27 Insanity

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Now I know I've got a heart because it's breaking.

L. Frank Baum

"I can take it. Tell me everything about my condition."

She had never thought this is how life would be like one day. That one day, the beauty in the glitters won't appeal to her anymore. That all the riches at her feet would come to be just ashes against the cost of a life she cannot pay to save. She had never thought life would become so meaningless, all due to the process of suffering a loss, not all together but in bits, until the day the love that has come to fill her heart is no more and her heart is empty again.

"The cancer has disseminated in your body. Here's your CT scan, and here's your bones scan. Your bones are badly affected."

She had never loved her blood so much. Yes, just how much a family could be loved for someone like her. But no, never to insanity. She had never thought loving someone could be this intense.

"Ah, so... how much time I've left?"

But then again, the fear of loss brings forth the worth of a thing or person. And until then, we're always taking it for granted. Until then, we're in oblivion. Then one day, it's just too late to value them. Then, we mourn.

"The survival rate is different for everyone, Mr. Humayun. After bones metastasis, the mean rate is seven to nine months. But it can be more or less than that."

Banafsha exhales a shuddering breath. Heavy silence settles in the clinic and neither Zoraiz nor the oncologist say anything anymore. She forces herself to hold back her tears-- she cannot cry. Zoraiz forbade her too ever since she broke the news to him and couldn't hold herself together. For her brother, she has to try. She cannot display her pain to him-- he himself is suffering enough.

After a long moment, Zoraiz finally replies, "Okay."

His doctor starts explaining to him his reports and treatment options. Banafsha listens to everything without participating.

"In advanced stage even though we cannot save a life, we can still try to increase life expectancy by slowing the progression of cancer. But at terminal stage, the cancer usually does not respond to therapy," the doctor informs him. "We can start with chemotherapy if you wish. Our main aim will be to make you comfortable as much as possible."

All these years in the hospital, she has seen numberless people die everyday. All these years, she has broken many news of deaths herself to the people, patients taking their last breaths in front of her, dying in her hands, from children to adults to elderly. People have come to her with all kinds of incurable illnesses, counting their last days to leave the world. But this time it's different. This time it's her own brother and it's intolerable. She has never made peace with young deaths in her career. Then how does she do so now with the man she has come to love more than her own existence?

"Then let's just not trouble ourselves with therapies, doctor. The pain from them are enough torture in themselves. I still haven't forgotten my first time. I don't want to add more to the list."

Her heart cracks at his words, breaks open with her every beat, the pangs enough to suffocate her. She wants to get up and leave, finding it difficult to keep listening to the discussion. But she doesn't want Zoraiz to go through it alone like before. She wants to be here for him. So somehow, she forces herself to stay.

"Any other complaints besides the coughing up of blood and headaches?"

"Back pain. Especially around my flanks."

"What's the intensity?"

"Mild."

The conversation continues. The doctor asks him some more questions and writes him a prescription, tells him they'll have to shift him to stronger analgesics if the pain gets severe. Banafsha listens to everything numbly.

When they're done at the hospital, they call a cab and go back home. The ride is silent and tense. Both of them just stare out of the windows at their sides all the way.

Once in the apartment, Zoraiz makes his way to the couch in the living room and crashes down on it. He tosses the his reports on the center table and throws back his head, closing his eyes and breathing steadily. Banafsha watches him for good few minutes, weeping internally, before speaking up.

"I'll make us something to eat."

She turns towards the kitchen but Zoraiz stops her. "Afsha?"

She looks back at him and he pats the spot beside him. "Come sit with me."

Reluctantly, she goes to sit with him on the couch, knowing a heavy discussion awaits her, and she wants to avoid it. But how long can she run away from the truth?

"I called mother. Told her I was coming home."

Her gaze snaps to him incredulously. "You told her about your illness?"

"No." He scrubs his face in restlessness. "I didn't have the courage to. She was ecstatic about me returning and I..." he sighs. "I couldn't tell her."

"Brother..." She scoots closer to him and takes his hand in hers, kissing his knuckles. "No matter what happens, you're not alone."

He smiles at her. "Thank you, Afsha. But you don't have to come home with me. I know you don't like it there. You can stay here with Mikael--"

"No," she quickly refuses. "You cannot expect me to let you go."

In other words: to miss on spending his lasts days with him. She cannot form the precise words for they're sharper than a knife to her pulse.

