● Y A W A R ●
Dear Yawar,
I hope you are in the best of your health, physically and mentally. I know you will be doing fine because I am always praying for you. Not that my prayers are answered, but still.
I know you will be having a bunch of questions in your mind about me. There's nothing special. I was rebellious since childhood. I hated it when someone asked me to do things in their own way. I hated it how society would label a woman modest just because she was wearing a large black fabric around herself. I am wearing it right now, the irony!
The only woman who understood me and kept me bound was my mother. However, she died when I was a 9th grade student. That was when conflicts between me and my father started. After I graduated, I had no option other than leaving home.
A year after that, I met you and the rest, you know.
My love for you hasn't changed. It has intensified instead. You are the only man who will live in my heart till death. You have been so kind and generous on me. It was as if I was seeing my mother in another human's form. I loved how you never judged but understood me, just like her.
I always imagined my future with you, but i dont know at what point it all satrted to seem impossible. But now, it all makes sense to me. Why did Allah make me meet and fall in love with you when you weren't written for me? That was because He chose you to teach me and bring me to the right path through you.
I have been working as a teacher in local school for the past two years. After that, I also take some tuitions. But in evenings when I am done with the students, I go to this madrassah, and that's how I came across true meaning and purpose of life, Yawar. Baji Saliha is so generous. She's another version of you and Mom.
When I was broken and astray, Allah sent you to me. When i was broken again, Allah sent these beautiful students and Saliha Baji from madrassah in my life. Allah, indeed, never leaves us alone after all. It is us who abandon Him. No?
I was the reason for your sins, wasn't I? And i will never forgive myself for that. When you would stop me from things that were wrong, but I will still do them deliberately, the gunnah. It's all on me. I will ask Allah to forgive you because you have always asked me to do things right. I was the one to play selfishly.
You will find a girl one day that is thousands times better than me. I pray this in every prayer. As much as it breaks my heart to say this but I am not her.
I leave you in the protection of Allah, Yawar.
- Someone who dearly loves and prays for you.
Um-e-Hania.
I turned the paper. Is that all? She summed everything up so easily in just a piece of paper? If it was me, I would write books on us, and maybe that was why I never picked up the pen.
I read it all once again and folded the paper neatly, and slid it into my jeans pocket.
I fished out a towel and started to clean the spilt tea. Just as I was done, I washed my hands and walked out my house to Uncle Bashir's.
I ringed the bell.
"If she comes again, ask her where she lives."
"Khairiyat?" (All good?)
"Gee. All good. She was an old friend of mine."
"Looks quite an old friend." Uncle Bashir passed me grin, which was a double take.
"Thank you for keeping the letter safe."
"Oh, never mind. What's neugbours are for, anyway?"
I nodded and walked back into my place.
