Koh-e-Noor

//• a i k •//

I know the tenses are different, you'll soon learn why.

[ily, ehe]

—  H A M Z A  —

I know every Pakistani father is strict, but there's something called love.

Does that lack in every?

And if it does, why do they even give birth?

To make their children suffer?

That's sadistic.

I laugh at the nasty word and choose another one. Barbarous, bestial.

Today, on my birthday, I landed here at 5AM this morning and reached home at 7AM. I had breakfast at home and to show that he's Pakistani, my father didn't even think of how tired I must be after an eighteen-hour flight. He just handed me a manual car's keys and told me to go to office and get him some files because he wasn't going today.

Ammi tried telling him that my face showed I hadn't slept well but he didn't even let her speak.

And I knew at that very moment that it wasn't about the files. It was about the pleasure he'd get from seeing me in pain. If it were about the files, he'd have sent the driver or called any errand boy.

Not to mention how he made me go back to learn about the new project after I had reached home and handed him the files.

It's an inhuman act that shows that my father, apart of getting sadistic pleasure from torturing me, doesn't even think of me as a human being.

It's not like I was expecting this birthday to be good. I knew since Monday that this was going to happen. Pakistan is just not my place.

But I am not as angry at abbu as I am at the motherfucker toddler who kept crying in the plane and didn't even let me sleep.

Moral of the whole day: NEVER, EVER, EVER HAVE CHILDREN.

Anyway, I spent the whole day sleeping on the couch in my office, which was definitely a better idea, and I must thank abbu for giving me a good excuse to keep phuppo and her daughter away from me.

The whole house was busy attending guests and I'm sure I could not have gotten this kind of sleep there.

I drive home at 12AM and I know I slept for a little too much - I blame the jet lag - but it was worth it. I feel fresh.

My hand quickly reaches and pulls the handbrake three houses away from home.

A breathtaking tanned skinny girl wearing punch pink flared pants with a simple white golden-button-up blouse is stretching her arms while getting out of a car. I snort when I trail my eyes down and see blue sneakers beneath those flared pants.

If that weirdness isn't enough to tell me that that is Zaira, her huge corkscrew brunette hair (that look barely manageable by someone so small) shining under the street light certainly are.

I look next to her and see what looks like Sahil's car. Sahil was supposed to go and pick them up.

I spot the whole family getting out of the car and just standing outside the house. Plainly staring at the brickwork painted in white, and the roof, and the whole house.