Ayat sat afar with her almond milk coffee, taken aback by the family as they bonded over the cookies bibi jaan packed for them. Her body begging for rest, for she had only slept for three hours in twenty six hours. She watched them tiredly as they ran around the house, chasing each other and yelling at each other. While she expected a twist in her gut, it made her smile faintly- only faintly to see the grown up adults becoming children in the presence of family. She didn't get that. She didn't get to live her childhood and teenage years.
The drink felt like a blessing after having to drink tea and black coffee for years. The drink warmed her throat as it made its way into her stomach, leaving her feeling alive. The youngest cousin jumped on the sofa, holding her hand up and saving the last of crumbled cookies from her sister. A laugh erupting out of her father's twin- a truth that she got to know from her chacha about her father. Ismael Wajdani was Ibrahim Wajdani's twin. He had told her to not hesitate and call him chacha jaan but how would she bring herself to do it when all that she was brought up with were nothing but lies.
"Faryal, be careful." Huzaifa groaned as he walked past them, his eyes almost bulging out. Ayat looked at her first cousin as though he was something that could break in a second, except he was already broken. He yawned a few times as he walked into the kitchen and opened the fridge to get his day started with a cup of coffee.
"Why are you sitting alone?" Was the first thing he asked when his gaze settled on the woman in baby pink lawn suit.
"Families don't look good to me." She breathed out. After Fayd, Huzaifa was the one she thought she could talk to, given she related herself to him in many ways. He chuckled, agreeing to her.
"You look horrible, didn't you sleep well?" His eyes shot up at her, her question intriguing.
He gesticulated towards the laptop that sat half-closed on the dining table- the one that he brought when he emerged from his room, "I'll have to take two weeks break for Salaar's wedding so yeah, work. What's with you?" He said, grabbing a mug from the shelf and helping himself in making a cup of coffee.
"Couldn't sleep. New place." She didn't say more, averting her attention to the people in the living hall. The roar of the coffee machine caught her off guard as she flinched and looked back at what Huzaifa was doing.
"How old is your daughter?" A question so unwanted left her. His eyes, that examined the slow dripping of the beverage, turned to her.
"Bas nanhi si jaan hai woh ek," He smiled- he smiled an aloof one and she could filter an ample of sadness from his tone. He yearned- Huzaifa longed for his daughter's love who was taken away by his ex wife to another country. Video calling his daughter occasionally kept him in the brink of life- not entirely robbing it off from him. The divorce was their goddamn problem to deal with but that little soul had to go through so much, "Hoorain's mother promised ammi to bring her to Salaar's wedding though so I'm hoping to spend as much time as I can with my daughter." He said, a smile glittering over his grief.
It was apparent that they were fated to be seperated from what they loved. Seeing his pain, her years old pain of separation felt too timid. He had a daughter who was sent away from him and she couldn't think of wearing his shoes. No way in the fucking world she would have survived such cruelty. The drink had turned cold and her stomach twisted, forging a pain. She looked down at the mug in doubt as what she chose for base for her coffee was plant milk and sighed, knowing her body was just acting up and that it would eventually calm down after adjusting to the milk.
"How did your daughter react to it?"
"She was too little, probably two years old. She is seven now." Damn. It had been so long. That man had gone so long without a wife and daughter.
"Fuck it." She muffled a curse into her mug as his rich accent reminded her of the only person she knew with an American accent when she wanted to empathize with him.
"Did you know I existed before I barged into your gate with an old woman, claiming to be your cousin?" And so to divert herself, she asked what she wanted to know the most.
"We all did. Baba's childhood was our favorite bedtime stories." He had said, letting out a hearty laugh that sounded like a mockery to her.
"How were they like as kids, how was my baba like?" Her heart jumped to her throat as she just trespassed the line she had for herself- to not look and be vulnerable before anyone.
"Quite rebellious I must say." Blood returned to his face as the caffeine kicked in, "And so brazen that they nearly kicked themselves out of dada jaan's inheritance. I heard he was ready to disown them."
A lump growing so rapidly in her throat, "Why?" She croaked out.
"I don't know. Baba wouldn't say if it's too serious," He shrugged his shoulders, "Taya Abba never told you anything?"
"No, not when I don't know where he is. Not when he thought it wasn't important to address my uncle and his family to me." She clipped her mouth, sucking in a breath, "I had no knowledge of your existence until a second before I was told to clear my schedule for your brother's wedding."
He gasped loudly at them. He really didn't expect that from her. He was just looking for something to change the direction of their talk when his eyes rested on her ring, a smile replacing the frown. One thing that she noted about him from the moment she stepped inside their house. He liked to smile a lot- almost at everything, "So what does Mr fiance do?"
That was the last thing she wanted to talk about. That was the last thing she wanted anyone to bring out about, "Dead but never buried."
As much as it shook his grounds, it was confusing to hear a thing like that. Perhaps, it was his first to ever hear something like that although there were possibilities for everything out there. Dead but never buried- the fog that garnered over her head was venomous, slowly suffocating her to succumbing to death. She didn't want to get into details as to why he was not buried. How could someone be buried when their body was not found in the first place? She didn't know what exactly happened. She didn't know at what time did his soul leave his body. She didn't know when and where things went wrong. She turned her television on and found out that the only son of Zohaib Alamgir had passed away in a mishap. Nevertheless, he didn't probe into it and let her off the hook as he stood up and walked out of the kitchen.
