[Enjoy!]

I gasp, "It's Abyan's birthday? Really? Allah, I missed it again?"

I hear Sehar aapi, "Stop nodding, she can't see you Abyan,"

"Ji," he uses his words.

"I'm so sorry. How old is Abyan now?"

"Chaar."

I gasp, "Chaar saal ke ho gaye ho tum? Itne bare?"

His voice grows up cheery, "Yes. Mama said I can stop wearing diapers at night. I doesn't ruin the bedsheets for... mama how much?"

"Didn't," she corrects him, "two months,"

"Two months." He hyperventilates and talks with so much emotion. I still can't figure out he's a real human being, he's grown so much and he has learnt so much.

I laugh at the unnecessary information, but it's cute how happy it makes him.

"Really? Two months? Wow. That's like a big guy."

He goes on about all the gifts he's been given and it's so hard to think that this human being was nowhere when I got married to Azaan. He was non-existent and he just appeared one day and decided to change everyone's lives.

"But you know, no one gifted paw patrol shoes uhhhh," I'm sure he'd straight up say it but his mama's around.

"Mhm, I get the point. When is Abyan coming to my place so I can give him his gift?"

"Yayyy!! Mama said she is busy this week but we will go meet Sawera on Thursday if Abyan's a good boy."

"Thursday is so far, won't you miss me?"

I thought he was silent because he was sad and missing me, but he was actually thinking of a solution.

"Why don't you come to my house?"

He's never said that before.

"My house is so so big, this big," he gestures a lot and rarely ever talks to someone on the phone. He doesn't realise I can't see him. "Mere paas aik mama hain, aik dad, one dadi ammi, one dada abbu, one phuppo, aur main— Nahin mere paas chaachu bhi hain."

"I'm sorry, I'm busy as well. I can't come."

"No, you will come to my house. I'll show you my room, my car bed," he gasps "and mama gotted me Rubble's lamp it do paw patrol light on the top of my room."

"Rubble? Mujhe toh lagaa aap ko Chase passand hai?"

"Mama says there was no Chase but I'm sure she forgetted."

He says forgetted with so much confidence. Bhabhi told me to correct him but I find it too cute to correct. His urdu is even cuter. I'm glad they're teaching it to him and he knows it's a different language, because I didn't and I used to speak in it even in school.

We both have a laugh and Sehar aapi's probably not around anymore because I don't hear any justifications.

"Aap ke chaachu kaise hain abbh?"

"Ttheek hain. He played soccer with me and he cheated and he said he winned but— maine khela achha, I doed this," he pauses and definitely moves his foot in some way "he said that isn't allowed but I seen him doing it too but he said it's allowed for him because he's big. I said I'm four now."

"What did he say?"

"He do—did:" he definitely shrugged, "he did this."

"Okay, but no cold anymore?"

I can hear him moving his head and he gasps right away, "He's my chaachu and you're just Sawera but I see you more than I see him."

"What do you mean by you're just Sawera? Is he more important?"

"Haan, kyun ke dadi ammi kehti hain yeh unnh ka bhi ghar hai aur he's my chaachu and you're just mama's friend."

"Abyan, it's 8PM. You should be in bed. Aaj Monday hai lekin jab aap so jaaein ge toh Tuesday ho jaae ga, phir agli dafaa sone jaaein ge toh Wednesday, aur phir—"

"—Mere paw patrol shoes!"

He's just a child, I tell myself, but the pain crawls up my heart.

"Mujhe days of the week—"

"—Wow, haan, paw patrol shoes zyaada zaroori hain,"

"Nahin, I know you're going to make me paw patrol cupcakes. Like the last time."

It's not because he's a child. There's no reason to miss me.

"Okay right, you're not excited to see me, isn't it? I'm going to give the gift and the cupcakes to your mum and tell her to give them to you. I'm not talking to you anymore." I huff and he hurries a bunch of NOs and tells me how much he misses me and how much he talks to his dadi ammi about me.

I mwah him a good night and cut the call.

27th of January.

Azaan's 32.

It's been four years since the last time today was a peaceful day.

One day it'll be fourteen years to that and I'll still sit in sadness.

Or not. If Azaan gets married again. To someone better.

Anyone's better than me.

I hear the call to prayer and get up. The prayer mat is already spread in the room from Asr. I wrap my hijab around and only leave the mat after almost an hour of praying for the same thing.

It killed me for around a year. We signed the divorce papers in the morning, at 10AM, and I had the whole day to cry.

I spent a horrible year after that. It was full of crying. I cried all day all night and I was losing weight but it didn't matter anymore.

I tried to think losing weight would help me love myself and I reached all the goal weights yet the love never came.

