Makhfi

Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Mehrma POV

I still remember every single detail of that day ,when my childhood was taken away from me because of my own credulity that I believed that my mother wanted to spend time with me but she just wanted to show everyone that she loved me.

Flashback

There are nights when the air smells faintly of iron, and I feel like I'm nine years old again.

I remember that afternoon very clearly, as if it wasn't a dream.
The haveli had been uneasy for weeks, men coming and going from Dada's study, doors closing quietly, voices dropping when the kids walked in. I didn't understand politics or land disputes or why grown men in nice suits spoke like the walls were listening. All I knew was that Mama had been distracted. 

At three in the afternoon, she came into our room.
"Get ready. We're going out." Usually, guards followed us, but not this time. The driver hesitated, remembering Dada's orders, but she silenced him with a look. I felt excited despite the tension in the air. Muneza skipped beside me, her fingers wrapped around mine. The mall's parking was empty, the lights buzzing overhead. Something in the air shifted. Mama adjusted her dupatta, her reflection briefly flashing in the car window, lipstick too bright, face too tight.

The men came out from behind the pillars like they had always been there.
One moment, the parking area was empty, and the next, there were hands on us, rough, unyielding. Muneza screamed. I did too, but the sound felt small against the concrete. One of them spoke calmly to my mother, as if talking about the weather. "He needs to be told, answer will come tomorrow." I expected her to fight, to grab them, to throw herself between us and danger. Instead, she stood still. Her eyes flicked between me and Muneza, and in that split second, I saw calculation, quick, cold, terrifying. "I want my daughter back" she said, her voice trembling but clear. She spoke as if she was sending me for a trip.
The men exchanged a glance, then pushed Muneza toward them.
My sister stumbled and ran into Mama's arms. The van doors opened. I remember reaching out, expecting her to grab me, to pull me back. She didn't. The doors slammed, and the world turned into darkness and the smell of sweat and iron.
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The warehouse was colder than the basement.
A single bulb hung from the ceiling, swaying slightly as if it, too, was afraid. They tied my hands and left me on the floor. No one shouted. No one demanded ransom in my presence. They moved like men who knew exactly what they were doing. Once, I heard one of them make a phone call. I couldn't hear what he said. Hours blurred together. I cried until my throat felt raw, until tears stopped coming. On the second night, a different man entered alone. He crouched in front of me, studying my face as if I were something he had bought. His fingers brushed my cheek, slow and curious. My body refused to move. Fear pinned me more effectively than ropes ever could. I tried to scream, but my voice was a whisper swallowed by the empty space.

The door burst open before his hand could go further.
Gunshots split the air, deafening in the small room. Shouting followed, boots against concrete, the metallic click of weapons. And then a voice that cut through everything, raw and furious. "Mehrma!" Taya Abu and baba. I saw them in flashes, Taya Abu ran towards me, his silhouette framed by light, his hands shaking as he untied me. "I'm sorry," he kept saying, over and over, as if the words could undo what had been done. The last thin I remembered was my father hugging me.

I woke up to white ceilings and antiseptic.
Machines beeped steadily, feeling pain in every muscle. Tayi Ami's fingers threaded through my hair, her tears falling warm against my forehead. Uncles and aunts filtered in, their faces pale, their voices hushed. My father stood near the window, arms crossed, eyes unreadable. He did not come closer. My mother entered last, her eyes swollen, her lips trembling. "Mehrma" she whispered, stepping toward the bed. Something inside me snapped like a brittle twig. I flinched and then felt my throat closing.  I was hyperventilating. She froze. My father's reprimand came instantly, he walked towards me trying to calm me down. I covered my ears and screamed again until the doctor's hands were on my shoulders and the world faded into sedation.

They told me it was random.
A cruel twist of fate. They told me I was brave. They told me Taya Abu had tracked the men heroically and arrived just in time. No one mentioned the waiting. No one mentioned that the calls had been traced hours earlier, that Dada's men had known the location by the first night. I found that out by accident, padding down the corridor three nights later when sleep refused to come. The study door was ajar. Inside, voices murmured like distant thunder.

"She was conscious when we found her," Taya Abu's voice broke.
"If we had gone earlier"
"If we had gone earlier, we would have lost the proof," Dada replied, calm and steady.
"Qadir revealed himself when he went to collect the payment." Taya Abu yelled in response. "She's nine!"
Through the crack I saw Taya Abu's fist hit the desk. Silence followed, heavy and suffocating.
"We needed the traitor exposed," Dada said at last. 
"This family survives because we do not act on impulse."

