Anatomy of Love - a series of Gul-e-Rana one-shots

first impressions and last words

The word echoes through his mind and keeps him up all night.

And it's not her name, a name that should have made him scoff - that had made him scoff when Maria had mentioned it. A name much heavier than the frail woman trapped between him and the wall. One that commanded respect. One that refused to be thrown around and used in vain (much like the woman to whom it belonged) - thrown at him like a challenge in a fleeting moment as she left him warring with emotions. Her name sounded almost melodic like a song and yet seemed soaked in culture and values, tehzeeb, he thinks, and shakes his head. God, just her name had him using words he never would otherwise.

But there had been no words, not initially. There had just been her eyes. Her big deer-caught-in-the-headlight eyes, eyes that had taken over half of her face with his palm pressing down her mouth, eyes that had drowned everything out until there were just the rapidly changing emotions dancing in a glassy sheen, and his roaring heart, as he shouted at her. He had watched shock replace fear, then comprehension and indignation, then surprise and disbelief and had there even been a hint of mockery? He didn't even know eyes could convey so much, had never experienced it, had never had an entire conversation in silence before. It left him unnerved somehow, like he had been privy to a secret language he had never been aware of, that wasn't meant for him and yet he understood it, all of it. And that knowledge had left him reeling.

That had to be it. That would explain his racing heart, shallow breath and the beads of perspiration he could feel on his forehead. Aside from the unexpected chase in his kitchen in the dead of the night, that is. It had to be it. It couldn't be the way her proximity overwhelmed his senses or the way her eyes slowly took over his entire world, until all her could see was only her, all he knew was just her. It couldn't be that at all. Who was she to him, after all?

Oh that's right, he thought, as he turned on to his side restlessly, sleep a distant thought. She was his chachazaad behan.

And there was that word again. Ever since he had heard her utter it, he couldn't un-hear it, couldn't ignore it, couldn't erase it.

Behan.

She had called herself his sister, his cousin sister but sister none the less. No one had ever implied to have that relationship with him, at least not anyone so close to his own age. And least of all, anyone who knew his family, their background and most importantly him. Even Laila and Maria, the two cousins he had literally grown up with had never referred to him as a brother.

That word confounded him and that relationship left him puzzled. It was as if she had put barriers between them instantly. Put them in a safe, platonic zone of respect, separated by distance. Made herself inaccessible to him and told him clearly that she didn't think of him as... as anything. A bhai was use to refer, by the girls he knew, to a sabziwallah, a friendly neighbour or even a pesky shopkeeper - but mostly an absolute stranger who should remain just that. Too bad he wasn't good at listening.

And while Adeel Kamal had been a lot of things to a lot of people, he'd never been a bhai to anyone and he wasn't about to become one now. Least of all to a woman who had chased away his sleep, invaded his mind and taught him the language of silence.