Caving in Fervour

Chapter 3

 Two days passed away after Mansoor’s threatening, Hamnah didn’t see him since then until the lunch break that day. In fact, he presented himself at her personally.

Hamnah felt his eyes drilling her left; she got up and left her friends to ask her brother to sit with her. For the first time in her life, she felt that those 15 minutes were longer than 15 hours. Atif was sitting with his best friend Jeremy when she found him. She asked him if he could be with her but Jeremy whined and mock requested her to stop being a nosy child. Feeling defeated, she turned around to walk away when she bumped into Mansoor, once again.

“What’s up chick? Missed me much?” Mansoor was hectoring at her.

“Stop blocking my way.”

“Oh my! You’re a brave girl to order me like that, I must say. And about our last meeting, don’t you think it was pretty harsh on me?”

“Just let me go!” she yelled as Mansoor grasped her arm.

“Let my sister go.” Atif stated, he was standing behind Hamnah and now he came in confrontation with Mansoor.

This caused Mansoor to laugh and say, “I’m the captain, honey. I order you, not the other way round. By the way, didn’t your hamburger tell you about our last meeting? I’m pretty much shocked the poor siblings are not that close after all!”

That was enough to build his rage into a punch on Mansoor’s arm that caused him to whimper in pain and leave hold of Hamnah and punch back in Atif’s face. The whole area looked like an arena watching a wrestling show until Sir Alan, the well experienced and most concerned professor of the school came in. He stopped the boys and called both of them to meet him after school.

Hamnah was never wounded with so much guilt for hiding something from her brother until this day. Atif whispered to her that he wanted to have a one-to-one question and answer session with her after they returned home.

Atif and Mansoor confronted Dr. Alan. He asked them to take seats and discuss the problem they have with each other. Before visiting Dr. Alan, both of them agreed not to make this matter official. They wanted to keep it personal, keep it fresh. Hence they replied in unison that they got over it and were on friendly terms. Being well experienced, he knew they were keeping things deep in the oceanic bed but he was afraid of anything toxic that would rise, harming themselves as well as the school. He thought of a different way of intervening in their matter as he realized that they were not going to leak any information at any cost; he just let them go without any detention but a warning.

Atif gave Mansoor a deep look which was backed by Mansoor’s furious expression which indicated not that it was over, but the game just began as they left the office. Atif then left to come out of deep waters by clearing things out about what had been going on with his sister behind his back.

Hamnah knew that hiding her worries this time could would bring more harm to her beloved brother. So she opened up her encounter with Mansoor to Atif as soon as he arrived home. Atif was glad that Hamnah could finally confide in him, yet he was bothered that Mansoor’s get up didn’t seem healthy at all. He could least imagine her being ragged by the cunning boy. He couldn’t sleep that night, thinking if he should back away from the team… but it was his dream… yet he wanted no harm to glaze his sister.

Atif cooked a lovely lunch for Hamnah and himself as it was a weekend the next day. Though he wasn’t comfortable about his sister becoming a barrier on the way of his dreams, she insisted that he should go because she knew what being a footballer meant to him. She assured him that she was big enough to take care of herself and finally he decided to leave her at home and go for the match practices. Atif gave her a hug and warned her not to open the door unless it was himself.

He left with an uneasy feeling that some trouble might just knock at his house for her when he was away. However he left her at risk as she insisted to not let go of the opportunity for silly reasons. His nerves were at its tips, he wasn’t sure if it was because of the match or the fact that he was leaving his sister to fall in a mess.