"I love you too, Alishba. I love you today, tomorrow and forever."

She jolted up again. The pearls of sweat on her head and neck rolled off from her perspiring body and joined her dried tears on the pillow. She closed her eyes and sighed.

"Why can't I forget him?"

════ ★ ════

Her day went as usual. Office, meetings, talking session. In between, cups of coffee and salad for lunch. It was hectic as usual, headaches creeping at times which she gulped it down by taking aspirin. She loved seeing the papers scattered over her office table and herself in the front chair during meetings. She never once thought she would be someone who held this much power and authority, after going through the struggle five years ago.

As she washed her hands under the running faucet, her eyes went to the reflection of hers on the mirror in front of her. The way she changed, from an immature young girl to a strong independent woman she was. Magnificent wings were grown from the slit of her scars on her body. And those wings never stopped fluttering. She didn't let it.

Her eyes then traveled to her neck, moving her ebony dyed curly locks to the side and turning around to see her nape.

'محاربة'

She smiled at her own reflection, seeing the tattoo that said 'MUHARABA', meaning female warrior in Arabic, embossed on her dusky skin behind her neck. To get tattooed was always Alishba's wish but she kept it aside because of the people around her. But now as she was a woman of her own, she hit her bucket list, making her wishes come to pass. That tattoo was a symbol of the pain she endured, the struggles she faced, the woman she was today.

════ ★ ════

"How are you today, Alishba?" Dr. Lolita asked as she smiled at the Indian Muslim girl in front of her.

"I saw him again."

"Alishba, can I ask you something?" she asked after letting a few seconds of silence pass between them.

"Yeah, shoot!"

Dr. Lolita took a deep breath.

"Why don't you contact Zayn?"

════ ★ ════

The warm water reached upto her chin as she closed her eyes and dunk herself into the tub. Her muscles relaxed with the warm water touching each and every nook and corner of her body. But her mind was restless. It had been since the moment her therapist asked her about contacting Zayn. The memories flooded her mind, just like the lukewarm water flooded her eyes and ears when she dunked herself deep down.

But I don't want to get married. I don't want to marry that guy. I want to marry someone else. I'm in love with someone else.

These words rang in her head but never came out. She didn't have the courage to tell her father that she loved a guy, and that too a Pakistani.

Zayn was a Pakistani but this never came as a hindrance as Alishba didn't bother about his nationality, race or culture. All she saw was a boy who made the butterflies in the pit of her stomach go berserk, who made her whole body in a shambles with just a smile that showed off his left dimple. But when her father broke the news of her getting married off to someone she never saw, she low-key wished that she should have bothered about Zayn's nationality. If she did, then she would've kept a distance. If she did, she wouldn't have fallen for him. If she did, she wouldn't have been drowning in her own tears by now.

It took her four days to muster up courage to tell her father that she was in love with someone. Although she knew that her father would make a huge fuss about it, pointing at their family's reputation and what people would say, she prepared herself to face the worst of the worst consequences.

"Aththa (dad), I like a guy from my college."

That was all that rolled off from Alishba's mouth as the next second, her father made sure his daughter wouldn't utter a word anymore.

The tight slap across her cheek made her taste her own blood that glided down from the cut on her lower lip. Without giving time to realize what was happening, another slap that was harder than before was plastered on her other cheek. Whimpers left her mouth along with ignored pleadings while tears rolled down her bruised cheeks that blended with the crimson blood of hers, as her father harshly grabbed a handful of her hair and dragged her to the unventilated storage room of their house.

"You will not eat and see the light until your wedding day." Alishba heard her father from the other side of the locked door.

The taste of metallic blood in her mouth, her smarting head and her tears were the only things she could feel as the darkness of the room engulfed her.

She counted the days of her marriage, more like her ordeal. Her mother and sisters were able to give her food without her father knowing but as Alishba thought about the upshot if her father came to know about this secrecy, she shut herself to food and water. She didn't want any other women in her house to get tormented like her.

She wanted to fight. Fight till her very last breath. But as days passed, every ounce of energy left in her vanished into thin air. She was helpless, soulless, and wished to be lifeless.

She didn't have any means to contact any of her friends she befriended at her college. She didn't tell anyone about her wedding as she thought her father would accept Zayn as his son-in-law after much convincing, just like she was able to change her father's mind on not letting her go abroad. But how wrong she was about her evil of a father. And how she wished to let Zayn know about everything, so that he would have been there to come and rescue her, just like a prince saving his princess in a fairy tale.

