Barakah

- Debt With Grace

)

There is always this cold in his bed. Hollow and yawning and grim. Most times, it is enough to frequently break his sleep. But there are times his night terrors compel him awake. The phantom is there. She's in his pool of sweat. Only, he sees a spilling of thick violent crimson, it is that of his very own. The quality of it is still fresh, sweet metal and rust. No odour. But he'll naturally find himself retching into a toilet bowl. The tremors will seize him next, the body will filter sweat. It is the process of a trauma. He has stopped sleeping in rooms. He sleeps in the mosque at home and pretends he does not hear his father when he walks out after Fajr. When his father prays on his head as if he is too fragile. Dedicate as a boy again.

-Jalal,
From the distant future.

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Note
Thank you so much for 40k. For every read and for every comment. I appreciate every single reader. Most especially the ones that have been here since day 1 despite my poor consistency. I know some of you day 1's from your votes. Honestly, you're practically the group of people that fuel me to get updates out so I don't disappoint you.

Also please check out: However It Goes, It Ends In Pain by Nafisahs_words

14/10/2024.

Jalal

Afternoon light tore into his vision. His eyes labored to adjust to the brightness. He could feel the advancing migraine just at the side of his frontal lobe. He reached for his phone, it was almost 3pm. And the ten missed calls from Amal only made him grow more irritate. His mother should not have allowed him to sleep so long. Barakah Amal always worried more than she really should.

"You should've sent a message at least to tell me you were at your mother's house." Her voice is tamed but there's still that betrayal of frustration and anger at him.

"You're right. I'm sorry." The apology sounds burdened. Nuanced with the accountability of lying to her for so long . Of recent, whenever she was cross with him, he tended to sound like that without even knowing. He couldn't help it.

It prompted silence from her end of the call. He can tell she's waiting for him to say more. He knows she's not stupid. That she can tell there's something he's been keeping to himself. That she's increasingly becoming afraid. But she loves him more than her fear. And he was as glad as he was ill just thinking about it like that.

He had her. He had her tamed. He had her weakness. He was her weakness.

"I'll be home before maghrib. I love you."

She didn't say it back. She hung up. The dead line was clarifying. His nerves swelled with a kind of unease nowadays he hardly saw anything normally anymore. Everything felt like a presage to some inevitable collapse.

He searched his mother's drawers for painkillers and swallowed them down. Using her bathroom to freshen up. She had spares for almost everything. He would do his prayers before stepping into her living room. The girls aren't home. He greets her and seats with her. She tells a maid to get him something to eat.

"The rest, was it good?" She asks.

"Great."

He felt almost embarrassed for crying at her feet. He felt less burdened, better for crying at her feet. It's his mother but at the same time he is man in his third decade of life.