"Do you think it matters if I know what's written in here?" She was swinging between the extremities. Rip the papers to shred or memorize the truth.
"What I think doesn't matter. What matters is what will put the unease and suffering to ease in your heart?" He handed her a cup of coffee. She thanked him as he sat next to her.
"You should at least know who I am? What if I can never look at this and never know."
"I won't look at it, and frankly it doesn't even matter to me. I have told you a thousand times over. It matters to you, and rightly so. I'm not going to weigh in on this for you." He tucked back the falling hair on her face. "You had my file the whole time and you let me tell my story."
He smiled at her as she looked up.
"I will let you tell me who you are through your own words and your own story. I never thanked. I should have thanked you days ago, but I will now."
"For what?" She creased her forehead with confusion.
"For letting me tell you what happened. For trusting me enough to do this. You have no idea what it meant to me. So let me do this for you too. Take as long as you want and I'll be right here when you want to go through these okay?" He kissed her forehead and pulled her closer as she nodded.
/////
"Your website is getting wonderful feedback." He was lazing around the bed as she stared out their window. The mountains were foggy and clouded like her mind.
Her heart aching to flip through the documents. Through photos, but another part holding her back. Fear. Every vein of her body was laced with fear. Fear of rejection. Of being called illegitimate by her own father.
The man she dotingly considered her father. Loved him all his life couldn't even be bothered to text her. She understood she was not his child but what about all the affection and emotion she had for him as his father figure?
So she was laced with fear to expect much from someone who barely donated his DNA in her veins.
She knew she needed no one's approval, affection, and love to know she was damn worth being loved and being happy, but little Rabail in her craved the affection that was her right.
She wrapped her arms around herself, crossing them across her chest.
Her whole world was filled with what ifs and the broken hopes and wishes of her childhood. She was well on her way to healing, but the truth of life was that she could never from the lost time.
The nights when she went to sleep in the darkness of the night, quietly crying for her mother to hold her because she was scared. The lost time of being Daddy's little princess.
Of all the things lost time was the only thing that could never be recovered and all she had was a pandora of lost time.
"Rabi?" She had not even realized when he stopped talking about the website and when he left the comfort of their bed and stood behind her. This was the reflection of the depth of her dilemma. "What happened, love?"
She leaned into the safety and warmth of his arms, closing her eyes.
"Is this the dawn I have been waiting for my life? The first thread of life?"
Her voice was exhausted for some reason. As if it's been too long for her wandering between pain to pain, tragedies to accidents. Her limbs fatigued. Her voice wearied of the future.
"What are you talking about?"
She held the documents in her hand.
"My whole life changes again after this huh?"
"It will, but to what extent that's on you. What's going on in here? Talk to me." He tapped his head.
She opened her eyes. The ambiguity rotting in her for days was now at the surface.
"This is could change me, give me a surname... maybe or maybe not, but it will never recover me for what I went through. I lost my whole life begging to be loved by my damn parents. The wounds will never heal. The time is lost. So I don't know what I want from this?"
"I know what you mean very well, Rabi. What happened to you will never be healed no matter how much we try. The pockets of darkness will follow us till the end of time. Reminding us when the situation is similar. When life brings us face to face with those people again. Everything will become freshly wounded and maybe even bleed again." He swallowed the lump in his throat as if he was familiar with the dilemma she was in. "But you can't stop living because of that fear and trauma. You have to take it and step on it to rise higher. You just have to make peace with your past."
Wrapping her hands around her face he grazed the delicate skin of her jaw with his fingers.
"Time was definitely lost, but if you let it drag you back, and let it keep you awake night after night... you will lose this time now. Learn to love yourself like you love me and others around you. Loving yourself and being at peace with your past is the only way forward. You don't have to go back to your mother or maybe even forgive her, but you do need to let it go gradually to be at peace with yourself.
"And when it comes to wanting to know your father's name or who he is, or whether you want to contact him or not. Weigh it in. Will it help you let it go or will this destroy whatever progress you have made with yourself? Your heart will know, you just have to calm yourself and take it one step at a time."
/////
She was toying with the cover of the documents. Just do it, damn it. The more she was stalling, the more anxiety settling in the pit of her stomach. Her gut feeling just confused the hell out of her.
Asfandyar had gone out of with his friends, instructing her to see the girls tonight, but she stayed back to finally to do it.
Swallowing the lump in her throat she flipped open the documents and read through the names and the where he lived where he worked. General Information. She was rather looking through it with detached emotions. As if reading about someone else's story, until she reached the photos and the file slipped out of her hands.
"Oh fúck no. Life wouldn't fûcking play me like that."
She frantically ran to the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face with a trembling hand. He is not my father. She chanted to herself. There is no way in the world this is true. Another splash of cold water. He could never be my father.
Turning off the tap, she walked out. Putting her hand on her mouth, then back on her hips as she paced around. Rubbing her face with her cold hands. She anxiously walked around the room.
Oh, hell no. Ya Allah, what is this?
/////
"I think your wife is possessed." Zach stared at her as she sat there with her widened eyes still staring at the papers on the table. "I think Jinns got her." He waved a hand in front of her, but she just seemed to be lost in her own world.
"Shut up, Zach." She flashed her blazing eyes at him and then shivered as the truth crossed her mind again.
"Oh Noor, you're alive. Here I thought I was going to have to get some Juju shít done to get you and your Jinn talking."
