Endless Summer🌞

28: Gone with the wind.

Three days later.
4:30pm.
Muhsin sat in the patio, sipping his tea as he watched rain heavily descending from the sky. Ever since the news of Didi's death, happiness departed from their home and his appetite seemed to have gone along with her. Tea was the only thing that kept him full. Even though the tension in the family had subsided, his remained the same. There was still this weight in his chest and numbness in his body.

Watching the rain reminded him of all the beautiful memories he had in the rain together with Didi. It wasn't just the rain, every little thing awaken the memories of his deceased sister. Surely, this was a test from the Almighty, a very difficult and painful test.

"You still haven't finished that yet?" Hanan uttered, ambulating towards him. He had been sipping the tea for the past thirty minutes. "It must have gone cold already, do you want me to make another cup?"

Muhsin looked up at her and shook his head. "No, it's fine, I am almost done." He shifted his gaze back to the rainfall.

"Muhsin." She called, squatting in front of him. He looked back at her, keeping the cup on the table. "It's okay to cry. You can't get over it if you don't let it out. It hurts, I know it does, but Muhsin holding it in doesn't make you strong and neither does letting it out makes you a weakling."

Muhsin stared into her eyes, his hands began to tremble and tears welled up in his eyes. "Didi is gone forever. Hanan I buried Didi with my own hands." He raised his trembling hands, letting his tears fall while Hanan stood up and wrapped her arms around him. Once the first tear got away, the rest followed it, creating a huge pool on her clothes. His lungs rummaged for air and his sobbing had the same force of someone drowning. The flesh under his rib cage throbbed, his cheeks burned, and his mind created memories and scenarios that made the tears continue.

It was painful to Hanan seeing him like that. All she could do was embrace him and let the torrent of his tears soak through her shirt. She could hear him silently screaming, suffocating with each breath he took as he tried holding onto his sanity. She ran her fingers through his hair time to time in an attempt to calm the silent war within his mind. She struggled to keep her tears silent while looking up at the watery sky.

Muhsin cried until there was nothing left inside but a raw emptiness that nibbles at his insides like a hungry rat. His irises were threaded scarlet and his eye balls hung heavy in their sockets. His whole body hung limp like each limp weighed twice as much as it had before and just moving it about was a slow, painful effort. The sun still shone in the sky, but not for him. The birds sung in bursts of melody, but not for him. For him, there was no beauty left in the world.
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Two months later.
Abuja, Nigeria.
It had been two long devastating months of grief and agony. Everyone was trying to move on in their own way. Aiman's dad and Abi busied themselves with work, Ummi's love for Didi had now transferred to Aiman and Iman, while Muhsin was pretending that everything was fine even though it wasn't. To everyone, Didi's death was a reality check, a reality too painful to accept. Aiman who had no idea where his mom was, still asks of her from time to time and that alone broke hearts even more.

"Ya Allah, Muhsin you are still dressing up?" Hanan proceeded into Muhsin's room, holding a two months old Iman in her arms. He had been fastening the buttons of his caftan for the past three minutes and didn't even notice her presence.

Over the months, he became slow in everything he does because most times, he gets carried away in his own thoughts, forgetting what he was doing. They moved back to their house two weeks after Didi's demise because watching the person Muhsin had become worsened Ummi's plight. To cope with the misery, Hanan pleaded with Aiman's dad to let her take care of Iman. So Iman was now under Muhsin's custody.