LOVE TRIALS

xvii

Everything I love
has always had a tendency to be
taken away from me.

🥀

The following days, months, years marked the darkest time of Hamza's life.

His father passed away, waiting on Munizeh to show up but she never came, they discovered about Munizeh and Bilal's accident shortly after Hassan's burial. Then, they had to prepare for their sister's funeral along with her husband's. Their children were lost. Nobody knew where they went. No one knew anything about their disappearance. Adam had exhausted all of his resources looking for them but the four of them were nowhere to be found.
Adam and Hamza failed to find anything, the knowledge had wrecked Adam.

Then, what about him?

Hamza's shoulders ached under the weight of their mutilated bodies he had to carry to the graveyard. The images of their severe injuries haunted him.

Thrice.

Four times. He had given his shoulder to his mother, too when he had been only ten years of age.

He glanced at his brother, Adam had collapsed on his knees in the dirt by their sister's grave. He had broken down beside Hamza in a heap of misery yet Hamza didn't take a single step towards him. He allowed Adam's wife to go to him.

Hajra grasped Adam's shoulders and pulled him up from the dirty ground.

Hamza watched him sob, pathetically, enveloped in the arms of the vile woman, Hajra. Hamza detested her, her senseless actions had taken away Adam from him. Had it not been for her, Hamza would have done more than just helplessly looking at his brother as he cried.

His gaze shifted to his wife, standing in the shadow of the Neem tree.

Sophia jerked her head towards Adam, urging Hamza to go to his brother.

She mouthed, "Go."

He shook his head and looked away from his wife, clasping his bottom lip between his teeth. He gazed at his son, hugging his legs as he cried, silently. 

Hamza hunkered down and gathered Ardashir close to his heart, he rested his chin on his shoulder and closed his eyes lest he cried, too.

"Baba chalay gaye." Hamza's heart squeezed.

His child didn't realize his father didn't have a mother and now, he hadn't only lost his father, he had lost his beloved sister, his favourite nephews, his precious niece and their dearest father. He had a brother to name but he was no more than a stranger to him.

Ardashir was too young to understand Hamza Hassan Omer had suffered terrible losses.

Ardashir buried his face in the crook of his father's neck and wrapped his arms around his neck just like Sophia, Hamza's mouth curved in a barely-there smile.

Gentle. Kind. Jaan se Pyaara.

He was his mother's son, it didn't matter if he preferred Hamza over Sophia.

"Aur zor se," Hamza encouraged, lowly. He swallowed hard, blinking back the tears in his eyes when Ardashir's grasp tightened around him.

The soil was still wet beneath his feet. It had only been a few hours since he had buried them and he would remain there for a little more time, he couldn't leave them alone so soon even when they had forsaken him.

It had been a long time since their family had last sat together in silence, simply enjoying each other's company.

Sophia's heart was pulled apart in all directions when she glanced at her husband and the tears swimming in his beautiful eyes. She wiped the tears from her eyes, watching her husband as he rose to his full height and dropped a kiss on their son's head.