Chapter 14

That following December, we visited Pakistan and it had been a year since I had been there. All past wounds began to ache when we were invited to Ahad’s house for a dinner party. Mehak and her family had been staying with us because their house was being remodeled. She was the closest thing I had to a friend, and knew all my secrets, including how Ahad had treated me.

“I’ll do your hair, and make up. He’ll regret losing you” Mehak winked at me.

“Thanks, but all I feel for him is pure hatred. I don’t even want to go,” I whined.

“Well, we’re moving out today back to our house, but do tell me how it goes,” she said, hugging me.

I had my hair, makeup, and outfit ready. I was ready to face the music.

We got to his place and my heart began to race. I hate him, he broke my heart. He’s a liar. I’m not even going to look at him, I told myself. Once we went in, my eyes wandered for his. I didn’t want to see him, but I did.

I greeted everybody and began to find excuses to find him. I was pathetic, wasnt I?

I struck a conversation with his brother, who informed me that Ahad was still at work. The hour felt like years as I longed for him to be home. Why? Why did I want to see him when he had hurt me so bad? He had broken my heart into a million pieces, yet those pieces seemed to yearn for him.

The doorbell rang. He was here.

I hate him, I hate him, I hate him. He’s a dick, I repeated in my head like a mantra.

The moment our eyes met, I wish I was dead. My heart felt as if it had been stabbed open, and all the feelings came pouring out.

He tried to say hi, but I walked away.

“Wow, look at Aimen. It’s like someone stuffed her up with a bunch of pastry chefs and they chugged her with all of these sweets.” That was agitating. He called me fat and that was f*****g rude.

“Aimen how much weight did you gain? It looks like you ate a whole whale. Shouldn’t you be fasting? Only eat healthy foods… other people are living in war and you’re being selfish stocking up your whole stomach that they could only ration for a year.”

I didn’t want to eat anything after that. I couldn’t bear the disgusting food because he poisoned my appetite. He seemed to be having mood swings for no apparent reason at all whatsoever. I despised his lifestyle of living.

His sister was so nice though.

“Uncle please, can she stay over? Please, for a few more days?” he sister was eager for him to say yes. She had already been so organized to talk to my father and ask his permission.

I had mixed feelings.

“Ok, sure,” my father agreed.

“You hear that,” she smiled, “You’re going to stay with us longer, yay!”

“Hehe, cool,” I nervously chuckled. I just didn’t want to be with Ahad, not at all. I knew that I was super skinny and I was o

n the verge of suicide. He just didn’t understand that he had worsened my pain.

But his sister was so sweet and gentle, and she said that I could still eat.

After everyone left, Ahad’s niece forced us to play with her in the patio.

We were alone, and all I wanted to was leave.

“You looked beautiful tonight,” he said softly, turning my whole world upside down. Wait, what? He had been nothing but obnoxious the entire evening, criticising me about everything and now he was being nice? He was fcked up.

“You’re fucked up!” I told him. Thoughts create reality, huh?

“Excuse me?” he seemed puzzled.

“ You criticized me ever since you got home. I didn’t even eat because you made me feel insecure, and now you’re being nice?” I yelled at him.

“Calm down! Somebody will hear you,” he tried to calm me. I was aggravated, and about to break down in tears but I held back.

“I’m sorry. I hadn’t seen you in over a year, and every time I had tried to apologize before you shot me down so I was angry. I’m sorry I was being a jerk,” he apologized.

“You know what? I don’t even care. I’m over this. I’m over you. You broke my heart. You had your chance and you blew it,” I told him, and left.

After everything, I didn’t deserve this. I didn’t want to fall back into that dark pit again. The last time we broke up was painful enough, I couldnt relive it again.

I freshened up and changed into something more comfortable.

Ahad suggested that we could watch a movie. It was super dark at night, and the room was barely visible.

It was 2 am and I just wanted to get some sleep, but he insisted.

I helped him grab some chairs from the study den, and the whole living room was almost pitch black.

