Chapter 30: Ashar Hussain

I couldn't wrap my head around the injustice that I had been put through. It was all I thought about night and day as I was now trapped with Sara in Khizer's apartment. Khirad had locked me out of my own home…not unlike how my mother threw her out. She wouldn't hear me out at all; neither of my texts, calls or voicemails….just like how I ignored her when she tried to tell me that she was pregnant. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw her at work the very next day! She didn't even look upset or anything! She should have been angry at me, or upset that her husband was caught in a trap. She should have understood already that it was Sara who made that move on me…but when she asked me why I bothered to look for Sara despite everything she put us through…I couldn't answer her. I cornered her to ask her exactly what she did when she ran off with Khizar she actually had the nerve to laugh at me before telling me that Khizer had left to see his family in Saudi Arabia, that was why he left the apartment to Sara who still had no money, no work and nothing to rely on. As disastrous as her deeds were, I couldn't just leave her alone and defenceless either…and despite her obsessive nonsense, she was still the only who was willing to have a decent conversation with me for almost a year now. 

 I shouted, I screamed, I cried at the injustice i was facing but nobody cared at all, nobody gave me any sympathy and now I had my deranged cousin making moves on me whenever she could. She didn't even seem fazed by her latest move at all. She seemed to be living in some sort of dream-land where she started acting like my wife again; cooking inedible food for me, getting Khizer's clothes ready for me which she had no idea how to do, waiting for me to come home from work…I tried to leave the apartment whenever I could just to try to clear my head and get some space…but Sara followed me everywhere like a damned leech! All she did was cause a scene now whoever I went; restaurants, hotels, to the gym…she constantly accused me of trying to sneak off to meet with Khirad! As if she had let me get within 20ft of her. She treated me like the plague, but thankfully she let me see Hareem whenever I wanted after her schooling…but I was beginning to shut down now. I had lost everything once again thanks to my delusional cousin who hadn't learned anything at all. She isolated me from everybody and made me feel like more of a fool than I was already made out to be. But what broke me the most was that Khirad, the first love of my life, my spouse, didn't even give me a chance to explain things, nor give our marriage a third chance. I knew she was angry at me for the past but I really had no idea that I…disgusted her on this level that she almost prepared to divorce straight away. I had a meltdown of my own when i saw that…but I had to admit that after 2 months of living in this nightmare, that i was indeed experiencing my own karma. Stalking Khirad validated that point to me even more; seeing how she lived her life whist i lived in miserly, social isolation…and injustice showed me exactly what she had been through…alone, aggrieved and pregnant. As a woman, I was very surprised at the strength she possessed to have survived this ordeal, and for 5 years at that. Every negative look my way left me feeling humiliated, every whisper behind my back made me paranoid, overtime a stranger approached me in the streets they still asked me questions about the incident that took place at Sara's 'almost' wedding, putting me in a bad mood. And these interactions were so repetitive that not only did i constantly lose my temper, but my pride a few times as well, fighting random people in the streets and constantly having to prove my innocence over and over again to a bunch of strangers…when the one person who should have heard it didn't even want to know.