Voice Recording 01

Recorded: 26th June Wednesday

Hi there, Hana.

Things must be bad if you're listening to this, and I must be in some terrible place of my own to not say this all myself. But that is the real dilemma, is it not? 

I have been wanting to talk to you for real all this time, to actually talk to you the way we used to before we burned out on each other; camping together on my mattress, having sent Mama and Baba off to a date night dinner because they needed the romantic break and put Dadi to sleep after watching some awesome Pixar movie with her. The way we would discuss anything and everything, what to bake next, ways we could make money and go on a solo trip together to Turkey and ride the hot air balloons in Cappadocia. How we could start our own bakery of sweet delicacies, build a posh little patisserie at the corner of some famous rich street, dress like boss ladies with aprons embossed with our names and golden hairnets on our heads, hand out with each order the most cute little napkins again signed with our names and even before we'd reach to open up our bakery in the morning, there'd be a line waiting to devour your love filled treats. However, time has a funny way of showing us the future is never as sweet as we envision it to be.

What a tragedy!

And you're at the hospital now with your friends, a Wednesday morning, late June, you could be here with me instead but you're colouring with cancer fighting kids over there and that's good, they need more brightness in their miserable lives but Hana, I'm your sister and as selfish as it sounds, shouldn't I come first? 

This is absolutely bizarre and psychotic of me and I don't know what more to call it, me talking to myself pretending to be talking to you and even recording it but it's been a long fricking time. Why have we not reconciled yet? Is this forever? Is this how Hana and Hanaan comes to an incomplete end? Didn't Anna and Elsa have such a distance too before they got back together but then again, they went through a lot, Anna nearly froze to death and it was Elsa's fault in some way but here, it's the opposite, it's my fault instead. I'm sorry I lashed out at you like that but you lashed right back at me and ever since we've been on silent shoulder treatment but isn't twenty four months enough for a winter so cold it is making all parts of me dead with your frostbite?

There, I just don't even know how to say it. I keep pointing all the fingers of blame at you even though I don't mean to.  I am sorry we had to fall out like this. I'm sorry I made you feel insecure about yourself because you thought you made me feel insecure about myself and maybe just a little bit I was too but that was stupid of me. That was immature of me, that was me just being cranky, Hana. 

Why didn't you knock some sense into me and tell me to find myself and be my own unique self or some stupid advice like that which would have worked in that time? But you didn't and I'm not trying to blame you here again but yes, Hana, I do blame you for not coming back to me the way you always did, like the elder, responsible, compromising sister you always were and made me so used to relying over. I told you to stay away from me and let me be myself when we fought that evening, the fight of our miserable lives, the Fight, but it was not what I meant at all. 

Why did you not see the real meaning through my angry words? 

Why did you actually do as I say? 

Why did you leave me alone?

Hana, I am so lonely, without you.

And I've done something.

I don't blame you for doing this thing, I can't even blame my CP or my loneliness I think, it's entirely on me. In this time what I have done to feel closer to you, it made sense when I started it but it no longer does anymore but I can't stop either. And you'll wonder if I ever told you or you found out for yourself, why I did this stupid thing and I don't have the answer to that, I don't want you to think I am obsessed with you or anything though yes I do admire you deeply for all that you are, this distance included.

So let me take you back to the very first memory I have in my head of me falling head over heels in love with you. God, look at me saying it so easily when you're not around, when you can't hear me say it, when I'm absolutely sure you'll never come around to hear me saying all this that I do love you, with all my heart. Why isn't it so easy to say so in real life?

I remember that day clearly, so very clearly when we were little with no worries in the world, no insecurities in our hearts, no concern for what the world would think of us if we smiled too bright or talked our hearts out.

You and Nashwa were six, I was three and it was the weekend. Nashwa was over at our place, you both were doing your homework, colouring in a maths worksheet which required you to add two numbers and then match the answer with the colour key given and then colour accordingly in the shapes that had the sum written in them. Of course I wouldn't agree on doing any other worksheet that was not exactly like yours because Hanaan only did what her Hana did and it took some persuasion from your behalf to convince me that one day I would grow into a big girl like you and then be able to do such a difficult worksheet, that I ought to colour my circle, triangle and square first because that's how you started too.

Mama was outrageous how easily I listened to you but wouldn't to her. You were Hana after all.

So we were sitting and we were colouring together and I kept asking you, "Hana, what to colour circle?"

And you didn't like being disturbed amidst your work but you put up with me anyhow. You told me to colour it yellow because the sun is yellow and it looks like a circle. I thought in that moment, who even is my teacher when you are such a genius!

I asked you again, "Hana, what to colour triangle?"

You told me to colour it green because leaves are somewhat like triangles too and they are green.

I asked you again, "Hana, what to colour square?"

You told me to colour it orange like the square wall clock in our room. You made so much sense that day to me, always did, no wonder I have never ever doubted your decisions in my life. Until one day I did and it cost me all this time we could have spent together had we not distanced ourselves.

Tragic, am I not?

