The air was unnervingly cold and withering– too cold for the region she lived in or it was just her that felt the coldness in her bones. Every time she saw Fayd outside of work hours, there was someone- anyone that lingered around him and he didn't seem bothered like he did when he was at work. There weren't many differences in their lives. Both lived with miseries but his was better, if nothing, he had friends. He had someone who he could lean on when he broke down and she had no one. The only person that stayed in her life was bibi jaan and she would break herself but would never break down before her. The older woman was too weak to hear her swear at anyone in front of her, let alone talking about heartache.
The pain and her past would never stop haunting her. She lost someone so dear– someone who didn't keep his promise and come back. He wasn't given a chance. She was served happiness in a platter, she had just started to smile again, she had just learnt the meaning of love again and she was made to taste the bitterness of death. One that she hadn't tasted. Her parents left her alone but they weren't dead, they could come back and she would have all the world's time with her to yell at them, to hate them, to tell them to never show their faces again and to tell them that she had grown into a woman they could have never raised.
But with his case, it was different. It was entirely different. He wasn't going to come back. He was so out of reach that she would have to die and walk over the thin thread to see and feel him again. She would have to bury herself under the ground to get a glimpse of him- to ask him how it felt to be living in a world where there was no sorrow, no misery, no pain, no separation and no death. He was so out of reach that not even stars could regard her to him. He was there in a world unseen to bare eyes where happiness was eternal.
Ayat fidgeted the ring on her finger restlessly as she thought about him. Her restlessness leveling up as she recalled the days she spent with him. Every moment. Every minute and every second of it. He wasn't her saviour but he managed to save the wetness of her heart, he didn't let it dry. They were only twenty two when it all happened. When their love was robbed off. Asher Alamgir was one fine man– the only heir of multiple hotel chains in Pakistan and the only son of Pakistan's next prime minister. The only man she fell in love with.
Life was unpredictable– Asher used to say every time and his death was also unpredictable. He wasn't supposed to die. That much Ayat knew of. She looked down at her dresser, raking her eyes to spot her ear stud amongst her other accessories. Her heart felt heavy from the moment her eyelids opened. The day hurt. The day was going to be so long and painful that she already waited for it to end. She would do anything to bring happiness back in her life if she was the same girl Asher loved.
"Saalgirah Mubarak ho." She took in a painful puff of air that constricted the walls of her throat as she stared at her reflection. The kind of woman she had become after his death. He was her friend. He was her lover and he was supposed to be her soulmate.
The photo that hung above the crown of her bed was proof of their friendship and love. They loved and loved until there was no love and only pain. They loved and loved until there remained nothing and no tomorrow. There was never a tomorrow for true love as they said. Her gaze then lowered to her ring finger to find the band shining around her finger. It was a promise. A promise that couldn't be fulfilled.
"Ayat beta." A soft knock on her door pulled her back to reality and she blinked. Bibi jaan was standing on the other side of the door while she wallowed in her past.
"Jee." She said it a little louder than she intended, knowing bibi jaan's reason to call for her. She did it every year ever since Asher passed away.
"Darwaza toh kholain." Her tone was gentle as though she was coaxing a baby. Ayat sighed at it and pushed herself up from the chair, walking up to the door. Bibi jaan wouldn't know how to console her and would just stand there, looking into Ayat's eyes and cry silently– in a hope to bring at least a drop of tear out of her eyes, for she hadn't cried for him ever since that day. The way she locked herself out of the world and pain after that day haunted bibi jaan.
"I was saying ke beta can you take me to Fayd's place?"
Taken aback, Ayat stood rooted in her place, reading the older woman's face. She was calm and she was quiet and Ayat could say that she forgot what day it was. Having just returned from the hospital, it wouldn't be as good to remind her of Asher's birthday so she chose otherwise and nodded.
~
Fayd kept his place minimal with no extortionate shit. He had his house decorated with only what was necessary. Ayat stood outside the gate and gawked at his two storied independent housing. On her way to his house, bibi jaan told her about how she got to know about his birthday. She was dubious whether or not he was home as his car was parked on the outside, her eyes catching the beaming led's of surveillance cameras.
