Caged Nightingale

Part 16- Saara

I spend the rest of the week in the same way I spent the last. I read, I laze in the garden and occasionally I go back and sleep in my room.

A think about Atif. He has no family. His father was an addict, his mother anguished all her life. working every hour to feed his habit. It had been a relief when he had died, he had told me. Then when his mother died, he had finally felt free.

i wonder how Atif can forge any real lasting relationship with anyone if he has never had one before. Even the story of his super model ex girlfriend rings alarm bells. I know only what he has shared with me and shown me. He could well have a darker side. A side so ravanged that there is no humanity left there. He jokes and smiles and laughs with me, but that is because he wants me- for now. If I'm honest I think a part of me wants him too. A part that is clearly wreckless and without logic or reason.

then there are other times when I think about how fortunate I am have to have the help and compassion of a man like Atif. He is brutally honest and doesn't lie to me. He has kept his word and maintained boundries like he said he would. How many men would do the same? Very few I suspect.

There is no denying the fact that the two parts of him are so disconnected it is difficult to reconcile yourself fully with either. On one hand he can be aloof and cool to the point of freezing, purposefully intimidating. The next moment he is laughing and joking, cheeky and witty. Like he should be. How can two parts of his personality be so incongruent?

I wonder if I am like that. I have been told that i have a formidable side to me. Like a silent assasin. I hear more than what is said and have a watchful gaze, which some find unnerving. I have a close knit group of friends, but that is only because I have so little time to make more. They seem to have been readily made for me, school, collage, uni. I know people look at me with envy. I have money, class and beauty. But they don't know what its like to be treated like a posession.
My parents worried about me consistently until they found Asim. It was like belonging to one person and then another. They wanted me to stay safe. I understood that, but they also nurtured a deep suspicion of others in me that seemed to verge on fear. with the exception of a handful of people, everyone else remained on the outside. I kept everyone at a polite distance because that was what I had been taught to do.

And now I am consorting with -sorry 'married' to . . . a different sort altogether. He might as well be a gangster and what was worse- i was liking it. feeling safe with him, trusting him. How had my logic become so skewered? He's so different and not at all what I would have expected. In fact I wonder whether it's because we are so different that we work. It's easy to be with him. He makes it easy...
I don't think about the police, the attack or even going home. What's the point? I have no control over the situation and therefore refuse to let myself be drawn into a panicked frenzie. Or prehaps i am in denial.

On friday morning I hear a commotion at the front of the house. there is a altercation, but it is unclear what is going on. As I open the front door I see a group of Banjara  tribal women arguing with Zain and Mohsin. Amina is in the middle of it all, trying to stop the women from pointing directly in their faces. Suddenly there is silence as I step out and everyone turns to look at me.

The bedoiuns assess me silently whilst Amina moves quickly to my side explaining that they are travellers who actually trade with her and that they are being thrown out by security who don't know them. the problem has been caused because one of the gardners who has worked there for years, let them in without clearing it with Zain or Mohsin first ( which he didn't know he was supposed to do, because he never had to before).

Mohsin comes over and takes me by the elbow ready to escort me back inside, as Zain moves infront of me to block my vision of the group. "We will take care of it." He says reassuringly.