How I killed my mother

Present: The father

This was beyond him.

Amir always kind of doubted if Errum was actually his daughter. She was a fucking genius piece of shit. How could she be born to a guy who snorted cocaine since he was 18?

He was glad when Saara took the kids away with her when they separated 16 years ago. He was a free, young man of 22, he couldn't bear the thought of two kids clinging to his legs at the time when he should be partying hard and enjoying his life. He never even bothered to look at his daughters, let alone actually getting to know them.

Today, sitting in the court room, seeing his own daughter getting trialled for the murder of his ex wife, Amir felt like crying. Today his paternal instincts awoke, the feelings that were buried deep inside him, that never aroused even when he kicked Errum away from him the day he went away. She had been wearing a pink frock that day, that complimented her rather pale skin. The exact copy of her mother. But he could see her eyes were just like him. So was her silky black hair.

It was not that never thought of his daughters. After all, he had lived with Alayna for 3 years, and 1 with Errum. He had changed their diapers, made sure they weren't hungry, lulled them to sleep late at night. Yes, he did them being pissed off or high, but he still remembered his daughters. He knew Alayna was the lovely one, the good-natured, dream daughter with a sweet temper and maturity reflecting from her since she was 5. But Errum was the callous one. Not once in her life had she looked at any one with affection or even acknowledge anyone, not even Alayna. Alayna, the protective one who saved her weird little sister from every peril that comes her way. Helping her survive in this world where someone like Errum was ridiculed, looked down upon and deliberately picked upon.

Especially when he laid on the floor on Saturday nights, drunk and high as a kite. He thought how different would his life be if he didn't leave his daughters that day, if he chose to be a family man, if he chose his poor daughters over everything.

But he was still glad he didn't. He knew Alayna was out of college, and the other one, Errum, was so genius she would be in one of the top five colleges by next year. Saara raised them well. If they were with him, they would've been the same pathetic shit as he was. He would be their drunk father who beat up their mother and took away their savings. And one day, they would have gone after him. But they weren't. They were pretty, and they were sensible.

At least he thought so.

When they told him his ex wife was dead in an accident a piece of him felt missing. His highschool sweetheart, and the only woman he bore children with.

  He met Saara on a cold night of October 21 years ago. He had been near a highschool with the shipment of cocaine at a party. His employer had clearly instructed him to hand over the stuff only and only to the owner. Amir stood outside in the biting cold when he saw the Auburn hair, the emerald eyes, the perfectly tanned skin. Amir looked at Saara sitting on the side of the road, spellbound. He was attracted to..a homeless girl?

Amir soon took Saara to his employer, both for giving her some shelter and to keep her close. He was the one who helped her out, and he was the one who involved her in the shittiest habit in the world and worst job in the world. Of snorting and dealing cocaine.

He remembered the intense kiss under the street light, the rented car that broke down in the middle of their first date, the day they made love for the first time. How they laid together feeling ecstatic of all the drugs both took. How he hit her when she told her she was pregnant. But he didn't leave her alone with the kid, because he loved her. Instead, he left her alone with two kids. Because the second time, not even his love could overcome the dread he felt as he looked at his younger daughter's face. He wanted to abort both of them, and both the time Saara resisted. "I'm not letting you touch my daughters, Amir. I don't care how hard it's going to be, but I'll raise them and I'll raise them right. Because I love them. Even though I haven't even see the little one's face. But you wouldn't know, Amir. You wouldn't know. After all, You're not a mother."

Everything came as a flashback, and all he could do was sit on the floor and wail. Technically, they never had an official divorce. She was still his wife. Amir was a widower now.

But the rest part of the news was what felt like someone pulled the rug under hiim. Errum killed her. That's what they said.

She was a bit abnormal, but weren't all geniuses like that?

He had seen her, so many times, from a distance, when she was walking home alone after school. Eyes down, afraid. Of what? She was clearly getting bullied by jerks. Amir's daughter, afraid of bullies? No, he couldn't say that. She wasn't his daughter, he didn't let her be. Though Saara did let them keep his name, and she herself never got rid of the surname "Hassan" that she took from Amir's Bangladeshi origin, he hoped they looked at their names and for once, thought about their father.

He knew something was terribly wrong with Errum. He wanted to go there and hug her tight, tell her how he was there for her, and it wasn't true he didn't bother. He cared, he just didn't have the courage to do so.

Maybe, maybe if he had went to her daughter and loved her that day, talked to her, ask her what was wrong like any other responsible father, he could've stopped her from murdering her own mother.

But he had stopped dead in his tracks, and now he sat glued to his chair, awaiting his daughter's trial.

Did Errum recognize him? No, how would she? There was a slim chance that Saara ever told them about their father. Or at the most, she would've told them about the drunkard bastard who left her alone on a moving train the night they got married.

He met Alayna though. She had caught him looking intently at her, and Amir could finally gather courage for what he wanted to do all his life, walked over to his daughter and introduced himself.

As their uncle.

He was a coward, and will forever remain so. At least he could console his daughter while she cried to her heart's content at the absence of the only parent of her life, her only family, and her only shelter.

A/N: I was so confused about this chapter, whether to keep it or pen throw, and I changed the sequence for a thousand times ( I might be slightly exaggerating:3). At first I felt like this was a void chapter with Amir's POV which isn't even that important, but I later realized it'll help us to understand Saara's background better because so far we haven't seen much of her. So I decided to keep it, and please vote and comment if I did the right thing. Also, here's my obvious choice for Amir: