Waleed
"Asalam Alaikum." I greeted my mother after having decided to drop by at her house before going for work today.
She stood up and smiled wide as she pulled me into a hug. "Walaikum Asalam. What a pleasant surprise!" Then she looked over my shoulder and frowned. "Eliza...?"
"She's staying with her family for a few days. Where are Dad and Shifa?"
"Oh, your father isn't home. Shifa's upstairs in her room. I'm seriously concerned for that girl. She's always in her room, doing something she refuses to tell anyone. I don't know what she's indulged herself in."
I couldn't help but smile at her concern. She was always concerned like this for both I and Shifa. "Relax, Mama. It's probably studies or something."
"Actually, how about you go and talk to her? She needs human conversation, unless she's been hiding someone in her room to talk to." She shoved me lightly in the direction of the stairs and I shook my head but went up anyway, heading to Shifa's room.
I knocked on her door and patiently waited for her reply which came as a mumbled 'come in' a few seconds later.
"Bhai!" Her eyes lit up as she threw herself onto me, arms going around my neck. It honestly reminded me of Eliza, who I'd last seen two days ago.
"What is my little sister up to? You're worrying Mama."
I saw her cheeks turn red as she averted her gaze, fidgeting with the hem of her shirt instead. She sighed and I knew she'd decided to confide in me. "Making plans."
"For what?"
"Bhai... I want to study law." My eyebrows furrowed at her words.
"And why exactly do you look nervous while telling me this? You know I, and our parents, would support you fully, right?"
"It's because I want to leave the city." She blurted out, leaving me to blink at her in surprise.
"What? Why? There are plenty of good law schools in Islamabad, Shifa." There was absolutely no reason for her to want to go away when she had everything here.
"Because I want a sense of independence, Bhai. And I'm not going to get that, or even want to do anything myself if I knew that you or Mama or Dad are right there for me to rely on, do the hard work for me."
Shifa was my only sibling, my only sister and Mom and Dad's only daughter. She was nine years younger than me, born when Dad had permanently returned back to Pakistan from the UAE. Of course we all would do anything for her.
But the idea of her being far away... It didn't settle well with me, and I knew it wouldn't settle well with our parents either.
"Shifa—"
She waved a head and shrugged. "Oh, don't worry. I'm not planning to do anything now. Maybe in two years? We got plenty of times for my plans to change."
"Have you told Mama? Dad?" My eyes fell onto her open notebook and once I read the word 'diary' on the top, I immediately shut the book and set it aside. She was turning twenty in just a few months, and even if she hadn't been, everyone's privacy mattered. Under her table, in the shelf, I smiled at the six copies of Pride And Prejudice sitting there neatly. She was so obsessed with the book, and she was still collecting more copies.
She shook her head and I exhaled deeply before gesturing for her to sit down on the bed. She listened and I dragged her desk chair in front of her and sat down.
"Why do you feel like this, Shifa? Do you... Do you feel suffocated around here?"
I'd been a little younger than three when Dad had left Pakistan to work outside in hopes of creating a better life for us. In the six years he'd stayed away, visiting once or twice a year only, I'd missed his presence. I'd missed my father. During those years, Eliza's parents had been our neighbors and her and I had become friends. While after returning, he was content with having a well paying job and getting a better house in a better neighborhood, away from where we'd previously lived when he was away, I wasn't. Those years had been hard for me. And a well paying job, or any job at all wouldn't give a secure future to my family or me. I could simply not let the same fate fall upon my children where they didn't have their father around for years. That's when I'd build the business I had now, with the help of Dad. I knew I was overprotective of her, so was Dad. He'd missed so many years of my life, he didn't want to do that with Shifa. But none of us had meant to make her feel like this.
"No." Her reply was dry and hesitant. She was lying.
"You do, don't you?"
"Honestly... Just a little. I want to do something for myself, Bhai. Like you have done. Maybe not as large as your business, but at least want to be independent once."
"Okay, but not now. You're too young right now."
She grinned and nodded then hugged me once again. "I love you."
It was a difficult to force on a smile. "I love you, too."
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The conversation with Shifa had left me... unsettled. Disturbed. I'd never known she felt that way, and I could bet my parents hadn't either.
