Kamran
This was one of those moments when my mind was racing at a million miles per minute, thinking of the worst case scenario, then reassuring myself that she would be ok, only to breakdown again as the feeling of helplessness swept over me, paralyzing me, numbing me. My limbs unable to move, despite my mind telling them to do something...anything, to save her.
"Ready for lunch?", a voice called out in that dimly lit computer lab.
Lunch? When the woman I loved was in an unknown location, halfway across the world?
Safdar's face with a worried look came into view, "Kamran, what happened? Are you ok?"
"Farah...she, umm...she is lost"
"What?", he looked at me with confusion.
Something finally spurred in me as I jumped back on to my computer, "I have to go to Berlin"
Safdar was still staring at me with bewilderment, but I already had a plan in place, "The next flight leaves tonight, I have to be at the airport in 2 hours. Could you drop me?"
I was adding my credit card information on the website when I felt Safdar's hand on my shoulder.
"You don't have a visa for Germany, do you?", he asked solemnly.
Damn it!
How the hell am I supposed to help her now?
"Slow down and tell me what happened. How is she lost? Where was she when you last contacted her?"
I narrated what I knew, except that I told him she and her friend had food poisoning and had felt exhausted. Their being drunk was no one's business and the last thing I needed was for my roommate to judge Farah. But as I was recalling her last email, Sorry. We are not eating men. We are sitting in a Turkish cafe with lots of men, I remembered something.
"Wait, that email I sent to her...", I pulled it up quickly.
And sure enough there were at least three Turkish cafes listed there, "I am calling these, if I can't find her I'm calling the police"
Meanwhile, Safdar had another thought, "Doesn't Komal have a German visa? She just visited Berlin"
"Yes, yes...call her, tell her to book a flight to Berlin immediately", I sent him her number, and frantically started calling the Turkish cafes myself.
Someone picked up from the first number after it rang a good 5-6 times, "Hello sir, Are there any young women there. They must have come in about an hour ago, and weren't feeling well..."
The thick accented voice immediately replied in broken English, "No...I no see any girls here. Thank you", and then he hung up.
No one picked up from the second number.
But at the third cafe a man with a crisp English accent picked up the phone, "Two young women? Yes, they fell asleep here. But they're gone now. They went home with someone"
"WHO TOOK THEM HOME?", my voice bellowed into my cell phone
"I...I don't know", the man seemed taken aback, "I am new here, I think one of the waiters did"
"What the fuck do you mean some waiter took them home?", I felt my heart sink, panic and anger swirled within me, clouding my judgement and cognition.
"Get me the contact of that waiter now. He has my wife. I swear if something happens to her, I will kill you", I threatened the man on the other end of the phone, my voice rising to a crescendo, making my friend place a hand on my shoulder again.
In retrospect, I have no idea why I called her my wife. She wasn't even anything close to it then, yet to me she might as well have been. Because, I had already given her my heart, my mind, my soul, my future. All that was left was for the time to pass, so we could be together like I knew in my heart that we were destined to be.
But what if something were to happen to her? What if time never passes, and we never reach our destiny? What if that brief phone call was all that I was destined to have with her?
My distraught state must have been obvious, because Safdar took my phone and spoke to the man himself, and he didn't mince his words.
"Find out where those two women went, and connect us to that person in the next minute. Otherwise, I am calling the Berlin police, and you know they are not exactly friendly to immigrants", his voice was menacingly calm.
The seconds ticked, Safdar sat still, I paced the floor feeling like the walls of that room were caving in on me.
"Komal said she'll look into the next flight, but is also reaching out to a colleague she met in Berlin", Safdar whispered to me.
But all that was plan B. And sometimes plan B is too little, too late.
Sixty seconds were up, "I am calling the Berlin police", Safdar said already dialing the number he had looked up while I was reciting all the duas (prayers) for safety that I could remember.
"Wait...", the man on the other end spoke up, "I found out who it was that took them. He was the cafe owner's son. He and his father took them home"
Farah
My head was throbbing, like hundreds of hammers were repeatedly pummeling my brain. Slowly, I opened my eyes, letting them get used to the bright sunlight streaming in from the between the crooked blinds that miserably failed at covering the windows they were hanging over.
