To Die Opening The Cage (Shortlisted for YWPSS 2014)

To Die Opening The Cage

Aisha looked down at the ropes once more, binding her wrists, and cutting in her skin. Four days the ropes had been there. Her skin was bruised underneath the tightly bound rope. It had hurt before. Now, her skin was numb from the pain. She wondered once again, what it was that had made such turn of events in her life. The horrid events of the past week began playing in her mind.

Six days back, her father, who was the gardener of the mansion, passed away, leaving her alone and defenseless in this jungle of mad people. The next day on her father’s funeral, Saeen Jee decided that she was going to be his new bride. A horribly cruel, fifty-something, monster-like feudal, who used to treat her father like the dirt on his shoes, had asked― no, ordered― her to marry him on her father’s funeral, the day she became an official orphan and left all alone. It was against the wishes of every fiber in her fragile body. Even though she was only sixteen, she had found the courage to scream out a ‘No’ to the Saeen in front of all his servants. But her courage was the exact reason for the state she was now present in.

Locked up in a large, empty, windowless room of the mansion, with her wrists and ankles bound together with rope that cut through her skin, waiting for this week to end to see what would Saeen do when he would return to visit her in this room, as he had said, and ask her if now she had realized her mistake and would she marry him now or face his fury. Aisha wondered what she would choose. Tears formed in her eyes as she calculated that she would probably be dead by the end of the week. She let the tears fall loosely, thinking about her father. She had never known her mother, who had died when she was just a month old. But her father had adored her and kept her safe from the feudal brutes. She wondered if the rest of Pakistan had men like these as well. Surely not? Her father had been such a sweet, honest man. And if there were more honorable men outside of this mansion somewhere deep inside Sindh, then what had gone wrong in her stars that she had ended up here? She let go of a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, and a sob escaped her. She hiccupped, crying miserably, as her tears fell on her battered wrists.

No one had even helped her. For who dared rebel against the Saeen? Who dared be brave enough to stand up to him?

She started sobbing uncontrollably as, once more, the fact that she was completely alone hit her with force.

*

‘Is there anything more to do, Heema Jee?’ one of the maids enquired.

Heema was sitting on the prayer mat, her hands held up for praying.

‘No. You may go now, and don’t disturb me for the rest of the night,’ Heema ordered the maid, who obeyed and left the room, closing the door behind her. Now that Heema was all alone, she could think clearly about what she was going to do.

She shifted her position on the prayer mat, which made her knees ache with pain. Old age. Forty five years, out of which the last thirty years Heema had been living in this vile manor as the wife of the Saeen. She loathed every single person here, particularly her husband who had given her such pain, such misery. He had produced a son with her, whom she loathed as well, because he had the exact qualities of his father, only a bit weaker, which was even more pathetic. He did everything the Saeen demanded. He got married to an unfortunate girl, who was killed by his own hands following Saeen’s orders, for producing a daughter first, and not a son. She had been savagely buried alive in the ground with the hands of her own husband. Heema’s son.