But what I saw once I entered my workplace was only the icing on the top of the day I'd had.
"What's going on here?" I made my way through the small crowd of people gathered in the lobby, all of them my employees.
Aruba stood in the center with a man who looked furious as he held her wrist in a grip tight enough to make his hand turn white.
"Who are you?" I glared at the man, coming to stand by Aruba's side who was panicking now.
"Oh, are you Waleed Asad Bukhari?" He eyed me with disdain and tugged her hand again. I only caught the edge's of her coat's sleeve to save her from stumbling.
"I am. But who are you?"
"Her husband, and leave her hand. I don't need you meddling into our business." He shot back and only tugged her again.
All of this wasn't adding up. As far as I knew, she had a happy married life with her husband and two sons. This man... he didn't look close to being a good husband. Not with the way he held her wrist so tight that I was almost scared it would break. "How about you leave her hand first. And if you don't want me meddling in your business, then don't bring your business at my office."
"Waleed, just please forgive him. I'll go with him, it's okay." She tried to say, and I knew it was her form of damage control.
I put my hand over his on her arm. "You are going nowhere with this man."
"She is my wife!"
"And you clearly don't know how to treat your wife. My employee will not be leaving with a man who I don't trust with her safety."
I didn't even understand how or when it happened. His hand shot up one second and his fist was colliding with my face in the other second.
Everyone around us gasped. "Zaheer! Are you crazy?!" That was Aruba's voice, and the next time she spoke, I knew she was standing close by. "Are you okay?"
In blind rage, I stepped forward and grabbed him by his lapels, punching him square in the jaw with enough force for him to drop onto the ground as I released his shirt. "Get the security and get them to throw him out."
"Waleed-" Aruba started talking but I instantly held up my hand.
"You're coming with me. Now." I made sure my voice left no room for argument as I ran up the stairs, entering the first empty room I found on the fifth floor.
Aruba was my assistant, sure. But she'd been with me for four years. Even your enemy starts growing on you after seeing them everyday for four years, and Aruba was a dear friend. To see her husband like this...
"That is the man you're married to?!" I couldn't keep my voice from rising as I paced the room angrily, trying to make sense of what I'd just seen.
"He's not like that, trust me." She immediately defended him, angering me further.
"Oh, I think I know exactly how he is. How come I didn't know about it? I thought you were happy with him, Aruba!"
"I am happy with him!"
"With an abusive man? Who, if I guessed right, was dragging you out of your workplace between a hundred people? That is the man you're happy with?"
"This is my business."
I ignored her. "Has he ever hit you?"
"This is none of your business, Waleed." She didn't say no.
"It is because it is a darn police case if he's ever hit you, Aruba! You're my friend, I care about you, alright? Why are you still with him?"
I saw the tear falling from her eye before she quickly wiped it away and gritted her teeth. "I can't just leave him like that. He's my husband and the father of my children, don't you get that?"
"He. Is. Abusive."
"He doesn't hit me, alright? Yes, I know he's not the best husband out there—"
"A competitor for the worst, actually."
"—but he's a good father. My sons are happy with him. I'm not doing anything. He just got angry today. He isn't like this."
"So he can get angry whenever and he'll do all this to you and you'll silently take it all?" I couldn't believe her. The twenty-nine-year-old woman I knew was wise and mature. She wouldn't let this happen to herself.
"Yes, for my children, I would."
Barely able to put up with her without getting annoyed and wanting to break something, I gave up, pulled out my phone and dialed in the number of a friend who owed me a favor.
"I'm calling in the favor now. Get me one apartment right now and furnish it completely."
Aruba shot me a confused look. "Now you have an apartment that you can go to whenever you need to get away, alright?" She'd known me long enough to know that it would be pointless to argue with me right now so she only nodded.
And I was so damn furious at everything. I couldn't believe that I'd been so oblivious to it all for four years. But I could only pray to Allah that my sister never gets a man like Zaheer and I, God forbid, never become a man like him to Eliza.
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(A.N): The whole father-away-in-a-different-country can take more of a toll on a child than it seems :)
And... The next chapter is one of my favs *side eye*