Love at First Heist

TEN

Photographs would always be nothing but a lie. A scam. Shehnaz always remembered this as she recalled when her family took their last photograph together. Her parents had been fighting just before, and it had been two days since Shehnaz had eaten anything, because every bite she swallowed flushed right down the toilet afterwards. But they all smiled once the camera clicked flash, and looked exactly like people of a conveniently happy home.

Paintings on the other hand had been different. There was nothing artificial about how one executed art, even if unintentionally, their emotions overruled everything else. While the audience, even if unable to guess the abstract behind the art, would come up with their own. And the observer's observation became the subject, but there was an observation, always, whereas photographies had been nothing but empty white lies.

"How're we always this restless, Arashi?" Shehnaz says, washing the paint off her fingertips leaving the water turn to shades of jade and ruby and putting on the engagement, "We try chase stars until we realise it's nothing but ash, that we're nothing but dust ourselves,"

"Half a life spent for fulfilled wishes we have lived and half to weep for the ones we have not. Shukaar ada karne ke chizay humare charo dik titlia ke tarha ghumte honge par hum makkhi ke tarha haata denge,"

As Shehnaz begins to scratch Arashi's chin, the feline purrs as if in understanding. It causes Shehnaz to laugh, before biting her lip then releasing it, "Perhaps because this dunya is so temporary, the restlessness never ceases. Like there's a longing in my soul that cannot be satisfied regardless of everything, as if it belongs elsewhere— beyond all of this."

"No matter what happens, that— that solace is never present. It's a curse but, I am, however, so grateful for it, because otherwise I do not know whether I'd be able to find myself in religion so much. That this dunya isn't it, we wouldn't be so vulnerable and mortal if it were. Our souls are destined for something so much further than just the universe. " She releases a deep breath, as she thinks about meeting Idris' family.

What would it have been if he could meet hers? Not that there was much to happen, her father wasn't a good person and her mother suffered for it. They probably couldn't have had a nice meal, with jokes every once in a while about her silliness growing up with photo albums and cassette tapes to support their frankness.

Her eyes watered, that even when a part of her was euphoric about getting married, to finally be part of a family— a sort of happiness her birthright deprived from her growing up, she was stuck on the possibilities of what could've been if those people were different. And all of her longing to be another identity elsewhere showed in the painting perfectly, one of the gardens of babylon.

She rested the back of her head against the railing, looking at the painting. Although it was abstract, she could tell the details apart; the glow of the tangerine sun was a glorious gold, and strokes of navy blue and jade after the iridescent peacock feathers, whereas palace domes had golden and silver shimmer splattered on them, absolutely glamorous—like the weddings in her culture, and the paint was textured as if it longed to come out in reality. Silhouettes— the figures wore attires out of a thin pastel muslin, celebrating in circle. Gardens full of flowers; lilies and jasmines especially, and the wisteria with branches that hung low, acting as a curtain cascading over the waterfall.

She sighed, rubbing the paint off from her fingertips.

"Shehnaz!" A yell comes from behind making Shehnaz turn her head around.

And there he is, her family.

Idris stands with a fry pan in his grasp, his glasses slightly tilted wrong, and the kittens crawling up his track pants.