Jahaan-Ara

Chapter Two- The Lonely Child

"I found my pupil sufficiently docile, though disinclined to apply: she had not been used to regular occupation of any kind. I felt it would be injudicious to confine her too much at first; so, when I had talked to her a great deal, and got her to learn a little, and when the morning had advanced to noon,
I allowed her to return to her nurse."

Jayne Eyre

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The palpitations grew. Her breaths raspy. Beads of sweat trickled down her neck. Jahaan-Aara tousled and turned trapped in her nightmare reaching out the empty side of her bed.

"No." She mumbled snatching the bed sheet in a fist. She pressed the balls of her feet on the bed digging in her heels. Her headscarf tightened around her neck. She was trapped. Now strangled.

"Don't-" She struggled. The more she fought the tighter the scarf trapped her.

"Saadia!" She cried out and sat up panting for breaths.

It took a few moments for Jahaan-Aara to recognise her new bedroom at Thornagar haveli. Jahaan-Aara looked to her side and reached out. She wasn't there. She was gone. Those sunken ice-blue eyes haunted her. Pale face. Cold body. Gone.

"Saadia." Jahaan-Aara shivered now moist with sweat.

She loosened her hijaab that she wore through the night. The idea of waking up in a new place unnerved her. Her hijab wrapped around her head that made her felt safe. Maybe someone would enter into her room, she feared. What if they saw her without her headscarf?

Jahaan-Aara rested against the headboard coming to terms with the nightmare. It had been six months since she saw the nightmare. She was secretly praying that the nightmares would stop. But they were back.

It was strange. There was no Mue'zzin, no call to prayer, singing from the minarets to wake her up for compulsory fajr prayer. Jaahan-Aara felt an ice of guilt solidify in her stomach rising up for her pre-dawn prayers. She'd missed her midnight Tahhajud prayers, it was the first time in ten years she'd missed her voluntary prayers and it settled on her like a bad omen.

This has never happened to me before.

Once she laid out her prayer mat directed by a compass pointing to the Qibla (direction to Makkah) she prayed her compulsory pre-dawn prayers. She found peace from the earlier nightmares.

Later, she made her way around the haveli, taking in the opulence, high rise ceiling, ceiling to floor windows and stepped outside. The beauty of the dawn exemplified Thornager Haveli. The mountains stood around the valley like wise men white snow capped beards, guarding the valley with their wisdom. It was majestic, the morning birds chirped with fervour singing the dawn rise around the valley. Jaahan-Aara sighed with contentment feeling fortunate glistening at the River gushing in the distance. She wrapped her arms around gazing into the sun rise in thought of the future wondering if it will bring her glad tidings.

"Aah. Aah. Aah. Aah." Chanted a voice behind her.

On turning she found a man sumo squatting his way into the haveli with his hands open wide. The cockerel squawked racing away from his grasp as he chased it into the house calling it to his attention.

"Aah. Aah. Aah. Aah."

"How many times have I told you to keep it outside? Her droppings are all over my brand new clean floor." Bibi Firdousi complained at the man dressed in grey salwar kameez. His head was round, meatball shaped, and large ears, squatting his way around the kitchen trying to catch the clucky fast bird.