-Following my schedule now xD

Saleem followed the Imam through the flight of steps leading up to the first floor and stayed at the Imam's heals as he made his way to the prison mosque. By the time they reached there, blood was streaming between Saleem's fingers and sliding down his hand as he clutched his neck.

"Sit down." The Imam ordered, motioning towards the eastern wall of the mosque.

Saleem sat down with his back against it. The mosque was an old fashioned cemented room with woven bamboo mats spread across the floor and a sheen wooden minbar at the front.

Saleem rested his head back against the wall and winced with the pain. The cut was small, yet it won't stop bleeding.

The Imam came back with a plastic box filled with tablets and tinctures of all kinds and a bundle of cotton. Then he sat down, plucking out a swab of cotton and applied what seemed to be tincture of Iodine on it.

"This might sting a little." He warned, and applied it to the fresh cut.

Despite the slight tingle, Saleem stayed put and allowed the Imam to do his first aid. Saleem looked at the Imam with awe and gratefulness glinting in his eyes as the Imam applied the tincture all over his wound.

"Thank you." He said. Never had someone been so kind to him, even his own parents.

"You don't need to thank me. As a human being, this was my responsibility. Hold this," He requested Saleem to hold the cotton swab to his wound while he placed the tincture back into the plastic box.

"Are you okay?" He asked, looking worried.

"I think so." Saleem replied with a look of admiration. So many questions were popping in his head that he did not know the answers to, so he stared into the black beauty of the Imam's eyes.

"You can ask whatever you want."

The Imam's sudden statement startled Saleem, but he recomposed himself to ask what he had been pondering upon for quite a while now.

"How do you live with this?" Saleem asked while still holding the swab at his neck. The Imam sat back and crossed his legs now.

"Live with what?" He inquired.

"How do you live among all us criminals. You are a noble man. You deserve to live among good people."

The Imam merely smiled at Saleem and then sat beside him with his back against the same wall. Saleem did not know how to react. Religious scholars had always been executive personnel as far as he was concerned. Being so friendly with them seemed to be a breach of their protocol as God's loved ones, and that too by someone as pathetic in God's eyes as him was completely out of line.

But the Imam didn't seem to bother that he was sitting with a man who was drenched in a pool of sins. He merely smiled at the ceiling of the mosque as if he could see something that Saleem could not.

"Everybody starts somewhere, Saleem." The Imam now looked at him.

How does he even know my name?

"I... I don't understand." Saleem managed.

"I didn't, too." The Imam chuckled. "I have come a very long way to reach where I am today. And what I am is no more than God's servant."

Saleem could not comprehend what this meant. Instead, this paved way for new questions to form in his head. He stayed quiet for a while and weighed whether asking more questions would be disrespectful. A moment of silence followed in which the Imam recollected his thoughts that seemed to have scattered into the mosque.

"My parents separated when I was ten." The Imam stated, leaving a confused Saleem to wonder what his reaction should be to this.

"I never saw it coming, you know. I came back from school-the only one we had in our locality, and they were screaming their lungs out at each other. I didn't know what to do so I just sat outside in the porch, waiting for things to cool down so I could go inside. I had won the school cricket tournament, you see. And that was a huge achievement for me; the proudest moment of my life!"

A tear trickled down the Imam's red cheek and fell into his lap.

"I don't know how long I sat there holding my trophy, maybe fifteen or twenty minutes. And then my mother storms out the front door and sees me. I hold my trophy out to her in delight when she suddenly lashes out at it, causing it to fall and break, and began screaming back at my father who still stood inside. She said, 'Teach him cricket so he becomes a fool just like you. That's what we need in the family, a cricketer. That'll keep the stove going.'"

Saleem felt guilty for being the reason this was brought up.

"I'm... I'm sorry." He said.

"It's okay," the Imam sniffled. "You don't need to be,"

The Imam regrouped and continued.

