Daily Newspaper

I stared at her, though not really seeing anything, eyes wide and unblinking. There was a blurry face swimming in my vision, there yet far away, nothing except a figment of the past. Joyful cries, laughs and silly taunts echoed in the air - voices that suddenly sneaked into my today after having been trapped unconsciously for years in my yesterday. 

I could feel my heart hammering inside my chest, like a bird wanting to break free of its cage, unable to persist functioning in its harrowing state of reality. My mind jolted restlessly, denying the fact with wild desperation, its screams a silent anguish. 

No doubt he looked familiar. Lustrous black waves, long straight and arrogant nose, lean figure, he looked so much like his younger self, so much like Uncle. But why would he want to kidnap me, why would Uncle let him? And his mother he was talking to? She was Aunt Maha! And Adil was assuring her he was bringing good news? Did she not know what he was upto? Did even Uncle know? All the words I'd exchanged with him came back to me like strong gusts of a stormy wind that doesn't let you properly breathe. 

"I want to see you working through the fact that your absolute trash of a father is a notorious tight-arse."

"How do you know my name?"

"You're hurting me."

"I'm getting us back something that was ours to own."

"Shareef got biryani. It's still warm."

"I doubt you wouldn't want to know what he did to my family." 

"I am not a monster."

Why? What did father do to him that he'd want to have revenge? 

I did not realise I'd said that out loud, so when Bisma spoke I looked at her somewhat alarmed, her face coming back into focus. I'd totally forgotten I wasn't alone.

"Uncle was arrested for corruption charges in the company in addition to being accused of trying to illegally transfer a majority share of the company's wealth to himself. He thought, being his brother, Father would back him up, get him out of the mess. But he didn't. Later, Father split up the inheritance and gave him his fair share but I think Uncle believed that since Father thought his arrest was warranted and got him locked up, he couldn't be trusted to be honest with the property. He thought Father took more for himself and only gave him a quarter of the whole fortune."

It was too much information to digest instantly. I shook my head as if that would somehow ease the burden on my heart and my mind. "And all this time you knew everything?" I asked the only question that I had the capability to pose.

"No." Bisma said, her voice low and sombre. *Father wasn't home when the documents were sent, so I received them. I read the names on the contract, one thing lead to another and the whole story was out before I could really comprehend it. I thought then that it was Uncle who planned the whole kidnapping, but Father later told me that the voice on the phone was young. I couldn't believe Adil would personally make it all happen."

My heart constricted, swelled in despair. Tears struck. I took in a long breath and stared at the swaying blades of grass, half concealed in shadows in the night, my vision blurring from the moisture in my eyes. 

"I know you adored Uncle, Mashal. But look what he did. He played us. He betrayed us." 

My  lower lip was wobbling. "All these years I resented . . ." my voice wavered, "I resented him for leaving us and–and not once turning back. But this, Bisma this is too much. I don't think I can ever cope with this." I broke down, tears streamed from my eyes like rain from the clouds. Bisma wrapped her arms round me and pulled me into a hug. 

I sobbed silently into her shoulder as the moon peered from behind the clouds, witnessing the tragedy repeat its hurtful strike after fifteen long years.

"No, you don't. You know nothing about your father, Mashal." Adil's distant voice continued to echo in her mind.

---

Even though I deserved at least an entire day of complete rest, the prospect of a failed exam wasn't too enticing. So no matter how grudgingly, I awoke early the next morning and got dressed for college. Down in the dining room, I found Father already seated in his chair, and stopped in my tracks. I was seeing him for the first time after an entire week. It had never been this long before. Even when he travelled abroad to different countries for business dealings, he never forgot to Skype us. How could a man seemingly so loving, possibly prefer his wealth over his daughter? Maybe Bisma was right, and I was really looking from this perspective because I'd been made to. Maybe if Adil hadn't expressed such contempt for him, I'd have believed and understood that a person would want to look for an alternative way that could save both, hard-earned wealth and relation.

But this was all so hard to believe. My mind still couldn't wrap itself around the fact that the guy was Adil, let alone that he'd kidnap me for revenge against something Father did that was completely justified. That Uncle would let him kidnap me. 

