Road to Jannah

Chapter Three • Crystals

Raw and charcoal colored eyes, I feel so cold and my skin feels so paper-thin. I know I'll wither so peel away the bark, 'cause nothing grows when it is dark.

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~ A H M A D ~

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Well now I'm blind, knee broken and heart broken and just when I thought things couldn't get any worse, it seems like I'll have to explain to this woman standing somewhere in front of me that I'm not actually crippled too, I just have to sit on this wheel chair cause I broke my leg while having a fit of anger after my girlfriend and potential wife broke up with me four days ago.

"Hello." or we could just start with that option. "I'm Ahmad Sambo, you must be Asiya Haroona?" I sense she must be staring down at me and eyeing my wheelchair with either a surprised expression or a sympathetic one.

"Y-yes Mr. Sambo, w-welcome to our institution. We are honored to have y-you here." by the way she had stammered, I realised it was much of the former expression.

I guess she was just must be too shocked to see someone with as much bad luck as me, being blind and crippled all at the same time. And besides her surprise, her voice had also succeeded in dissolving my earlier assumption of her being a fat aunty type of woman.

It wasn't squeaky or excessively high pitched, it just sounds like that perfect tune of breezy crispness a sophisticated feminine voice posesses. In short, she sounds attractive and now since my faculties of sight are useless, I take some pointers from her voice and try to imagine a hot face to match with the hot voice. I may be blind now but I'm still a guy.

"It's my pleasure." I say while still picturing the face I'm answering to but to no avail. Darn, I must be losing my imagination too. "So where are we headed?"

She took that as her cue to start walking and I felt Harrison start wheeling me ahead as we followed behind her.

Harrison's my nurse/driver/only friend and thanks to Far, his newest occupation is now my wheelchair pusher. And speaking of the woman that left my heart shattered on the floor in pieces that I can't even see, after the day she dumped me, Mama had taken it upon herself to make up other "activities" to distract me from reenacting another stunt to end my life.

I was back from yet another trip from the hospital after spending two days there and getting my left leg treated and sure enough by now, all the hospital staff were used to seeing me. They must've thought I broke my leg on the way to another suicide attempt but I couldn't care less and that was actually less embrassing than them knowing I had gotten the fracture while literally running to my mommy.

The injury was way more serious than I thought since I had to get a cast on from my knee down to my foot and was equipped with this wheelchair since it turns out, I'm too blind to use crutches. Immediately we were back home, the first so called activities Mama forced me into was joining in this program I had learned too late was held in the university campus. This same university I had dropped off from three years ago when I decided to ditch law school and pursue my dream career in aviation.

Thank God I can't see the surroundings cause then, the feeling of rubbing my stupid mistake in my face would have been even greater. If only I hadn't left, if only I had just gone through with the remainder of the final year left and gotten my law degree. If only I had gotten a tight slap on the face and a sound scolding only a Nigerian father could have given me and not the "do everything that makes you happy" babying my Egyptian mother and Australian upbringing had gotten me used to, and for the first time since his death, I felt if only my dad had been alive.