But fairy tales were called fairy tales for a reason. They were just some mere fantasies of someone, maybe a dream that one wished for. Alishba knew her life wasn't a fairy tale when she sat beside the groom, her now husband, at the age of 19.

"The bride is so beautiful."

"So is my life!" Alishba said to herself sarcastically.

When she thought her father was the monstrous, barbarous and satanic man in this world, she was wrong. Her husband proved her wrong. Not giving her a position of wife but a slave that should cook and clean for him and also someone to vent his throbbing and twitching pulse. Her first time with her husband was nothing different from that of a forced sexual intimacy. A marital rape.

While Zayn asked for her consent and made sure he didn't hurt her, her husband acted as if she wanted it more than that hornball. While Zayn kissed her soft rosy lips lovingly and gave her time to prepare herself to take him, her husband didn't even kiss her, instead ripped off her clothes and entered her forcefully. Being heartless about the tears that profusely and continuously rolled down from her eyes, he vented and vented until he reached his high and left her on the bed, all alone. She felt used, disgusted, unwanted. She just wanted to die.

Every single night her husband, who was worse than her father, beat her up pointing out petty things. She was just someone that he could take out his frustration and anger on. Alishba's petite figure would be lying down on the cold floor with blood dripping from her forehead, lips, arms and legs. The scars on her skin were nothing compared to the depth of the scars on her heart.

"Zayn..." she would mumble under her breath as she laid on the floor, praying to God and begging Him to not make her see tomorrow's dawn.

How those ocean blue eyes, that smile, that unseen, warm touch, that euphonious voice and saccharine words soothed her bleeding heart, even from miles away!

Things became worse when she missed her period and realized a new life was growing inside her. And that life had the blood of a callous monster. Alishba knew that a woman had to be prepared, both physically and mentally, to be a mother because bringing a kid up wasn't an easy task. The child's perspective on how the world was and the humans were completely depended on how its mother saw the world and humans and Alishba, she regretted being alive every single day. She thought about abortion home remedies- eating pineapple, doing heavy tasks, taking over-the-counter medications and so on. But the pure and innocent part of Alishba that hadn't ceased burning flickered at the thought of her baby.

"But what did this unborn child do for its father to be a demon?" Alishba thought before embracing her belly with love and warmth for the little one.

She showered her little one with lots of love, affection and care and gradually, she found herself smiling after months. Her unborn child was a rainbow, who shooed away the dark, heavy cloud that lingered over Alishba's head, filling her life with seven wonderful colors. But when she smiled thinking about her baby, when she kept her hand on her baby bump to feel the small kicks, when she hummed a lullaby while knitting a tiny purple sweater, deep down a voice in her said that she wouldn't be happy for long. It said a bad omen was coming. And it did.

Her only source of happiness was crushed as her little one got miscarried on the fourth month of its growth. It was a punch that was a "mistake" from her own husband, the child's own father, that killed the baby before its heart learned to beat. The line of blood that trailed down her legs, as she clutched her stomach in bone-gnawing pain and gut-wrenching cry, told her that she lost her little one even before naming it, cradling and singing lullaby to it.

Although it was her husband's mistake, the whole family blamed her for the child's death, telling she should have been more careful and responsible. In a way, Alishba was glad that her child didn't see the face of the world as she thought about its survival in this world, amongst these people, if it was a girl.

Alishba met Lolita during a seminar session that was held by her husband's company.

"WOMAN AND HER IMPORTANCE."

Her husband read aloud from the poster on the entrance of the hall.

Those words coming from someone who beats his wife to death every night. Ironic! Alishba thought to herself.

Alishba attending the seminar was by far the best move she took in her life. If it wasn't for that seminar, then she wouldn't have met Dr. Lolita, who knew from the first glance that Alishba was a living zombie. And if it wasn't for Dr. Lolita, then she wouldn't have the tenacity to throw the papers that read DIVORCE in big bold red letters on her husband's face. Her father, her mother and sisters and in-laws were all stunned when they heard this news.

When Alishba's father confronted her, she disclosed everything about how her husband treated her. About how her father lost his grandchild even before taking the baby in his hands.

But instead of being angry at the man who abused his daughter and made her cry for seven months, her father said, "I don't want to know all that. People will talk and remember, you have two sisters that should be married off. Who will marry a girl that has a sister who's a divorcee? What will people say?"