Sehar aapi helped me a lot. I don't know how she did it but she helped me out of that disordered thinking, on the right path, towards Islam.

She also got me in the interior designing field, alongside her.

She helped me build healthy habits and I hate myself to this day for every time I thought wrong of her.

All she has been to me is nice.

I moved out of bhai's house once he thought it was safe and he bought me this perfect little place to live in.

It's not a penthouse, it's on a fourth floor and you can hear New York's busy life all the time, but that's what I love about it.

I'm never alone with my thoughts. There's always a noise disturbing them and that has made them disappear.

I rarely ever think of anything. I live life everyday the way it is. Keeping myself occupied 24/7.

He doesn't come to my thoughts.

But Abyan brings him to me again and again. By talking of him.

He asks Abyan often about me.

And Abyan cutie teased us of being boyfriend and girlfriend once but got scolded by him and didn't talk to him for an hour.

If only he knew there's no possibility anymore.

I'm done with the wudu and I spread the prayer mat again.

Sometimes I think of what Azaan could be doing right now.

Is he praying and asking of a way out of this misery? Or is he happy now?

I've hated myself all these years and I had promised Sehar aapi to start going to a therapist as soon as Azaan married someone else but two months ago I realized I couldn't stretch it any longer.

I knew if I didn't start I'd fall way too deep to ever rise again and literally, my only motto has been to survive until Azaan gets married.

Or I don't know. It keeps changing. I just know I need to survive as long as I can. Azaan's marriage is just one excuse of the many I've put up to procrastinate my death.

And I don't want him to live with the guilt of ending my life. I know he's too nice and the guilt won't let him move on.

I don't want that for him.

I put this useless life to some use and pass time.

But the sessions aren't working much. Azaan deserves happiness more than I do.

And I'm the one going to the psychologist.

He's still living in pain.

Even Abyan knows it.

Sometimes I want to go to him and tell him to move the fuck on.

It's been four years.

That's too much.

I can't drag life any longer.

I know seeing him with someone else will shatter my heart completely and I pray Allah pardons suicide after that if the broken heart alone doesn't kill me.

Because He knows what's going in my heart better than me and He'll know it was too hard. No one could have survived any longer.

And even if Allah doesn't pardon me, this life's going to be a waste. I don't want paradise if not with him.

I imagine everyone in paradise with their soulmates and me and my parents all alone in different corners. I, holding that one letter in my hand.

Hi Sawera,

Lyrical Video: Chalte Chalte Title Song | Shah Rukh Khan, Rani Mukherjee

Love, Azaan.

~~~

When you aren't waiting for anything, days pass quicker. Thursday comes and Abyan sits and watches cartoons while Sehar aapi tells me of a wedding they are all going to attend in Pakistan.

Somehow, every talk of ours reminds me of Azaan. Some nights I want to lie in bed and just give him a call. Ask him how everything's going and tell him that I miss him terribly and that he was right, I shouldn't have been stubborn, I'm regretting it so bad.

And it's not that I don't have those intrusive thoughts where I see him going to the study and taking an aspirin just because of how acting like he loves me gave him headaches.

But four years of being on the right path has taught me that love is natural when you spend enough time with each other. To be honest, I already know it. I know he was in love with me just as much as I was. If not more.

Sehar aapi too once told me how it's impossible for someone to waste so much time on someone they don't love.

I don't know if I'd love someone the same way despite their irritating illnesses.

And these six weeks of self-care have taught me there's nothing too bad in me to not be loved at all. Sehar aapi and Izyaan's relationship is very similar to what ours was.

I used to think he was providing me with too much but that's how it's supposed to be. It was his responsibility.

I wish I knew it then. It could have changed something.

Every single thing I've gotten to know now has always come with I wish I knew it earlier. And I wish something, anything could have stopped us.

I kiss Abyan a goodbye and when they leave I lie down on the bed.

Nothing can ever fill this void in my heart.

He has the missing pieces to this puzzle but I can't even request him to solve it.

It's devastating.

I watch him online on WhatsApp. At this hour.

Who must he be talking to?

Sometimes I wish WhatsApp had that Snapchat feature where you can see when someone's in the chat.

I would like to see if he ever misses me.

If he ever reads our old chats the way I still do.

If he ever wishes he could go back to that time just to live a second of it once again.

Because I would. I would give everything I own to just get to relive one minute of that life.

I miss sleeping on his chest.

I remember how hard it was in the beginning.

It still is.

Time doesn't heal anything.

My heart aches the same way. It hasn't healed. I've learnt to conceal the ache.

I put on a movie and keep avoiding the pain.

[Thank you.]