Hana & Hanaan | ✓

Chapter 03

I wake up the next day, seven in the morning.

I slept in my own room last night. Dadi slept in her own. The house was empty and it was unsettling but we kept the distance even after the emotional memories we shared together because that's how me and my Dadi are. She values her personal space and somehow, that trait transferred to me.

I don't hug my parents. I don't put my arms casually around my friends either. I only do physical contact with Hanaan and that too just to help her brush her hair or sometimes help her with her spoon and food or putting on her clothes. Yet still, no matter how clumsy Hanaan likes her own two feet better than anyone else's.

When my Dada passed away, times became tough for Dadi. She became lonely and I found myself in the same mental state with my father involved in dangerous court cases and my mother more intensely involved in Hanaan's caretaking as she matured into adolescence. Dadi and I bonded silently in this time and were together alone in our loneliness.

So when I step out of my room, teeth brushed and hair in a rough bun, eyes still sleepy, it's no surprise to see Dadi stepping down the staircase too. Sure we slept in different rooms but there's no telling if we really slept at all.

I smile at her and we exchange our morning salaams.

"Oh thank God, you're awake."

I don't hold back my teasing smile. "What would you do without me?"

"Wake up Baano of course."

Baano, our housemaid, is a day night maid. She stays overnight at our place but goes home over the weekends. With Baano, there come a lot of tantrums too. She'll work how much and as much you like but she will not get up and start work before nine in the morning.

So at a time like this— seven —she isn't there to make us breakfast and with Dadi, here's the funny thing. Dadi does not cook. She simply does not know how to or even tries to. For Ismat Jehangir, cooking is just not her thing.

She follows me into the kitchen and pulls out a box from the freezer. "Strawberries today, I feel we might need their spiritual energy."

I take the frozen strawberries from her and slice them before putting them into the blender. I add milk, ice cubes and artificial sweetener before turning it on.

My Dadi, in her late sixties is physically healthy with no bone aches or calcium deficiencies because she and I treat ourselves the right ways, always have. She's a little on the chubby side and I credit her for my inherited weight as well, but she's been supportive, in fact the only one who agreed to work along with me two years ago when I built the wall and decided I needed to focus on myself more, my weight as well.

Mama tried being supportive too. She introduced beans and salads to me but it was difficult for her to keep up with me because of Hanaan's caretaking and homeschooling and Baba's hectic court routines and Ahmad Mamu's added occasional dirty law cases that landed him wrongly in jail some nights.