When My Sorrow Was Born {COMPLETED}

CHAPTER 5

Relief flooded my body as we passed the prison's gate. I don't know what had possessed me to even think of going to see Farouk, but ever since Zainab informed me of his whereabouts I just had an inexplicable urge to see him.

Even with Ayyub at my side, I had still felt uneasy. I couldn't begin to fathom how it was that people actually lived here for years talk more of some who would live here for the rest of their lives; someone like my brother.

We had passed two gates before getting to first checking point where I was searched thoroughly by a security woman. Ayyub was also subjected to a similar search, I don't know what they thought we were bringing in with us. At a second check point within the building, we were searched using a metal detector and we had to drop our phones and anything containing a metal material in a tray before we were allowed to pass through. The second check point opened into a spacious yard where some male inmates were seated on mats weaving baskets. The place stank of unwashed bodies.

The warden left us as soon we got into the visiting room – a small bare room, painted grey that consisted of a wooden table and three chairs. A few minutes later, another warden brought in a man handcuffed and made him seat on one of the chairs.

"You have just ten minutes." The warden said as he left. But my ears were deaf to his words as I stared at the creature in front of me.

Surely this couldn't be Farouk! The man had a full unkempt hair and beard which did not succeed in covering his gaunt cheeks. His fingers were bony and bent. His hands were slim enough that he could probably remove them from the cuffs if he really tried to. He looked very old and haggard – more like a man in his seventies than forty-seven that he is. His blue prison uniform was tattered and roughly mended in a lot of places. He was fidgeting and had the look of a caged animal. He used his cuffed hands to scratch at his beards and hair several times, and sniffed before even looking towards our direction before his gaze slid away again.

"Yaya." I whispered. He looked up and for a moment his eyes widened then he smiled. At that moment he was my Farouk again. He looked exactly like the Farouk I had shared my childhood with before my father's preferential treatment of him had built the venom inside me and ruined his life by not correcting his mistakes.

"Haneefah!" Farouk cried out as he stood up to hug me. I was sure the odour emanating from him would cling to my body for days. He let go of me and scratched his beard with a calculating expression. "So you later married Ayyub, eh?" He turned to Ayyub while still scratching his beards and other parts of his body. "Baba's choice was always the best, eh?"

On that I agreed with him, Baba's choice had always been the best but the hatred in me had blinded me to it.

For a brother I had such heartfelt hatred for, the depth of my pity for him staggered me. Yes Farouk was guilty of all the crimes leveled against him and he was paying for it. But he also had a missing accomplice, Baba. Thank God, he wasn't here to see how Farouk turned out, it surely it would have killed him.

Baba was partially responsible for what Farouk was. It was Baba who he hadn't reprimanded him when he beat up the girls in the area for refusing to date him, the one who paid off the people that Farouk stole from, the one who taught him that women were mere objects created to obey his whims and desires just the way mother scrambled to obeyed our father's, the one who made him believe that because he was a man he could get away with any and everything he did. Piety and modesty were only enforced on us, the girls.

Baba had changed – probably due to his illness but his change had been too late to alter Farouk's beliefs.

I would like to think that Farouk's warming up to me had been out of happiness to see me but I knew that it was simply happiness at seeing a new source of money. It would be a miracle if he lived for even five more years; he was surely addicted to some kind of drug.