⚠️ TRIGGER WARNING: dark themes such as sexual abuse, child abuse and kidnapping. Please read with caution and only if you feel comfortable with it.
SOMETIMES, THERE WERE DAYS in your life that you never wanted to forget. You wanted to permanently etch them into your memory so you could open them back and marvel at how they brought you such immense joy or an emotion that you wanted to feel over and over again. You wanted it to play on loop, never wanting the perfect moment to end.
It's said that whenever you reflect on a memory, you don't actually remember what you felt during that event but instead what felt the last time you reminisced it. Memories change and adapt to fit you as you change and wander through life. It could even begin to make you recall memories in a light that they were never originally in.
Memories were almost like a bunch of dominoes in that regard. The last memory you have of the memory affects its essence — its core — and tips the next over, creating a chain of consistent change.
But gradually, you begin to forget memories. They become faint and barely a whisper from your past. You even lose your determination to keep them permanently etched into your brain as it withers away slowly with the memory. Almost like when the dominoes reach the end of the chain, when it knows that it has nothing else left to tip over. Your brain picks the memory up and tosses it, trying to make room for newer memories, throwing away the ones that you treasure more often than not.
But sometimes, you had days that were nightmares wrapped in the disguise of being just another day. They left you with memories and scars that gave you tortured you whenever you shut your eyes. You wanted nothing more than to simply just forget, but your brain — being the torturous, heartless organ that it was — never seemed to realise that. It reminded you of those memories over and over again, becoming sadistic, never easing its deadly clutch on you and never becoming less painful.
It becomes forever engrained in each second, in each breath, in each waking moment. It simply begins to sum up the purpose of your entire life. It begins to define you. Like it did with me. My life revolved around that nightmare, and each time my brain tortured me with the memory once again, the need for vengeance grew in each cell of my body. Vengeance for myself. Vengeance for Rafiq. Vengeance for every single person out there who suffered and continued to suffer after they were stripped of any sense of normality, left to live a nightmare. Because as nice as wealth and extravagance seemed, once you met your fate, you begin to simply just yearn for a normal life. One without bloodshed, one without the bloodcurdling screams that woke you up at night, one with peace. Peace from the outside world. Peace from the voices screaming at you. Peace from yourself.
As much as I hated recalling that specific memory, I was done with keeping it away from someone who'd grown to mean so much to me in so little time. She was family, and I hated keeping secrets away from them. It was unfair of me to probe about her past and her troubles when I didn't return the sentiment. But more than anything, I wanted her to see what was behind all the layers. I wanted to show her my raw truth and I wanted her to stay after seeing all of that. Maybe it was selfish to wish for, but I wanted her to see all of me — all of my demons — and still stay. I didn't want her to stay with a lie, a man who was a husband in name and a stranger in reality. We both deserved that much.
I stared into her glassy, blue eyes, watching me with the warmth and compassion that I would forever be grateful for. God, she was perfect.
"Do you remember when I told you that something happened when I was seven that threatened our safety, making us have to move to England?"
Fatimah nodded wordlessly.
I fought the urge to clench my eyes shut to ward off the vivid memories flashing through my mind like scenes from a sick documentary. They were so dark, so bright, so raw despite it having been years. Memories were a funny thing, fickle and sadistic.
"Human trafficking is common in Iran," I explained. "But child trafficking is more popular. They kidnap a child, and essentially test them out to see if they're suitable for whoever is sick enough to want to buy innocent children as if they're property, not human beings."
She watched me aptly, and I swallowed past the thick lump in my throat, spitting out my next words like they were a poison I was desperate to expel.
"When I was seven, I was kidnapped."
She sucked in a sharp breath. "What?"
I offered her a pitiful version of a reassuring smile. "I was out doing God-knows-what on the streets when this strange man appeared out of nowhere and tried to make conversation with me. I was a naive little kid back then, and completely foregoing everything my parents had warned me about strangers, I continued to converse with him. I didn't even realise that he'd put a cloth to my nose until I woke up in this strange, dark room that seemed supposedly empty.
"The first thing I remember hearing after I woke up were these weird sounds. Weird murmurs. Whimpers. Moans. There was that man I'd met before sitting next to me, one hand touching himself, and the other..." I took in another breath, clearing my throat and blinking away the moisture from my eyes. My voice cracked when I continued. "The other had unzipped my trousers, and his hand was inside. I remember trying to move away, but whatever drug was in my system made my movements sluggish. I couldn't talk, I couldn't fight back and all I did was lay there, letting him touch me like that. When he finished, he got up like he wasn't just abusing — raping — a little kid and went to talk to these other men. They were laughing as if they weren't destroying the lives of young children. As if they hadn't just both witnessed and abused us."
I broke off my sentence, feeling my eyes burn and I scoffed. Weak. So goddamn weak. Even after all these years, I still couldn't talk about it without tearing up.
"You don't have to talk about this, Zayaan. I hate seeing you like this." Her hand flew up to my shoulder, the warmth seeping inside through my shirt. "Stop."
"It's okay, Faithe. You deserve to know. You've lived with a stranger for long enough," I disagreed. Just let me finish this. Please.
She nodded gently.
"I ended up staying in that dark room for more than a day. More children were brought in, wrangled up and tied at the hands, mouth and feet. I drifted in and out of consciousness, I remember when another young boy was brought in. He seemed to be around my age, but he was conscious and crying the entire time he was carried into the room. He begged them to let him go, that his mother would be looking for him and that he was all she had left, but their treatment towards him was only worse, more cruel and harsh.
