Khwabeeda-e-Ishq

Chapter 3| Unbearable

🖤"Woh ghum chupane ke liye haste hai, jinhe rona nahi aata."🖤

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•||"The Unbearable Sting of Betrayal: Learning to Heal and Move On"||•

The alarm rang, sharp and merciless. Zain sighed, his arm fumbling across the nightstand until he silenced it. Sleep still clung to him—not the softness of rest, but the heaviness of sedatives. For a moment, he sat on the edge of the bed, eyelids weighted, shoulders slumped, as though the night’s haze refused to release him. He forced himself up, dragging his steps to the washroom.

The cool touch of water cleared nothing of the heaviness inside him, but it steadied his body enough to return to the prayer mat. He whispered "Bismillah," raised his hands, and began his Fajr Salah.

When he lifted his hands for dua, his voice was steady at first. Words poured out—the familiar pleas, the rehearsed invocations. But beneath them, pain stirred, subtle and patient. Each phrase carried more weight than the last, pressing harder on his chest. His breaths grew uneven, his lips moving slower, as if his own heart resisted letting go.

It wasn’t just heartbreak—it was everything. The loneliness that gnawed at his nights, the exhaustion that dulled his mornings, the endless ache of being surrounded by people yet still untouched, unseen. His thoughts circled like vultures: unread messages, unfinished duties, a heart that no longer remembered laughter or rest. The guilt came next, bitter and sharp. He thought of the shadows of mistakes that clung to him, stubborn and suffocating. "Gunahgar!" The word echoed inside, louder than his whispered prayers.

His voice faltered then. He pressed his palms tighter together, forehead bowing lower. The dua broke apart into silence between phrases, the silence swelling until it choked him. His chest ached, his throat burned, and at last the tears came—not in a sudden burst, but in a slow surrender. They spilled quietly, running down his cheeks, falling to the mat in dark patches.

Zain tried to hold them back, his shoulders stiff, his jaw tight, but the dam had cracked. He whispered on, weaving prayers through sobs, asking for strength, for forgiveness, for release. Every word seemed to strip another layer from him, leaving him raw, trembling, small before the One who knew him best.

At last, his voice dwindled to a whisper: "Ya Allah, do what is best for me." The Ameen trembled on his lips before fading into the stillness of the room.

He wiped his face, erasing the evidence, then rose to wash again. By the time he stepped into the lounge, dawn’s light had spread across the room. To anyone else, he was composed, measured. But only Zain knew the storm he had left behind on the prayer mat. With a cup of coffee in hand and his heart still aching, he braced himself for the day, carrying wounds no one would see.

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Zain greeted the room with a calm "Assalamu'alaikum," but his family, being who they were, responded with an overly dramatic chorus of "Walekum'assalam!" Drawn out like a performance. They never did anything half-hearted. If enthusiasm could win trophies, his family would already have a golden one shining on their shelf.

Aashiq was the first to rush forward, throwing his arms around him with theatrical excitement. "Mubarak ho, bhai! I’m so happy for you," he declared. Before Zain could even react, another cousin shoved him aside. "Yaar bro, daafa ho! Mujhe bhi bhai ko mubarak baat deni hai." And then came the chorus of "mujhe bhi," "aur mujhe bhi," until Zain found himself surrounded, almost swallowed, by the noisy crowd of his own.