Suddenly the air tasted bitter, ripping her off the last good think she held on her parents' behalf. They did nothing. They told her nothing. They didn't do anything to make her aware that another family existed. That she could have someone to be with her in her misery. She wished she had a sibling. She wished she had grandparents. She wished her cousins lived with her but there was nothing that could be done now. Her father thieved her last hope of having a family or coping with the idea of having one. It was probably in that moment she realised it wasn't anyone's fault but her parents'. They isolated her from the world and everything it had to offer.
"I'm driving the women to a nearby mall, are you coming too?" One of the other two boys whose name she realized was Salaar was looking at her with closed expectations. But then why would a loner want to explore the city. Although the theory that she was opening up to his elder brother ate away at him, she was not going to test it. She could read it on his face too, except she kept her silence because she knew Salaar was just looking out for his brother.
She had a second thought even though she was fully aware that bibi jaan would drag her out. She wanted to stay back in and maybe sleep for a few hours but here she wasn't stuck with work. There was no Farah to tail her around and tell about backed up meetings. There was no need to hide Asher's portrait from the housekeepers while leaving for work. There was nothing here that concerned her. And maybe for a while she could live like a girl- a girl without no backloads. Even when she wasn't going to be herself around people.
"Aapi?" Confused, she glanced up at the man.
Right, aapi. "Yeah, okay." That's when her eyes met with bibi jaan's who wore a smile that stretched from an ear to another. Placing the mug on the slab, she pushed herself up from the chair and disappeared into her room to get ready to go with them. She was just going to eat good things and find herself a corner.
~
Adrenaline pumped in her veins at the sight of people bustling in the busy mall. She wanted to walk back home and just rest. Too many people was not her forte. Bibi jaan nudged her shoulder, almost urging her to walk inside the entrance with her cousins. Ayat rolled her eyes at her and the woman held a glare for misbehaving. At times like these, Ayat really wondered if bibi jaan was her mother even though the age gap between her real mother and the older woman was huge.
"Get a dress or two for yourself, don't waste away." The woman cawed, dragging Ayat in like she was some child.
"I have enough for a lifetime, I'm just going to rest somewhere and probably read a book."
Bibi jaan examined her body movements for a while before nodding in a yes. No matter what or how hard she tried, at the end of the day, it was in Ayat's hands whether she wanted to get closer to her family or not. Once bibi jaan left to help her chachi, Ayat set out to look for a bookshop and a resting area. Back in Pakistan, she would rarely go out to such places. She would spend time either in the company or in the mansion and there was no in between, mostly because she was a well known face and the media wouldn't stop bothering her.
But before she could spot a bookstore, her eyes spotted a man so familiar- a man that even her veins could identify, a man that burst into her life and hadn't gone since, a man that owed her answers, a man who was ready to slice the universe into two for her. Her gaze, so automatically, raked his body- skimming parts and rushing to his left hand to speak for her, to vouch for her that she was not hallucinating. And so naturally, her legs began to take steps towards him, towards the direction he was walking away from her.
The black turtleneck hugging his body and the silver chain he wore over the sweater gave away what she needed to know. His hair, tousled and brought back and his fists clenched at his sides. Anyone who knew him could easily tell it was him. But then she wasn't anyone, she was the woman that drank all of him, memorized every detail of him. Nothing much had changed, except he wasn't wearing his infamous black cotton button down shirt.
As her steps drew closer to him, a hand tugged her, stopping her from moving ahead. Standing at almost six feet, Ayat was able to easily through the crowd but he had gone. He had walked away in that exact moment where her gaze wavered.
"Bibi jaan found something for you." Huzaifa brought her attention to himself the second he spoke.
"What?" She rasped. Forcing the forming lump down her throat.
"I don't know. I was chilling in the food court when she came up to me and told me to look for you. Anyways, are you looking for someone?" He said, pointing to where bibi jaan looked at them with keen eyes.
"Ah? Yes." She didn't hesitate. Ayat Wajdani never hesitated about anything.
"Who? Maybe I could help."
"Someone I know from my childhood. I met him in New Orleans years ago." Her eyes, intuitively, going in his direction. Her first meeting with him was in a local park of New Orleans on her first day there, when she had cried for hours so her father wrapped up early and brought her out to explore the city and while exploring, she found a boy who was sad, who was looking down at the butterfly with curiosity.
"How can you recall someone you met all those years ago? I think you misunderstood."
"There are such people in this world, Huzaifa, there are people you would recognise like you've known them all your life." Shame on her because she didn't know it was him when he came to her. Shame on her because she didn't recognise him when he recognised her on hearing only her name.
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❝Juda hue hain bhot log ek tum bhi sahi
Ab itni baat pe kya zindagi haram karein.❞
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Huzaifa aur Ayat kuch zyada hi guftagu karne lage hain, nahi? AND I'm just going to ignore how the word guftagu sounds so intimate 🌚👍 thoughts toh dete jayein!