Malika Bashir had a darkened view of the world. Ibrahim Ahmad refused to see anything but the light.
Soon, a friend from the past appears at Ibrahim's doorstep and a mysterious set of letters are left in his bedroom. Old conflicts are raised and ne...
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"So, he has the letters?"
"Yeah," Dahlia affirmed, gingerly.
Malika only nodded in response. She didn't speak another word, her mouth was clenched shut; but the storm in her honey eyes displayed her feelings loud and clear.
"Maybe he didn't read them," Dahlia tried to console her. "Maybe once he realized what they were he put them away."
"Yeah, Dels. He definitely didn't read the years worth of letters addressed to him because that's what a normal person would do," Farrah said dryly.
Dahlia's words died on her lips. She let out a sigh, realizing there wasn't anything she could say to make the situation better.
"If he had the letters, why didn't he say anything earlier?" Farrah asked.
Both girls looked up to meet her eyes. Farrah was curled up on top of the bed and snuggled under a blanket.
"He said he didn't know how to react to them," Dahlia answered. "I guess he was just processing." She shrugged.
He had her letters. He held them in his hands. Malika's stomach churned just at the thought. "God, this is a nightmare," she let out a sigh.
"I mean, would it be so horrible if he read them?" Farrah prompted. "You did write the letters for him. Don't you think it's better they finally reached him?"
"They weren't written for him," she corrected. "They were written to him. They're-" she stopped halfway as her eyes fell on Dahlia again. The girl looked just as uncomfortable as she felt.
They were in Malika's bedroom. The hijabi was seared on the carpeted floor from across her, picking on one end of the cookie packet lying on top of the pile of other sugary treats to avoid her eye. It was the night before the weekends. There was an old Bollywood movie playing on Farrah's laptop that no one was paying attention to anymore.
"Just forget it, alright?" Malika said at last. "This whole situation should have never happened." She rubbed her face with her hands, her sensitive cheeks turning pink.
Silence settled into the bedroom. Malika's life was out of control, or that's how it felt. As someone who had experienced a severe breach of privacy in her tender teen years, it was something she had come to become very protective of. Malika's boundaries were steel and she preferred it that way. Layla made her recall the worst experience of her life. So despite the girl's intentions, Malika still refused to be in the same room as her.
Perhaps Malika should have felt happy to be finally liberated of this burden, the burden of the letters and keeping her feelings for Ibrahim a secret. Hiding it from her best friends for all these years was difficult to say the least. She found the words come to her lips so many times, almost on the edge of her tongue; her heart fought madly against her ribcage, reasoning with her mind to lighten the burden. But Malika could never even consider the option, not when - Dahlia - Ibrahim's sister was always in the picture.