And just when she was about to open the door and enter, the gate opened and Fayd emerged from it. Wearing a black vest that stuck to his body like his second skin, he was just out of shower. Intuitively, her eyes went down to his hand and before they could rest on it, he folded his hands behind his back and arched a brown at her.
"What are you doing here?" Pressing on the word you, he looked at her as though she was invading her personal space. He was expecting someone and that wasn't her.
"I took her here." Instead of Ayat, bibi jaan responded to his question as she came from behind Ayat and stood next to her with a huge smile etched on her face. A smile that brought a smile on his face. The woman as old as his mother started to mean something so much as a family to him in his own mother's absence.
"Saalgirah Mubarak ho bache." She placed her hand on the left side of his head and started reciting dua for his future and passed him a box of tea cakes that she made for him the previous day.
Fayd waited with a smile until she was done to voice his doubt, "How do you know its my birthday today?"
"Elders know everything." She didn't say much and recited dua for him again. Ayat could see how he had managed to peek in bibi jaan's little cocoon and could only wonder about how she forgot about Asher's birthday.
It took her by surprise from the way everything was packed and neat. Every single thing that he owned was well packed, leaving appliances that made him food on everyday basis and the things he was going to leave for Adil. He had his place organised unlike herself, she could not even imagine how her life would have turned out to be had bibi jaan left the place in her childhood for good. Maybe, only maybe her parents would not have left her behind and take her with them.
His place– it gave away his truest feelings– the loneliness, the resentment, the longing and the ache. Every bit of his place had something to say about him, only she wasn't in the state to understand. She was engulfed and drowned way too deeper in her own loneliness to give a damn about others.
And reading her mind, he said, "I'm shifting back to America." Except it left her baffled.
No doubt, Fayd Malik was excessively perfect in his profession. A laid back investigator who was sought by many but avail only to those who could afford. She could say that he was making money just enough to spend the rest of his life lavishly but he was leaving, throwing all that and shifting back to his home country where he was born and where he was brought up. And he was going to carry one of her hideous secrets with him for as long as he continued to live.
Oh? Her eyes drooped to a certain level where one would think she was dozing off. Despite wanting to ask about the reason, she didn't probe further. Strangely enough, Ayat could feel a strong connection– something that told her where he belonged in her life, vaguely in her present and prominently in her past. Like she could trust him with her matters. Yet she didn't know why he was shutting her away, she was just meaning to be a friend.
"Kahwa." Ayat jumped in her place at his voice and turned away only when her heartbeats normalised. There he was, standing with a cup of traditional Arabian coffee. Looking at him and looking back at it, she wondered if he made it for her.
"Kahwa, for me, is like an energy drink," He shrugged as he walked off to bibi jaan to give her cup. She took a sip and its bitterness washed over her. She was overwhelmed by how dark it was, "If its too bitter, grab a couple of dates from the breakfast bar." He said after looking at her making faces at the drink. It was a drink that his mother made whenever he felt low or down or when he needed something to sober him up from his numbness.
She noticed paintings made by Arab artists and went, "You almost have everything an Arabic household may own." Ayat joked, with a straight face.
Fayd snarled at the remark, "That's because I'm part Arab." Her ears burned red, declaring the fact that she was embarrassed when she wouldn't have to, she had no idea of who he was and where he hailed from, yet it bothered her. Maybe because he knew about her and she didn't and that bugged her.
"Make yourself at home, I won't be around for at least half an hour so be comfortable and sit down," He said to her, eyeing the couch behind her, "Bibi jaan, I have someone waiting for me outside the house, please excuse me for a while." And when she nodded, Fayd turned around and was about to walk out of the door when,
"Happy-" Words stuck in her throat as she tried to wish him on his birthday. He turned around upon hearing something from her and arched a perfect brow at her, "-birthday." Barely just above a whisper it was.
