Unlikely To Happen

Part 27 - Family First

Part 27 – Family First

Maleeha's life fell into a routine after several weeks of struggling to cope with everything that was happening to her. Learning to be a responsible wife, learning to balance university work and house work as well as making time to visit her mother were amongst the things that she had to find a way to make it work. Luckily for her, Zaakir helped wherever he could.

During the weekends, they would cook several meals for the week ahead, then pack and label them and freeze it. Zaakir had even suggested that they take a portion out of the food that they prepared and take it to her father, so that he too had food for the week. To help her make her life even easier, Zaakir had enlisted the help of his many siblings and his parents to visit her mother, to assist her father where they can. Seeing his family over the weekends had become part of her routine as well, as they dropped by their apartment to drop of food for the couple, or support, some company.

Despite all the care and love that Maleeha received, she was still somewhat feeling blue, feeling isolated. Zaakir's family had unfailingly offered to do anything that she, Qandeel or even her father requested. Had any of them hinted at something, Maleeha found that Zaakir's family rushed to get it done. In a sense, she felt guilty. Both she and Zaakir had abandoned their newly combined families, left them all awaiting their arrival while they bowed out uncourteously. Instead of greeting her with contempt and iciness due to her part in causing them shame and embarrassment, they greeted her with open arms and warm hugs and words of love and encouragement. Maleeha was floored by their understanding and accepting reception.

After two weeks of them being steadfastly by her side and helping her around her parents' house with the cleaning and rearranging of furniture, Maleeha realised that she loved them as her own. She was eternally grateful for her mother-in-law and her father-in-law. Not a day passed without them stopping at her parents' house with something to either ease her father's stress or alleviate her mother's temporary physical burdens. Ever since her mother was officially diagnosed with MS, the doctors at the hospital had ran extensive tests on her mother, pushing her to the point of exhaustion. Constant MRI's were taken, several lumber punches in the dark, cold nights during winter, she was even subjected to multiple physical strength tests. In the physical strength tests, she had to push and pull against eleven different weight sizes, do a balancing test across a 5-centimetre broad beam, that was 7 centimetres high, thereafter she had to do a memory test twice a day, and numerous other exercises which tired her out to the point of no return.

When she was finally released from the hospital, she no longer had the physical ability to do much other than lie and relax in her bed. She was, essentially, a couch potato, an invalid. Maleeha stressed over her mother far more than anyone else, babying her mother, rushing to soothe her every whim and desire. Guilt fuelled most of her reactions, and unbeknownst to her, Zaakir observed each and every emotion that passed over her face. He noticed each time that she withdrew into herself.

"Maleeha?" he called as he walked behind her and wrapped his arms over her shoulders. "What is bothering you?"

Leaning into his comforting touch, Maleeha shook her head, denying that anything was troubling her. "It is nothing, Zaakir," she replied in a quiet voice as she lifted her one arm and held onto Zaakir's muscular forearm. It was as if she was trying to pull him closer to her than he already was. Maleeha was lost in the view that his apartment offered in the most exclusive part in the heart of the Johannesburg city life. The sparkling, glittering lights that twinkled in the distance like stars on a dark night just somehow made her feel calmer. The mixed scent of Zaakir and the evening air added to her calmness. It was an intoxicating, heady aroma and Maleeha was grateful for it.