Like Chalk And Cheese [Completed]

Disrespecting Milad?

There were a few women and girls here and there around the house, their mixed voices creating a soft buzz in the environment. Veiling my face with the dupatta I wore, I wound my way to the drawing room and found a couple more women seated on the sofas, and one among them was my Mama Jaan. She wore a cream colored kurta shalwar, and looked as elegant as she always had. Still it wasn’t hard to notice the hollows beneath her eyes and the wrinkles that had begun to form on her tanned skin. My eyes began to water at her mere sight and I simply stood there by the sliding doors, gazing at my mother with a corner of the dupatta still held upto to cover my lower face, lest Auntie Aqsa recognized me and bombarded me with all the questions that I didn’t want to answer.

At one point during her conversation, she glanced up and her gaze lingered on me for just a fraction of a second more. I moved out, stepped sideways and leaned my back against the wall.

I had to wait for hardly a minute when she came out and grabbing my arm pulled me towards the hallway. I followed her up the stairs into a lounge lined with multiple doors. There she turned the knob of the nearest and pushed it open. Once we were in and she had closed the door, she turned around to face me and took a step forward.

“Assalam Alaikum.” I said awkwardly as my breath hitched and a lump began to form in my throat.

“Walaikum Salaam.” She said and pulled me into a hug.

I inhaled a long shaky breath, taking in her warmth and her smell, her perfume odour and all the senses I had associated with her came rushing back to me. “I missed you, Warda. So much.” I sobbed into her shoulder. “Even though every daughter of the house is destined to leave one day. I just wasn’t ready for mine.”

She wiped her eyes and sniffed as she pulled away and gave a soft laugh at the sight of my weeping mess. “Come sit.”

We walked to the bed, she sat down and I went around to the other side, and crawled to her. Letting my head rest on her thigh, I wiped the tears that flowed from my eyes.

“Shh, you’re ruining your makeup.”

I sobbed even more.

“Acha bus.” She ran her fingers in my hair and tried to console, but I just couldn’t control the dam that had just burst.

“You know what, I wasn’t really worried about you. And do you know why?”

“Why?” I sniffed.

“Because I saw you a couple of times, driving away with Hasan. I know he takes you out to places, takes good care of you. And then you sent me the food, and I knew you weren't miserable anymore.  Because I know you would never have prepared chicken nuggets and food trifle at the same time while you were not feeling like yourself.”

My heart squeezed in an effort to spill out the resentment I’d been hosting for him, but failed terribly to do so.

“Hasan’s  good man.”

“Ironic how that contradicts with all the previous comments about him that I’ve heard from the elders.”

“They see him for what he did later on, not for what he is as a man and a human.”

How can you say that for sure, that he is good?” I complained childishly as I took the tissue paper from her and wiped the snort off my face.  

“He always had been. As a young boy, always so sweet and charming. Bi Jaan adored him the most. Used to say that it’s probably the name. All men and boys with the name she’d come across were of similar nature. Loving and kind.”

“Well, you are wrong.” I muttered and turned side on her lap so she couldn’t get a direct view of my face. “And so was Bi Jaan. Because he is not a good man, and you hadn’t even seen him for the last eight years to be able to say that.”