BREATHE ✓ ⇢ [EDITING]

Epiphany

Hans Haider had always struggled with life.

Ever since he was a child, he had been terrible at mathematics, which was something that his father hated about him. Nicah Haider needed heirs that were quick and snappy with numbers, not retards with limited brains.

Hans had struggled to keep up with his father, staying up all night until the sun came up, practicing his mathematics. However, Nicah Haider never appreciated his son's attempts to do well. Instead, he yelled at Hans for being useless, and Hans could feel his father's discontent over his younger son.

As Hans grabbed Becca's burned body from the flames, he didn't care about what his father thought. He didn't care that he had publicly humiliated his family anymore, because he realized with shame that what his family had done for generations was absolutely wrong. What he had done in his lifetime had been wrong. And two wrongs could never make a right.

And so, Hans decided to finally do something right in his life. He quickly placed Becca's body in front of him on his new motorcycle and sped off into the horizon as the sun rose, ignoring his father's screams for Hans to return immediately.

Hans could never look his father in the eye and smile ever again. The man he had worked so hard to become had only hurt him, and Hans was ready to break away. He was going to leave his father forever with Becca and hopefully gain her forgiveness along the way. He would go anywhere she wanted him to go, only if she asked him to. Perhaps she would even want him to be her friend, and he would gladly be her anything, so long as he wasn't her enemy.

As he pulled up in front of the hospital, a nurse rushed to him and yelled for a stretcher. After that, everything was a blur, and Hans only heard the sound of machines beeping and medical personnel screaming. He remembered being separated from Becca as she was taken to the operation theatre, and his hands felt colder. He felt colder, as if the temperature had dropped a few dozen degrees in just a few seconds.

Hans wasn't surprised when he realized that his family hadn't come once to the hospital to see how Becca was doing. They didn't come to comfort him or offer their condolences for his broken heart.

Hans wanted to find the Hayeks. He heard that only Zara was still around with her parents in Ankara, being only fifteen. He wanted to tell them that their daughter was going to be alright, and that he would leave her forever with no pressure for anything if she wanted, that nobody would ever hurt her again.

Hans stood alone in the meditation room when the doctors had ushered him away and told him to eat some lunch. They told him that Becca's surgery would take more than just a few hours, because her face and body had been so badly burned, and that she would have scars, so many scars that she would never be able to remove from her body. Hans would love her the same, because she was Becca Hayek, the fiery girl who had stolen his motorcycle eight months ago and had never given it back. She was the only woman who had not only stolen his motorcycle, but his heart, and she would forever have it.

He stood in front of the division between the Christian cross and the Islamic Arabic calligraphy, holding his hands up to both, and crying his heart out to whoever truly existed. He cried until he felt that the higher power had heard his pleas, only then stopping to collapse onto the ground. He saw a small book turned to a page in Arabic, and as he read it, he whispered the words to himself:
"Ignorance is always afraid of change." Hans felt his heart feel lighter as he whispered those words over and over again, until one time, he realized what he had to do.

Hans had to make a right.

~

Author's Note: This chapter was pretty deep, to be honest. The last and final chapter is also going to be posted today, and I'm afraid to let "Obscurity" go. I put a lot of passion into this book, and hopefully, it showed.

By the way, that quote about ignorance is one of my favorites from Jawaharlal Nehru, an Indian freedom activist during India's separation from British imperialism in the 40's.