Even as a child, Rumi was aware of the personal emotional lynching in both of his parents. They might've just separated, he thought, divorce. And where would Mama go? And Papa would've been back then what he is now— a lump of sorrow and regret and tiredness.
It began a couple of months ago, when he heard whimpers from his father's room. At first, he ignored them, thought that he only wanted to go to the toilet or perhaps a drink of water. But then he heard grimful screams, and at once woke up, and jumped to his father's presence, to find him still asleep, still screaming at once. He'd wake Rustom up, shake him so severely as if he was trying to hold someone to cut out a seizure. Tears streamed and poured out of his father's eyes, and he stammered and didn't speak. He tried to form words. He didn't.
When the painful yells catapulted to a daily routine, Rumi at once summoned a doctor after about three days of the happenings. The doctor said that Rustom wasn't fine. That he was having nightmares. That he was getting old. That it was quite normal for people to feel lonely at this age. That age, once arrived, never retreats.
The doctor left a prescription of pills for Rustom to have one in the noon after a meal, and two more after dinner, before sleeping. And that he must sleep twice a day. Rumi took care of those, gave medicines on time, cooked and served his father like his mother did all those years ago, and at night would recite poetry. This was all it was. And nothing more or less.
For an hour or so, Rumi would walk down to the cafeteria his father once ran with all the young and blood, and spent most of his time handling, entertaining guests and friends— unlike Rumi, who would only go there for a tiny bit of updates on the earning of the day, and if anything had to be ordered.
When he stood by the doorway, in a late afternoon, the sun creamed in mildly, casting a large shadow of his body, and he looked at it silently, his form disheveled from expectations. His father's words came roaring back to him, One day, you'll become like your Papa. You will, won't you? He tilted his head slightly and rested it on the corner railings of the shutter of the shop, neither smiling, nor crying, his face just straight, his neck getting wet from the sweat, and his hair dancing with the breeze.
Yes, he muttered to himself.
***
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The Inherited Custody
General FictionAt the center: there's Rumi, a young boy who grows up in a normal family- yet flinchingly is devoured by the absence of his parents' relationship. Over the years of a silent and lonely family life, he is left inherited with a stack of letters that b...
