As Meerab's voice echoed through the hallway, Saad found, to his dismay, everyone's eyes trained on him. Maa Begum, Murtasim, his parents- everyone's.
Saad was suddenly the centre of all the attention. Expectent and distressed looks caused him to momentarily loose his ability to construct a sentence out of his jumbled feelings. He mental cursed himself, for the thousandth time, for being himself.
Oh! How he hated being here!
Ever since he could remember, Saad had hated attention. It made his stomach feel weird. He was content being the background character and let others shine in the spotlight. Fortunately for him, he was never a subject of it either.
All the attention in their family was reserved for the lovable Maheer and the witty Neelu.
Not Saad. Never Saad.
"Go on!" Meerab urged as she slowly walked down the stairs towards the crowd. "Tell them how you feel about all this." Her voice held anger as her hardened eyes bore into him with expectations.
"Tell them your wish!" She now stood next to her silent husband whose eyes were downcast.
"What are you doing?!" Maa Begum's enraged scream filled the silence. "He is my son and he will stay here!" Her words held an entitled assurance, as if- as if Saad's words will not have any effect on them!
"And I am asking the same son what he wants!" Meerab, again spoke with conviction as she held her own against her mother in law. "I thought your children were precious to you. So why don't we listen to them for once?" The taunting tone didn't go unnoticed by Saad.
"And Mr and Mrs Hussain? Saad is legally your child. Why aren't you saying anything?" Her sharp words caused his spectator-like parents to reel back in shock. Meerab's eyes, he could tell, held an abundance of untold accusations towards his parents.
"We just want our son!" His Maa finally spoke up after what felt like an era. "We just want our Saadi to come back home with us!"
Her distress was visible in her voice. Saad wanted to give her a hug and assure her. But his legs felt frozen still.
The overwhelming urge to throw up arrested him in his spot. Saad hated attention.
He just wanted to go home!
"See, he wishes to go back and his parents even want him!" Meerab's voice, this time, came out broken with something akin to longing as she stared at his mother with teary eyes, "Unlike the people in Karachi, they will not just let him go!"
Meerab visibly tried to compose herself by taking deep breaths as her voice wavered with emotions. Saad pitied the young girl.
No girl should hold that much pain in their eyes.
"Children are not toys without feelings, Maa Begum. You can't just expect us to switch off our emotions according to your whims. We are human!" Meerab's eyes, red with unshed tears, glistened as she uttered those words through a chocked sob.
"You can't just expect us to let go off our love, our dreams, our lives whenever you want! We deserve better than that. We deserve to be treated as human with a will of our own!" Meerab was screaming now, her chest heaving with every word she shouted.
"You think Saad will be happy if you keep him against his will like some kind of exotic pet?" She let out a mirthless chuckle. Maa Begum flinched back at her mockery.
"No, he won't be! He will live everyday with the painful memories of what was taken away from him!" Her voice sprouted venom as she almost spit those words out.
YOU ARE READING
BEST OF BOTH WORLDS
Fanfiction"Sometimes Saad wanted to feel special too. Sometimes Saad wished life would shock him too for once by giving nice things to him. Is it really too much to ask?" Fate reunites Saad and Murtasim during the most chaotic phases of their. Face to face...
