The Flying Dreams

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

It had been a complete week since the kitchen incident, but I still couldn't stop replaying the moment in my head. A mere touch of her fingers on mine had managed to shake my usually static routine like a pebble thrown on the unwavering water. I couldn't lie to myself in the mirror and say it did nothing to my already divided heart and I was not as innocent I liked to portray before the crowd. I had thought about my first night with Wahab and fantasized so many scenarios that I couldn't talk to him in a normal way afterwards. Zoya had helped greatly in making up fake scenarios as a matter of fact since she had more knowledge on the matter—book and movie knowledge obviously but more, nonetheless. She had a phone and a separate room from her younger sisters, she watched too many romantic Hollywood movies and wouldn't miss a single detail in narrating the story to me whenever we met. Then, we had come across Fifty Shades of Grey and my brain wouldn't shut up about it and seeing Wahab in a white shirt and gelled hair on Eid had done something to my sanity and did twice something to Zoya's creativity, apparently. She seemed more excited for my first night with him than I was and had made plans. Like crazily elaborated plans which embarrassed me to even think about. We were going to buy the sheer nightdress especially for the night, and we almost did while shopping for Eid but the risks of being caught were higher than our sudden momentarily spur of courage. The idea was then abandoned but stayed lingering. Then Wahab decided that the wedding would be postponed and the idea hadn't crossed my mind ever since.

But I had never thought of Shifa the same way, not even when she wore a white shirt or styled her hair behind her ears and looked more handsome than any girl I had ever seen. The notion of being attracted to her in a similar way failed to register in my mind but after she pulled the little stunt in the kitchen, that was all I could think about. The way her fingers laced around my wrist and how her chest had grazed the back of my shoulder, all too much. And to make it worse, I didn't think she did it on purpose because if she did, I would have known. She acted as if she hadn't just grabbed my hand when there was absolutely no need for it and hadn't breathed on my ear when the words could be heard from a good, respectable distance. I wasn't deaf. And still, her face lacked any sign of the crime she committed. We watched a movie, or more likely she watched a movie while I just sat there with my food plate and occasionally glared at her face or reprimanded myself for entertaining such muddy thoughts.

I turned again on the bed, squeezed shut my eyes and tried to sleep but my mind was being too loud and defying and at last, kicking aside the blanket, I sat up and grabbed my shawl from the headrest. I could make myself some tea and revise a few chapters before the morning prayer if sleep failed to come but as I walked toward the door, I heard another sound of footsteps. Shifa, obviously. Glancing at the wall clock, I touched my ear on the door. Why was she up and what was she doing at 3 in the morning? Her exams were over, and she wasn't the one to wake up for morning prayer, there were still more than 2 hours for the first azan. Pressing my ear closer to the cold door, I tried again and the sounds of footsteps had stopped. I wondered for a minute if I should go outside or stay inside my room and let her do whatever she was doing in private and I almost stepped back, took off my shawl but then another sound came. Small but certain, the whoosh of swift wind. I opened the door and ambled toward the sofa and sure enough, she sat there without any blanket and the cool wind surrounding the space forced me to wrap the shawl even tighter around my shoulders. The window was open and instead of saying a word, I went ahead and closed it.

"It's like you want to get sick."

"Open it."

"No."

A small part of me was scared to face her but the much bigger part of me needed to be there with her and I was not even sure if she wanted me there, knowing her, she probably didn't but I was done with pretending nothing was wrong when whatever happening was enough to have her sit on the sofa in 3 in the morning with an open window and no warm clothes on. Taking a deep breath and convincing my mind to stop talking over me, I spun around and found her eyes already on me. She wasn't crying as I had expected but the slight shudder in her posture when she leaned over the blue pillow urged my feet toward my room to grab my blanket. I walked over to her again and draped it around her. She immediately straightened it over her head, covering her ears and then her feet, looking extremely like a soft body-sized teddy bear. I had to remind myself not to think about it as I took a seat on the right corner.

"Thank you. Couldn't sleep?"

I nodded and she mirrored my gesture, "Me too."

I mulled over what to say next to make the situation less tense but the only words I could muster were—

"Would you like some tea?"

Shifa stared at my face longer than I was comfortable with but something inside my heart told me not to look away like it knew she was putting me through some sort of test, and I couldn't lose this one. Not when I wanted her to trust me. I was being a hypocrite—I didn't trust her; how could I expect it from her? And I rummaged through everything stored in my mind, opened my mouth to let her in one of the secretes I hadn't even shared with Zoya, the one which in a way scared me. But she was speaking before me.

"I am gay, Adia."

I was aware of my lips parting, but no words would come out, nothing moved inside the walls of my brain and for a second, I felt everything around me stop to give me time to fathom if what she said was what I heard. I had suspected this but never imagined she would acknowledge it in front of me, a complete stranger. My heart rate increased swiftly without a moment of break, and I shook my head, there was no way I was going to give her something to hate me for. Having desires in the privacy of your heart and expressing them were two different things. I was ready to get up and leave but I couldn't. Not when she had trusted me with this. If I had walked away then, I knew that moment would forever live in my life as a regret which I could never correct.

"I know."

The silence fell between us like an invisible curtain, and I shifted over my leg to get inside the blanket and Shifa moved her feet faster than anyone sitting only with a cover could. I tried not to make a face.

"I would have done the same thing. I would have run away too without caring for my family if that was the only. Does it make me a horrible person?"

My eyes roamed all over her face and rested on her hands, intertwined together on her lap. She was not fidgeting as I was, my fingers were out of my control, and I didn't think too much in reaching for her hands. More for my own sake than hers. Shifa allowed me to separate her fingers and take them in mine but with each second passing I realized—that she was trying to stop my fingers from squirming, carefully holding them under hers and making a fist with both her palms pressing against each other. Her touch was cold and yet soothing. I didn't have sufficient will to look her in the eyes, but I knew the answer before she even asked. No one who cared for others without letting them know, who still managed to be considerate of me when I had unintentionally accused her of being a terrible person for putting love before family could be anything but horrible.

"No. No, it doesn't."

Then something I had never expected happened and her first tear dropped on my thumb. No sound came but the tears continued to drop, and I watched her shoulder rise and fall at a heated pace, her face was hunched over, and before I could understand my own drive, I was shifting closer to her until my hands were wrapped around her neck and my knee touched her toes. She flinched and for a second, I thought she was going to remove my hands but then her body leaned toward me and at last her forehead touched my neck. Soon her lips parted, and I felt them move. Her body shook violently, and my arms tightened on instinct.

"I hate it. I hate it so much.", she said between two hiccups.

How was it possible to feel like my whole world would be shattered if I see cry again when I only had half an idea of her sadness?