Operation: Dard and Devotion

18 | Risky & Ruins

I did not get to spend so much of my solitude with thoughts of my parents because Tala came back a day later, bruised and battered.

She had shuddered when I had tried to console her by patting her back, which left me wondering just how much Faizan had tortured her if she had flinched at a mere touch. Seeing as there was no other way I could help her, I had saved a good portion of food and slid the food bag towards her. Tala had eyed the bag uneasily, but slid her arm into the opening and nibbled on a loaf of bread.

I did not go out of my way to tell her where the food was from, nor did she ask. From the time she had arrived, she did not speak a single word to me. She had resorted to scratching the dried blood off her pallid skin with her nails when she wasn't eating or sleeping. Bluish welts were scattered across her bare arms and she struggled to breathe. I wanted to cry after observing her sickly, weak state, but fought the urge to do so.

There were a few scattered branches, remnants of useless firewood, on the floor and she preoccupied herself with etching the concrete floor and the walls. She would often sit back and observe her random sketches from every angle, without speaking at all. This went on for days.

Saad was thinning as his bottle of milk and our food portions were gradually decreasing. I began to worry when he stopped crying so much. While the screeching was a bit bothersome at times, a purely silent baby was never a good sign, medically. I forced myself to make him laugh, giggle, or even smile. I took a piece of bark and scraped the floor, writing out the English alphabet and urged him to repeat the letters after me. A motherly beam spread across my face in the midst of this disastrous misery; Saad was beginning to recite the letters to near-perfection.

"A," I said slowly, allowing him to watch the movement of my mouth while I pointed to the letter etched on the floor.

"Aaah," he babbled. Close enough.

I grinned, kissed his cheek, and elongated the next letter for him to pronounce easily. "Be."

"Be! Bee! Beee!" He clapped his little hands together when he saw I was proud of him and suddenly blurted, "Beee! Baba!"

Baba?

Not once in the past month did Saad give any sort of reference to his parents. But where did 'baba' come from?

...Or perhaps I was thinking too much into this and Saad was merely playing around with a new sound.

"Baba!" He began shrieking, slamming his palms on the cold floor. "Baaaabaaaaa!"

Maybe I should quickly introduce 'C' to him...

"Baba, baba, baba!" Saad smacked his hands on the ground with more force than before, demanding his Baba to come.

"Who's Baba, Saad?" I asked him, ridiculously expecting him to understand a question in English at age two. "Baba who?"

He stared at me intently for a few seconds before slapping his face, covering all of his features except for his eyes.

Uhm, okay then...oh, maybe he wants to play peek-a-boo?

I wasn't in the mood to laugh or to make someone laugh, but for Saad, I struggled to put a very un-genuine grin while covering my face with my hands. He was not pleased at my disastrous attempt at playing peek-a-boo.

"Baba!" Saad smacked the ground harder and his cries echoed throughout the room.

Sighing, I attempted to gently reprimand him. "Saad, please calm down. I'm too tired for this."

Before he could cry out again, I shook my head and wrote down the letter C when Tala gasped from the other side of the room; it was the first sound she's made since she came back from being with Faizan.