"Rabi, what happened?" Her husband rubbed her cold hands.
How am I supposed to tell him?
"Uh... Uhmm... I just... I uh I read the... the documents. And uh... they uh... have photos." She swallowed after every word. "Zach!"
She called him out and then pointed at the papers sitting in front of him.
"You want me to read em out loud?" He raised his eyebrow as he picked up the stack of papers and opened it. He froze too for a second and then his eyes bugged out.
"Oh... Oh..." Zach flipped through them. "OOOHHHHHHHH."
"What is it Zach?"
"I mean I don't know if I should laugh or be shellshocked. This is worst than the trashy movies Noor is obsessed with."
She rolled her eyes.
"What is it Zach?"
"Man here I thought I was a stud, but look at chu getting engaged to one sister and getting married to another." He was met with a cushion thrown into his face by Rabail.
"What?" Asfandyar was confused and snatched the papers from Zach. Scanning it, his own jaw dropped open. "OH!"
They all just sat there, reeling in the fact that Doctor Affan Rahman was Rabail's biological father, and Maheen was her half sister.
"What are the chances!" Zach shook his head and a shiver ran down his back at this weird coincidence.
"What am I supposed to do now?" She looked at the both the men who were just as confused as he was.
"You were missing an evil stepsister so here she is completing your Cinderella story."
"ZACH!" She threw her hands in the air at his smirking expressions.
"What? No wonder he was staring at you all weird." He raised his eyebrows, but meeting her angry gaze made him drop it. "Okay, I'm just kidding." He backed off. Then the curtain of seriousness fell over his wyes. "Do you want to reach out to him, Noor?"
She stared her fingers as they intertwined with each other. Her throat burned as if she had drowned a glass full of poison.
"Rabi?"
His voice washed over her soothingly, calming her nerves.
"I do. I want to reach out to him. I want to see him at least once." She closed her eyes as she felt her husband hands on her own, reassuring her. "Do you think Maheen is going to be okay with this? I mean she doesn't nessecarily like me."
"It's not about her at all, Babe. It's about you. You have been kept away from your father all your life so now it's just about you and what you want. Stop thinking about what others want."
"He is right, Noor." Zach smiled at her. "You're going back with him to see his family anyways. Maheen's family is there also. You have few days to wrap your head around this. For everything else, don't worry. I'll get the meeting set and I'll reach out to him and see what his reply is. Trust me. I got your back okay?"
"You're going with us right?" She furrowed her eyebrows.
"Ahhh... about that." He stood, stuffing his clenched fists in her pockets. The nerves in his temple working angrily. "I can't. I have work."
"Bullshît!" Asfandyar let her go as she yelled at Zach. He leaned back, crossing his arms across his chest as he watched his wife fight his best friend. "You own the firm and the last time I seen you even talk about work was never. So don't make excuses."
Zach glanced at his bestfriend, he just shrugged in return.
"Look, Noor. I have my reasons to not return. Please understand. I-"
"No Zachary Wahab. You will go with us and if you refuse I'm not going either and which means you're practically ruining my honeymoon with my husband after this trip and trust me you don't want to get bad duas for that."
"Just agree to go, Man. She used your full name. There is no getting out of this anymore."
"I make to promises, Noor, but I'll think about it."
Oh, he was so going. Rabail Smirked. She was going to take him with them even if it meant dragging him across the country.
/////
Come home. Rabail won't come home without you. I know Lala won't either. Please, do me this one last favor. - Ruh
He paced around the leaving room. Rage flowing through his veins. Shoving his hands in his ruffled hair.
How dare she? How motherfûcking dare?
He put his forehead against the window glass, looking over Downtown. He promised himself to never let her affect her again. But who the hell was he kidding? She had asked him once and he had been in exile for ten years.
Laying awake at nights because dreams and nightmares both belonged to her. Wandering from hotel to hotel, even though she had never been here still his home carried essence of her.
Everything was stained for him. His solace was a lost cause. She was everywhere even years later. The way her face would glow in moonlight. Or that she held the light of sun her eyes. Imprints of her fingers on his when she would hold them. Traces of her warm lips on his cold ones. She seeped into his veins.
He pressed the name on the screen and waited for her to answer.
"Zachary!" Her whisper echoed through the phone. His back stiffened.
"Ayla Alina Khan!" The name once brought him solace was bitter on his tongue yet caused him sweet pain. "I'm not coming home. Ever."
"Please. This one last time. I take my words back. Do this for Lala and Rabail. They deserve to be home. It's been to long."
"And I don't? It's always about others huh. It's always about you, about them, about everyone but us. What about us? What about me... damn it?"
He punched the window and it broke and crashed under his knuckles. His fingers and knuckles bleeding.
"ZACH!" She knew he had done something. She knew him more than she knew her own soul. She knew his anger. And it was because she knew him, she knew it as well that he was coming home. He could never say no to her.
Even if it meant setting his life on fire again.
"I hate you, Ayla." He whispered as he fell to his knees. "I hate you for what you have done to me."
He threw the phone across his living room. It shattered just like his heart as he screamed in pain.
Why did you do this to me? Why did you break my heart?
He had tried to burn down his world. Turn his memories into ashes. But she had risen back from those ashes. He could burn his world, his memories, his body, but how he burn his soul.
She was his ruh.
She was his soul.