A Muslim's Life

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Walid's POV

I woke up screaming once again. The man who had took me in barged inside my room, running. I looked at him wide eyed and dropped my head in my hands. "I'm sorry", I whispered.

"Don't apologize, boy. Just tell me what's wrong" the broad shouldered man pleaded while hunched forward.

I shook my head "Nothing's wrong! Why does everyone keep asking me that?!". He shook his head at me "Your bruises, scars, nightmares, and screams beg us to. Do you hear yourself or even see yourself? How can we not ask?". I turn my back to him, shuddering.

At the sound of the door softly shutting, I curl up in bed. You killed them. The voice whispers, yet the words are a scream to me. I wasn't always a orphan. My mother was kind and my father, loving. I don't know why I relive these painful memories a thousand times in dreams when I barely survived living them once in reality.

Yesterday, I had been the orphan boy that only had one friend. It had always been her. When I was starving, she shoved her lunch box towards me, ignoring her hungry stomach. Here I am today, a rich million air, with hundreds of friends, money, food, yet these nightmares still buckle my knees and I find myself thinking of her to make it better. What would she say if I told her I imagine her calm face every time a panic attack threatens to come and it goes away?

They took me in. They were- are everything to me. Their beautiful daughter is here with me now. She's not the same. Her beauty blossomed, but she's damaged. I shake my head.

They had brought a candle with my lunch. I flung it across the room. 'Why are you so afraid of fire?', they would ask. I stayed silent. It consumes and destroys, taking away something that stood beside you a minute ago. My father had passed from cancer. My mother held him tightly. I was five. A child, yet I watched as even with his eyes open, he couldn't see me. I cried with my mother. She had me to hang on to.

But who did I have as I watched her burn? What was an 8 year old boy supposed to do? I remember them dragging me away. I remember clutching tightly onto my own skin to keep me sane. "No one" I whispered. No one held me as I cried. No one told me everything would be okay. I heard her screams, still in the house.

That day, I stopped believing there was a god. Alone at my mothers funeral. A coffin filled with ashes, not even pictures to remember her face. Physical pain helps me remember her, it stops me from being that helpless 8 year old. The one that ran from every foster care he was put in. The one that took beatings silently, he took them quietly because his father was supposed to be the one to protect him.

I don't blame them for leaving me. If I had been a better child, life wouldn't be punishing me. Was this a second chance? Was Amna my second chance?