Must Read: The Silent Lover - Season 1 - Episode 55

7 years ago

Must Read: The Silent Lover - Season 1 - Episode 55

People think so much, talk too much, make plans, discuss their future, decide things, but sometimes things go exactly in the opposite way. Only in the end, a person realizes that there’s nothing in his hand, and all he could do is try, hope and pray for the best. Most often, he does hope for the best but forgets to keep himself prepared for the future.

Aariz and Komal were not prepared for what happened the very next week after their last important conversation.

“Where are the parents?” Asked Aariz, staring at Zeest who was working in the kitchen, busy preparing dinner.

“They haven’t returned yet.” Foreboding crept up Zeest spine as she replied.

“They were supposed to be back by now.”
She threw a glance at the wall clock, which showed the time was a few minutes before nine p.m.

“Did they tell you anything else?” He asked quickly. “I mean did they have to go somewhere else too?”
“No. They had to attend a function but that was at four p.m.” She said, keeping her eyes low as usual.

Aariz shook his head, his stringy hair flipping in his eyes. “I’ve told them many times that law and order situation is really bad these days. Still they don’t care anything I say.”
Ten minutes later, Aariz had tried everyone he could think to call—-all of his relatives and father’s friends. But none had any news for him. There had been no answer on his parent’s cell phones. Now inside him was a hard knot of fear.

He bit his lower lip in frustration. Then forced himself to take a deep breath. There was no reason to panic. He had to sit and wait.

By the eleven p.m, Aariz didn’t know whether he was more scared or more exhausted.

Suddenly, the phone rang with full intensity, breaking the pregnant silence in a horrifying way.

Zeest’s heart plunged. Renewed alarm clamored through her veins.

He jumped and almost ran to recieve the call.

His face was drawn with worry. Zeest looked at him in silence as he talked through the phone, praying for her in-laws’ safety.

Suddenly, he slammed both his fists on the table top and vaulted to his feet.

Zeest heard his sharp intake of breath, and her heart stopped beating.

“What….what happened?” Are they alright?” Zeest asked in a trembling voice, her heart beating with full force.

He gave her one quick glance and said, “They are in the hospital.”
The tires sequealed as Aariz’s car rounded the corner and sped toward the hospital. He raced, driving so recklessly that it was a miracle he didn’t have an accident and end in the intensive care unit with his parents.
All the while, he prayed that those horrible images he’d conjured up would prove false.

His parents with wounded bodies, facial lacerations, he shuddered violently at the thought.

He switched off the ignition while braking, leapt from the car and broke into a run. He met some doctors at the hallway of casualty.

Please God! He begged silently. Please don’t take them away from me. He burst through the front door with all the grace of a charging bull.

“How are they?” Breathing hard, he asked the doctors in a shrill voice, after explaining who he was.

“I’m afraid…….” One of the doctors tried to say.

Terror settled over Aariz like a shroud.

“Afraid of what?” Grasping the doctor by the shoulders, he asked. “What happened to them?”
A dazed look of helplessness spread over his face as he tried to tell him the news.

“What happened?” Aariz repeated, really frightened now.

“I won’t say we tried our best, we didn’t have enough time even for that!” He finished his sentence, and turned his face, avoiding Aariz’s painful glare.

“Your father didn’t give us much chance.”
Another doctor told him. “But your mother is still surviving. We’re trying our best.”
“I don’t have much good news for you!”
This time, it was some policeman. “While returning from some function this evening, they were attacked by a group of Shiyah sectarian terrorists.”
“It’s a miracle that your mother is still surviving.” Someone had added, shaking his shoulder, trying to bring him back to his senses. “She had five bullets in her body. One punctured her lung. I’m not sure if…..”He left his sentence unfinished.

“The bastards sprayed the bullets on their car like rain.” Another man was telling him. “Your father was shot dead on the spot.”
He couldn’t hear more. Holding his head in his hands, he knelt down on the floor.
There were voices in the background, someone was crying, someone was trying to hold him, someone was telling him that everything would be alright.

Was it possible now? Were all the things going to be alright like they were before?
Suddenly, he stood up from the floor, and ran toward ICU.

Two ward boys grabbed him by his shoulders.

“Mr. Aariz you can’t go inside…..”
“Like hell, I can!” He shouted, tears running down his cheeks. “I’ve got to see them, they are my parents.”
His voice faltered, and he flinched as though someone had punched him in the gut.

Staggering slightly, his shoulders sagged; he was near breaking point. On the doctor’s nod, they released him. He opened the door and got inside.

His mother looked small and incredibly wounded, lying there beneath an oxygen tent, and there were so many tubes and monitoring devices that it was difficult to get close to her.

He wept silently as he looked at her.
“So mother, would you mind listening to me now?” He whispered, his cheeks wet, his eyes red.

“Don’t go.” He sobbed. “Don’t leave me alone like this.”
“Oh yes.” He laughed weirdly, tears never stopping for a second. “But I know, you are very stubborn. Again, you’d pay no attention to what I’m saying.”
“You never care about my feelings, do you?”
“But I won’t ask you for anything, now.”
He cried with so much intensity that made him cough and, toward morning, when Mrs. Ali passed away, there were no more tears to cry.

The next day, they were both buried according to islamic rights in the presence of the family and loved ones. It was a tragic moment for everyone.

“I’m sorry mother. I couldn’t give you much happiness.” He cried, as they finally hid the two graves beneath the thick soil and sand.

“But how could I give you something I never had?”
His faithful, sincere mother had truly accompanied his father, till the last of her breaths. Staring at the two adjacent graves covered with wet brown soil and freah red roses, he thought. People were saying things to him, trying to decrease his grief.
Such typical and ordinary remarks, perhaps at such instances, people don’t have much words to say, just formalities, nothing else.

Suddenly, he felt someone’s hand clasping his shoulders.

“Open your eyes and look at me!”
He found himself staring at Zeest, her own cheeks wet, her lids heavy as her eyes asked if she could get some right from him to share his pain and hurt.

“I don’t want my share in your happiness.”
She had whispered. “But I can share your sorrows, if you trust me.”
He shook her hand roughly from his shoulder, keeping his face averted. “Don’t touch me.”
Zeest couldn’t meet his eyes then, they were so full of agony.

“Leave me alone.” He said and again burst into tears, filling Zeest with dread.
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