I See Fire

43 | Day 5

Jordan, Zarqa.

25/01/22

06:00am

•Zayda

"Who are you then?" Lotfi takes a step back, staring at the balcony the man went out to but never came back.

He was puzzled and was lost of words so he criticized with his eyes and let his mouth simmer it in subtlety.

"You see," I sat on the soft bristles covering the floor of my room, holding my head "It's a long story."

"It always is," he deadpans, sitting on a plastic chair close to the door of my room "Start from the beginning."

"It's too late for that." I yawn, not wanting to speak of what prompted this travel or who that man was.

He plays a drum beat with his fingers, staring at the table "It's never too early to share a truth."

For the past five months, everyone had either been working or attending school, not enough family time and certainly not enough face time for anyone.

Amira, Usama and Aamanee went to school, came back and had lunch, went upstairs to do their homework's while the parents surrendered the chance to bond for their egoistical money run. Yusuf wasn't an exception and so was Farouk.

Everyone would sleep without speaking the next or previous day and that was how life went on but one thing that kept them going was the fact that everyone had a partner in this lonesomeness.

Farouk had Yusuf whom he spent his mornings with. He'd take him to school and they'd talk about the previous day. Nadine always fought with Amira then she would come to me and I'd ask her to apologize to Nadine.

We'd go weeks without seeing it speaking to each other though we lived in the same house but we barely crossed paths. Dinner was our only family time and still, everyone was on their ones. We were dysfunctional before they knew it.

The trip to India was a trip like many. Our parents would go to whichever monumental tourist site they heard their friends talking about and abandon us to tour cuties by ourselves. We're lucky we haven't been kidnapped by child traffickers.

And if we had visitors, there was an announcement hours before in the morning as if we had such tough schedules to beat then we'd have to dress our best to impress the snobbiest, envious, over privileged friends they had—at least our parents did—the children only went to school. We never even attended islamiyya but a malam once used to come when we were children. I wonder why he stopped.

We grew up together but in our own worlds, there was little our bonds could do and if the world tried to break us, we would definitely split from the force. I guess our blood wasn't thicker than water—it was painted to bind us to a family with strangers.

The last time we really had fun as a family, I was 14. Straight out of Ss1 with the grace of an angel and an unhinged interest for baking. My parents let me host a picnic and we invited all our family in Abuja and a couple of our friends.

For the first time in months my father was home from 'work' and I was so excited. My mother was so excited when I made them tiramisu in the night and it shocked my siblings more that I actually created everything from scratch.