The words didn't seem real at first. They floated in the air. We needed the traitor exposed. If we had gone earlier...We would have lost the proof. Proof.
My fingers clenched around the banister outside the study door.
The wood pressed into my palm, solid and splintered, grounding me when the rest of the world felt like it was tilting.

Proof of what? There was the scrape of a chair inside Taya Abu's voice again, lower now, raw.

"She was tied to a pipe. Do you understand that?"
A pause. "We were monitoring the location," Dada replied.
Calm. Patient. As if explaining arithmetic. "Qadir had to feel secure. If we interfered too soon, he would have vanished." "You sacrificed your own grand daughter?" His words were sharp as he stood up abruptly.

Secure. The word settled somewhere deep in my stomach.
They knew where I was.

The hallway felt colder. The antiseptic smell from the hospital room clung to my clothes, but beneath it, I could still smell the thick smell that coated that room. I could still feel the rope biting into my wrists. I had counted the cracks in the concrete floor. I had listened for footsteps that never came.
They knew.
My heart began to beat so loudly I was certain they would hear it through the door.
Taya Abu spoke again. "She cried herself hoarse."
Silence.
Then Dada, softer but firmer: "And she is alive."

Alive. As if that was the only standard that mattered.

Something inside my chest shifted.
Not pain, that had already lived there for days. This was something else. Something sharper. Cleaner.

Realization

A realization unfolding slowly, like a blade being drawn from its sheath. They had not been searching blindly. They had not been desperate. They had been waiting. Waiting for him to step forward. Waiting for payment to be collected. Waiting for the right moment. While I sat on a cold warehouse floor. While I tried not to breathe too loudly. While I learned how small a scream could feel.

"She's a child," Taya Abu said again, but the fight had thinned in his voice

"And she will grow stronger for it," Dada replied.
"Better she learns now what this world is."

Learns??
My fingers slipped from the banister.

I didn't understand politics.
I didn't understand traitors or leverage or exposure.

But I understood this, I had not been the mistake. I had been the method.
The study door creaked slightly as someone moved inside, and I stepped back quickly, pressing myself against the wall.
My pulse thundered in my ears.

Method.
That was why no one had told me the truth. That was why they kept saying random.
That was why my father had stood near the window defeated, he didn't knew. He didn't knew his wife and father had betrayed him. He thought that he failed as a father.
They didn't come. Not because they didn't care. Because they had chosen.
I remembered Mama in the parking. Her eyes flicking between me and Muneza. The calculation I hadn't understood then.

Maybe she had known too. Maybe she had been told not to take guards. Maybe the outing had not been impulsive at all. Maybe the phone call had never been about anything ordinary.
My stomach twisted. What if she hadn't sacrificed me? What if she had delivered me? The thought was so enormous it felt like falling.
Inside the study, a glass clinked against wood. "We cannot afford weakness," Dada said.
"Especially not now. When we have proof."

My name echoed faintly in my head. Mehrma! Taya Abu had shouted it like a prayer when he burst through the door. But prayers come when there is no plan. This had been a plan. I took a step back. Then another. The corridor stretched long and pale under the dim lights.

This family survives because we do not act on impulse. The sentence rearranged itself in my mind. This family survives because we sacrifice strategically. My throat tightened, but no tears came.

Something new was forming where tears used to live. If they had gone earlier, they would have lost proof. If they had gone earlier, The man would have escaped. If they had gone earlier, I would have been spared the second night. The image flashed, the man crouching, his fingers brushing my cheek. I swallowed hard. They had weighed that risk. And decided it was acceptable. The realization did not explode. It settled.
Heavy. Permanent.
I was nine years old.
And I understood, with terrifying clarity, that in this house, love was not protection.
Love was strategy.
I turned and walked back toward my room, my steps quiet on the marble floor. When I reached the door, the room remained the same, nothing had changed. 
But something had already changed.
Not in them. In me. They thought they had taught me how the world works. They had.
And I would remember.

Flashback Over

The words made more sense to me as I grew older, that the family I believed was everything was nothing. It was also the reason my parents got divorced. The reason we left that house. It was all due to power. 

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