint Michaels clinic of care and wellbeing" would spend their time drawing or completing puzzles no one would speak to me, most of these kids were loonies and not like me at all there is no one here I would even remotely talk to unless I had to.

The old nurse with the beer belly and sweaty and pulled-back hair walked over to me and knelt to be at my level.

-Your old man is here. He says it's urgent so, we have arranged a room for you to speak to him, she exclaimed as she pulled herself up by grabbing hold of the old wooden sofa behind her and walked over behind me as she pushes me towards the end hallway.

We stood before an old green metal door with a small window square in the middle of it as she tapped some code to open the door, it almost looked like an interrogation room, and I was there to be interrogated by some cop.

As she pushed me in, I saw Mustafa sitting across the table with his head hanging low with the window behind him filling the wall. The rest of the room consisted of a table, two chairs across one and other, and pictures hung on the wall as a coffee machine was in the corner of the room. He had a cup between his hands as he did not even dare lookup. Why?

-I am going to let you guys get to it, alright? She announced with her southern accent ringing in my head loudly. God, why does she always yell?

-Marhaba Habibi, Mustafa finally musters out, breaking the ice.

-I want to talk to you about a matter, the matter of Leila and your biological father.

I only stared back. I did not know what to expect out of this fool.

-I do not know if you know what the matter is or if you know more than I do. But, I am going to speak from what I know. You are not my son Danial. Leila seemed to have had an affair. However, it is excusable, you see, it is probably from the Alzheimer's that was not detected, and that made her fuck another man, he chuckles still his head hanging low.

-What do you mean, Mustafa?

His head spurs up, and he looks at me with widened eyes like he had seen the corpse of Leila blossom and come back from the dead.

-Well, it must be why she had the affair and had you, Habibi she forgot about me and forgot that you were not mine. That's why she never told me.

-How can you even say that, Mustafa.

-What do you mean?

-You find excuses for her for everything. How can you do that? She cheated on you before her Alzheimer's was detected!

-No - he shook his head starring back at the table with raised eyebrows - she did not know she probably thought that man was me and forgot my name, and that's why she fucked him.

-Mustafa, she did not only fuck him. She cheated on you he was a colleague of hers, which she fucked continuously, even though she was married to you. She never loved you. She loved the idea of you loving her. She was not capable of loving anybody! She never loved me, her son.

-It is because you are a bastard son! You are a mistake, do not come here and distort the picture of Leila floating in my head, you bastard son!

-Mustafa! Listen to yourself, I shout through gritted teeth.

He stops and looks up at me with red and puffy eyes as a single tear drops from his left eye as it began raining behind us.