May 8,

Dear Rubab,                               

Your son, Zuhair turns 18 today. He'll start university next month. He's all grown up now and looks exactly like you. He has beautiful green eyes and a straight nose just like you had. He even has the same tastes and choices. He looks just like you, Ruba. I see you in him every day and that's enough for me not to miss you. He's seen you and loved you. He's been fed by you and nurtured by you but our daughter was not. He understands but she does not. She has not even seen you to miss you. We, me and Zuhair, treat her like our princess and she has everything she wants and needs except you. She's just 14. She thinks that after she was born you turned into a star to take care of her from afar. She loves stars just like you loved them. But people say she killed you. But that's not true. That was Qadr. But your daughter is too naive to understand that. She often asks about you. She asks about your hair colour, whether you were chubby or thin like her. She wants to look like you. But I'm sorry to say this (laughs) She looks just like me and loves me more than she loves her 'mamma star'.

I promised the kids that I will take them to a restaurant today. They're literally shouting from the living room because it's already six in the evening. I'll go check on them and see if they are really our children or a monkey's (laughs). I'll take my leave. Bye, sweetheart.

Love you, Ruba. Always

Two tiny teardrops fell on the words 'love you, Ruba'  as I finished reading an entry from my Baba's diary. He was a diarist. After ma's death, he wrote it to ma. He used to say that if Allah wills and her soul comes back on earth, she'll read it and fall in love with him even more on how he handles two troublesome kids all by himself. 

Laughing on that, I placed back the diary thinking of that day. It was Dada's 18th birthday and he was all excited because he was an adult now. Though the memories of that day have faded a bit inside my head but I remember how he had shrieked like a little girl when Baba gifted him a car as his birthday present. I remember how Baba had strictly instructed Dada not to misuse the freedom he was given and how Dada had made a face after hearing that.

No matter how much joy we poured in our father's empty soul, he always missed Ma. He missed her very badly. Just like I miss him now. Just like she misses Dada now. We all have suffered and are suffering the loss of our loved ones. But what could one possibly do when the delicate strings of fate were in a tangled mess and if anyone would try to untangle them, he will end up hurting himself in the process.

Turning the pages of the diary, I opened its last page and found our childhood pictures. A 3-year-old me was sitting on the floor wearing Dada's over-sized t-shirt and my uncovered chubby legs sprawled on the floor with chocolate smeared all over my face, hands, and legs. In another picture, I was holding a telephone and sticking out my tongue on Dada who seemed angry. I was probably 10 in that picture. In another picture, I was probably 17, wearing a hijab and had my arms folded with a grumpy look on my face and Dada was standing next to me, his right arm around my shoulders.

Laughing at those pictures, I picked another one and stood still for a moment. The picture was a bit faded. The woman in that picture looked somewhere behind the camera. The background was a dark night illuminated with bright lights. Her sparkling green eyes filled with laughter. The woman wore a green headscarf, with a golden border on it, on her head and bosom, her beautiful hair swaying with the wind from the sides of her bare neck. Her fair skin glowing like a full moon in the darkness.  A wide grin on her face making the woman all the more beautiful. 

Gulping audibly, I stared at the mesmerizing beauty of the beautiful woman who had birthed me. As Baba mentioned in his diary, I never saw my mother in person. I had always seen her in pictures. Baba was right. Dada was exactly like her. Same eyes, same nose. 

I wish I was as beautiful as her. But I wasn't ungrateful. I was like my Baba and that was enough.

My mother died while giving birth to me. People said I was a bad omen on the Khans. But Baba and Dada never let that affect me. They were like a shield protecting me from the harsh realities of the world. How I wish they shouldn't have pampered me to such an extent that I might not be able to fight my own demons when they're not around. 

Baba always taught me how to tackle my own problems and Dada was always insisting me to learn how to fight physically. Though I learned what all the two of them taught but never got a chance to actually use them until a day came when everyone and everything left me and I was a dying soul stranded on this shrinking land.

How brutal could destiny be that one moment you are living in a happy bubble with no worries and in the other you see your world crashing down in front of your eyes? 

Placing back the photographs and closing the diary, I kept it back in the box. I closed the box and slid it back under my bed. 

***

It was past midnight and I lay wide awake on my bed. Sleep nowhere near me. Just when the whole day had passed by in bliss, this had to happen Didn't I deserve to be happy? I prayed that nothing goes wrong with Ash and Ryan. and praying that, I tried to sleep but in vain.

 After a few failed attempts to sleep, strange thoughts started filling my head and affecting my brain. Was I really unworthy of having blessed by a mother? Was I really so cruel that I killed my own mother? Was I really a bad omen? Did I actually kill my mother right after I was born? Why was I deprived of a mother's love? Why didn't I had a mother just like other kids of my age had? 

I rolled over the other side and clutched my stomach crying like all that nights I cried for not having a mother to kiss my forehead, for not having a mother to hit me and tell me that I had committed a mistake, for not having a mother to hug me whenever I was sad, for not having a mother to teach me how to become a woman, for not having a mother to braid my hair, for not having a mother to tell all my worries to, for not having a mother who would not sleep the whole night when I was burning in fever, for not having a mother who would sleep next to me and tell me stories of her youth, for not having a mother to always count on, for not having a mother to be loved by, for not having a mother who would console me whenever I cried of pains, heartbreaks, for not having a mother on the night before my wedding and to tell me the best and worst outcomes in a marriage, for not having a mother to take care of my father when I was in a different home. 

I cried and cried.

For not having a mother.

Because I was a bad omen that killed my own mother.

***

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