One shots

Find me in the hopeless

"I was compelled to love you not because you are the fairest, but because you are the deepest. For a lover of beauty is usually a fool."- Mahmoud Darwish.

The house was quiet. Deadly so. The sound of the chirping insects outside calmed her, made her feel less of the loneliness she had always found herself surrounded by. The all-consuming silence had long become her friend that she was no longer sure she knew what the opposite was. So, she hummed to herself the same haunting tune that told others she was still breathing during the days. And at night made her look like the ghost that haunted the country home where she was left completely to her own devices. She was not living; it was no life, feeling no emotion in an endless state of numbness. And it served as a suffocating reminder that she existed and forever would in the pretty prisons made by men that never wanted her out of love and choice but for the sake of a chess game where she was nothing more than a mere pawn.

Misha was tired to say the least. Five months. Five achingly long months since he married Sahar the girl who had owned him since he was a child. And the women he would wage wars over. Four long months of leaving her in the family country home alone, four months of keeping her a secret from his friends. He wondered what she got up to everyday. His heart hurt from the updates he got from his men weekly. She never left the house, didn't speak to anyone unless spoken to and on more than one occasion had scared half of his workers when she had roamed around aimlessly during the night. He felt the ball form and get stuck in his throat when he thought back to how in more than one report, she had had red eyes. How her cheeks seemed to be sinking further in and it was apparent she was struggling more and more everyday to paste her fake smile on her face. The girl wasn't living, and he had neglected her for far too long when he had sworn to set her free.

The brush stroked the canvas one last time before she sighed. Though no sound passed her lips. Green eyes peered through the swarming colors on a background of a starry night. They looked right through her, holding emotion she had only once in her life been privy to seeing. Their wedding day. Green eyes that looked at her like they saw her, understood her as he swore to stand by her side. Rough hand that held hers as if he was her protector and savior from the prison she had been confined to for too long. Pink full lips that touched hers lovingly that whispered thousands of wordless promises that this would be the beginning of change. She had thought her dreams were finally becoming real. That the boy she saw home in since she was a child reciprocated the feelings, she had for him. That despite the riches and money they had been privileged to have they would be the key to each other's prisons created at the hand of their fathers. That they would no longer be puppets to masters who lived in archaic times. Until she had heard the words that shattered the last remaining parts of her battered and bruised soul.

Yeah well, I'm the one stuck with the weird bitch we've tried to stay clear of our whole lives.

The words rang in her head on repeat for days. The tears she wished she had to cry as an outlet from the wound those words ripped into her heart everyday never came. So, she came into the room she had made her refuge every day, painted, danced, wrote, read and laughed into the air at nothing to tell herself she was okay.

"When was the last time you left for fresh air?" the siren voice behind her spoke in Arabic.

Startled she dropped the brush in her hand at the familiar sound of the voice of her one constant. Iskra, best friend and now sister-in-law. The one human who she knew for definite loved her with all her might. And who she hadn't seen for four months stood at the door. She steadied herself knowing when she turned around, she would be forced to face shared features that haunted her on the nights where she grew most desperate for human connection.

"I have missed you habibiti." She replied in her native tongue, though it did not seem like her voice that carried across the room.

Green eyes brimmed with tears turning a little pink. The sharp jaw and chin wobbled. And she had no energy or capability to feel when she saw the first tear fall with the whimper that escaped rosy, pink lips on the face of the only person who understood her. She simply sat, hand folded on her lap like she had been taught as Iskra threw herself across the room, arms around her. Sahar no longer could register the warmth they radiated.