Dearest Miss,

"I humbly approach to be something and someone because I feel my authentic self or any men is not enough. Oh, they say, Miss, be yourself as if Man truly is something great not knowing that Man in its true self is a savage, an animal. How could I be myself?  Imitation is key to the art of living. I am on a quest to find the most subtle soul to imitate, till then I must be in unrest or wait until death approaches me politely"

Do you remember I said these words to you?

Do you look as beautiful today as you did the first day I saw you, in the mahogany scarf on your head, your lustrous raven curls, your lean eyes like the crescent moon, and those lips, oh Miss you have the most beautiful plump lips like a blooming tulip...oh you're so stunning, something to marvel, to save in sight, to remember on an odd afternoon, to think about at night?
Yes, I felt all that the very first moment I saw you, it was like an entirety.
Miss, I want to talk to you.
Can we talk?
I suppose you agree.
Did you nod or you took a deep sigh like you always do before listening?
I want to gather your sighs in my hand and bottle them up in a jar, I wonder if that's possible?

I miss you.

Oh yes, when will you return?
I have a favour to ask, can you convince my mother to retire herself in an old age home or asylum. She always talks me out of it.
Please be back soon.

You have bewitched me that I forgot all the things but I shall remember all of it and tell you now. Listen, Miss, this tale is true.
My father was not a writer, he was not a professor, he never worked a day in his life, he was a rich elitist from an industrious family who knew how to soil a good name.
He was an alcoholic, a charmer but in only words, he had numerous affairs, he had nothing to do with Maerifa. Yes, nothing to do with it.
Eloped with my mother, a modern sour feminist from Northern Ireland. She was an ardent columnist, the editor of a women's magazine.
All those books you see in my house belong to her, lost her mind in love and suppose her legs too. She says I am like my father, I deny. I wanted money, we had nothing, oh wait we have nothing.
No money, no food, no matter how hard I try I could not do a job well, I guess I am like my father.

Uncle could buy Maerifa, I thought if I persuade him to marry me to his daughter, the bond with come with good fortune.

You came into the next house, I had not seen anyone there before, you had an eye for detail, I was instantly drawn to you. I thought this lovely lady is half the mad, more beautiful than my uncle's daughter.
I wanted to marry you.
I love you Miss and Awan lives for and would perish for you.
Believe me, I truly loved you and your money had a little to do with it... It's hard to make confessions like these.
Then it felt fine most days.
My name is not Awan, my real name is Rouhaan.
Awan is a character my mother wrote for a children book. Who was brown, remarkably honest and extremely languid;
I adopted it exclusively for you.
Do you hate me yet?
Well, there's more.
I knew Timur loved you and that some unsaid mystery between your parents and him have strangled your marriage.
I heard your father choke and threaten him one day. I took advantage of that, I never wanted you to love him.
I know how he feels, my mother was molested by many men or may I say many of her lovers, does that make you pity her less?
My father committed suicide when I was eight. Small age, a big relief. He never treated us right, if we had money from her columns he would take it, drink in the bar would bring white girls home then there would be myriad of fights. I touched one of her girls, she asked me to, I should not recall this.
She hated him, he hates us. He told me I was not his son, now when I look back on my life I indeed am his son.
He committed suicide but immediately rejected it, he yelled from that cursed kitchen to call an ambulance. Deep cut wound on his neck, his hands coloured red, it almost looked like paint. I stood there watching him die. My mother wasn't at home.
She cried a lot.
Sometimes people cry when people they hate die.
It signifies the end of sorrow.

Then itwhite men who made entries into our house, they were never civil.
Mother handed me books; most of them not age-appropriate for me and told me to f*ck off.
Then she lost her legs and she became very lonely. I tried working odd jobs to decent ones but could never make myself stay.
I would always mix up names, stories, people to faces and also forget the job.
They said I am always absent-minded.
I say I am the only one looking.
Then we spent horrible days of hunger.
I started using the only thing I had to feed us.
The charm of words,
I wouldn't say I conned anyone I simply made their sights humanize us.
The people from the market particularly loved hearing poor magic stories that were set in mediocre to begging backgrounds.
And the cafes had a taste for student loans and breakups.
I preferred telling people what they like to hear.
All was going well, I felt ultimately like my story was being written, such a heroine you looked, such a hero I make... just then you mentioned Timur and it became such an uneasy plot. I could understand your point but then I studied Timur withdrawing amount from your father's account and oh miss, poverty scares me more than anything.
Your father has lost everything, he is lying to you currently as well. You too are going poorly. I distance myself, though how could I fix the damage, I thought you could do well with Timur and it would be alright. Alas! This f*cking heart!
Did I tell you I told Timur that I love you one day?
He laughed but he was sad.
I don't like this.

Something is very off.

Zahra comes into my life.
Insane women, sensuous but crazy...
I think quickly that I have everything I want, money, food on the table, property and women to sleep with.
The hole in my heart grew bigger and bigger.
It became so large that I felt like I was inside it. This is where I realise the wealth has made me rich but love left me poor.
She screamed I am just like my father.
Zahra mimics her.
She mimics everybody.
I like that sometimes.
Sometimes I hate it.
Sometimes I want to make love to her till the sunrises.
Sometimes I want to put an axe between her body and tear it apart.
She makes me crazy.
For Zahra, it is that her reality is her fiction.
I suppose we are similar in that aspect.
Her frenzy comes with her believing so.
Believing I had been with another woman when I had been with her all day, believing my mother came running to kill her when she was in the bathroom when my mother cannot walk.
Believing I am trying to leave when I have nowhere to go. She believes in it all.
Sometimes I try to make her understand, sometimes I cry sometimes I scream sometimes I want to kill her, other times myself.
I can live like this no doubt but I don't want to. when I look in her massive innocent harrowing eyes.
I scowl when they watch me. Like it is all my fault...

Unknowingly I trapped myself in a cage of a cannibal who eats me a bite each day.
My mother sometimes pities me, other days she too joins her.

I hope you would write to me so it would take me away from here, like those books my mother handed me when I was a child, I would take them into a dirty room, rub my hands across the paper, smell them and read and get lost...

They are both sad and happy memories to me.

I still remember how foolishly you believed my tale when I took you to the place, you were about to cry, I burst out laughing because certainly, you were corny. Good days Miss.
That place is of Mr Josephine Malcolm, they call it the Putin grounds. I named it Maerifa, don't call it that to anyone else you'd make a fool of yourself once again.
Maerifa is something I would have executed if I could. Pay people to be themselves and express the niche of each soul.
I would give them bread and wine.
And we all could passionately subsist with literature, Golden age, I call it in my head.

Your family always offered me food when I came to Sidra-Tul-Muntaha, I am grateful, I had been starving all those days.

I have said everything now.

My mother would be pleased to see she was right; I am like my father.

Goodbye Miss, it was Good to know you.
I've left a farewell gift for you with Zahra, take it from her, retain it safe and read it every day.

If they tell you I was a happy boy who drowned at the lake don't tell them otherwise.
Let them think of me as a hero,
This would a good ending I suppose,
Not the white man with sad burning eyes but the brown-skinned boy with a never-ending smile.
Oh, this gives me chills...

Lovingly yours forever,
Awan.