The Flying Dreams

CHAPTER THIRTY- TWO

Living with Shifa became easier than breathing, in fact as soon as college ended my excitement for sitting on the sofa with her and watching another movie would continue to grow until I stepped inside her flat and her face greeted me. I could try and explain what my heart felt in her presence, but the words might push me into the pit of guilt and shame. I wasn't supposed to feel as if my whole body had lost the invisible burden that I carried when I sipped the tea she always prepared before settling in, or how every single worry vanished from my heart just hearing her laugh. The wrongness of it made it harder to resist. And it might be just a delusion of my desperation to spend my time with her whenever I could, but she seemed happy to be in my company too. Her usual ventures outside in the evening had eroded by a bit or it could just be the cold weather that forced her to stay in the warmth of home. She hesitated less in introducing me to some of my new favourite movies, though Harry Potter didn't make it in the list much to Shifa's dismay. With great persistence, she kept bugging me about the movie at whatever chance she could get and then this led to another thing and soon I was sitting with her laptop on my lap, trusting the internet to know my Hogwarts House. The fact that she turned out to be a Hufflepuff surprised me a little since the movie didn't really offer much insight and I had ended up doing whole research on the house under my blankets at 12 in the night but that I was a Slytherin shocked me to no end. The path to, hopefully, a good friendship looked smooth but there still stood one thing in the way—her mother.

It was, after all, hard to not notice when someone who lived in the same place cried.

I loved my mother, sure, sometimes the conflicts of affection surfaced but nothing that a cup of tea and a cringy TV show couldn't cure but the relationship Shifa shared with her mother appeared to be based on purely blood ties, relations which can not be easily broken no matter how much they hurt and made you suffer the kind of misery which made you numb inside and can not be spoken in the light. Every time I saw her red eyes after a single five-minute call from her mother, I wanted to either give the older woman a piece of my mind or engulf the younger one in comfort. Or perhaps it was both, but I knew Shifa wouldn't appreciate the gesture, she tried to hide in her room just so I couldn't witness her moments of vulnerability and once I even caught her splashing cold water on her face in the frosty morning. I did my best to look the other way whensoever that happened but as time passed by and I got to know her a little more with each fleeting second— the act of not caring started to threaten my sanity like a dark shadow over my head.

"Why the long face, Adia?"

I rolled my eyes and ignored her emphasis on the last 'a' of my name. It was my mistake for telling her how the mispronunciation of my simplest name bothered me.

"I want to see the Red Fort."

She put her book down on her thighs and scrunched her nose, "Why? It's boring."

Shaking my head, I closed the notebook and moved my pencil around as if it explained anything, "How would I know? You'd been there and so had Divya but I want to decide it for myself. Divya says it's boring, too but I don't know, do I?"

A look of strangeness came over her face and the reply came too late, I had already opened my book and started to highlight the main points, assuming the conversation had died there but she spoke, not what I had been expecting but not unpleasant.

"Well, if you really want, I can accompany you."

"And what about Wahab? He especially asked me not to stray from my studies. He will be angry."

She scoffed and for a moment I regretted what I uttered, I thought she was going to criticize him but all she did was a small mocking chuckle and a shake of the head. I couldn't say I wasn't relieved because I knew in my heart that if she started on Wahab, I couldn't sit still. The reasons were many and most of them were stranded on Shifa and not my fiancé. This was enough to make me look away from her face. Was what I doing wrong? Of course. Cheating happens in a lot more different ways than the physical aspect of intimacy. My mind filled with Wahab's younger cousin instead of him was proof enough and I had no notion how to feel about that. I had never considered myself a cheater. 

"Wahab wouldn't be able to say a thing if I am with you. Don't worry. Sunday, okay?"

And that reminded me of his warning to stay at a  distance from her when I first arrived there. What was that about, anyway? I hadn't asked and he didn't elaborate. But the interest expanded since I now knew Shifa and the way she lived her life, obviously no one in both our families would approve of but she was not a bad person. So, what had he meant by that?

"Okay, can I ask Divya to tag along?"

She shrugged and returned to her book, indicating the end of the discussion.

__

As it turned out, even if it was boring, people wouldn't leave a chance to hang out together. Or just get out of campus, I could understand Divya since she had been lamenting about spending Sunday in dorms with girls she didn't like but Rohan's enthusiasm was a shock. He barely tolerated Shifa's friend Abhi last time and he knew the other boy was coming too then why would he make himself go through a rough day when he could be doing anything else?

Shifa's confidence proved to be right as Wahab didn't oppose, though, the phone call was cut short, due to a network problem he claimed, however, I still held some doubts. What if he only pretended for Shifa's sake and was not really okay with this? He had said not to spend time with Shifa and now I was going places with her. If what I thought proved to be right, then I could just assume what would be waiting for me after a blissful day spent with a few people I had come to adore. My mind conjured a picture of Zoya so suddenly, and I wished that she could be here with me too.

"Are you alright? Finally saw how boring this place is?"

I turned to face Shifa, whose eyes were covered with a massive round sunglass and shook my head, a smile stretching upon my lips without my permission and my eyes roamed over the other participants sharing the same rug and saw Rohan laughing at whatever Divya had said, his brown jacket discarded on his legs, Abhi was busy conversing with Vivek about who knew what in loud voice with a lot of hand gestures and at last landed on Shifa whose red hoodie was used as a blanket for my feet, rummaging through the small basket she had bought along with her. You can never not have a little picnic there. This wasn't boring. This was everything my soul had earned for even when my mind didn't know what was amiss.

"No. I don't find it boring."

Shifa laughed as if not believing my words but nodded her head, skinning a slice of apple with a pocketknife before passing it to me and as I chewed the juicy fruit, I could not contain the excitement of knowing that she remembered how I liked to eat apples without the peels.