Chapter 16

                                    

                                          
His wife was sitting in the garden, swinging by herself. Her eyes closed, her hair flowing while sipping a cup of tea. When he was about to approach her he saw Sahil, walking towards the other swing.
The swing where Abdullah and Maheen played, now there sat Sahil and Maheen. 
His eyes stung. His nose flared. He was hurt. 
Why was he so dramatic? He wondered. 
His wife wasn't that kind of woman... then why was he so insecure. He couldn’t impose his insecurities onto her so he sat down on his study table. 
Opening his diary. He was never the type of a man who would journal, but Saad would gift him a journal every year and he didn't wanted to waste that book. 
Human are emotional beings. How many wounds had he gauzed up? He was a doctor he had stiched, disinfected many wounds and scars. But... what he couldn't heal was an emotional scar. 
Seher... he saw the broken hand and the scar on her lips. But the pain in her eyes was emotional. 
He had never liked or disliked her. She had helped Maheen escape... but as he saw her wounds he knew why. Saad was a monster. But he wasn't any better...
He hadn’t been a good husband himself. 
He hurt her, left emotional scars on her. He let his weakness and insecurities win over his love. 
His pen hovered over the page as he stared blankly, struggling to find the right words. The quiet ticking of the clock on his desk filled the silence. His chest tightened as the weight of his thoughts sank deeper.
It wasn't about his wife. It was about him- about the man he'd become.
How often had he been consumed by the shadows of his fears? How many times had he let his doubts taint the moments of happiness he could have had? He gripped the pen tighter, his knuckles turning white.
"I am my own enemy," he wrote. The ink bled slightly into the paper as his hand trembled.
Saad had destroyed lives, but what made him any different? He'd hurt the woman he loved, not with fists or words but with silence, with distance, with his inability to trust.
He thought back to the first time he saw Seher after her escape. Her frail frame, her trembling hands, the look in her eyes- a mix of relief and fear. She'd smiled faintly, but it hadn’t reached her eyes. He had seen many wounded patients in his career, but her pain was different. It wasn’t something stitches could fix.
And yet, wasn’t he inflicting the same wounds on his wife? Subtler perhaps, but no less damaging. The doubts he kept buried, the love he withheld when she needed it most- weren’t those scars he was leaving behind?
He closed his diary abruptly, the sound echoing in the quiet room. For a moment, he just sat there, staring at the leather-bound cover.
"I need to do better," he muttered to himself.
He stood up, his legs feeling heavy but resolute. He walked out of the room and back to the garden. His wife was still there, her cup of tea now empty. She was laughing at something Sahil said, her eyes bright.
He approached her slowly. She looked up and smiled, a soft, unassuming smile that made his heart ache.
"Tum se baat karni thi", she stood up. He shook his head, "Nahi baitho tum."
Motioning her to sit. 
Maheen stopped smiling, she was being too pleasant to him. 
She had to be rude.