"They beat him till he was bloody in the end, making him lose consciousness. They dragged us out of that warehouse and took us into this lorry. I heard them talking about how they'd split us up and where each of us was going. I'd managed to wake the boy up and had given him my shirt since his had been ruined and removed, but it only made things worse because one of our kidnappers had seen that and beat him up further for accepting it. The man dragged me into the forest and forcibly made me take the rest of my clothing off." I paused, hating what I needed to recall next. I remembered my seven-year-old screams, my protests to not touch me again and all the blood. The knife he took to my throat, then to the most private part of me, threatening to hurt me if I tried talking or helping anyone else. "He touched me again. But then he told me that I was ungrateful and that I needed to return the favour. He made me touch him, and when I refused, he used a knife to threaten me. When I screamed at him to let me go, he cut me on my pelvis, causing that nasty gash that bled for days. The sight of my blood seemed to overjoy him, and he finally let me put my trousers back on and run back to the lorry with the rest of the boys."
Tears were streaming down her face as I spoke about the most painful part of the memory, and she clasped my wrist between both of her palms tightly.
"But there was still a part of me that yearned to fight, the part that was determined for freedom. I talked to the boy despite the threats I'd received for simply giving him my shirt earlier. During that journey which spanned a few days, we plotted how to escape and get everyone out of there. A few days later, our plan seemed more feasible and it worked — to some extent. When our kidnappers left to do something, we managed to unlock the back door of that lorry. We'd driven far past Tehran and were in a completely different province, but in that elation of opening the goddamn door, we just fled. We'd thought that we heard the voices of the men coming back and since all the other kids were unconscious, we ran, leaving them behind. We just left them behind, so selfish and so greedy for our own freedom that we left the other children out to the wolves. They would have been sold, and more children would have just been kidnapped to make up for the two of us."
That haunted me to do this day. We may have been children, but those three days had forced us to grow up. We couldn't afford to be selfish, but that's exactly what we had been. We'd simply forgotten that we weren't the only ones hurting, and if I could go back now and rewind time to make sure they had escaped with us, even if it meant I had to relive all the abuse again, I would.
"You can't say that, Zayaan." Frustration dripped from her tone. "You were seven. Only seven. A child. It was not your fault that you were kidnapped, and it was not your fault that you couldn't help those other kids. No one holds you accountable for that. Anyone would have done the same as you in your position. The only people you should blame are those monsters. Those unfeeling, inhumane monsters who had no conscience and tortured you in that way. They deserve all the blame; they deserve to rot in hell for everything they did."
"Yes, but—"
"No buts. You did what you had to. And you're trying to make up for that now, aren't you? You and your family are doing all that you can to help those in the same situation that you were once in, and you're saving all these lives, Zayaan. I know it doesn't make up for the children you were with all those years ago, but there isn't anything we can do about that anymore. All we can focus on is the present and the future, as you said earlier. Instead of reliving the memories that still manage to drown you, hope that the punishment Allah will dole upon those perpetrators will bring justice to all the people who have suffered at their hands.
"Right now, you're doing all that you can for other victims out there and I thought I couldn't be any prouder before, but you've just managed to prove me wrong. I'm so proud of you and I couldn't be happier to be your wife. You are a goddamn amazing man, Zayaan Haidar."
She wrapped her arms around my waist tightly — almost as if she were scared that one of us would disappear if we didn't hold onto one another close enough — and rested her head on my chest, making me aware of how fast my heart was beating. Her embrace managed to calm it down and I wrapped my arms around her tightly, burying my face in her hair.
"Thank you," I whispered against the soft tresses.
"For what?"
"For listening."
"Always, Zayaan." She punctuated that by leaning up on her tiptoes and pressing a gentle kiss against my jaw. "I'll always be here for you. Whether it's to vent about something, share something happy or just to be someone that you can talk to at the end of the day."
Relief ripped through me almost violently. She wasn't going anywhere. She was staying. She wasn't leaving.
I'd meant what I'd said earlier about our feelings being beyond just like, and it only just hit me just how far past that point I was. So far past the safe zone that I was falling down the cliff, fast, not yet knowing how painful the landing was going to be.
A shrill ringtone pierced through the air, startling our quiet and making us pull away from our embrace. I frowned at the sudden intrusion and Moon seemed to share the feeling because she leapt off the sofa and strolled over to us. She brushed her white coat over my feet and I picked her up just as Faithe strode over to her phone. It rang insistently, almost as if the person on the other end was desperate for her to pick up.
She smiled when she saw the name on the screen. "It's Aden." But when she answered and brought the phone up to her ear, barely getting the chance to greet her brother, her smile immediately fell. "Aden?"
She listened to what he said, grip tightening on her phone, the frown marring her face deepening as each second passed.
"Where are you?" A barely-there, frightful murmur left her lips. "No, Aden, I don't care. Where are—"
I set Moon down and stepped closer. "Faithe?"
"It got cut off," she said, still staring at her phone as if willing her call to reconnect. When she finally glanced up at me, her eyes were wide and frozen with fear. Terror. Panic. "Something's wrong, Zayaan. Something happened to Aden."
I was already grabbing my keys and pulling her to the door. "Let's go."
author's note:
whew, it's been a while since the last upload. this one's pretty short but it's heavy and i didn't want to add too much and make this chapter about anything other than zayaan's past. if anything was difficult or triggering to read in this chapter, my PMs are always open if you want to talk and i'd be happy to help in any way i could. this chapter was so heavy for me to WRITE, and it made me realise how we can't possibly fathom what the people who have suffered this abuse feel like day in and out, and i'm so deeply sorry to anyone out there who is now living the consequences of sick people thinking they can ruin others' lives in any shape or form. just know that you're loved and even if things are looking bleak now, things will hopefully get better. there is a purpose for you being here and your struggles will not be in vain. you're a fighter, a survivor. as always, thank you for your patience and for reading 🤍