Suddenly, he pushed me against the wall and started kissing me. I restrained against it any further, but all of those feelings came back. The memories gathered pouring on me. I was puzzled though. I asked myself, “What the f**k? This isn’t happening at all, isn’t it? I don’t like it… not one bit.” I ran back to his room where his brother and sister waited for us. I tried to catch my breath to avoid suspicion.

We started watching a movie on his laptop and I kept slapping his hand off of mine. It was like he was trying to hold it like we had a serious deep romantic moment together even though the movie was all about thrill and suspense. I loved him, but it wasn’t the right moment to be lovey dovey, especially after the way he had treated me.

The clock read: 6:34am.

It was really late but I wanted things to get every chance it could and I wanted to wake up whenever he did so I intentionally left my necklace in his room as an excuse to go back there. When I did, he held me and told me he loved me. That night or well, morning, I slept like a baby. I had the man I loved again. My heart began to feel the burdens lifting off, and I felt the doors of heaven open for me as I drifted off to a deep sleep.

It was 10:00 am, and  I forced myself to wake up so that I could take a sneak peek of him until everyone would show up. Ahad’s father was an alcoholic and his addiction was really severe. His mother dropped him off to his AA meetings. We were alone again, and sparks around us had fallen.

I saw Ahad and at that moment I fell in love with him again.

“Hey Aimen, I really love you,” he sighed.

“Um, hey. Uh… I guess you love me,” I replied. I was having the feeling that this was just too impossible to experience. “Well in that case, I love you too,” I assured. His soft cold lips touched mines. I pushed my face into his and  we became one of our romances together. He kept repeating the same thing, “I love you, I love you, I love you…” Then I realized, what if he really didn’t? The only time he told me this was when everything around us had become sexualized. He tried to induce me with arousal or lure me into his seduction. I stopped and pushed his whole body off of me.

I wanted to create boundaries and limits from him more, because I knew how devastating he already was towards me.

“Wait. Slow down. We should talk first before we move forth,” I commanded. His mom must have returned from dropping his father off and as soon as she entered the room, we both pretended we were asleep.

It was the second day and he went to his workplace. The half day of the second day I slept over passed as we constantly texted each other on Facebook. He was told me my kiss drove him crazy, and how bad he wanted me. All he could tell me was all the things we would do together. I began to see that he didn’t love me.

That evening, I sat in his bedroom alone waiting on him, and I recalled terrible things. He was a molester.

When I was a kid and we’d all play hide and seek, he would feel me up. When I really put thought into it, I realized we always hid together and I used to sit in his lap, while he touched me. He had done this on many occasions, but I hadn’t realized it until now.

I was in love with my abuser!

Hours and hours later, I still sat in the very same spot, trying to make sense of what I had realized. I felt disgusted with myself, and wanted to rid myself of these feelings.

“Oh, Aimen, there you are. You take my breath away, I love you so much. You built a roof on top of my head so that people wouldn’t break my heart. You have given me presents for my soul. I want to be with you forever, my love. We’ll fly high in the stars, we’ll be married and have children. We will be in the shores of the beach as the rocks will bring us the echoes of the water when we throw it there,” I heard him say.

“Oh really,” I doubted.

“Yes,” he said with a smile, “I want you to eat so much like a hundred thousand wales, I wouldn’t mind. I really want you to love me back the way I feel with you. He tried to feel my skin and attempted to take my hand, but I refused out of anger. He only does this because he just wanted to use me for his own lust. He didn’t really love me, because if he did, his actions would show it, not his words.

At the end of the third day, our relationship had spoiled.

“Ahad you know I have to return to school, let alone that, Malaysia. If we’re going to communicate then I’m going to have to take risks. It’s not my choice anyway. I would gladly live in this place, but you also live in Pakistan. If we’re having a relationship, then you have to realize that my home is not like a few minutes away.”

“Aimen listen,” he frowned, “Don’t do this to me. You’re abandoning me and I think that you’re happier without me.”

