The picture Mansoor held shook slightly in his hand as he stared unbelievable at it, unable to fully process the possibility of what it might mean. Layla walked back from Hafsa's room who had been taking a rest and sat beside him on the waiting chair by the foyer. Thankful that Sa'ad had quickly stepped out to run an errand, she found comfort in discussing whatever it was that was bothering Mansoor.
"Are you..are you alright?." She softly asked and he turned to look at her, his eyes carrying a depth of an emotion she had not the slightest clue how to interpret or even describe.
"You really did found this in her belongings?." All of a sudden she could see how exhausted he seemed, and it yanked at her heart to see him in such distress. Layla nodded, already able to puzzle out that there was an underlying connection between Mansoor and the picture.
But what could it be?. These were the times she wished her mind was as sharp as Sa'ad's who would've already figured it out.
"Tell me her story. The ones you were able to piece together from her journal." Layla cleared her throat and squirmed at that.
"Uh..where do I even begin? I couldn't read all of it. I felt like I was invading her privacy." She whispered fiddling with the crystal ring that sat on her finger.
"Start from the where you began reading. Apart from her father being alive, did she write anything about him being sick?." Layla shook her head no.
"I'm not sure. There's a lot I haven't read. Still".
"What about her mother? Just.. just tell me everything you read." She sighed and looked up.
"That one day she took them away when she was about eight years old and told them they were going on a vacation, but they never looked back. They lived with one of her mother's sisters, who was a divorcee at the time." She sighed, willing herself to calm her heavy heart at the horrible circumstances that had been Hafsa's life. Mansoor nodded his encouragement and she went on.
"Life was hard for them, especially when their mother who used to provide for them had a stroke and turned vegetable, where they started seeing the true nature of their aunt and her children. Hafsa was pulled out of school because nobody took care of her mother. She had to do it herself, at eleven years old. The aunt got married and moved with Hafsa and her brother and their older cousin, leaving their mother in the care of what Hafsa described as a distant relative. She eventually died and her daughter found out later how badly her sick mother was mistreated by them. They used to be bullied because of their weight in their new home, sometimes they got threatened that they'd not have a meal for a day and other times....they don't eat at all." Layla let out a shaky breath at the wild clench of her stomach at such cruelty.
"They were overworked from the list of chores she'd mention they did, and she wrote that sometimes her brother teaches her what he'd learned in school even in islamiya, where she talked about an Imam that took it upon himself to teach the boy exclusively at the local mosque at first, before making it into a fully grown Islamic school for kids." The smile that graced her lips at that was as genuine as nothing she had felt in a long while. "She slept in a store room, on bare ground using a wrapper to sleep on while her brother was only allowed to sleep outside, to go out as early as 6:30am, to farm the land of the woman's husband and he was so young. The cruelty clearly didn't stop there as one of the woman's co-wife made the girl's life a living hell. Her brother was later pulled out from school as well." She whispered the last part and sniffed quietly when a nurse and some visitors passed by them.
"When Hafsa became a preteen, her aunt started sending her out to work in people's homes as a house help and babysitter. The money, her salary was sent directly to her aunt and sometimes...when the aunt is generous enough she'd offer her a hundred Naira from the money, on a good day she'd get a two hundred." Layla turned and rummaged through her bag pulling out paper out and the wristwatch she found days ago. She handed it to Mansoor, watching him stare contemplatively at it as if he had never seen a watch before. "I found this watch in her bag days ago, the list is of what she needed to have when she could get some money on the front page, and what she wanted to have and do if she had a chance to on the back."
आप पढ़ रहे हैं
Endurance
सामान्य साहित्यTwo people from different backgrounds who have both been at the bitter ends of life meet in a conventional way. Yet, their fates aligned in the most unconventional manner that created a complicated web of unfavorable connection that rooted out pain...
