BOUND

Chapter 1: The Journey

December 2015

The cold hamattan wind blew across the dark and foggy streets of a city half-awakened, rustling tree leaves and flapping the clothes of the men hastening to attend the dawn salaah as the call to prayer blared loudly from the speakers of the masjids spread around the city.

It was past Five in the morning, and the coldest morning of the hamattan season so far, but the male inhabitants of the city; determined to perform their act of ibaadah, continued trickling out into the streets in response to the call to prayer, and within a few minutes, the masjids had filled up and the dawn congregational prayer began.

In a remote part of the city; where towering fences and wrought metal gates guarded imposing two-storey buildings, similar activities was taking place, albeit on a lesser and quieter scale. It was in this area that a young woman, of around the age of twenty-three, suddenly emerged from the side gate of one of the buildings. Her face was partially hidden by a thick black hijab which fell down her shoulders to cover most of the ankara she was wearing, and her hands clutched tightly to a large handbag that was hanging over her shoulder.

She took a hurried look around her surrounding before walking briskly down the residential street, turning to look behind her back every few minutes to check she was not being followed. She didn't slow down until she reached the main road minutes later, where she stopped to catch her breath, heaving a huge sigh of relief in the process.

Adjusting the hijab to reveal her face fully, she clutched the side of her abdomen where a stitch had formed as a result of walking the distance at a fast pace. The pain of the stitch however, was nothing in comparison to the fire that was burning within her heart, for deep in the confines of her heart was a pain so terrible she felt her heart would split apart in two, and all she wanted to do was scream, shout, yell; do whatever it took to take the pain and agony she was feeling away, but she calmly held it in, for now wasn't the time for expressing weakness; she had a more pressing matter at hand.

She was so preoccupied with reigning her emotions in that her other suffering; the pain of several wounds on different parts of her body, had turned insignificant. Though blood trickled out from some of the wounds, her attention was on the road instead, where she prayed for a taxi to appear, but because of the earliness of the hour, only a few cars drove pass her, with no taxi appearing in sight.

She continued to wait by the roadside, her heart pounding louder in her chest as the seconds turned to minutes, before she finally saw one approaching. Heaving a tremendous sigh of relief, she rushed closer to the road and waived frantically at the taxi to stop. She had almost passed out with fright seconds ago when she saw the men start to emerge back into the street from the nearby masjid; an indication that the dawn prayer was over, and for a brief moment, she had considered turning right back to where she had come from, but the approaching taxi now dissipated her fear, and she waived the taxi down with renewed vigour.

The taxi slowed down before reaching to a halt at her side, and before the driver could ask where she was going, she had yanked the back door open and hopped inside.

He glared at her through his rearview mirror, suddenly suspicious, but as the sky was still dark and foggy, save for the sliver of grey indicating the sun was soon rising over the horizon, he could only make out her hijab-clad form. Annoyed, he opened his mouth to demand that she leave his taxi immediately, but decided against it at the last second. Unlike the women who roamed the streets late into the night and the early hours of the morning, this woman was dressed decently, and must have come from the local masjid nearby, he reasoned. She was probably those types who insisted on saying their prayers in the masjid, including the morning prayers, he concluded. For that reason, he would be much kinder.