"I want to be with you," she insists. "Let me, please."

"You know I'll never compel you against your will. Whatever choice you make, you're free to."

"Thank you. I'll call mama and tell her about my arrival too."

He pauses, then asks, "Can you do me a favor?"

"Sure."

"Tell Pari baji about my situation. It's better she breaks the news to everyone before our arrival. I won't be able to bear mother's reaction if I tell her directly, and baji can handle her if she tells her herself."

"If that's what you want."

"I don't want to go home all these years later only to bring suffering upon them," he adds. "But maybe I'd never have returned home if I wasn't dying like this. Almighty is wise-- He knows what He's doing and why."

"Certainly. But you're no suffering to them, jaan. You were the youngest in the house, dear to everyone. Remember what mama would say?" Banafsha caresses his cheek. "That you're the light of her eyes. And when we were kids, baba would call us his little kittens." She smiles sadly. "Pari always loved you like a baby, even lala too. I guess it was us who didn't get along the best, but that's also settled, isn't it?"

"Thankfully, yes." He chuckles, appearing sardonic, and glances away. "Imagine if I had died a sudden death, I would never have gotten a chance to see my family again. At least this is better. At least I get to see everyone one more time before I die, so I wouldn't have a last wish left."

She blinks back her tears at the edge in his voice-- the yearning she cannot miss. "Everything was heavenly when we were innocent. Why do time flies and wreck everything in its wake? Why did we grow up only to be broken, brother?"

"Because we're mortals, Afsha. We have to die to become immortal. And this process of achieving an eternal life requires breaking up and setting our souls free."

Banafsha swallows dryly and rests her head over his shoulder. Zoraiz puts his arm around her, hugging her to his side. They stay like this for a long time, a million possibilities of tomorrow running through her head-- a future without him. A tomorrow bland. She exhales slowly through her mouth, as if expiring her pain in the air. But the dull ache in her heart remains. Maybe it always will.

"I'll be spending the days before my flight home with my friends," Zoraiz says, and she pulls away from him. "Some of them are out of the city, friends I've made during traveling. I'll go to meet them too. God knows if I'll ever get another chance."

Banafsha bites the insides of her cheek, trying to keep her expression wooden, and Zoraiz rubs his palms together, a gesture clearly showing his nervousness.

"I've talked to professor," he tells her. "Stay with him until I return. If he's with you, my mind will be at ease."

"I can take care of myself," she denies weakly. "Mikael has his own troubles to deal with right now."

"You're his wife, not a burden. He took your responsibility the moment he signed the nikah documents."

"I know, and I trust him with this responsibility. But he's suffering, and I'm suffering. And what good are two wounded hearts to each other?"

"They heal each other." Zoraiz squeezes her hand and smiles. "Go to him and take care of him, Afsha, and let him take care of you too."

A small smile crawls up her lips against her blurring vision at his words. She nods slowly. "Okay."

"Here comes our teas."

Mikael places the tray on the table and grins at her to uplift her sullen mood. They're at his house sitting on the patio and watching the evening fall. The sky is casted by heavy gray clouds that seem ready to pour. So does her heart is filled and ready to burst, but she has chained down all her agony behind a mask of apathy.

"Thank you." Banafsha takes the tea cup from Mikael and gestures towards the book he has brought with him, lying on the tray. "What's this for?"

"Poetry to read to you," he suggests cheerfully and picks up the book. "It'll distract you."

"I highly doubt it."

"Let me try, doctor."

"Of course." She tilts her head, keenly studying him. "Although it looks to me like this is more of a distraction for you than me."

He clicks his tongue, putting on his reading glasses which despite making him look so attractive to her, he only rarely wears, and flips through the pages. "Don't read me so well. You make me feel so vulnerable."

She hums and sips her tea. "You don't seem to mind."

"How do I mind my own heart?" he replies casually and this organ within her ribcage beats violently.

He is in pain too, as much as she is. He is worried and despite him pretending to be alright, the lines etched on his face remain carved there. His demeanor is terse and his features dark despite the warmth in his orbs.

Those eyes. Blue was always regarded a cold color by her. His eyes are blue-- so blue that the ocean and midday sky would pale in comparison to them. They should remind him of winter and ice and everything cold. But instead, they set her feelings ablaze-- they're embers heated in her love, consuming every inch of her body and soul with the fire in them. She isn't sure how they so easily betray nature and are warm. But she sure has lost her heart to them.

