Hamida's Hostage (COMPLETE)

Chapter-4

Sleep never came to Hamida that night. She tossed and turned on her bed, while her little girl sucked her thumb in deep slumber. She turned to Marah and looked at her glowing, chubby face. Tears clogged her eyes. Her heart paced, her hands shook. Prayer. She needed to pray. Only the almighty could bring her some peace now. She removed the sheets and fetched her prayer mat. The night was deadly silent. Stars twinkled and the crescent moon glowed.

On her prayer mat she sat, facing the Mecca, her hands raised and eyes a river.

“Allah, the merciful one, the shahenshah of shahenshahs! Bahar Aapa was right! I know I am no empress, but what life is this that you have given me? Do I not have the freedom to aspire, to dream, to believe, to have faith? I never questioned your existence when you brought me here, in this quarantined hell, where every day my heart has yearned to kill myself? Yet, I never lost faith; I knew you held me in your arms when I did not even have any. You gave me the celestial light of my life, and now when I am relatively content, why do you want to take that away?” Hamida sobbed. Her glowing, fair face was red, her kohl smeared eyes were more wet than an ocean.
Never had these thoughts occurred to her in her darkest nightmares. She always knew Marah was going to be everything she couldn’t be. A learned woman, a wife, a nurturer, a woman of everyone’s dreams; she would enchant people not with her temporary gold and glitter, but with her wisdom, her aura. And everything was falling apart. Or was it?

Hamida wiped her eyes. A stern look covered her otherwise naïve face. No, this was not the end of the world. She knew her will and her dedicated determination towards its fulfillment could make emperors bend. If she was determined that Marah was not going to have the life she had and detested, she would not have it, and that is final. She stood up, her back straight, her face expressionless. She put the prayer mat back in her trunk. She went beside the bed, as calm and composed as the night itself. She removed the strands of hair covering Marah's face and caressed her forehead.

Her hand on her daughter's forehead, Hamida pledged to herself that night.

Marah will not become a concubine. Not until her heart beats, not until she closes her eyes forever. Never.