Finally, my vision adjusted. The haze cleared and my aching muscles contracted and stretched as I sat up on the mattress. Stunned and confused, I looked around me. Ameerah was on my left, her body turned away from me, her soft snores audible in the eerie silence that surrounded us. The room was a small one and sparsely furnished with just a chair and a chipped wooden desk in the corner. The mattress we were on was the size of a single bed but lay on the maroon carpet which seemed clean but had obvious stains that someone had tried to remove.
The night's events were slowly coming back to me now. The fruit punch we drank, the light headedness after that, our attempt to eat something at a cafe, and then suddenly feeling so drowsy we could barely keep our eyes open and then lying down on a sofa.
But the next vision I had made me sit up straight and throw off the thick cover that covered me and Ameerah.
I remembered being shaken while I was on the sofa and struggling to open my eyes, and then I remembered a pair of sea-green eyes helping me into a van. My eyes frantically searched my legs, my body for any sign of what I as a woman feared the most. But both Ameerah and I were fully dressed, except our shoes which were neatly lined against the wall near the door.
Thank God!
"Ameerah wake up", I hissed to my friend.
"Go away. I am sleeping", she shoved my hand away, pulled the cover over herself and was back to snoring soon after.
I, on the other hand, was fully awake now, my faculties agile and tense as I tried to makes sense of where we were and how much trouble/danger we were in. My hand reached out to the chair to steady myself as I got up from the floor and took the first few steps towards the door.
Gingerly, I turned the knob and heaved a sigh of relief to see that it wasn't locked.
Ok, so we were not kidnapped...or at least may be able to escape
The door opened to reveal a simple but tastefully decorated living room. Two sofas with black and red designs lined the sidewalls. In the middle was a square coffee table, and across it a smart TV hung from the wall. But what surprised me most were the heavenly smells in that room, buttery deliciousness mixed in with hints of cinnamon and cardamom wafted towards me reminding me that I hadn't eaten much since yesterday afternoon.
Where am I?
"Oh you're awake", I heard a voice behind me, startling me.
I swung around and nearly ran into the young waiter with sea-green eyes we had seen last night. I gulped, remembering how Ameerah had flirted with him, wondering if he had read more into that than there ever was.
"Uh...who are you? And why are we here?", I backed away from him, my eyes darting around the room for something I could grab and use for protection.
"Relax", his face broke out into a grin, showing off his pearly white teeth, "My name is Ahmet, and you fell asleep at the cafe my parents run. We couldn't leave you two alone there after we left for the night, and we had no idea where you lived, so my mother insisted that we bring you here"
"Your mother?", I finally let out a breath, relieved to hear that there was a woman around us while we were completely knocked out.
"Yes, my mother. She is making breakfast for you now, so I suggest you wake up your friend. Mom is not too keen on people who sleep in", he laughed.
Just then Ameerah appeared in the doorway of the room we had been in, looking disheveled and distraught.
"Farah, I think we have been kidnapped", she whispered frantically without realizing that we weren't alone.
"You guys are so weird. For the record, you were trying to kidnap me yesterday", Ahmet chuckled at Ameerah, and she blushed a deep red when she noticed him.
A woman's voice called out in Turkish, and Ahmet replied to her, followed by another gruff voice from an older man who had just entered the living room. The older man looked at us and muttered something under his breath about America and then motioned for us to follow him.
"Breakfast is ready", Ahmet translated for us, and then turned to me and said, "And my father is saying that he is sick and tired of your American husband who kept calling him every two hours the whole night. Please call him before he sends the police after you"
"My American husband?"
Ameerah and I exchanged surprised looks before she gave me a coy smile, "Fruit punch tum ne piya tha, aur tumhare ishq mein hallucinations Kamran bhai ko ho rahein hai" (You drank the fruit punch, but brother Kamran is hallucinating in your love)
Kamran
We were home now, Safdar had gone to sleep but I was glued to my phone and computer, willing either of them to give me some signal that my Farah was ok. The man I had spoken to last night was the owner of the cafe, and despite him and his wife reassuring me in their broken English that Farah and her friend were fine and just sleeping off whatever they had consumed, I remained a nervous wreck.
Komal's colleague in Berlin frequented the cafe that Farah had been in, and knew the cafe owners well enough to be convinced that they wouldn't hurt anyone. But no one seemed to know much about the son, who apparently was the one seen walking Farah and her friend to a van.
