- What if the world told you 'men never change'. Would you still believe in redemption?
- What if your whole life is shrouded in secrecy. Would you shed your mask for one person anyway?
- What if an avatar intrigued you. Could you fall in love with...
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Zain
"Did you call and check in on her?" Fiza asked me as the two of us sat in an antiquated meeting room at the Rangers HQ, with its unfashionable wallpaper and ancient wooden panels, trying to ignore the musty odor while waiting for our respective bosses.
She didn't elaborate on who 'her' was, and I didn't inquire further. I already knew, just as she understood precisely why I hadn't reached out to 'her'.
"Why would I do that?"
Fiza raised her eyebrows. "She sort of saved your life, you know."
"I didn't ask her to," I shrugged.
That cold indifference might have come across as rude but it was merely a facade masking a deep-seated fear. An emotion that was so consuming and intense that there were moments in the past two days where I found myself almost paralyzed with dread at the thought of something happening to her. Every worst-case scenario had played out vividly in my mind till all I wanted to do was take her away and hide her from the world.
Echoes from my past reminded me how I had once installed a tracker on someone's phone and kept a tab on her whether she went to eat ice cream with friends or to the gym on her own. And, there was the urge to do it again.
This time I would even be justified. Ameerah had walked into the middle of a drug dealers' rendezvous and surely they would have realized she was no innocent bystander.
She could become their target.
Tracking her activities would be for her own good. Right?
Wrong, my conscience kept repeating.
The lines between my need to keep her safe and what benefitted her were razor thin and so easy to blur. Yet, they were there. And be it the lack of alcohol dulling my senses or the woman for whom I would rather die than hurt her, this time I could clearly see them.
So, no. I did not call her, or text her, and tried my damndest not to think of her.
Instead, I asked my cousin to check in on her.
"I am sure Kiran Api would have called her," I told Fiza just before my cousin's husband and Major-General Majid walked in.
"Doing ok?" Junaid Bhai asked me as he took a seat on the faded leather chair at the head of the table.
"Yes, Alhamdulillah."
"That was quite the feat you two pulled off the other day," my own boss remarked.
Fiza gave me a side-eye. "We had help," she clarified.
"Ah yes, Ameerah Sheikh," Junaid Bhai smiled. "My wife calls her terrifyingly unpredictable and stubbornly fearless."
There were plenty more adjectives I could add to that; generously compassionate, fiercely independent, infinitely resourceful - heartbreakingly beautiful. Yet, those words would remain confined to the pages of a diary, never to be uttered aloud by me.
