Hana & Hanaan | ✓

Chapter 12

Voice Recording 04

Recorded: 24th July Wednesday

Merhaba, Hana!

Relating is easier than always praising; maybe this is why Nashwa and I get along so well. Your life looks easy, Hana, from my eyes and Nashwa's eyes, it looks easy. You study all night, you get an A. You work out all month, you lose weight. You mix ingredients in a bowl and put it to bake, from the oven comes out a Tres Leches milk cake. You smile at people around you, they smile right back at you, you're easy to love, and easily love too.

Nashwa and I aren't like that.

We'd rather egg people who are too happy, we burn up the kitchen if we light up a match stick, we put up too many conditions when giving out love because loving us isn't easy in the first place.

And you're probably wondering, really, Hanaan? You're always laughing and smiling and cracking lame jokes yourself, why be so depressed on here but, Hana, let me tell you, the pain I hide behind these laughters and smiles it stares back at me in the mirror and what I see in my mirror, it kills me every day.

FYI, I'm not so stable as I sound on these recordings, I recorded my entire breakdown yesterday, full of crying and sobbing and wailing and bawling and sniffles and just me calling out your name in the darkness. I deleted it of course because it will only pain you, it will put a burden on you of forgiving me because I'm suffering but I won't do this to you anymore, I will not take away your right for being angry on me, I deserve your anger, your wrath, your mercy denied.

I deserve your worst, Hana.

Or maybe, I don't even deserve that anymore.

Because see, it's hard to meet your eyes these days when Waheed has sent me heart eyes and fire emojis on the pictures I have sent to him. Something in my chest stirs when he sends such emojis and messages saying ooooh so pretty and other ones like sooo gorg baby girl. Of course I knew instantly when it started, a friend, a guy friend isn't supposed to message you like that and that thing that stirred in me gave me the signal to fricking stop already, unfollow him, block him, end this whole stupid thing but I don't stop. A part of me likes it.

But even before this, Hana, it was hard to meet your eyes some mornings, when I'd wake you in the middle of the night, skipping on my feet, shaking you by the shoulders in urgency, begging you to take me to the washroom because I was finding it difficult to turn the door knob by myself. If not the door knob then some other issue, often I have wet my clothes and in shame woken you up and you, already tired and exhausted from late night study regimes would still clean up the mess, wash up for me and never utter a single word to anyone in the family, even me. And something like this happens at least a month.

I'm fourteen. Could anything be more humiliating?

I love dining out with the family, Hana, visiting fancy restaurants where you're supposed to eat with a fork and knife and chopsticks, where the ambience is all about dim lights, fragrant air, sweet violin music soothing the heart and romance all about but the nasty stares we get there when I spill rice all about taking my spoon to my mouth or splatter sauce all over my face when the fork holding steak hits my cheek instead, it makes you all go uneasy and though you don't show it, I can feel it in the way you all stiffen, keep your eyes to your plates and make small talk in that instance.