Life Sentence

CHAPTER 17

~ ONE MONTH LATER ~

“Let’s talk about the day you were freed, shall we?” Mrs. Fatima Iftikhar, her psychiatrist asked at the start of their fourth session.

Kubra groaned. True, it was her who had practically begged for therapy, but these weekly sessions were her least anticipated events. There was no excuse she had left to escape these. Unfortunately or fortunately, Huma, Saad and her father knew how to read between her lies, and her fears as well.

Kubra looked at the human being in front of her who had the patience of a saint. She had to give it to Fatima. She wasn’t the easiest of patients, yet she had managed to make her feel comfortable around her.

The sophisticated woman in her mid-thirties waited patiently for her to answer. And she did.

Swallowing, she replied, “If we must.”

“Tell me how you felt when you knew you were a free woman.”

She wet her lips. “When the judge announced that I was a free woman, I . . . I couldn’t believe my ears. I didn’t have to go back to that small prison. Saad had fulfilled his promise. I remember everyone I loved was over the moon.” She smiled remembering how happy everyone was.

“And were you?”

“Was I what?”

“Were you happy?”

Not for the first time, she ran her tongue on her bottom lip. Then she sucked it into her mouth and contemplated for a long moment. “For a moment, I think I was. I was on cloud nine. The proof was in front of everyone that I was not a murderer. You can’t know how much that meant to me. My class fellows, my teachers, even my parents . . . now they couldn’t doubt even a little bit that I was guilty. In that moment I couldn’t contain my happiness.”

“You think your parents doubted you too?” Fatima jotted something down in her notepad.

She nodded. “They had no reason to believe that I didn’t kill. They stood by me because I was their daughter and they couldn’t stand to see me behind bars. But I think they didn’t trust me.”

“We’ll come back to it again. First tell me why you weren’t happy.”

“I should’ve been happy, right?” She asked a question that wasn’t meant to be answered. She covered her face with her palms, looked up and groaned. “Gosh! I sound so ungrateful.”

“Don’t worry about being judged here. Talk freely.”

Kubra stood up from the chair and laid down on the couch, adjusting her hair so that they fell over the arm. “Your couch is too soft.” She exhaled. “Well, as I told you. I was happy. But then the bubble popped all too soon. My mother hugged me and I was slammed into the reality that awaited me.”

When she didn’t continue, Fatima probed her. “What happened when your mother hugged you?”

“I couldn’t bear it.” She shook her head. “I felt this immeasurable urge to shove her away from me, vomit my guts out and scrub myself in a lifelong shower. I realized that nothing would be the same as before. I couldn’t just pick myself up from where I was dragged away. And every moment after that simply proved me right.”

“How and what did you find different?”

She looked at Fatima as if she was stupid and couldn’t figure it out. “Everything in every way. It was too much of everything. It was too loud. The house was too bright. Everything was too comfortable, too accommodating. The seats were too soft. The water was too clean. My parents were too touchy. Even the temperature was too okay.”