Meant To Be #wattys2019

Chapter 31: Flashback, Truth and Forgiveness

Be easy. Take your time. You're coming home. To yourself.

Anabiya sipped on the bitter-sour drink, as she scrolled through her Instagram feed, just liking all the posts that were coming on.

"I don't know how can you drink that thing.", Anabiya looked up and saw her brother standing near the bed, with a disgusted look on his face.

"Green tea is healthy, Suhail and I'm used to it now."

"Green tea sucks.", he gave the declaration of his opinion and Anabiya groaned.

"Why are you here? You won't just move your butt to criticise my green tea.", she eyed him suspiciously and Suhail grinned.

"Yup. Mom Dad are calling you."

Anabiya nodded as she quickly attached her phone with the charging pin and walked out of her room towards the living room.

Fatima And Aseef gave a small smile and Anabiya returned the smile.

"We need to talk to you.", Fatima started and Anabiya instantly knew it was about her marriage.

And there were no second thoughts on the fact that she was indeed ready to get married to Omar.

"We want to apologise.", Aseef said those words which caught Anabiya off guard.

Who expects their parents to apologise out of nowhere?

"Huh?", she questioned unable to grasp what her parents wanted to say.

"We are sorry. For whatever that happened four years back.", and as Fatima said this, Anabiya's past came back rushing in, crumbling her and then drowning her mercilessly in guilt.

Four years ago, Anabiya made mistakes. Some really stupid mistakes which to be honest made her grow as a person. Those mistakes made her realise some true meaning of her life and the people who are a part of it.

There were no second thoughts on the fact that Anabiya was suffering from depression four years back. The reason it let's say reasons were pretty evident.

Body issues, Recent loss of Zayd from her life and also FOMO.... Fear of Missing out on her friends.

College pressure was on too. And the person as she was, fear of new people and places, the new college wasn't helping.

And within all these pressures and problems, she started to build issues with her parents too. Not to forget the part where she even went weak on her religion.

Her parents too were struggling with the financial crisis and other work related stuff.

If we are talking about this, let's get a bit deeper. Anabiya's family's financial position was really strong till the time Anabiya was two. Aseef was working with a Canadian company and life was going pretty smooth until Aseef's family started torturing Fatima. The situation got too worse and thus Aseef returned to India to stay with his wife and protect his two year old daughter from his own family.

He lost his job in Canada, the savings were taken over by Aseef's mother and elder sisters and the amount left with Aseef and Fatima were spent on renting a new house, away from the toxic family.

Situation got even worse after Fatima discovered she was pregnant with Suhail.  But eventually, Aseef and Fatima handled the situation pretty bravely, their faith in the Almighty.

Aseef worked hard and so did Fatima and they provided their children with the best if everything. Best food, best clothes, best education. And apart from all these worldly things, they made sure their children were in the path of Islam and were righteous.