Tumultuous Love

Chapter 25

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"Your grandmother passed away earlier today." He announces with a heavy heart. Soft gasps filled the room and a few supplications came out of their mouths. Tears cascaded down Saudah's cheek as she said a silent prayer for her grandmother. The grandmother she never knew, never loved, never even set her eyes on her. Now she was gone.

The last grandparent she had alive, even if she never met her was still an important part of her life. The comfort of knowing she had one was still there. Now it's gone. She never even got to find out why exactly her mother shunned from her every conversation that involved the woman.

Habib was sad. He was looking forward to perhaps meeting her one day even though he doubted that would have ever happy anyway. It still felt good living with the hope. The Maybe and now he didn't even have that.

Hammad was the most indifferent of the three. He felt upset to lose a family member but that was it. He couldn't find it in him to mull over her death knowing that there was a high chance she hurt his mother. She never spoke about it but he was very sure something very terrible happened for his father to move them away from their home country and everything related to their ties there. It didn't go unnoticed by him that his mother flinched slightly every time his father's mother was mentioned. Something definitely happened.

He offered that they say a prayer for her anyways and everyone cupped their hands as he made supplications and made dua for her departed soul. Everyone muttered an Ameen as he finished and the room was left in utter silence once again.

"Excuse me." Alhaji Kabir muttered as he stood up to meet his wife in their room and break the news to her. Everyone loosened up a bit as soon as he was out of hearing shot.

"I'm so sorry for your loss. May Allah have mercy on her soul." Amina prayed. "Ameen. Thank you." Hammad replied.

Her worried gaze fell back on Fatima. She had been practically frozen since their father made the announcement. It seemed like she was holding her breath or was in complete shock.

"Fatima." She whispered making Fatima to turn sharply. "Na'am?" She turned sharply, breaking out of her reverie. "Are you okay?" She squeezed her left hand. Fatima nodded, "excuse me." She stood up and left the living room, walking stoically to Saudah's room.

She sucked in a huge amount of air as soon as she shut the door behind her and slid to the ground, her back against the door. It felt like the room was closing in on her and she suddenly couldn't breath properly.

Her fists were tightly clenched, nails digging into her palms as she tried very hard to control her breathing.

"Calm down Fatima. Breathe in" she heaved.

Slowly, her breathing leveled and she could finally feel the air in her lungs. There was still a heavy feeling in her chest, as if it was pushing her down.

When she was very sure she could breathe just fine, she hugged her legs and put her head in between her laps, rocking her body slowly. She was sat there for almost half an hour before she heard a soft click indicating the door had been opened.

She raised her head to see who it was. Amina slid next to her and hugged her, rubbing soothing circles on her lower back. None of them said a word, Amina didn't try to console her neither did Fatima try to thank her for being there. They just sat in comfortable silence, the unsaid words hanging in the air enough to communicate what each felt.

Fatima fell asleep a while later and since Amina couldn't carry her all the way to the bed, she moved her away from the door and used one of the pillows to prop her head up and brought down the duvet to cover her up. Before she left, she hugged her and whispered, "it'll all be okay In Shaa Allah" and she left the room.

Little did they know the worst was yet to come.

"She fell asleep" Amina informs as she comes down the stairs. Saudah sighs, "Alhamdu lilLah. I can't imagine how horrible she feels. She has known Hajiya all her life. They must have been so close." She whispers. Amina nods lightly at her knowing that was definitely not the case.

She had heard a few conversations of Fatima and her mother regarding the deceased woman and she has not for once ever heard Fatima say a nice thing about her. Of course she never asked why Fatima had so big of a problem with her grandmother and Fatima never offered to explain. She never hid it from her either so she figured it wasn't any of her business and never asked.

Now was not the time to tell that to Saudah or any of her siblings however so she chose to keep quiet rather than correcting Saudah's statement.

An hour had already passed and mamii and daddy were still not down. It was getting close to 10pm and none of them had eaten dinner yet. It was long forgotten but Amina's stomach still grumbled silently. She was absolutely famished since she hadn't eaten since breakfast right before they left Madina.

She didn't want to sound insensitive given the current situation in the house but she couldn't stay hungry for that long either. She had a very minimal tolerance to hunger.

Luckily, mamii and daddy came down a few minutes after and announced that they would be taking the morning flight to Dubai the next morning where they will get a connecting flight to Nigeria.

"Allah ya kaiku lafiya." Saudah prayer and mamii muttered a soft Ameen. Her face was devoid of any emotions and you couldn't tell what was going through her mind no matter how closely you inspected her face.

But Hammad saw the fear in her eyes, it was a tiny flicker but it was there nonetheless. He prayed in his head that she's able to tolerate his fathers sister who he had no doubt made her life a living hell even from several seas away.

When they had all been standing in awkward silence for almost two minutes, "Let's eat." Daddy announced and they all scurried to the dining room.

"Where is Fatima?" Mamii asked when they had all settled into their seats and she realized Fatima wasn't there. "She went to sleep." Amina muttered and Mamii nodded.

"Saudah save some for her when you're washing the plates." Mamii instructed.

"There's no need for that I'm awake already." Fatima came down the stairs. "Ina wuni Daddy. Ina wuni mamii." She greeted as she slipped into the chair in between Saudah and Amina. "Lafiya Fatima." They chorused.

Amina squeezed her lap reassuringly and Fatima graced her with a soft smile, then she served her own food and they all ate in complete silence, the only sound being the clanking of the cutlery against the plates.

*•••*

I would try to explain to you all why I haven't updated in so long but the truth is I don't think any of you care to know😂
But I'll tell you anyways because I think you deserve to know. This chapter is honestly the hardest I've written for as long as I can remember ever writing.
Writing emotional scenes no matter what kind has always been difficult which is why I try my best to avoid them as much as I can.
I'm not sure any of you read my first book, Heart of Gold when it was still up but it had absolutely no emotions whatsoever which is why I think I took it down now. It lacked substance because I couldn't bring myself to write it.
With this book, I promised myself I would write even the things I thought I couldn't write and I never had to step out of my comfort zone until this chapter.
I wrote this chapter a total of 4 times and I still don't like how this chapter turned out but I've decided not to be too hard on myself. I can't expect myself to be perfect after trying a new thing for the first time.
All this is unnecessary information anyways and I told y'all you probably don't care😂 so I'll end this mini rant here.
Please leave comment, constructive criticism, what you thought of the chapter, things you liked and didn't like about the chapter, even your thoughts on the whole book thus far. I love to see your comments and I honestly need to know your thoughts now more than ever. See you in the next chapter, hopefully it doesn't take as long as this one took☺️

With love,
Fatima❤️