Gereksiz İntikam

51

TANIYA

Time blurred

There were days Dawood wouldn’t speak.
Just curl into himself.
Rock gently, thumb in mouth, staring at nothing.

And there were days he screamed.
For hours.
No reason.
Or maybe reasons only his tiny, tangled mind could understand.

I never shushed him. No one ever,
I never yelled.
I just held him.

Sometimes on the floor,
his little body trembling,
mine aching with the weight of this role I never asked for—
but had grown into like skin.

I learned the rhythm of his silences.
The flicker in his eyes before he’d throw a plate.
The sound his breathing made when nightmares were near.

And I stopped fearing it.
Because love without conditions doesn’t fear inconvenience.
It just… stays.

Shoaib watched from the doorway most days.
Quiet.
Unmoving. While i sit with his mom and badi mom,

While anam khala caress my face in proud and affection,

The same man who once slammed doors now tiptoed past them.
The man who raised his voice now barely raised his gaze.

He’d kneel beside Dawood sometimes,
offering a toy.
Or mimicking his sounds until Dawood giggled.

One morning, I woke up with Dawood clinging to my neck,
his breath warm, his whimper soft.
And I felt it again—
that ache in my ribs, that terrifying gratitude.

He could’ve gone to anyone.
But he came to me.
Chose me.

...
One night, Dawood had a seizure.
It started with a twitch.
Then his limbs stiffened.
And suddenly—he collapsed.

I screamed.
Held his body.
Fumbled with my phone.
Screamed Shoaib’s name so loud my throat cracked.

Shoaib came running—barefoot, breathless.
He saw Dawood shaking in my lap and didn’t ask questions.
He picked him up, cradling him like glass,
and drove with one hand while gripping my trembling fingers with the other.

At the hospital, while I stood there frozen in the harsh white light,
he knelt beside me,
rested his forehead on my knees,
and whispered,
“I can’t lose another one, Tani. I can’t…”

And for the first time in weeks,
I touched his face.
Not with love.
Not with forgiveness.
But with shared fear.
Because Dawood wasn’t his nephew anymore.
He wasn’t my burden.

He was ours.
Our heartbeat.
Our shared hope in a world that had burned us both.

The doctor said his brain responded slower than usual.
Some trauma at birth.
Possibly being ivf premature child.
“He’ll need special attention,” she said.
“Routine. Touch. Familiarity. He learns through repetition and love.”

Love.
That I had. Everyone is, although khirat mom is in grief seeing her son like a living corpse,

Whole malik villa is in deep sorrow and grief,

Sometimes

Shoaib made flashcards.
Spent hours drawing stars and cats with trembling fingers.
Dawood clapped when he got it right.
And Shoaib would beam—like a child who had finally done something right.

Some nights, Dawood fell asleep with his head on Shoaib’s chest.
Other nights, on mine.

And those rare nights…
when he slept between us—
his tiny body the only thing connecting two broken people—
I would turn my face away.
Not from Shoaib.
But from the ghosts.
From Theodore’s breath still curled in my memory.
From Shoaib’s past rage echoing down our hallway.