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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Hana jumps off the car even before Ahmad Mamu has pulled out his keys. He steps out too and his brain must be very slow, slower than the CPU Zaid owns at his apartment because it takes him three minutes thirty seven seconds — yes, I was counting — to realise I've been waiting for him to open the car door for me.
He blinks at me. "You could have done that yourself."
"I was buying Hana and Nashwa time."
"Aren't you scared you'll be left out?"
I hold my heart. "If I have to fear my place, I don't have a place in the first place."
He blinks at me again. "Welcome to the loners' club."
"More like the loser's club?"
"Your Mamu is no loser."
"He is with those he loves."
The look he gives me makes my empty insides churn. Forlorn tragic eyes seeking sympathy in mine but if I dare offer any, he'll deflect it with his mighty sword of indifference. I'm not Hana therefore I'm going to give him a mighty dose of Hanaan.
He leans back against Chacha Ali Gul's car beside me. The back of my shirt clings to my skin with sticky sweat and I absolutely detest the sensation — we could sit inside the car with the air conditioner blasting cold air at my face but this is all the better. The humidity outside, the thickness of the air and the dust in it — it matches our insides, the suffocating atmosphere of our chests.
Perhaps it will rain.
I open my mouth, he shakes his head. "I refuse to be the first experiment subject in Hana and Hanaan's therapy club."
"You have the right to remain silent."
He gives me a weird look.
"I'm cool, admit it."
His weird look intensifies. He resorts to a sigh. "You're like Nashwa in some ways which scares me because I'm the common blood between you two. But Hana's and Humaira's maturity reassures me you two could just be an anomaly."
I hold my heart again. "How could you? You wound me."
"Dramatic, as always."
"Everyone's an artist and art isn't limited to paints and palettes."
He smiles against all odds. The softest smile on such an exhausted face. "I said that to Hana when she was thirteen. She poured her heart out to me over a double serving of ice cream telling me how you couldn't paint and draw what you had in your mind."
Wind picks up and blows sand into my eyes. Hana. I need not say more at all.
"I told her—" he leans his head towards me. We watch the speeding traffic and blurring headlights whiz past by us; our heartbeats conquer their roar. "Even the finest artists, writers, poets, kingmakers, conspirators struggle with that. Hanaan is no less in that regard." He crosses his arms over his chest. "You're really not."