That piece of information had unnerved me enough, that I ignored the irritated voice of the cafe owners and kept calling them. If nothing else, to let them know that they would have hell to pay for if someone even dared to touch the woman they thought was my wife, or her friend.
Finally, the phone rang, from a number that I had now memorized by heart.
"Is my wife awake yet?", I quickly asked before the caller could say anything.
There was a pause, and then that sweet, soft voice I was dying to hear spoke, "Kamran, its me. Farah"
"Oh my God, are you ok? Did anyone hurt you? I swear if they..."
She cut me off gently, "I am ok. No one hurt us, we just fell asleep and now we're having breakfast with this really nice family"
"Oh...good. Ok. I was just so worried", I felt like I could finally breathe.
"I am so sorry for scaring you. I didn't even realize that I had emailed you last night. Everything was such a haze. But if it hadn't been for your email and all the instructions in it, we'd probably be asleep in a bush somewhere. So thank you so much, Kamran. I really, really appreciate it", I imagined how she must look then, shuffling her feet, her pretty eyes downcast, and that shy smile I could never forget.
"You don't have to thank me Farah. But please be careful", I let out small laugh, "I don't think I can take another round of not knowing where you are"
"I promise I'll be more careful. Ahmet said he'll take us back to the hostel as soon as we are done"
I knew who Ahmet was, I had dug up that cafe owner's entire online family history in the last few hours. But I had also come across something else, that I had a feeling Farah didn't know.
"Did you know that your hostel is co-ed?"
"What?", her startled voice confirmed my suspicions.
"Yup, even the rooms are co-ed. They're on first come first serve basis, and there is no gender restriction"
There was silence then I heard her gasp, "Those aviator glasses...that Finn had, were on one of the bunk beds in my room"
"Who is Finn?", I sat up again, sure that Farah's trip was going to result in me getting a heart attack.
"He...he...is a med student who kissed me. Ameerah said that was just the culture where he came from, but then...", she hesitated.
"Then what?", I heard my voice get louder again.
"He, uh...he offered to show me a good time last night", she replied in a small voice, "Kamran, you must think I am such a stupid person. And maybe I am, I just never thought to even look at the details of the hostel, and I didn't think they would have any alcohol at the party last night. Most of us were younger than 21 years"
I shook my head, she was so innocent and gullible I just wished I could encase her in a cocoon and keep her safe till I could make her mine forever.
"The legal drinking age in many parts of Europe is 16, but I don't think you're stupid at all. I just think you need to be a bit more cautious. I am booking a hotel room for you and your friend near the University for now. But Farah, the world can be a pretty dangerous place and as much I would love to protect you from it, I can't...not when I am not with you"
She stayed quiet and I almost regretted saying what I had just said. I knew she was an independent woman, and I had no right to lecture her. I even debated whether to address my faux pas from earlier in our conversation, or to ignore it altogether.
But then I realized that she was too precious to me and leaving things unsaid however uncomfortable, only served to increase the chiasm between two individuals. And the last thing I wanted to do was to impose my dreams on her, or make her feel pressured into doing something she didn't want to do.
I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her, but only if she wanted me in the same way too.
"Farah...I didn't mean to call you my wife. It just came out of my mouth the first time I called the restaurant, and then I thought that you being married might make them less likely to hurt you in any way, so I kept referring to you as that. But I am sorry about it, and I didn't mean to patronize you either"
"It's ok Kamran. I know I have a lot to learn, and I can't thank you enough for being there for me, and Ameerah. But maybe..."
There was another long pause, but when she spoke her voice was so low and raspy that I almost wondered if what she was saying was a mere figment of my imagination.
"Maybe me being your wife is something we could discuss more in a couple of years"
Is she saying what I think she is saying?
"I'd like that Farah. I'd like that very, very much"
A woman's voice called her name in the background.
"I have to go. Allah Hafiz Kamran", she said, reminding me of the last time we had said goodbye.
"Allah Hafiz Farah"
Allah Hafiz, my love
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Poor Kamran! But also, Farah is clearly a lot more book smart than street smart. Though can you imagine the guts it would have taken someone like her to say what she did in the end. Lol 😂
Anyway, hope you liked the chapter, and hope you're digging these two!
Please vote and comment!