Love is an emotion that can never be fully depicted with words. Love is like a mountain which stands tall through all the storms forced upon it by nature. Love is like a fragile string that holds everybody's lives together. Without love, we would be...
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Peshawar, 1989
Ayesha
As the sun casts its golden rays over the city, the temperatures soar, making the air shimmer with heat. Yet, there is something magical in the warm air, breezing through the hustling and bustling streets of Peshawar. The breeze smells like Jasmine and tandoors. The laughter of the children playing on the streets, adds a sense of peace and belonging to the lanes of the city.
The streets are narrow with colourful shops and vendors selling intricate handicrafts. The buildings, with their small wooden balconies, stand as silent witnesses of history. The history of Peshawar is long and beautiful, like a majestic, ancient tree, its roots delving deep into the earth, drawing nourishment from centuries of stories and experiences, while its branches stretch towards the future, resilient and ever-growing.
Ayesha has been living on her own since the age of seven. She never had a family to look after her; the one she had was nothing short of hell. A drunkard father and an uninterested brother were all she had to call her own. This is the story of every girl she had ever known. She believed the world to be like that: uninterested and uncaring.
Ayesha was just four years old when her mother left her alone with her father and her brother and went away to fulfill her lost dreams. "She was a tough and strong woman forced to marry," her grandmother always told her. Ayesha always wondered what her mother looked like, was she tall? Was she fair and beautiful? Was she the woman a man dreamed of? Or was she just like her- pale, short, crooked teeth and average-looking? She always wondered if her mother loved her or was, just another obligation over her. Questions were never answered, buried deep inside the hearts of the witnesses of the dreadful night when Ayesha's fate changed.
Ayesha's grandmother was the only source of her mother's memories- the happy ones. Her grandmother described how her mother loved her, groomed her, cared for her, and protected her. Over the years, Ayesha had learnt that happiness never comes easy to her. Her only source of happiness and her mother's memories, her grandmother, was snatched away from her God. How can God be so cruel to her, she wondered. But life goes on and people move on, and so did Ayesha.
This is the story of Ayesha. Her resilience, her struggle, her comfort and her Azm.
