A hundred silent ways

Chapter 10

"Take another bite. Please Mama's heart." Rubeena coed, holding a spoon before Emir's mouth but he wasn't eating it. Emir was a spoiled brat so it wasn't easy to deal with him.

Zaman entered home and greeted his mother.

"Ammi ki yaad aj kesay aa gyi. Tum aur Ibrahim to nazar nai aatay." Rubeena complained.

(How come you remember your mother. I see you and Ibrahim don't visit me that frequently.)

"It isn't like that. You know that Mum. Responsibilities are a bit hard to take and handle. But Mama your prayers never let us fall."

Rubeena smiled, gazing her son. She proceeded towards him and kissed his cheeks lovingly.

"Your proud Zalmai had come. Of course now you wouldn't have time for me."  Emir huffed and stormed out of living room.

"What happened to him?" Zaman asked, gazing at the place from where he exited a while ago.

"Do you know what date it is today?"

"Um. Its probably 18th of December." Zaman replied, placing his head over his mother's shoulder when suddenly it hit him. Its 18th of December and the day when Emir was born. He sat straight, "shoot! Mom its his birthday."

"That's why he is so mad because all of you completely forgot it."

"What can be done now." He placed his head back on his mum's shoulder only to earn a glare back from her and he chuckled.

"What do you mean, Yousaf? Get up! Get him his favourite chocolate cake and rest you know."

Zaman rolled him eyes, "i came to spend time with you."

"We will. After his birthday." Rubeena flashed him a smile. "I am going to kitchen to make his favourite food until then bring the things i asked you to from market. We are going to celebrate his birthday after evening."

"Right." He mumbled, ecstatically because whole family would be together in a few hours and have some quality time.

He opened Emir's room door only to find him sitting in a corner of his room, near the window.

"Hey Champ!"  He caressed his hair.

"Don't talk to me Zalmai." He scowled and looked away. "I took candid shots of the girls in the wedding even tho there was a risk of me getting beaten up but i still did it for yo—."

"Didn't i forbid you?"

"So what. I will delete them."

"Bohat burri baat ha. Umar daikho apni aur harkatain."

(Thats very bad. Look at you age and the things you are up to.)

Emir's looked up at Zaman with wide eyes. "I did it for you. You know that."

"I know very well your little schemes of getting me married." Zaman chuckled, still caressing his brown curly hair.

"You know what. When i woke up, i was happy because i turned 17 today. I thought you all must know it and must have arranged something special for me but all i found was an empty home. Baba isn't back from Islamabad yet, Ibrahim bhai visits once in a week even tho lives next door and Yameen, that traitor is gone to his university. Matlab kuch bhi!" Emir complained, having mist in his eyes till the end. Even though he mimed to be bold but Zaman could see a little child in him, a broken one who wasn't let to buy his favourite toy.

Zaman was grown in the same household, he knew the pain of not having family members around. He knew how their mother had brought 'em up in the absence of a father like authority figure.

Khalil mostly used to spend time out but he was doing this all to provide a nice living to his four sons and wife.

Zaman didn't want Emir to feel the same.

"My champ! Chin up. Baba will be back by evening. Mum is off to kitchen to make you delicious food. And i am going to market to buy you cake." He held his face, "c'mon get up now."

***

"What was so urgent that you called me right this moment?"

"I wanted you to see this bhai." Junaid turned the laptop to him. "See that person, in that purple shirt."

Zaman crouched, leaning over the screen as Junaid kept telling the details. "Bhai, he intruded in, roughly after half an hour you and Bazil bhai left."

"Due to some mechanical issues, camera from the main exit couldn't record which is a major loss. But on the corner of road, there was a restaurant which had a camera placed. It had roughly captured the people getting in and out the hospital."

"See there you and Bazil bhai leave hospital." Junaid stopped and zoomed the footage, "its not clear but still through the outline, I recognised both of you."

"Right after somewhat 25 minutes, this guy on bicycle stops by and walks into the hospital." Junaid stopped the footage again. "Bhai see that person, he is wearing a purple shirt."

His shirt seemed black but Junaid changed the clip and switched it to the waiting room of hospital where that guy sat down, now under the light his shirt seemed dark shade of purple. He was restessly checking his phone again and again, taking it out of his pocket and shoving it back.

"Bhai, I don't know but who in the middle of night comes to check on their loved ones." Junaid suspected making Zaman nod.

"The thing about this guy which makes him a suspect is that he did not show up the whole day, not even the day before it, then who was so important, all of a sudden, to meet there that too in the middle of night."

Zaman was still staring at screen. "What happens next? Did you find anything?"

"What i found will shock you."

Zaman asked him to play the video on so that he could himself see what was so shocking. That guy in purple shirt got up after some fifteen minutes of fiddling with his phone. Then he took stairs and at the second floor he started striding in the hallway, back and forth.

He stood in the end of the hallway, taking his phone out again near the window as if catching the signals. To the left was Nimra's room which couldn't be seem in the screen. He went somewhere to the left after typing something on the phone, soon he was out of the frame.

"Where is the next clip? Where was he seen next?" Zaman bombarded questions at Junaid, one after another.

"Bhai, please listen to me. The camera placed on the other end from where Nimra's room was perfectly on sight hadn't recorded anything just like the exit camera."

"- the hell!"

"He is seen again after 22 minutes, walking out of the hallway here." Junaid brought furious Zaman's attention back to the screen. He saw that guy exit building in the rough footage and soon he was on his bike and gone.

Zaman breathed in sharply.

Was he the one who murdered Nimra or did she die a natural death?