Lost In Paradise

Chapter 1

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The Mukhtar household had never known a dark day such as this, as Baba's corpse was brought in and laid in the living room. Only their tears and wailing filled the air, and the melancholy which hung in the air was such that one could almost taste it.

Everyone wept in agony as they stared at his gentle face, trapped in eternal slumber. He looked so peaceful that one might have assumed he was merely sleeping. Everyone was so used to seeing him in a jovial mood, but the lifeless man before them seemed like a stranger. All six members of his family were in the room, and they cried out in grief.

That is, everyone except Amina.

She stood at the far end of the room, staring at the white cloth in which her father's body was wrapped, and she was as silent as he was. There were no tears in her eyes, and she made no effort to throw herself to the floor and cry the way her mother and stepmother did. She just stood there and watched, so far detached from the scene that it was almost as if she wasn't actually present.

Why can't I cry like everyone else?

The question haunted her the longer she watched him, a dull buzzing in her head which wouldn't go away. She couldn't understand why she didn't feel as hurt as everyone else. It wasn't as if she was glad to see him dead. The sadness was there in her heart, like a tiny ember which refused to spark to life no matter what she did.

She was painfully aware of how several people were looking at her confusedly. Her aunts stared at her like she was insane, her stepsister—Saudat—cast sideways glances at her the longer she remained silent, and she was absolutely sure that her mother would think she had lost her mind if she could stop crying long enough to look up and notice her.

"The corpse needs to be bathed," Malam Hamza said, seated across from them. "We must make haste if we want the prayer to happen after Jum'at."

There was a mumbling of agreement, but no one made an effort to move. The women stayed exactly where they were, and the wailing only increased. Amina looked up at her brother, Aslam, who avoided her gaze as he cried by the doorway. He had to be the one to act, seeing as he was the man of the house now. Their mothers would remain in this state unless someone stepped up and told them to step aside.

And that person couldn't be her. Not after everyone had seen her lack of tears.

Aslam didn't move, even as Amina willed him to do something. The tension in the room was palpable, and she desperately wished she could step forward and shake her mothers out of their misery. But everyone waited for someone else to act, and it soon became clear that no one was willing to act.

Fine. If that's how it's going to be.

Amina took a step forward, and all eyes shifted towards her as she walked towards her father's corpse. She tried not to look at his face, at the black spots which covered his cheeks or his swollen lips. He looked nothing like the man she remembered in her childhood, a handsome man who always had a smile on his face and a story on his lips. That was several years ago. Now, Bello Mukhtar was a completely different man, with a fat nose and extremely large earlobes. His bottom lip was larger than the top, and his eyebrows were mismatched. The sickness had also made him much older than he was, with patches of grey hair scattered all over his head.

Amina was just about to place her hand on her mother's shoulder when Aslam stepped forward, clearing his throat awkwardly.

"Umma, we need to move the corpse and bathe him," he said. "Please, stop crying."

Amina didn't fail to notice how he didn't refer to him by name. Instead, he simply said 'the corpse', as though their father had been nothing more than an empty shell, a husk of flesh and blood who was now gone, leaving behind his body.