“What, why?” I almost cried.

“Trust is like a mirror, you only use it until it’s broken. I don’t think you’re trustworthy Aimen. I think we have to cancel our relationship. I really looked forward to it. I even wanted to talk to your mom to marry you. This is really pitiful… I’m the victim here,” he claimed, “And I think we’re going to have to break up.”

“What?! Why?” I cried.

“There’s no reason why. You always make excuses. I don’t have any excuses. You just have to love someone else who’s like me  out there, even if you don’t like it. You’re going to like it later on,” he tried to explain, “I hate it when you do this to me. You expect me to be taking too much time on you when it’s actually very little. When it is long though, it’s like being in hell for a thousand years. Pure agony. I hate you.”

“Why can’t you ever be explaining things to me,” I sobbed.

“Shut up. Stop your bickering and go somewhere else,” he heartless demanded, “You’re not abused or anything. You’re a worthless piece of trash who doesn’t deserve anything because you curse people too much. You better feel guilty later on and remember that. You’re not fit to be a bride because you can’t even fit the dresses so go start eating protein juice. Get the f**k out of my room,” he threatened. He stormed out. I ran out bawling in tears loud and hard.

I immediately texted him asking him why he broke my heart all over again.

He said: you b***h, things can never happen between us. Why can’t you get that, huh? Three days werent enough to satisfy you? What are you going to do then,, hop on my dick to keep me?

I sobbed even harder.

It was the third day and it was awful. I couldn’t find his sister anywhere and I wished that she would be able to help me. I was in the darkness again, lowered in my self esteem feeling awkward and more unstable.

Finally that night I had been rescued, well, maybe if the problem wouldn’t be him anymore, in that case. Who came to pick me up? Adil. It was like I was stuck between two devils, who lusted for me.

“Your father was busy, so he sent me to pick you. Why are you crying?” he asked me.

“Nothing. Please just take me home,” I cried.

“Did he hurt you? That b*****d!” he shouted.

“No, nobody did anything. Please for the love of God just take me home!” I yelled at him.

The whole drive home, none of us spoke. I wasn’t about to sit and explain to my abuser that the man I loved broke my heart all over again, and oh, he had abused me, too, so join the f*****g club, no I wasn’t about to do that.

It took me weeks to recover the Ahad incident. I started cutting my wrists. I felt terrible and every night it was the same old scars aching. Whether I was alone or not, I self harmed to escape the harm or forced myself to be with the family who was going to harm me. I had to work with a hopeless and dangerous situation over and over again. I could never be satisfied with anything. I felt more guilt as it punched me hard in the face. I didn’t eat and I wasn’t going to be busy fasting either.

Ahad gave me a reason to kill myself, and if he dared to tell me that I should, it didn’t matter because he just made me want to die. He should have been hit with karma so that instead of me suffering for what seemed like forever, he would struggle.

I deserved better things. I didn’t care if homes were made to look cheap even though everything about it was rich and intuitive. I craved for that sort of thing and I wanted to get something better out of what was best for me. I hated being treated like I was a criminal, and if I was a victim, they would only try to win from me all of the time. That’s all he ever cared about, winning or losing. He tried to make me the loser by losing more weight. I tried to forget him so many times but the memories were much too painful to forget. Somehow, I wanted situations like this to be less cruel. I just didn’t know how. I wanted the best things I took granted for to be balanced with what I had the worst out of. I wanted to make the best out of my lowest points. I didn’t feel determination, but I did want a good economical flow of energy. This life I had was either too high or too little.

It was February 2011. I hated Adni. I absolutely despised the label. If there were more religious freaks, I bet they would make awkward and lame jokes about Islam with the bullshit they tried to feed me. They always pushed me down on the same beliefs we had and they were hypocrites to me. It was tormenting and I felt no encouragement of fun around there. It was a light dirty blue painted building, with disgustingly scented classrooms. I felt like I was imprisoned by the FBI for being a terrorist because of the constant torturous weather change. At times I was sweating bullets, while other times I was freezing to my own death. The cafeteria was a disgrace, and reeked of raw fish. The little mini mart with half decent snacks was extremely overpriced for the hot dog mush they sold.

