A tale of love, loss, and new beginnings.
Hareem wants to start over, Momin is stuck in the past. Can a newly wedded couple learn to love and accept one another while also dealing with an uncertain future and a haunting past?
Trigger warning: ptsd...
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Chapter Thirty Two
Hareem's first call from her new phone was to Momin. But he didn't pick up.
She stared at the screen to check if she had the right number, before redialing. There were five equally spaced out rings before the call went to voicemail. She tried one more time to be sure, and got voicemail once again.
It was odd that Momin wasn't picking up her calls even though he had told her that he had Mondays off. She checked the time, 12:05 pm. Was he still sleeping? Or was he driving back home?
Her number was the same, so there wasn't a possibility that he was avoiding her call thinking it was spam.
"They don't have the qeema naan today," Aima complained, appearing at the lunch table with two paper plates stacked on top of each other.
After her peculiar behaviour on Sunday, Aima had returned back to her normal self when they reunited at university that morning. She could see that Aima was going out of her way to make up for what had happened, but Hareem held no ill feelings.
"Thank you, I'm okay with aloo naan too." Hareem whispered, frowning at her new phone.
"What's up?" Aima asked curiously, peering over Hareem's shoulder to see what she was doing. "Do you want me to help you?"
"I'm okay. It's just..Momin isn't picking up my calls." She sighed and put her phone aside.
"Um, well did he tell you what his plans were for today?" Aima wondered, leaning back in her chair as she tore off a piece of the steaming naan.
"No, we didn't talk on the weekend."
"Well, did you guys have a disagreement before the weekend?"
"No." Hareem denied, jogging her memory. At least she didn't remember them disagreeing.
"He'll come around, don't worry about it." Aima waved dismissively. "Boys like playing hard to get sometimes."
Not Momin, Hareem thought, dipping her naan into a deep paper plate of watered down yogurt.
"Hareem," Aima started, leaning towards the table. "Why do you like your husband? What is it about him that makes you think you love him?"
Hareem sat silent for a few moments, contemplating over what to say, but she was clueless.
"I don't know," she finally confessed. "I..I don't know."
"Okay, that's not necessarily bad." Aima assured. "How about you start with thinking how you feel around him."
"I like when we're together. He buys me food, he makes me laugh and he listens." Hareem calmly told her, tearing her food into little pieces to cool it off.
"I see, well, what do you feel when you first see him?"
