A Midsummer Weekend (The Extended Version)

7. Morning After

In retrospect, I have no idea why I called her my wife. She wasn't even anything close to it then, yet to me she might as well have been. Because, I had already given her my heart, my mind, my soul, my future. All that was left was for the time to pass, so we could be together like I knew in my heart that we were destined to be. 

But what if something were to happen to her? What if time never passes, and we never reach our destiny? What if that brief phone call was all that I was destined to have with her?

My distraught state must have been obvious, because Safdar took my phone and spoke to the man himself, and he didn't mince his words.

"Find out where those two women went, and connect us to that person in the next minute. Otherwise, I am calling the Berlin police, and you know they are not exactly friendly to immigrants", his voice was menacingly calm. 

The seconds ticked, Safdar sat still, I paced the floor feeling like the walls of that room were caving in on me. 

"Komal said she'll look into the next flight, but is also reaching out to a colleague she met in Berlin", Safdar whispered to me. 

But all that was plan B. And sometimes plan B is too little, too late. 

Sixty seconds were up, "I am calling the Berlin police", Safdar said already dialing the number he had looked up while I was reciting all the duas (prayers) for safety that I could remember. 

"Wait...", the man on the other end spoke up, "I found out who it was that took them. He was the cafe owner's son. He and his father took them home"

Farah

My head was throbbing, like hundreds of hammers were repeatedly pummeling my brain. Slowly, I opened my eyes, letting them get used to the bright sunlight streaming in from the between the crooked blinds that miserably failed at covering the windows they were hanging over. 

Finally, my vision adjusted. The haze cleared and my aching muscles contracted and stretched as I sat up on the mattress. Stunned and confused, I looked around me. Ameerah was on my left, her body turned away from me, her soft snores audible in the eerie silence that surrounded us. The room was a small one and sparsely furnished with just a chair and a chipped wooden desk in the corner. The mattress we were on was the size of a single bed but lay on the maroon carpet which seemed clean but had obvious stains that someone had tried to remove.

The night's events were slowly coming back to me now. The fruit punch we drank, the light headedness after that, our attempt to eat something at a cafe, and then suddenly feeling so drowsy we could barely keep our eyes open and then lying down on a sofa. 

But the next vision I had made me sit up straight and throw off the thick cover that covered me and Ameerah. 

I remembered being shaken while I was on the sofa and struggling to open my eyes, and then I remembered a pair of sea-green eyes helping me into a van. My eyes frantically searched my legs, my body for any sign of what I as a woman feared the most. But both Ameerah and I were fully dressed, except our shoes which were neatly lined against the wall near the door. 

Thank God!

"Ameerah wake up", I hissed to my friend. 

"Go away. I am sleeping", she shoved my hand away, pulled the cover over herself and was back to snoring soon after. 

I, on the other hand, was fully awake now, my faculties agile and tense as I tried to makes sense of where we were and how much trouble/danger we were in. My hand reached out to the chair to steady myself as I got up from the floor and took the first few steps towards the door.