Life Sentence

CHAPTER 19

“Let’s talk about your fear of touching people, shall we?”

“Why do you always start as if we’re gonna do things my way and it’s my choice what we discuss?” Kubra took a sweet from a jar on Fatima’s table.

“Because it is your choice.” Fatima slid the jar towards Kubra so she could help herself to some more. She’d noticed that no longer she hesitated to eat for the fear of throwing up. That was progress.

Kubra raised her eyebrows, popping the cherry flavored toffee into her mouth. “Is it? If I say ‘let’s not’, are you going to let it go? Or are you going to say I shouldn’t lie to myself or I shouldn’t keep things from you or that you only wish to help me, blah blah blah?”

Fatima tried to conceal a smile, which wasn’t concealed at all and which was very much obvious to Kubra that she was trying to conceal it. Did that make sense? Whatever.

“I see you’ve figured out all my responses.”

Kubra gave her a smile of her own. “Of course I have. Did you take me for a fool? I may have a few nuts loose, but I still know what two times two is.”

“What about thirty eight times forty seven?”

Kubra pointed at her with her forefinger, as if in a warning. “How dare you assume that stupid of me? I said I have a few nuts loose, not enough to make me like those stupid people who have a calculator in their heads!” She leaned back in the chair, yes the soft chair and not the floor, though it was most uncomfortable. “Fire away your questions, doctor. I shall not interrupt you.”

“I thought we discuss things. Do you think I always ask questions?”

Kubra smiled as if to say, ‘there’s your answer’ and Fatima raised her hands in surrender.

“Very well.” She lost the humor but kept an expression that could only be seen as trustworthy. You would want to tell your deepest, darkest desires to her, because you could see that she would lend an attentive ear and not misuse the information. “Your fear of touch. . .”

“You keep saying fear. It’s not really. It’s more like repulsion. Like when people are not really afraid of insects or animals, but they don’t touch them because they think they’ll get dirty somehow.” Kubra ended with a shrug, as if that would explain what her words couldn’t.

“Your repulsion, then. When did you first notice it? You’ve told me before everything, you were a very physical person. Some would define your language of love as touch. So when did it change? Or when did you realize it? Was it after you were released and your mother hugged you? As I gather that moment holds great importance to you.”

Kubra licked her lips and tried to gather her memories. When did she realize she could not touch anyone without wanting to regurgitate? “No. It was before.” Her face was drawn into recollections, like she was trying very hard to remember. “After four years of being in a cell, when for the first time Huma visited me. Huma and Saad, they both were there. But Saad, I had seen him and talked to him time and time again. But not Huma. And then I realized I wasn’t going to talk to them from behind a glass.

“They were there to tell me that they could reopen the case, you see. And so naturally, the first thing I did was hug my best friend. That’s when I realized. I had never wanted to get away from my best friend faster.”

“But there’s an exception, isn’t there?”

“I know what you’re going to ask of me. I do not know the answer to that ‘why’.”

“I’m gonna ask you anyway. Why do you think Saad is the only exception?”

“How should I know it? Believe it or not, I don’t choose my involuntary responses.”