Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
unwind with - Awari by Adnan Dhool, Momina Mustehan
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
It felt cold, colder than anything I had ever known. Not the wind brushing against my face, not the chill of the river at my feet but a frozen emptiness inside me that no warmth could touch. My bones trembled with it and my heart shivered in ways that were terrifyingly unfamiliar. I stood still, staring at the river, feeling every second stretch like an eternity, wondering if the world would notice if I simply disappeared into nothingness. The words haunted me, echoing cruelly in every corner of my mind. A brief chapter. That was me, reduced to a fragment, a footnote in a story I had believed was ours. A story I had loved so completely it had consumed me. I wondered if he had ever cared at all, or if everything had been just an illusion. He read, turned the page and my world crushed at last full stop.
Just then my phone rang and the sharp tone jolted me into the waking world but it did not warm me, did not fill the hollowness. Arjun’s voice came trembling through the line, bursting with disbelief and excitement.
“Didi, your visa’s approved. Three days, just three days.”
For a moment, the words felt unreal, as if the universe was mocking me, offering a gift I could not accept. My fingers gripped the phone so tightly it hurt, my chest rising and falling in a rhythm that was both frantic and hollow. I went home, every step heavy, dragging my numb body across familiar streets that felt suddenly alien as though nothing I had known could ever belong to me again.
The house smelled the same, yet it was suffocating with unspoken fear and awe. My family’s eyes were wide, glistening with confusion and their whispers filled the corners of rooms that had always been safe. I forced myself to speak, though the words felt foreign on my tongue.
“Before he left for Los Angeles. He made a Prime Continental Passport for me. It has no certain criteria. They made this passport immediately only because he ordered it. That’s why the embassy approved my visa so quickly.”
