Who Loves You | ✓

xliii • daneen

Daneen grew up believing she had to be the object of everyone's sympathy. She had to make people pity her so she could get what she needed from them. She had to be this weak, powerless human who couldn't breathe the air around people far well off than her. She had to stay in her limits.

But after all this time, it was not herself she felt bad for, but Fareeda.

"Must've been quite a tiring journey, no?" Daneen questioned, rubbing a hand over her arm.

Fareeda nodded, her straight black hair falling out of her bun. "I haven't travelled so far since he died."

Daneen peered at her. To say it was an odd miracle Fareeda was in her room, talking to her, would be an understatement. "You never speak about him."

"Ammi Jaan hated it. I eventually stopped."

"Why?"

"A tongue as dirty as mine should never tarnish a name as pure as Furqan's."

Daneen's chest ached, and even if her mind had trouble processing this information, somewhere deep inside her, she knew. She knew Ammi Jaan was capable of that. "She said that?"

Fareeda nodded. "If you ever repeat those words before her, a flash of recognition will pass before her eyes before she'll pretend she doesn't know what you're talking about. But she knows I overheard the things she'd say to her friends in my absence."

"That's... that's horrible."

Daneen noticed Fareeda's breathing pattern changed. "You know Daneen, I brought up the topic of divorce once between myself and Furqan. Even though he had all the love in the world to give to me, I still felt suffocated in the relationship. Furqan said he would divorce me if it made me happy, but only after Abnosh and Tabish settled down in their lives, because they were still studying and they didn't need the distraction."

"But you did imply this suffocation meant you couldn't be with him anymore."

Fareeda shook her head, going into an elaborate explanation of how the situation took a horribly wrong turn this point onwards. Fareeda had never even thought of divorce, but when Furqan told her the only way out for her was through the separation, Fareeda began doubting her decision. Was it really worth it to let go of her home, the happiness of her children upon seeing their parents well and together, the unity of a family? Was she ready to give it all up just because she needed room, space to breathe in?

Fareeda pursed her lips, continuing. "Furqan discussed the matter with Ammi Jaan. She was ballistic. She said she hated me for what I was making her son do. I tried to go back, Daneen. I told her I didn't want to leave. But she didn't listen to me. All she knew was divorce was a taboo and she wouldn't have that stamped over Furqan's forehead."

Daneen crinkled her brows. "So there was no other man?"

Fareeda narrated how she had been accompanying a cousin of hers, Waheed, whose name Daneen had heard once during a conversation of Ammi Jaan's. Waheed had just been widowed and needed a friend to confide in. Ammi Jaan mistook their closeness for Fareeda's disinterest in Furqan, even with reassurances from both Fareeda and Furqan that she was assuming things. And by the end of it all, Daneen had a hard time wrapping her head around the fact that Ammi Jaan, a woman she held in the highest of regards, was capable of such a thing.

"You're saying Ammi Jaan twisted the situation?"

"She's old. She doesn't remember things as well, Daneen. She'll say one thing and forget it the next day. She misread the situation and then put all these ideas in Furqan's head, and kept feeding them to him until he couldn't take it. He wasn't doing very well with his health in the first place."

"Why didn't you speak of any of this? Why don't you tell Abnosh and Tabish?"

"I've given up on explaining myself. It is no use. I'm already the bad person in their eyes."

"You could have at least tried to step forward and improve your relationship with Abnosh and Tabish. They wanted you to."

"I know," Fareeda spoke. "But I'd been thrown so far down, I couldn't find my way back."

Dear heart, just a little more.