Kissed by Chaos

Kissed by Chaos (23) - Dunya's Gift

Her hair was not the only thing that had changed. She had undeniably lost a lot more weight than was healthy. Her skin looked almost transparent and when she clutched Raafi to her in a weak embrace, he could feel that her skin was just as fragile as it looked. He realised with dismay that somehow his mother, a beautifully fierce eagle, had been reduced to a tiny sparrow with a broken wing dragging by its side.

“Mother… what happened to you?” The door clicked shut behind him as the maid respectfully stepped out to leave mother and son alone.

Queen Zainab released Raafi from her embrace to hold him at arms length. Her eyes were filled with the wonder of a mother looking up at her son to find that he had suddenly grown too many years at once. “No matter about me,” she replied dismissively. She brushed a thumb gently over the hollow under one of his eyes and said with a cheeky smile, “What have you been worrying about? You look hideous!”             

He chuckled but still could not quite get over the change that had so suddenly come over his mother. “Why thank you, that makes me feel much better about myself. But Mother, you only give me more to worry about. Please tell me, are you ill? Do you not feel well? What happened?” When she looked away with a smile, trying to avoid the question, he gently took her by the shoulders so that she was looking directly up at him once again.

“It’s… it’s just age. I’m an old woman now.”

“You look as tired as an old woman, that is true, but you are far too young to be so weary. You know that as well as I do,” Raafi said quietly.

She sighed and moved to sit down on her bed. “Maybe. Who knows. Now tell me, what can this old woman do for you? Surely you did not just come here to visit me?” Queen Zainab was smiling, but underneath that smile was an already dying hope that maybe she was wrong.

Guilt made Raafi clench his hands together. He had never been too close to his mother. She had always been attending to business, trying to please his father. She did not appear to have much time for her children. Even so, her favourite child was Raafi’s little sister, Farah. No matter what, Raafi could not deny that there was no excuse for him to have neglected his mother as he had. Had the distance between them become so great that she no longer expected him to visit her just for the sake of it?

“Mother, I always want to see you, you know that. But you know how things have been – Father had banished me and I still can’t believe that I’m still standing here, within the kingdom’s walls.”

Queen Zainab gave a short, bitter laugh. “Ah, the whims of your father. That is one man that I will never understand. Adnan…” she looked down at her hands as she spoke her dead son’s name. “Adnan did not die because of you. That is something that I refuse to believe.” She glanced up at him searchingly for reassurance. “Am I right?”

He sat down beside her and rested his head on her shoulder. “Yes, you are. I cannot thank you enough for believing in me. I do not know how I would have felt if I had known that even you thought I was the reason for his death.” A silent moment passed as mother and son let themselves remember the man that could have been sitting and joking with them at this very moment if fate had been just a little kinder. Then Raafi remembered why he had come here and he spoke once again. “There is something I need to ask you, Mother, and I need a truthful answer. You’ve never answered this question before – you’ve always avoided it in some way or another. But now… it is important that I know.”

The slight smile that had lingered on her face throughout their little meeting fell from her face and now she looked wary, as if she knew what was coming. She remained silent, waiting.

“I want to know what happened seventeen years ago.”

The silence in the room was so loud that it seemed to screech through his brain, demanding to know why he had spoken the unspeakable. For years he had been denied of an answer so why had he brought it up now?