Endurance

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

It was late in the evening when Mansoor's car screeched into the premises of the his home. Walking into the living room he met with his brothers playing game.

"What happened?."

"The fever got worse when you left. She couldn't eat and threw up five times. And she panics every time Ya' Muhammad says he'd take her to the hospital. Mama is back too." Mansoor nodded at one of them that turned to explain. Knocking on the door, he greeted with Salaam before striding into the room. 

His mother and Saliha sat by Hafsa's bed, mama pressing a cloth on the girl's head while his sister held a bowl of water.

"Barka da dare Mama." He greeted and took a seat on the chair opposite the bed. Mama and Saliha greeted him back and continued the task at hand.

"We need to take her to the hospital." At that Hafsa whimpered and shook, mumbling incoherently.

"She's burning up." Saliha softly declared with a crack in her voice.

"I'll give Ya' Umar a call." Mansoor sighed and left them to their task to call the doctor in the family whom was his eldest brother who thankfully happened to be in town with his family.

When he walked back into the room, his mother had left to attend to their father so only Saliha was in the room. Mansoor took a seat in the chair he previously occupied, thoughts jumbling over his scattered mind when his eyes landed on the old book that was Hafsa's. The one both she and Layla had protected as if it were some sort of a treasure. Mansoor wondered what was contained in it, and in the end his curiosity won over the rational part of his mind as he slid it to himself from the coffee table. Knowing what he had about Layla earlier that night had made him even more curious at the kind of life his cousin lived when her mother took them away. Opening the cover, there was a lot of jumbled phrases in beautiful handwriting that expressed excitement in their mother tongue. He was confused with some of the words written because of the poor spellings, but he was able to read through a lot of it alright.

'I bought a book. Now I can write for so long.' One of the lines says.

Flipping through more pages and reading its contents for himself, he was surprised and raving mad all at the same time. Saliha had left to bring her books so she could kill time before she sleeps as he could faintly recall her mumbling how she was having difficulty sleeping. He had been familiar with what Layla told him about the starvation Hafsa and Sa'ad had to endure, but the pages he read were too overwhelming for him to handle. His cousin wrote with emotions, expressing clearly if she were happy or sad in her notes and it made him wonder how tiring a life she had lived.

'I ate twice today. I had breakfast and dinner. I'm full Alhamdulillah.' The statement made him refuse to even think about just how much she was allowed to eat in a day. He could not believe there are people out there cruel enough to hold back food or refuse to allow a child eat. Food, a basic necessity for Allah's sake!.

'I am back at my aunt's house and nobody is picking on me because I'm not fat anymore. Even the kids that used to throw our buckets away when we go to fetch water with Sa'ad because we were fat don't do that to me anymore. But they said I'm dirty. I don't bath that is why my skin has faded. They still call me names, but at least they don't throw my bucket away and they've stopped calling me a cow anymore.' Checking out the dates, he was able to align how many days apart every incident happened.

'Saleh locked me in the animal shelter today. I was there for the whole day and I smell bad. Aunt Ramla hates when I smell bad, she spat on me and ordered that I washed clothes and scrubbed the floor for the rest of the evening.' Mansoor wondered who the woman was and what right she had to treat the girl so inhumanly. He read through the grounds to why her cousin locked her up. A flimsy one. She had delayed fetching water for him to take a bath because she hadn't recovered properly and said since she was useless, then he'd give her a reason to be. He had hit her and pushed her into the livestock loft then left with the key after locking her in from outside. The book was stained on that particular page, and he wondered if it were her tears that stained it.