Book II: My Muslimah, My Wife

Chapter 1

Ayesha's POV

A moment passed as we sat in silence. This was my fifth time visiting her office and there hadn't been any progress yet. Every time I sat here after revealing the entire matter to her, I only felt like this was wasting both of our time. There was no way to fix this. I just had to live with it and protect my son from it. That was my only motivation to even show up again. I had to try for Ali.

I took a glance at her. She had her eyes fixed on the table. Her eyebrows furrowed as she played with the pen in her hands.

"I-", she paused, "wait, let me just move these curtains back." She pushed her chair as she got up and moved towards the windows hiding behind thick grey curtains.

Grey?

I moved in my chair turning towards her. "Were these always grey?", I asked, confused. I could take an oath on the fact that the last time I visited her, they were a dark blue shade.

"What? These curtains? Yeah, I changed these last week", she said with a smile.

"Oh", I took a breath turning back towards the table. My heartbeat rose almost believing that I had started hallucinating.

Sunlight poured in as soon as I heard the swishing of the curtains. I could immediately feel it's warmth on my hands and on the side of my face. It spread across the table and hit the glass prism kept at the edge. The array of rainbow colours that formed on other side of the prism had spread out on the table surface. The more I stared at it, the more I was reminded that the world consists of many other colours than what I see, many other shades besides grey.

Hania came over to me and placed her hand on my shoulder with a reassuring smile. "You're not hallucinating, Ayesha, believe me."

"I wouldn't be sitting here if I didn't believe you", I returned a smile.

There were different reasons to trust Hania. One being that she was a marriage counselor with a master's degree in marriage counselling and pursuing a PhD as well. Though I wasn't here looking for any such counselling, I was done and over with my marriage. She said she understood and had knowledge of the human psyche and that she could help me better. But the only reason that I could trust her enough to reveal all of this was that she was my childhood friend who understood my psychological state and was easy to confide to. She emitted an aura of peace and serenity. She would bring me clarity whenever my thoughts were jumbled in a mess. She had been the best support system. Thanks to our younger sisters Afaaf and Hareem, we ended befriending each other as well. Though Hareem slowly drifted away after her marriage.

"So", Hania got back in her chair placing her elbows on the table and putting her hands down, "This nightmare-"

"This nightmare" I interrupted before she could start, "It's just like the ones I've had before. There's no way I can fix them or get rid of them. The only problem is that they are getting more and more frequent, can we please focus on that? Because the more frequent these nightmares are, the more I lose myself. The more I lose myself the more Ali has to-", I stopped, holding my words back before I could start crying again. The first time I cried to Hania was the first day I visited her office. I cried for hours. I wasted a lot of her time and promised myself I wouldn't do that to her again.

"Ayesha," she said pouring a glass of water for me, "This nightmare was different. Didn't you notice?", she asked placing the glass before me.

"Notice what?" I asked before taking a sip.

"You weren't pushed down to the ground when you were running away. You said you fell. Yes, the rest of it was the same, him running after you, you running away with Ali in your arms, you entering a dark wall like structure, then him taking Ali away from you while you try your best to get up but you can't because he had pushed you down and you felt like a weight was kept on your back. This time you said you fell to the ground, he didn't push you this time." She paused to read my face trying to see if I noticed this slight change.