THE STORMS WITHIN

The ties that bind...

What can be said about family? Is family simply a bloodline linking one person to another? Is it something much deeper than that? Or is it both? What if it could be both? What if the one reason that held a heart back could become the single deciding factor in the future that waited someone on their path?

Aziz laid awake in his hospital bed. Although he was conscious, he was not yet fully awake. Aware of where he was, he was not quite sure how he got there. Never fond of hospital rooms, he did not like being in one now. He looked over and saw that the bed next to him was empty. He had been told Mihriban was admitted along with him and put into the same room he was in. But the bed next to him was empty because she had been released. They had both collapsed and been rushed to the hospital. He was told that it was Bulut who had called for an ambulance for them. Bulut... their son. His son... his and Mihriban's son. Aziz did not know if this was true or not and thought it should be verified. But maybe not. Something told him to trust his gut because there was one thing for certain... no, two things. Mihriban was just as distraught to learn that Bulut was their son. More importantly, she did not deny the fact that it was possible.

Being alone with his thoughts was nothing new to Aziz. He had spent most of his life alone. Actually lonely, to be more precise. His heart had only ever opened up to one woman. One angel of a woman with a heart of gold and the soul of a gypsy. She was like no other to him. She was pure, innocent, and unchanged by the world they were forced to grow up in. She did not have a wicked or ambitious bone in her body. She was as kind as the kindest of nature's creatures but as mysterious as the darkest of nights with very few stars. She was Mihriban, his beloved.

The day they met, his world had stood still. She had mistaken him for a thief of one of her most loved books and verbally laid into him. Using words and hand gestures, she had made Aziz understand that a man should have more decency than to steal a book. Books were not meant to be stolen but cherished. She shone with an indescribable fierceness that came out of her. She yelled at him but all Aziz heard was the melody of her of her voice, the sweetness of music in her words. All he felt was Mihriban taking a sudden hold of his heart, and he knew in that moment that she would hold it forever.

Seeing that her words either froze or baffled Aziz, she grabbed the book from his hand. But one glance at the inside of the book made Mihriban realize that she had just taken her anger out on Aziz by mistake. He was not the thief she had mistaken him for. She apologized to him from the bottom of her heart, saying he was the wrong man and held out her hand to return the book. Instead of accepting it, Aziz took hold of her hand with the book still in it. Drawing her closer to him, he held her hand with the book in it against his chest. He told her that it turned out he was exactly the right man she was looking for.

The sincerity in his voice, the calm and poetic tone of it, and the fact that he did not seem to be bothered at who saw them moved Mihriban's heart. She was a girl from the lower class but eager to learn. She worked two jobs so she could afford to go to school because she wanted to make something of herself. Aziz was a man from an established family, a respected family. A family who, as they say, "slept on money". Somehow Mihriban saw past the entitled life she knew Aziz had come from and Aziz saw past the life she came from. They saw each other through the prism of their hearts, both pure and yearning for someone to call their own. Aziz's favorite cousin Remide had also taken an immediate liking to Mihriban, and vice versa. This only added to Aziz knowing how right he was to fall in love with her.

Mihriban let her soul shine out of her eyes whenever Aziz was near her. But something unspoken kept casting shadows on that light whenever her friend Huma was around. Aziz dismissed these warning signs. He was so much in love with Mihriban that he only saw her. By the time Aziz realized how damaging their acquaintance with Huma was becoming, Mihriban had begun to pull back. Aziz did not know why and blamed himself. He did not see that Huma had morphed from being their so-called friend to being a friend's worst nightmare. The day Huma told him that Mihriban had left him because she could no longer tolerate his status and the growing distance between his social class and hers, Aziz's heart broke in two. The light in his eyes dimmed and his soul cried in a soundless grief. He was about to ask Mihriban to marry him. To announce to the world that his love for her meant more to him than life itself. But she had fled without even the decency to bid him good-bye. The pain of his rejected love would remain with Aziz from that day.