Chapter 45 : B

"And you don t want to die? It s not a bad thing to die, Mairam." The look she had flashed him was the one that will tell him how foolish she thought he was to say something like that. Who would ever want to die? If not that death was something that no one could run away from, Maryam was certain no one would ve died in this world.
"Do something! Please, don t let me die this way." She was about to close her lips when she shrieked painfully and covered her eyes with her palms, "It keeps rushing out, this feels like something big. Ya Allah, please don t let me die." No matter how Na im wanted to stop his laughter, he couldn t. He threw his head back and laughed at how scared she looked and how she was crying tirelessly while she begged him not to let her die.
"Bilkisu!" He called out, because he had figured that this was something that was beyond him. Bilkisu came rushing into the room only to find him laughing while Maryam cried, she gasped.
"Did something happen to her? Did you do something..." She let her words trailed off as she looked away from him and focused on Maryam that was still crying, "Mero, tell me, what s wrong?"
"It s blood. It s coming out, rushing down, look." She pulled her feet to show her and Bilkisu didn t know when she sighed and palmed herself out of relief. Then what she had said to him came back to her mind and she gasped before she immediately turned to him.
"I'm so sorry, Your Highness..." She began but he was still smiling when he stood up.
"Don t worry about it, that only shows how you're taking care of her. She has just started her period, here s a pad and some pain killers, please show her everything she needs to know." He walked out of the room and Maryam stared at his retreating back, she was going to give him an earful for what he had done to her. She wasn t going to forget how he had laughed at her.
Bilkisu smiled at her, "You re not going to die, Mero, okay? I do this everything month too, every woman does it."
Maryam looked at her doubtfully before she nodded a bit, she had trusted Bilkisu with all her heart and when she said something, Maryam knew she meant it. "Really? But it s coming so fast, Bilki."
"That s how it is, and it will keep coming for days, we just have to wait and see how long yours will take. But don t fret, it s natural and even healthy for your body." She had helped her into the toilet and ordered her to take a bathe while she took care of where she had stained and when she got back, she showed her everything she needed to know and told her the few things she knew about it regarding the islamic rulings of it.
Bilkisu walked out of the room when Maryam was already in new clothes as she kept on thinking about how one could live even though she bled for days. She didn t want to believe Bilkisu s words but if she could clearly remember, she had not once seen blood on Intisar s clothes someday and she had never fret or even told her about it.
Bilkisu found him still seated on the sofa in the living room as he watched the tv. She went to the kitchen and prepared a meal for Maryam and was about to take it to her room when he stopped her. He got to his feet and walked to where she was, "Have you taken care of everything?" He had asked and she nodded her head.
"I'll take this to her, then. You can go and rest." She was reluctant at first, because Bilkisu just figured out that she had to be extra careful with the proximity they shared now. She had heard when he left the apartment yesterday and even after she had given him the tray, she kept it in her mind to speak to Maryam about him. She ought to be careful now.
He knocked on the door before he walked in without waiting for her permission to do that. "Bilki, I love the scent of this incense flakes." She said dreamily and when she turned to the door, she found out that it wasn't who she was thinking and quickly masked up the smile on her lips.
She looked away from him and turned to the other side of the bed, wrapping her veil around her hair. She heard when he sat down beside her and kept the tray between them. "Someone is angry at her husband," he began with a smile on his lips but Maryam was so angry at him to get all mushy like she did whenever he referred to himself as her husband.
"I do not have a husband." She said through gritted teeth and he chuckled.
"Well, that s so sad for you because I have a wife and she s sitting right across from me. She s so beautiful, you see. She looks so innocent and cries so hard the first day she saw her period, thinking she s going to die. That has been so cute as heaven is."
She groaned in annoyance and he laughed, which forced her to turn to him, the openings of her nose flaring with the anger she felt. "I thought you were here to apologize?" She rolled her eyes at him and yet again, Na im got enchanted by the beauty that resided in her eyes.
"Yes, I am. And with all the regret in this world, I apologize for laughing at you when you thought you were at the brink of death." He lifted his hands in a begging manner and Maryam punched him right on his shoulder and when he yelped, "Hoor, that hurts!" She began to panic and he laughed at the expression on her face, which annoyed her even more.
...
"Does it really hurt?" She innocently asked as she took the tray down and placed it on the bedside drawer while she moved towards him. There was worry laced on her tone when she placed her hand tentatively on the shoulder that she had punched him, "I thought you ve healed when they let you come back home, why would my tiny hands cause you pain?" He was still groaning in what seemed like real pain and she had no choice but to believe that it was indeed paining him even though she thought otherwise.
"Your hands aren't so tiny and it s still a wonder to me how, Mairam, how you always resort to violence whenever you re angry with me. What if you mistakenly hurt me or even kill me one day?" His face looked so serious that she thought she might actually kill him one day. And then she began to panic, what would she do if that happened? She only punched him because that was the only thing she thought could hurt him.
"I'm so sorry, I didn t mean to do that. And you re a soldier, how can I kill you even if it were intentionally, lest a mistake?" She rolled her eyes at him and when the ends of his lips began to come up in the beginning of a smile, Maryam knew he had been faking it all along and she had already lifted her hands to punch him when she remembered his accusation and placed it down.
"That s more like my girl, apologizing when you should." He ignored her last question and acted as though he didn t see how she had a battle with her inner self about whether or not she should punch him again, but it seemed like her inner self had won.
"But you haven t apologized to me, I was really scared and how do you imagine I would feel to die while I know that you won t even be bothered by my death because of how you kept laughing? It was so heartbreaking to even think about." She wanted to pull back her tears, but seeing him laugh that way while she cried and begged him to save her because she thought she was going to die was so heartbreaking. So, that was how he couldn't wait to get rid of her?
Seeing that she was sincerely crying, Na im placed his hand on her shoulder and smiled warmly at her, "How can I laugh when you re really going to die? It would be the saddest day of my life and I will spend the rest of my life mourning in grief of losing you, Mairam. You shouldn't even harbor such kind of thoughts about me, okay? I'm not tired of you, hell, I don't even want to separate from you even though I have to. Please, this is so sad to hear, okay?"
She was just looking at him while he spoke and Maryam realized he wore his heart on his sleeves for the first time for her to see. For she saw his pain as clearly as she would have seen the morning sky she loved so much. She wiped at her tears and reluctantly, Maryam leaned towards him and hugged him. There was a certain kind of grief that hovered over him and it wasn't about her, nor what they had just spoken about. It seemed to her, how it was bare in his eyes that even if she had asked him what it was, Na im had no idea what was the cause of that interminable grief he had accommodated in his heart for years.
At first, he was taken aback by the hug she had offered and it seemed to him that she wasn t the one that needed the comfort, it was him. She was offering him comfort in the best way she knew how to, or how he had taught her of, which was to hug her. The first day Na im had hugged her, Maryam had felt as her pains had vanished and she was able to feel peace deep in her soul and she thought, maybe hugging him too today would surely make him feel better.
"I've always been comforted whenever you hug me this way, will it soothe you if I do that too, Noory?" She couldn t call his name directly and when she had heard someone being called Noory in a movie and she got to know that it meant light, Maryam knew the name suited Na im in her mind. He was light to her and all there was for someone that had been in the darkness for all the years of her life.
Na im didn t speak, he just wrapped his hands around her body and brought her closer while he rested his read on her shoulder and closed his eyes. He could feel that pain resurfacing and it was aching him too much that he might as well cry but he didn t know how to. Instead, he kept breathing as softly as he could until he was sure the pain had subsided and he slowly broke their hug.