Jaana : The Girl He Loved Too Much

Chapter 31

His words made her stumble in her place. Did he just say, Father?

"Fir-Firdaus was -" "Firdaus was my stepmother." he explained, turning back to the photograph.

"He was forced to marry her because my mother died giving birth to me, he was all alone drowning in his grief with a just-born baby, and no clue of what to do with me, whatsoever. So he took the advice of his family and married a young girl who was the daughter of one of his workers at the mosque. She was young, naïve, and someone who was a strong believer in religion. No matter how outspoken and bold she was, but she was just a teenager, you tend to have a rebellious vein in you at that age. In spite of her candid personality, she has always walked on the righteous path, hence when her ailing father asked her, she agreed to marry a man double her age, a widower, and a father. She loved me and took care of me like her own son. Not for once,she had treated me like she wasn't my birth mother. I got to know this when I was old enough to calculate the age difference between us. My mother, being just sixteen years older than me, doesn't make much sense. My father's behavior made it clear, too. He hated her. All he wanted was her to take care of me and him and his house like the maid, and he never let go of any opportunity to show his disdain to her. She was my first friend, the woman who taught me what kindness is, what humanity is, what love is, what God is. Slowly, I became the center of her universe." He was telling her the story reminiscing his childhood.

Suddenly all the things started to make sense to Sitara, how he mentioned that he used to offer namaaz five times a day, why he said she was the first woman who taught him how to love, what she couldn't understand how can the woman who adored him like her own child can betray him, when all he done was save her. "Why you said she betrayed you?" she asked, failing at keeping her inquisitiveness inside.

He turned towards her, looking at her stunned expressions, a smile came to him. Reaching near her, he cupped her cheek, "What can I say, I guess unrequited love is my destiny," he said, making her eyes drop as she understood his comment. He laughed slightly and shifted backward.

Leaning on the table, he folded his hands on his chest, "She got me arrested for killing him," He told, making her eyes widen in shock. "But you saved her?" she asked, unable to contemplate the reason behind. Why would anyone make the man suffer who actually freed her from all the sufferings. Her question earned a wry smile from him. "All he gave her was pain and humiliation. Why did she make the man who saved her from her agony suffer?" she still couldn't infer the intentions behind her act.

"Because I killed her husband," he said nonchalantly. "I was a fool to think that she loved me the most. I used to think that the love of a mother is purest and is non comparable. No love can beat the mother's love for her child, but apparently, her love for her husband was much more than for me. She couldn't see that I had ended her suffering. All she saw was I widowed her." he said, and she noticed how his fingers clawed around the picture.

"I was just about to start my engineering degree. But this happened a day before I was about to leave to join university, since I wasn't an adult. Hence, I was taken to juvenile. I have seen the worst of the world, Sitara. That place taught me how humanity makes you weak. Since no one was fighting for my case, and I was not some important citizen, like the son of some bureaucrat hence the government took its sweet time to provide the lawyers for me. The days turned into years, and I had to spend four years in the prison. I got released in just four years because I was a minor when I committed the crime, and I served the remand home. All these years, that place burned me like the iron is melted to take the form of a weapon. It was just one hope that kept me going that once she would come for me. She will visit me. After all, I was her son, I was the one she used to pray for day and night for. But she didn't. She never came, she never called, she never wrote. How could she just abandon me? Did she not feel my absence at all? It sucks when you realize that you mean nothing to the person who meant everything to you. It sucks when they come in your life, make you a part of their lives, shower you with the love you never asked for, and then abandon you in a split of a second like nothing matters. It kills you from inside when you literally crave the presence of that one person, for whom your absence doesn't matter. And you are so helpless that you can not even ask, why?" He opened her heart in front of her. The ache in his heart was shedding from Sitara's eyes.