"Mikael?"

He looks up from the book in his hand to her, arching an inquisitive eyebrow, silently awaiting to what she has to say to him, questioning her with his eyes. His eyes, they make her sanity break into threads, then make it into a tangled mess. They're not from this world, she's sure-- they're phenomenal.

"Blue is a cold color, is it not?" she asks softly, curiously, feeling impatient for his answer.

He chuckles at her query and shrugs one shoulder. "Maybe, maybe not."

"At least I don't see it as a warm color," she argues.

He now closes his book and leans towards her with interest, resting his elbows on his knees and holding the book between them. "Why do you say so, doctor?"

She hesitates, then gingerly reaches forward to take off his glasses. He lets her without retreating, now appearing more gripped, those irises taking on a
deeper hue.

"How can your eyes be so blue yet so warm?"

He stares at her a long moment, seemingly thinking, appearing lost, before smiling and glancing away, then meeting her gaze again, answering gently,

"Just like your eyes are so brown yet so cold. Now is brown not a warm color, doctor?"

She bites her lip, searching those orbs before drowning into the sea in them. "My eyes are cold to you?"

"Only when you decide to be the old you."

"How so?"

"When you lock up your feelings and don't let anyone inside your walls." He shrugs one shoulder. "When you decide to be alone rather than trusting anyone, how you were before. Back then, your eyes would always be cold and distant-- impenetrable. I could never tell what was on your mind, just that you didn't want anyone to be part of it-- me neither."

"But it's not true anymore," she quickly corrects. "You're part of me now."

He smiles, seemingly unconvinced. "These eye, Banafsha, are traitorous. Even when they give nothing away, they give away detachment in that nothingness, and detachment in itself is very cold. I will never insist for you to tell me what you want to keep between you and God, but know that when you hurt, I hurt. And I want to live in the warmth of your eyes than their frost. So please trust me enough to let share your burden. You don't have to go through anything alone."

She sucks her lip between her teeth now, trying hard not to cry but her tears fall, so do all the walls of pretense she fails to keep erect anymore, shaking and coming apart.

"No, janan zama (my love)." Mikael takes the cup from her and puts it on the table, coming to kneel in front of her.

"Do you see my eyes as warm now?" she asks in a trembling voice. "Do you see that I'm dying, Mikael?"

"Banafsha..."

"I want to save Zoraiz but I cannot. At least I can save you of my pain. Why hurt with me?"

"Because I love you, Banafsha." He raises himself on his knees to her level. "Damned be these words, don't you see for yourself? I love you, doctor. I love you like a dying man clinging to life. I love you like a starved man wanting to be fed. I love you in way words can never be enough to describe. How can you ask me such questions? Why do you ask me why when you're not just a woman but my insanity? Don't my eyes tell you that too?"

She gazes at him, those pupils with ruins of past crumbled and faded, waiting for her to build together their home there. She lets her love be painted there, making sure he sees it for him in her eyes. Banafsha takes his face in her hands.

"Your eyes tell me more than that."

"Then why test me like this, doctor?" he asks in a plea. "Why not allow me to burn in your love instead of pushing me away?"

"And what good will that do to you?"

"It'll bring me closer to you."

"You're already too tangled in my being, Mikael. How much more closer do you want to be?"

"Until I know all of you like I know all of me."

"Don't you already?"

His gaze flicks to her lips and her heart jumps, suddenly erratic, delirious like a beast. His Adam's apple bobs up and down and he meets her eyes again. Mikael leans forward and hold the back of her head, his fingers curling in her hair.

"Only if you let me," he replies in a whisper.

The earth slowly slips from beneath her feet as she starts floating in the air. Can she? She thinks and her thumb grazes down his cheekbone to the corner of his mouth.

"What do you want?" she asks, whispering back.

"Everything with you in it." He kisses her forehead. "From joy to pain." He pecks the tip of her nose. "Your love and trust." He angles his mouth up towards hers. "All of you, Banafsha."

Thud. And her heart skip the next beat. Thud. And its rhythm becomes bizarre. Thud. And it takes over her mind.

The next thing she knows is her lips taking his, too late to interpret before they kiss.

Eid Mubarak / عيد مبارك

Remember people of Palestine, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kashmir, India, China, and all the others who are helpless and suffering in your prayers.

Sending you well wishes,
Laiba.

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