Hiraeth

16

SHE recalled wearing a lot of bangles. Not just a few, but many and would equally fill both her hands with them. Everybody thought that it was her way of romanticising her existence. She told some that it was something that she did from her teenage days. She loved getting ready for Eid since she was a little girl and would giggle when her mother would slip them in her delicate hands, sending a cold yet fulfilling sensation down her body. 

The only difference was that it was partly a lie. She did love them as a child and always looked forward to them on Eid but her mother could never for once bear the thought that one day, those same little hands would be filled with scars to hide. Her daughter would no more come to her for days, sometimes spend her Eid alone and wear those bangles everyday. Not out of love nor for the sake of her interest, but for the simple purpose of hiding her wounds. 

She stared at her wrists. It had almost been a year since she had stopped wearing them. They weren't that evident anymore and all she could figure out were those scars that lasted over time and wouldn't go any soon either. 

"Pink and yellow." Ayla peeked over her dresser while her keen eyes went through the array of bangles hung behind the mirror. 

Sitara smiled at her but could feel her eyes prick as she went through them, looking out for the ones that the kid had wanted. 

"Yellow ones are of mama's size. Pink?" She whispered, getting a hold of her small hands and could feel a deep burden slowly tying itself up in her chest.

She felt a lot of things while slipping them into her hands. Her heart weeped for her mother. That discernible feeling of somehow being imprisoned in her place for that very little moment was beginning to tear her up.

In Ayla, she wished that she'd stop seeing herself. She prayed for innumerable times in her head as her own thoughts would eat her down. She was begging for her to never end up anything like her. 

"Sitara madam, are you done?" The nanny knocked on the door and she could hear a crying Abeer. 

"What's wrong?" She asked, feeling him rushing into her arms the very minute she had opened the door. 

"Abeer?" She whispered, running her hand through his face and gasped. He was burning with fever. 

"Nimrat, please call the doctor." She panicked, lying him on the bed and saw her rush. He seemed too tired to speak or even react. Guilt flushed her over, realising that she had never paid enough heed to him for the whole day. 

Ayla silently gazed at them, a little hesitant to say anything but observed Sitara's distressed features. She couldn't recall anybody else being the same towards her except her dad and grandmother. 

"Were you there with me when I was a baby?" She hesitantly questioned, adjusting her head in her newfound mother's lap. It was foolish of her to compare things that way but it was all that she could decipher from what she saw.

Sitara feigned a smile, nodding as she kissed her forehead and put a blanket over Abeer. She was too young to be told those harsh truths. 

"So will you leave again when Abeer grows older?" 

Her eyes found hers. Big and brown, as deep as the sea when you'd attempt to look into them. Just like her father's. She knew where the little girl was coming from, she had many of such unanswered questions pelting up within her that went unaddressed or unsaid. They might have just been within her but nothing triggered them enough.

But whenever she saw Abeer with Sitara, she somewhere felt confused. She knew that she was her mother and had also accepted her wholeheartedly without much thought but grievances were embedded deep down within her too.