But that's not all, Hana. I remember so vividly, I remember every thing in my life so clear it's actually more of a curse on me. You were colouring with your brows pinched together, so focused and Nashwa was colouring with her tongue poking out, her hair was short back then, so curly then too and I remember her face was as pointed as it is now, she's shorter than you, she's my height and even back then, while you did look your age, Nashwa looked like mine. I wonder now, was it because she had lost her mother and lacked that nurture? She was awfully tiny back then.

I remember going for yellow when you suggested it, reaching for it but grasping red instead. I looked up to see if anyone had noticed but no one had so I tried again only this time my fingers grasped blue instead. I watched you put down your colour pencil and without even looking, picked up the green one as you intended. I let the matter go thinking this too was something I would learn over time, how to properly use my hand, it would of course take me time to become as good as my Hana was. Little did I know it wasn't a skill to be learned, it was my lifelong tragedy, my cerebral palsy, the bringer of many bruises to come and now heartbreaks too. But early days and childhood brains, they work in miracles, don't you think? If only I was still that little Hanaan and not this walking tragedy I am today. 

Daijoubou. I'm fine.

And then when I did finally grasp onto that yellow colour pencil and begin colouring, I only let myself down even more. My pencil moved on its own accord, I wanted to colour like you, within all the lines but a slight jerk of my wrist and there you go! 

A catastrophe! 

A long line went straight outside the circle and across half the page. It was such a shameful moment for me, what if Hana sees? I had looked around warily if you had noticed what a bad thing I had done but you were colouring, not a stroke out of line, no white spaces, your forehead creased as it does so still, focused on what you were doing.

I continued anyhow, it would take me time to be as good as my Hana, my heart dropped into my stomach many times when I scarred my colouring page with yellow marks all across it, aiming to colour in the circle, my pencil colouring anywhere but in the circle. I let go of yellow and reached for green instead. That too took me so much time to just put my hand on it and then curl my fingers around it and for a moment I considered, was I possessed by a jinn perhaps? One that thought I was cute? Or scented Mama's perfume on me as Baba said jinns were likely to do so on little girls who used their mama's perfume? Perhaps this one was from Nashwa's ghost stories that she would tell us every weekend when she stayed over, after drawing the curtains in our room, turning off all the lights and only just holding a flashlight up at her chin so all her dramatic facial expressions could be emphasised. I wonder where she learnt the skills of theatre at such a young age. Was her mother very playful before she died? Or was it Ahmad Mamu?

So as disturbed as I was internally and on the verge of crying and tearing apart my worksheet ready to tell you how I was damned, I caught sight of Nashwa's worksheet to which I had not bothered glancing at all when I had you in front of me. I noticed her worksheet and then her face and then her worksheet again. Her tongue was still sticking out, her left hand held her colouring pencil, and with her head tilted, she let her wrist drag her colour pencil aggressively across the page. Her worksheet was a mess, all colourings out of their borders, strokes in many different directions, not at all like yours was, neat and perfect. There were too many white spaces left and while you shaded lightly and gracefully holding your pencil at an angle, she held it in her fist, vertically straight and had grated the nibs of our treasured colour pencils violently across the page.

But wasn't Nashwa a little bit older than you? Should she not have done it better?

Did that mean ... it did of course! To my three year old mind that still believes so, it was clear that Hana was one in a million, that there was no grace, no neatness in the world that could match hers. It meant I wasn't possessed by a jinn or a churail, it meant Hana was too good a level to be reached by someone ordinary like me and Nashwa. It meant you were the shining star, the fairy princess, you were someone very very special and Allah had sent you to be my sister. Of all the little girls in the world, He sent you to me.

Ever since that day when teachers would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I told them I wanted to be Hana. They'd ask me again, what I wanted to be? A doctor, a teacher or a — I interrupted them plain and clear, I wanted to be Hana.

And do you remember when I turned four, as we cut the cake and I blew the candles and everyone asked me what I wished for, I told everyone with an air of pride, I wished to become Hana of course. They could stop calling me Hanaan now, Hana I would be henceforth.

But it doesn't really work like that does it? 

Wishes blown on birthday candles can't possibly come true, can they? 

I like to think this is just a coincidence, I know it all sounds like an obsession from the very beginning but, Hana, I'm human too and the very ego and pride that held me back from apologising after our Fight that day and even afterwards, even now, it is the same ego that makes me say, I am not obsessed with you, yes, I respect you, admire you but I'm not obsessed because obsession is such a dark word and yet somehow what I have done is dark too.

I don't even know what I'm saying anymore, just that I wish you were here with me and I could talk to you so easily the way I'm talking to myself with my earphones plugged into my tablet, recording this, hoping somehow, Allah will put it in your dreams and make you come back to me. That I could tell you what I have done and you could help me come out of it but you're already angry at me, this would just make you furious on me for life.

Because, Hana, I will always need you. Not just to physically help me around, but mentally, emotionally too. Call that my dependency, my desperateness, my love or my trust.

I pray to Allah we can sort this between us soon and you can bake me some of your heavenly treats again, with your love back into them.

Saranghae.

Come back to me, Hana.