Sisters torn apart by the fragility of the heart, how can love possibly hurt so much?
Hana Junaid decided two years ago, distance would make her younger sister Hanaan more independent but Hanaan's love and yearning for Hana during this time has drow...
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Melancholy hangs over me like an autumn sunset, parched leaves shedding off the dry branches in my chest, leaving no flowers or fruits to lend over. A winter night breeze thrashes against my ribcage, begging for a way out. It is summer ever still because everything I am burns in the sun wrath glory of endless torments. Spring is the hope in my heart that all will be good again even if I must bury myself as a dead leaf so my family may sustain on me.
I am all four seasons at once.
In the hospital cafeteria, sitting around a table, I do not hear Taha Muhammad narrating his epic failure of an adventure that both Nashwa and my Dadi listen to with stars in their eyes.
Who cares how many wheelchairs he jumped over? Who cares how many nurses he flirted with, just to get across? Who cares how he slipped his hand into an attendant's pocket and came out not just with a key but also a tissue paper still wet with snot? Who cares at all when I can feel Nashwa's phone vibrating in her bag by my feet all along? And her ignorance towards it.
It isn't Haala Mami, I know that for sure.
Taha Muhammad is back in his plaid shirt and jeans. Yahya no longer wears a lab coat or Taha's glasses. When my Dadi asked the guard what the commotion was all about, Yahya sprang into action, pulled out his ID card and his business card despite his hand cuffed to Taha's and handled the situation with such grace, Dadi was impressed all over. I look to my left at Nashwa who still listens to Taha with a hand under her chin, elbows on the table. To my right, Dadi also watches him in a daze.
Pity, they only see what is at the surface.
Did Taha not accuse Yahya of being a bad liar? How swiftly he handled the guard, makes me think otherwise. Silent with just a soft smile gracing his lips, he sips on his coffee, one leg resting over the other, top button of his shirt undone, sleeves rolled midway to his elbows. He doesn't cut Taha even when he exaggerates or calls out Yahya for being a prude with the female nurses, he just smiles along. Yahya Afaaq is observant, he's a listener, he only talks when absolutely necessary and when he does, he takes the ball away and doesn't miss his goal. There's more to him than that which he shows. I do not want to dig out skeletons.
But Taha Muhammad is a whole whirlwind wind storm, a Pandora's Box if I dare try figuring him out. I do not trust the glint in his eyes and the way he's been winking too much at me despite exchanging jokes with Nashwa. I do not trust his easy lifestyle of casual clothes and worn out shoes and pulling stunts like these without weighing all the consequences, smiling like a goof ball anyhow upon failing as though that in itself is a victory.
They all laugh as he mentions how loose those polka dot trousers were and he had to hold them at the waist throughout the heist.
It pricks me even more that once the guard went off, Taha gave his phone to Nashwa to snap a picture of him and Yahya in their costumes. Memories, the brothers had laughed. I had laughed too looking at the door behind them where my sister played hopscotch with a pretty and fiercely caring doctor while I just kept breaking apart again and again like glass.
