Deen Queens

one [saleena]

SALEENA

Saleena Ali was cold.

She hadn't really noticed it before – being half asleep and all – but the chilling damp crept through her bones like venom, set out to kill. Her legs trembled uncontrollably from beneath the crumpled sheets wrapped around her knees, withering as her mind grew darker with every passing second. It was always the same scene.

Her family – ammi, abbu, her older sister Sameera and their baby brother Yusuf – were laughing around the kitchen table, their voices blending into the familiar smell of a lemon-scented laundry detergent and ammi's homemade samosas frying. They were happy, they were all so goddamn happy. Yusuf had needed to go to the toilet just as their mother turned the gas off, the two sister's flipping a coin to determine which one of them would get up to take him. They were both feeling lazy and coin flipping had always been their chosen method of decision making, the only method they wouldn't good-naturedly argue about. Saleena had lost and so, with a roll of her eyes and grabbing hold of her brother's chubby fingers, they climbed the stairs.

And then they'd come.

She could hear the crash, loud enough to shake the entire house as her mother screamed out, loud in pure agony. Her father was shouting; a mixture of pleading prayers and the occasional swear word. Even in her sleep, Saleena could smell the rust of the crimson blood soaking into their cream carpets as her family lay dying.

Yusuf was crying, his small body heaving with sobs through the hand she had clasped over his mouth, tight enough to almost cut off his circulation but not tight enough to hide his fear. He was the baby of the family, born twelve years after her as a surprise little miracle. She couldn't let him get heard, couldn't let him get hurt. He had been only four years old at the time; too young to truly understand what murder meant but old enough to know what terror felt like. The two siblings watched the scene from between the wooden stair rails at the very top, shrinking themselves as much as possible to avoid being seen.

Her father was the last to be killed – forced to watch the death of his wife and eldest child as a special form of torture first. Some part of Saleena wondered if her abbu had known this would be coming someday to get back at him, his ever-loving gestures resonating in her mind with suspicion. But all she could do was wait. Each second felt like a lifetime of fear as the horror washed over her, so strong she could feel it suffocating her long after the men had left. They had done what they set out to do and Saleena had never had another samosa since.

Despite the numbness that was settling into her bones, she had eventually called the police with a voice that barely felt like her own.  She could not face the dead bodies alone and she had screamed until her throat was raw and her lips began to tear at the edges when she was face-to-face with their glazed eyes.

She wasn't sure if it was sweat or tears rolling down her face as she lay in bed, dripping past her lips as they widened in a blood-curdling scream, her mind replaying the scene over and over. Whilst the rational part of her mind knew that the images weren't real at present time and that she was in her own flat, a year later, she couldn't shake it off.

Because it was real.

Her nightmares were made up of her memories, replaying continuously the very second she fell into a deep slumber. They pounced on her when she least suspected it, mind vulnerable to the fear pushing itself through her pores.

Saleena Ali was world famous: face plastered over billboards across the country, name known in every household, and magazines continuously writing lies about every snippet of her life they heard. Everyone knew of her but how many people actually knew her? How many people knew the demons she carried on her shoulders from behind the glitter and the gold she allowed to be on display? The truth was nobody but herself knew exactly what had happened; she was entirely alone.