Chaos in the Canvas √

11 | scars

یک هـمدم باوفا ندیدم جز درد
My constant companion is only pain

Tuesday, 9:29am

It was her Dadu who had fallen, and it was Hemayal who thought that she would never be able to stand up on her feet again.

It was her Dadu whose heart had stopped beating, and it was Hemayal who thought that there is a gaping hole in her chest where her heart used to be.

And it was her Dadu who had died, and it was Hemayal who thought that life has abandoned her in the most brutal of ways.

It had been three hours - three hours and twenty seven minutes - since her Dadu had left this world, and with each second passed, she felt that her own death was nearing. Every breath seemed more difficult than the previous, each beat more broken than the last. The pain she had been enduring since last night seemed nothing in comparison to the misery she was going through right now - this was the real pain, this was the real heartbreak.

This is what death must feel like; this is how it must hurt when soul abandons the body.

All the pains she had encountered in her life, of different depths and kinds, had not managed to break her. Yes, they snatched the ground from under her feet; yes, they made her fall on her knees and yes, they did snatch the living breath out of her but they never, not even once, stole her desire to live. They never took away her hope for a bright future, her desire to lead a contented life, her dream to live peacefully.

But this one, this absolute heartbreak, this disastrous misery, it made her wish to never breathe again. It made her wish things she knew would hurt her Dadu if he was alive - a desire for the end, a craving for the death. But that was where all the problems lied - if he was alive. It was this if and absolutely nothing mattered to her anymore, no reality, no sanity.

"Hami!" A voice rang close to her, knocking at the already rusted door of her mind and Hemayal fluttered her eyes open, her irises red that held centuries of pain behind them.

The ashen face of Mehmal spun before her eyes for a second before she dropped the lids again, the wet lashes fusing to form a mess, tear stains tainting the cheeks and temples. It had been three hours since she had been lying on her bed, head against the headrest, three hours since the doctor had given the final news of the death of an old man she valued more than her own life. After then, her limbs had refused to function and she had fallen on the ground, in absolute misery, in sheer agony.

She did not know when the doctor came and tended to her wounds, when she prescribed her medicines and bed rest, when she went. She did not know any of that. However, she did know one thing that the doctor wanted to drug her with sleeping injection but she had refused, not willing to let go of the thought of her Dadu as of yet. She wanted to feel him, and with that, she wanted to torture herself.

After all, it was because of Hemayal Khakwani that Masood Khakwani was no longer alive. It was because of her that he did not live to see the sunset of this day. It was the love that he had for Hemayal that caused him his life; it was his pain for his granddaughter that wrote away his death.

It was Hemayal and her decisions which signed the warrant of his death, of an old, aged man with white hair who loved her more than he should have.

"Hami, please, wake up. Eat something, please." Hemayal heard the cry of her cousin but there was no heart left in her to feel the pain hidden in these words.

She felt a feather-light touch on her arm, an infinitesimal action that made pain find home in her, and she again forced the heavy lids to slide open, a kind of heavy that made each part of her ache. Mehmal was staring down at her with flushed face, crying but controlling herself, for Hemayal alone.