Tainting The Void Canvas

4. ●Hiraeth●

You can never judge a book by its cover. Old phrase right, and maybe the most practical phrase for life. Everything around is a facade yet a truth. They say that the happiest smiles hide the deepest pain and today Zain Amir realizes how true that is.

Amaya Kareem is the happiest person Zain has ever met in his life. The one who laughs at his every lame joke, the one who always smiles, the kind of smile that reaches her eyes making everyone around smile along with her, the one who spread happiness wherever she goes, the one who lives her dream and loves herself too.

But today while sitting next to her, he witnessed the most painful site of his life. There is a smile on her face yet her eyes tell another story. Her brown orbs have tears in them, showing the pain, the sadness, the loneliness of her life. And this made his heart clench, he simply wants to take all her pain away and fill her life with happiness.

Silence engulfs them as no one knows what to say next. Zain Amir is simply shocked after knowing his best friend Amu is a divorcee. Not like he is judging her, but she is hardly twenty-three now. Seeing that this silence is just making things uncomfortable between them he breaks it.

" I don't know what to say. Like what's your age Amu?" This made her laugh, out of everything he decides to ask her about her age. Zain Amir is surely her true friend.

"Well, I will complete my twenty-three summers in three days."

"Okay let me save the date first, I don't want to miss your birthday girl. Wait it's a special day already." Zain said talking about saving the date on his phone.

"Seriously Zain. Like seriously out of everything you are here worried about my birthday treat." This made her laugh again, all the painful tears are now gone.

"Amu yaar. Look I really don't care about anything when it comes to food, okay, and it's your birthday treat and that means free food, and damn girl only an idiot will miss that chance."

"I am blessed to have you Zain, seriously I am."

"Ohh thanks, woman, and the feeling is mutual."

"Don't you want to know about it?"

"Honestly, yes I am curious about it but this is not me wanting it to know, it's about you wanting to talk about it or not. You just told me about your parents and I saw how painful memory is for you. And this thing is much worse than that.

The separation between parents when you were young, is already something heavy you have to bear, then the same thing happened with you too, and this time it would have been terrible, and I simply don't want you to visit those haunted lanes of memories because of me. I don't feel sympathy for you, I feel proud that you didn't stay somewhere where you never belong to. And about knowing it, you can always share that whenever you are comfortable with it."

"Honestly that's very thoughtful of you. You know Zain I never talked to anyone about it, simply because I don't want to. But today I can say it. It's not as complicated as people think, we got married when I was just eighteen and after two years six months, we got divorced, simply because I was not happy in that relationship."

Things are always simple for Amaya Kareem. She faced many things in life, being from a broken family did that to her. She had only one fear in life that is being alone, yet years later her happiest dream became her worst nightmare. She had spent nights crying, screaming just in hope that someone would not leave her alone. She stayed in a namesake marriage for that too, but then she finds herself and staying there is no more an option so she simply left.