It's been six months. Six months of stillness. Six months of engulfing silence. Six months of escaping gravity. There has not been much time to do anything. She just breathes, and breathes, and breathes. There is not much she can do anyway. Time seems stuck in her throat.
However, it was silent but silence isn't quiet. It was still but stillness isn't unfeeling. She tried hard not to fall but falling isn't the only way to hit the ground. What more could she do when even the familiar fist of grief hits differently? There was a lot more feelings in breathing than she thought was possible when she became conscious of the air getting into her lungs and the air getting out as time wears on hastily despite her tardiness.
Yet it doesn't compare to the ravage she'd bear witness in those days where silence steals into those minutes she wakes yet stays there, still, not quite sure what she was supposed to do with herself or those evenings after a rather particularly hard day of watching Grandpa lose his mind over monsters that lives only in his mind; they were rare and far between but they were there, helpless and alone, trapped in a never ending fear of when or even how her monsters would catch up with her seeing as she too lives in the belly of a beast.
Thankfully, her nights are easier. It isn't silent. It isn't still. She doesn't fall. She just lay and choose. She should grief. She shouldn't. She should be happy. She shouldn't. She should be carefree. She shouldn't. She should feel everything. She should feel nothing.
Most nights, she have nightmares and on the others, she have nothing. Most nights, she miss him and on the others, she begs to forget. Most nights, she likes to pretend he doesn't exist and on the others, he makes up her entirety. But most nights, it is just him, and her, and an endless stretch of darkness.
Bilaal.
Her Bilaal.
She still couldn't believe she met him again after all those years. She couldn't believe he was just right across her room. Alive. Healthy. She couldn't believe. And so, she waits for him, tirelessly, in each tick and tock of the clock, and yearns for him on every inch and edge of the silence that accompanied her everywhere. She had lost him. And she had found him. Yet she hesitates, scared.
It was obvious he didn't want to have anything to do with her. Was it right to push? What if he disappeared, again? It wouldn't be strange. Junaid says he does it all the time.
"He disappears but he always returns. Always." Junaid had laughed at her curiosity when she asked him how comes they don't fear when he does that. She would know how possible it was. He had disappeared on her and didn't return. Ever.
She does the second best thing instead. She hears him. Most night. She hears him walk the hallway. Back and forth. Back and forth. He matches. Or he paints—he is the culprit for the montage in her room. She would wake sometimes and the hallway would be an endless sea, or a tempestuous garden, or an aching sky or a lonely road. It was never the same. It was of no particular order. She could never predict when either. She hears him, but in the last six months, she's only seen him twice.
The first time was on that day when Junaid had introduced her to Grandpa Amadu and she had seen him by chance. He had blatantly refused to hear anything she had to say and had slammed his door shut in her face. She had stood there for moments undefined trying and yet not quite understanding his hostility. Or maybe she does seeing as that meeting wasn't exactly the first time they had met.
Bilaal Yusuf Ahmad.
How can she ever forget him. She couldn't even if she tried. Bilaal is a montage of whatever goodness she could ever wear. And a very long time ago, he was the boy she loved. Desperately.
Bilaal. What can she say about him? What should she say about him? It was like that the first time she saw him. It was like that the last time she saw him. Not much has changed since that January evening thick with harmattan when she had saw him for the first time. She was seven and they had just moved to Mando.
Growing up, her family was always on the move. She didn't understand why but whenever things were starting to look good, her father would make them move. She'd quickly learned that the 'good' her father was desperately trying to avoid was her mother's laughter.
Those days, her mother rarely laughs. She would smile but she didn't laugh. And on those rare moments when she finally does, like clockwork, her father makes them move. It were as if he couldn't trust her happiness. Perhaps knowing he couldn't be responsible. Perhaps fearing it just because. Whatever the reason, when she was seven, they had already moved five times.
Bilaal was the boy on the roadside who didn't move despite the irritating and alarming loud honk of her father's car. Her father had been forced to step out and say something to the lanky, brown skinned boy with rather huge raven eyes which had looked quite startled at her father's car meeting her eyes briefly before he had fled like someone was hot in his chase. They met later in school. The quiet boy everyone notices yet no one really sees.
"What's his deal?" She had once asked,"I get he is smart but he is snobby." She had complained bitterly. He never says anything to her even though they share the same seat and she is always finding ways to talk to him.
"Leave him alone." Everyone had said. "He has always been like that."
She wanted to leave him alone. She wanted to believe he has always been a loner. But what does she make of those moments when she would find chocolate in her locker after a rather long day? Moments when she would be absent from school and somehow find her notes updated—Seatmates share the same locker. Moments when she would catch him staring at her whenever he thinks she wasn't watching. He was paradoxical and she was impatient. And those days, many hours of hers had been spent on trying to decipher his kind of monsters. She couldn't. And in the end, she had pushed him away.
"STAY AWAY FROM ME! YOU HEAR ME! I DON'T NEED YOUR PITY!" She had screamed at him the last time she had seen him and fling his chocolate at him before running out of the class. She was ten & had just learned her friends were just using her. How can she trust him? He might just be like them. Deceitful. And she was tired of hope.
And the next day, he disappeared.
She had blamed herself. What if he had disappeared because of her? What if something had happened to him? Days, however, had quickly passed with no news and since no news was better than bad news, she had kept praying and hoping it was for the best. A year later, they had graduated and honestly, in the hustle and bustle of living her life, she had forgotten about him, at least on most days; there were the rare blue moon days when she would find herself thinking about the boy with the saddest yet beautiful eyes she has ever seen. Junaid had always reminded her of him. It had been strange those days she would stare at him when he isn't looking searching for a person he didn't even know existed. She now know why.
And now years later, she had met him when her life had hit rock bottom and he had slammed the door in her face.
She had tried meeting him after that day but she had always lost her nerve. She would hear him pacing back and forth and she would sit with her ears on the door, listening, like it were some sort of healing, and on those days he would paint, she would sit there inhaling chemicals and writing stories in her head of what kind of drawing he was painting and what could possibly be the story behind it.
Was he as anxious as she was? She would find herself wondering on those days he would pace and on those days he would paint, she would wonder what it was he was trying to tell her because for some strange reason, the paintings had felt like it was made especially for her;
The lonely road had reminded her of the road they had met for the first time. Red. Dusty. Potholed. Empty. On some days, the road would have sunshine, birds & trees, and on others, it would wear the night sky, wind & gravity. Her favorite is the aching sky. She had never thought much about the sky and its many skins, but between its orangeness when the sun sets, its blackness when the rain comes and blueness when it just is, she'd learned a new color exist. Pain.
The second time is today. Now. In this very instant. He is standing in front of her.
How? Why? What is happening? She was yet to understand. She had a knock and thinking it was Junaid, she had opened the door. Only it wasn't him. It was Bilaal. He was standing in front of her, staring at her with those melancholic raven eyes of his and not saying anything.
"Is there something you need?" She hear herself say in quickly fading brevity. She could hear her heartbeat in her mouth.
He doesn't say anything. He just stares. She shifts uncomfortably. There was nothing on her face, is it? There couldn't be. She just prayed asr. Her face is clean.
In the ensuing silence, they hear the gates open and a car zooms into the compound. They hear footsteps after they heard a careless slam of door and seconds later, the front door opens. One. . .two. . .
"Ah! There you are," The intruder laughs and she looks his way. It was Junaid. She smiles.
"Were you looking for me?" She asks and at the same time she moves her gaze to Bilaal. He wasn't there. There was nothing that shows he was even there a moment ago and instinctively, she stares at his door only to hear the turn of a key. He had disappeared, again.