"Naturally I was devastated. My whole world had been shattered within a matter of seconds and I faced a choice between living with any one of my parents. I isolated myself from everyone because no matter who it was, they seemed to feel pity for me at best and despise me at worst. Life is not easy when you don't have both of your parent's support."

The Imam looked at Saleem's face who seemed to grasp the point of this discussion, so the Imam continued, "The House of God was one place where no one asked who I was? Where was home? What did my father do? You know why?"

"Why?" Saleem countered.

"Because God does not care who you are or where you belong to as long as you bow down to Him. You receive equal attention, equal love, equal status. The mosque became my escape. I found it fascinating that people who won't even look at each other, joined their shoulders together to prostrate to the Lord. And so, I fell in love with Him."

Saleem's eye brows furrowed at the last statement. He had never heard anything like it. If it hadn't come from the Imam's lips, he might have even deemed it to be infidelity.

"People fear God... But I fell in love with Him. I don't realize why we fear His wrath as a faraway entity who is the Almighty. Why can't we think of Him as our friend? Why are we scared to do so?"

Saleem was unable to formulate any answer. He had never thought of it this way.

"So, what did you do?"

"I trusted Him with everything. As my true friend, I knew He won't betray me, so I never betrayed Him. Years passed by and now here I am... doing His service among supposedly the most sinful of people in hope to change one's life through His love the way it changed me."

The Imam looked at Saleem as a teacher does at his bright student.

"I see that in you, Saleem."

Saleem was flabbergasted at the thought. He; a three-time murderer who was sentenced to death?

"How could He forgive me after what I did?"

"Verily God does not forgive partnering Him and forgives whatever else he wishes to."

The Imam gazed deep into Saleem's eyes as if procuring his soul from within.

"Take that first step, Saleem. Trust Him."

Saleem's whole life flashed in front of him. His parents, the dumpster that he had lived in, the man who had taken him in, how he had used him, the murders he had done... Yet God loved him. He was ready to give Saleem another chance if he wished.

"I've asked for God's forgiveness and moved on. All I'm doing now is spending the rest of my days in his remembrance."

The Imam merely smiled at that and said very calmly, "But that's not how it works, Saleem."

Saleem was confused.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that you obviously had to ask for God's forgiveness... But you have to ask from the families of people that you've killed as well."

Saleem could not believe it. He had trusted the Imam and now he was suggesting something that was more absurd than anything Saleem had ever heard.

"WHAT? WHAT DO YOU MEAN TO ASK FOR FORGIVENESS FROM THEM?"

He was fuming now as his chest heaved up and down with every breath that he took. The Imam had just taken away the key to his escape door.

"I mean that when you overstep God's rights like prayer, you ask Him for forgiveness. But when you usurp a man's rights, God does not entail the wronged by taking it upon Himself to forgive you if the wronged person does not wish to do so."

"YOU MEAN ALL OF THIS... EVERYTHING YOU SAID ABOUT TAKING THAT FIRST STEP, LOVING GOD, ALL OF IT WAS A LIE." Saleem roared at the Imam as his face reddened with anger.

"No, Saleem. All of it was true. Just for a second imagine yourself as one of those families that had to live with what you did. Wouldn't you want to retain the right to forgive the murderer? Wouldn't you want to be the person who chooses whether to forgive the murderer or not?"

Saleem's breathing steadied. He knew he would want that, yet it was unfair that he was locked up here with no possibility of asking for forgiveness from the families that he had wronged. But that didn't change the fact that this was justice.

"It's impossible."

"No, it isn't." The Imam smiled. "I told you, take that first step and trust God."

"What do you mean?" Saleem asked.

"I mean I'm going to help you break out from this prison."

-Okay so I don't know what happened but my reads were significantly low in the last chapter. Is the story losing it's way? If anyone has any suggestions please come forward and comment in a totally unbiased way or just inbox me :)

-Tentative date for next update: 15th July, 2017.