- 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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Ameerah
For several minutes I sat still. Unable to come to terms with the name on my adoption papers. It made sense though - all of it. If Irfan Khaver was not Moeez's biological son, like Zain had deduced, he might very well have been adopted from the same center Afaan Bhai and I were.
So, I really could have another brother? The answer came with mixed emotions.
The possibility should have filled me with joy. Wasn't that what I had been yearning for more than a decade - someone to call my own, share my flesh and blood with? Yet, it only brought trepidation.
Perhaps there was something wrong with me. I seemed to only attract the most morally gray of characters.
Sighing, I began to capture images of the document with my phone. I'd need them on my journey to uncover the mysteries of my past. As I carefully returned them to their spot beneath the old quilt inside the trunk passed down from Ami's mother, my eyes caught sight of a petite khaki envelope.
There was a polaroid picture in it. Its colors had faded but that didn't prevent me from recognizing a familiar landscape - the mountain pass that I had noted in the only picture I had left of my brother.
Though, instead of Afaan Bhai, his two school friends and the man I now knew was Irfan Khaver, there was a woman there, standing in the middle of two young boys, her belly round and swollen cradling a new life. The woman exuded an inexplicable beauty, her dark hair was intricately braided and slung over a shoulder. A smile lit up her eyes as she held the boys in a protective embrace. It was the perfect picture of a mother who adored her young children, with another on the way.
I'd seen the younger of the two boys before. He must have been about 5 years old in that picture. His innocent face hadn't changed much as he grew.
I'd never seen the woman before. Yet, in my heart I instantly knew who she was.
My breath faltered as trembling fingers traced the contours of her silhouette. Tears welled up, their warmth a poor substitute for the maternal affection that had eluded me.
"Ami?" I whispered to the woman in the photo.
*******
Zain
"Why are these criminal sightings always in the middle of the night?" Fiza yawned as she and I found ourselves in the Rangers HQ just hours after we had called it a day.
"Evil loves darkness, I suppose."
In this case, 'evil' had a name - Haseeb Rehman, once our colleague, now a criminal on the run who had been sighted along the coastal highway of Balochistan. The highway built along the southwestern coast of Pakistan traversed through rugged landscape of limestone mountains and unique rock formations along pristine beaches. Though, the unadulterated beauty of the region hid a dark secret too.