I stood there frozen on the stairs, my mind a torrent of thoughts. 

The light that I had been perceiving my father in, what if it was also a false one, just like my impression of Uncle Haneef. If it was possible for him, it could be true the other way around too. 

A dull ache resonated in my head, and I immediately shrugged all the thoughts away. There should be just one thing in my mind, and that was how to convince the college management to take my exam after the semester break.

"You won't ever talk to me now, Mashal?" 

His voice pulled me out of my reverie and I looked at him, wearing a flat expression. With his phone kept atop a folded newspaper and his cup of tea letting out tendrils of smoke, he sat leaned back on the chair, looking at me wearily. I noticed he appeared older and weaker than he ever did, with the bags under his eyes hanging low and the pallor of his skin lost, and what little hair he had left had completely turned white. The wrinkles on his face made him look like Grandfather, as much as I had seen him in real life apart from the photos. 

Tugging at the inside of my lower lip, I sighed, knowing not what to do. I was double minded. I couldn't decide what to settle on. Who was innocent? Father or Uncle? Did I really need to know? Focusing on my medical studies, which the college made the most difficult thing on the face of the earth, should be my first priority, and not digging forgotten family secrets that for me and everyone in this house are better forgotten. But what about Uncle and Adil? Did I really want to lose them once again? They were the people who took away with them a piece of my heart, my calm and contentment for the next six months that followed his departure. 

Maybe I should talk to Adil. But how?

"Mashal?"

"Huh?" I blinked as Father came back into focus.

"Are you mad at me?"

"Maybe." I said as I walked to the dining table. 

"I'm sorry for taking so long. I was trying to-"

"I know." I cut him short as I pulled out the chair to his right and sat down. "What Bisma told me, is that what happened?" 

He hesitated before nodding his head in affirmation. "I'm afraid, yes."

I leaned back on the chair and regarded him with a hard look. "I don't believe this." As I said this, I could have sworn, I saw a flicker of fear cross his eyes. "How can Uncle do this? He loved us, Father. He used to care."

"You don't know, Mashal, what things money can have us do for it." He didn't quite meet my eyes as he said that. "Maybe Haneef doesn't know, and it's just the boy all through."

I shook my head. Nothing made any sense. Nothing at all. "Did you really not give his whole share the first time?" 

He dropped his gaze, and slowly shook his head, like a child afraid of admitting his mistake to his mother. "No."

I choked on empty air. "Why?!" 

He sighed heavily. "Because I was the one who invested more to build this enterprise. I worked harder, spilled more blood and sweat. It was my hard work in every sector, Mashal. And I did all of this for you and Bisma, to give my daughters a luxurious life. How could I have handed over half of it to Haneef just like that, knowing he was involved in corruption as well, knowing he was pulling on our own reigns." 

"No, Father, there must be something else you missed. What if he did no such thing. What if he was innocent?"

He looked away. Leaning forward, he clasped his fingers around the cup and held it up to his mouth. I noticed the slight shiver in his hands. He took a sip and put it down. 

"Don't you think you should look closer? Open the case again."

"Do you think I didn't?" He met my gaze, and I saw that a trace of firmness had settled in his eyes. "Do you think it was easy for me to accept that my own brother had been stealing from his own family? Do you really think I did not go around frantically trying to look every which way that could prove him innocent in the court? Every evidence went against him Mashal, every single evidence. "

"Why didn't you tell us?" 

"I didn't want my girls to know that their uncle wasn't really who they thought he was." He said with a dejected solemnity. 

I nodded. "I want to talk to him."

"No!" He blurted more fiercely than I'd expected, surprising me and maybe even himself. 

"Father, Adil caused me extreme mental misery. And for what? Nothing. I want to talk to him. I want to find out if the Adil I remember is still in him somewhere," I leaned forward over the table and half demanded, half pleaded to him. "He lied to me, made me believe him, Father. I want to know why."  

"No, you don't. You know nothing about your father, Mashal." The words resonated in my every thought.