What will people say?

Of course, that was all her father was worried about. Well, to be honest, Alishba didn't expect much from her father.

Filing a complaint on her husband for domestic violence, Alishba left everything behind. Her home, her parents, her siblings, her family, everything. She swore she would never ever look back again and took off with Dr. Lolita to New Zealand. She told herself that whatever happened was a past, an awful and a dark past.

Getting out of the tub, she put on her pajamas and went to the balcony that showed the breathtaking view of a full moon, with a glass of red wine in her hands.

════ ★ ════

"Why don't you contact Zayn?"

"I don't want to suffer again. I don't want a life with a man again. I don't know if I can be a good wife or a good mother. My ex-husband made me tremble at the word marriage. My first love made me cynical. I can't do that to myself again. Right now, I'm independent. I can do whatever I want, whenever I want. I'm successful and an inspiration to millions of budding entrepreneurs out there. I love that. And this loneliness. It's gonna be here in my heart forever. It is unerasable and ingrained. Even though I miss Zayn and feel like I want to be with him, deep down I know. I know that I'm better off on my own. So, I'm gonna let it be like that. I'm gonna live a life with no man because I want no man."

════ ★ ════

She leaned on the ice cold metal rail and closed her eyes slowly. Alishba took a deep breath and let the chilled breeze pepper her face and damp hair with kisses. She opened her eyes and looked at the full moon that stood with pride of giving light to people and creatures in the darkest of dark hours.

She smiled to herself and whispered,

"You're doing great, Alishba. Keep going! After all, you're a muharaba."

THE END

It was her chaos that made her beautiful.
- Atticus

════ ★ ════

Ok. Lemme tell you somethings.

Did you find Zayn's confession creepy?
Haha darling, it may be creepy for you but look from Alishba's perspective. If she saw Zayn just as her friend and nothing more, ofc it would have been creepy af! But Alishba had feelings for Zayn and that too deep. So when Zayn painted her portraits and surprised Alishba, she didn't freak out but instead she was shook to the core as she didn't expect a guy like him to have feelings for her. As simple as that!

If you're thinking that it's not a happy ending for Alishba, once again darling, you got it wrong! She indeed is happy with her single life and is independent who can take decisions on her own and mark her life ahead. She is trying to cope with her single life as she knows it's the best for her. And if you're thinking 'why the hell she can't just move on?', lemme tell you, not everyone is same and has the same mind as yours. She's taking her time to let go of her past as she knows she's got plenty of time in her hands.

So basically, I'm trying to normalize the fact that women can be happily single if they can be happily married. If it's cool to be a bachelor, then why not a bachelorette? It's not necessary for a woman to have a man in her life to be happy. She can embrace her single life as long as her heart desires.

I know many of you are thinking how can Alishba be a follower of God when she doesn't even wear a hijab (scarf) and drinks wine. Well, wearing a hijab isn't mandatory and one cannot compel a girl to be a hijabi. It solely and completely depends on the girl. And drinking wine, well you know there is also non-alcoholic wine!

When I described about Alishba's father and husband, I don't take the whole Muslim men in general. When a few of them are monsters like this, a majority of them are the best, like my dad and bro, because Muslim religion necessarily highlights the importance of women and is a rule that women in general should be respected irrespective of cast, race and culture.

As much as it hurts to say, this short story is based on a true story of many girls out there. I narrated thousands of girl's lives in three chapters to let the world know that there are much more horrendous things happening around them, which are going unnoticed. Being treated as a liability, a burden, a slave. And this not just revolves around the Muslim religion but also the whole world. I have heard many incidents like this and in our society, it's the girls that are blamed nevertheless. And don't even start with forced marriages! Like seriously, what the hell is going on in people's dumb heads. Why are parents forcing their kids to marry when it is purely their wish in the first place? To see them suffering in a loveless relationship? Dafuq!

I'm just tired of people saying that we girls are just some objects that are used to continue the kinship and doing household chores. I'm just tired of people saying that the kitchen is meant just for us. I'm just tired of men suppressing women and having superiority when they don't even have the conscience to do their own dishes. To all men who thinks that we are their helping hands and nothing more, IF WE WOMEN DISAPPEAR FROM THE FACE OF THE WORLD FOR ONE DAY, LET'S SEE HOW YOU MISOGYNISTIC PIGS SURVIVE!

Thank you so much for reading my book. It means a lot! Hope you enjoyed it. Thanks again!