The whole school may have just pissed me off, and classes ended at 4:30pm when starting at 8am so that didn’t help the case either.

My mother took me to their store and it was blazing hot. It was torture that I had to wear huge clothing while the weather was disastrous. I was very short and I had to wear fabric that could’ve been more slippery. It was moderately fine to go in there and not really fine to change in the wet bathroom. I sat on the high parts to change so my feet wouldn’t get wet. I didn’t care if girls were watching.

The first time I had come in, they all stared at me like there was something wrong with my face. I wore the same light yellow scarf and navy blue baju koreng pant design they had, so what was the deal?

I met Aqeelah. She obviously had a fake boyfriend named Matt. It was like Aubrey with the name Matt. The same damn thing and he had the same colors and same hair that Aubrey had described.

I was forced to be something I clearly wasn’t.

I didn’t care about anyone, and I was surrounded by their false saintliness. I didn’t care about their so called rules. I hated the prefects. They always looked older than their actual age. Kaser was two faced. They didn’t care if they had a job or not, they just wanted to dominate everybody like an ant army. I didn’t care about not being allowed to talk to men, I wanted to talk to guys.

Aqeelah bugged me again. When I came to class, she had a full Malay accent on. Then all of the sudden, she changed her voice to sound like an Australian. I knew she was ready to make up a fake life story about it too. I had to sit in the front for some time. Yet even though I sat there, away from the aircon, they overwhelmingly made the room too cold. I wanted to change all of that. I was the demon, the devil. They were the holy angels. I hated it. I still would hate it. I was always the sinner in their eyes, and they judged me. My first day at school, I felt like I was the spawn the devil because every word that came out of my mouth was judged in ways you could not imagine. “So, you’re from an American school, than?” Teacher Aizan, our Business and History teacher asked me. “Well, I suppose any school that doesn’t look like this may seem American to you,” I replied. “I actually studied in an international school before this, British. It was much more lavish and lenient. Also, less hypocritical,” I remarked. Everybody in that little pea-sized room stared at me. Uh, oh. I had said too much. She then calmly said “I’m sorry you feel that way, but thank you for the information.” “You’re welcome,” I smiled at her. I knew she had her eyes out for me, and it was going to be a terribly long year.

“How was your day?” my mother asked. I felt disgusted to even answer that question, so I disregarded it. I was happy to rip that ugly yellow scarf off my head, and let my hair loose. I couldn't have cared less in the event that I resembled a delinquent to them, school was over and so were the rules that followed. “Please tell me there’s something to eat at home. I am famished, and this trash you call school had nothing I could digest,” I complained. “Yes, I cooked your favorite, Haleem ( a pakistani dish)” she cheered me up. I was a little relieved that my day wasn’t a total disaster. We drove home, and all I wanted to do was pass out on my bed. The thought for going to this dump for a school the next whole year infuriated me, and my parents were to blame for this hopelessness. They generally were. The first thing I did when I got home was talk to Amit, my bestfriend. He was a guy I had met online and we clicked from the moment we first spoke. He knew my secrets all too well, and was never the one to judge. Secretly, I knew he liked me, but I couldn’t ruin the friendship we had. Everytime I was upset, I could vent without a care and knew he would listen for hours. He was very average looking, black eyes, black hair, blemished skin. He was a Sikh (A kind of Punjabi tribe in parts of India), and although most things about him were average, his heart and soul were made of gold.

“I’m telling you, I told her off. She was so pissed, Amit” I laughed as we talked.

“You’re so gila ( crazy in Malay). This is why I love you,” he blushed.

“I’m serious. That place is a shithole. I wish it would burn down before I go back there tomorrow,” I whined. I honestly from the bottom of my heart did wish for that. but sadly it didn’t.