His feet halted as her words hit his ears, a smile forming on his face slowly. He then turned around and his darkened eyes bore a shine bestowed from the stars, "Thank you."
Fayd threw on a sweater jacket and saw himself out while she stood on her place, wondering whether or not was she in a place to wish him. He didn't seem to mind it but something kept calling out to her, saying that he was being mysterious and hiding anything that she shouldn't know in the first place. Ayat heaved a sigh as she made her way to sit next to bibi jaan and call Farah to postpone her meetings to the afternoon.
The front gate flung as he rushed to look for a person that he was expecting before Ayat came through with bibi jaan. When he opened the gate for her, he could feel the person's eyes on him that he made him nervous. That person– or anyone for that matter– could never know who she was to him. He ran his eyes all across the silent lane, in search of that one person. The man that was about to bring him an information which might help Adil's case. One thing neither Ayat nor Adil was ready to understand, Fayd was holding lava near his mouth and only a thought away before he actually swallowed it. He rang him up, for he could not keep his guests waited.
"Giving a hard copy of it doesn't seem like a nice idea to me. Check your mail, I've sent pictures of it." Fayd nodded as though the other person was in front of him.
He marched back in and found bibi jaan entertaining herself in the kitchen while Ayat explored his place just with eyes, "I have to get this. Excuse me." He said to the air, not waiting for them hear or reply and climbed up to his room and took out his laptop.
There it was, a bunch of old pictures– back from the time when Ayat and him were only kids, merely above three, "Who are they?" He asked, his face turning stony now that he recognised one out of four.
"Ibrahim Wajdani, Zohaib Alamgir, Khalid and Nazeem Shah." The other person said, acid dripping for very obvious reasons. They didn't work day and night to see their senior officers have fun with a runaway businessman and Pakistan's future prime minister. Be it only from the past. It felt like betrayal, no, it really did.
While Fayd thought over it, he felt stupid for not being active with the hints Khalid sahb dropping his way. He could have grasped it when he said Zohaib Alamgir and Ibrahim Wajdani were friends. No one knew. No one would even guess.
"Things will only get dirty. I hope it's not what we think it is." Fayd sighed, downloading pictures from the mail and saving it in the vault.
When the screen beeped, indicating that his pictures were safe in the vault, the other person continued to speak, "We can only hope." Fayd hummed before hanging up and heaving a very long sigh. He didn't like how deep he was getting involved in it unknowingly. He didn't like how dirtier it was getting as days passed. He didn't like how people traded loyalty. He hated how people functioned.
"Piano?" Was the first thing he heard when he stepped into the living room and shoving the phone in his pocket, he eyed his piano at the far end.
"I play." The irony, because she too did.
"I play too." She mumbled to herself, however, he heard it too.
"I know." He smiled the faintest to ease it for her but it didn't settle with her as it should, seeing the way she knitted her brows together in query. He didn't bother to answer though.
"Why is it painted dark– your place?" Unlike her place, his place was almost swallowed by darkness. Windows and curtains closed, walls painted in dark colours and lights with low brightness.
"Darkness– it's beautiful. The meaning of no colour expresses a lot more than the colors in the palettes, so why not?" There was something unreadable about his cryptic words. His eyes looking at her ear stud while he said it and his eyes matching the color he was talking about. They were dark– darker than she had ever seen. The men that shared their birthday were poles apart. Asher believed in colours. Fayd loved darkness.
Her eyes dropped down to where the hideous scar was– his hand. Even wearing a sweater, he didn't hide it or flinch like he did when he caught her staring at it and as though he was used to it. His scar rooted from the base of his forearm and went all over his arm, ending a couple of inches below his elbow.
"Darkness knows you and me better than anyone else, so why not?" At that moment, she realized how fucked up he was and how hard was life for him.
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❝ek aas thi tum aaoge toh zindagi khil jayegi
tum dur the toh kya hua tum mil gaye toh kya hua
veeraniyan kam na hui tanha tha main tanha raha.❞
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Thoughts?👀