Another Shot at Forever, page 15
Their guests were still with them, so Zaynab at least had some company besides Ara’s.
And yet Nasser and Anisa were busy touring the city and doing some shopping for their wedding, and Zaynab’s mother was fully enjoying her retirement and spending time catching up with friends that she’d left behind when she had moved from London. They couldn’t be with Zaynab every waking hour to keep her from thinking about Ara and what their lives might have been like had he loved her.
She was having one of those quiet, pining moments when her mother dropped in on her in her bedroom. Zaynab hadn’t expected her to be back so soon, so she couldn’t dash the tears away fast enough.
“Zaynab! What’s the matter?” Her mother hurried to her side and hugged her. “Why are you sitting in here alone and crying?”
Zaynab looked around her, afraid that her mother’s voice might have carried through the house. Anisa and Nasser were still out, but Ara was, as usual, shut up in his office. Zaynab quickly realized that she was fretting for no reason though. The chance of him having heard anything once he was absorbed in his work was merely hopeful on her part. And she also didn’t have to worry about any of his security cameras catching her crying as none of the bedrooms were being monitored.
“Are you sick?” Her mother paused, her face crumpling more with worry as she lowered her voice and asked, “Is it the baby?”
Zaynab shook her head. Though her mother heaved a sigh and whispered, “Alhamdulillah,” she still clutched her chest and gazed at her uneasily.
“But if it’s not the baby, and you’re not sick, then what’s wrong?”
Her mother was the last person she would’ve chosen to confide in. After surviving her battle with cancer, Zaynab had only wanted to shield her from worry, and she had for a year now. It was almost as tiring to avoid Ara as it was to keep the problems with her marriage from her mother.
Perhaps that was why she opened her mouth and blurted, “It’s Ara.”
And apparently that was all that needed to be said for her mother to bundle her back into her arms. Clinging to her, Zaynab buried her face in her mother’s shoulder and cried more of the seemingly never-ending tears that had plagued her recently. Her mother quietly patted her back and rocked her the way she had when Zaynab was younger. When she was soothed enough to pull back and wipe at her face, Zaynab didn’t see any judgment in her mother’s eyes. Just the same open concern and love for her.
“Now, tell me what’s wrong,” her mother urged, taking Zaynab’s hands and squeezing comfort into her.
Needing to unburden herself, Zaynab told her everything. Starting with the reasons that had led her to asking Ara for a divorce and ending with her choice to remain with him in the end.
When she was done, her mother tsked. “Why didn’t you tell me you were thinking of a divorce?”
“I didn’t want to worry you.”
Laughing, her mother gently cupped and stroked her cheek. “You will always worry me, Zaynab. Now that you will be a mother, you will understand what that feels like.”
“That’s why I’m staying with him. For the baby.”
Her mother nodded. “I know. It’s very noble of you to sacrifice for your child,” she told her, her smile sympathetic.
“Is it?” Zaynab said. “It feels awful.” Like her heart was breaking over and over again, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. Because I can’t make Ara love me.
“It should since you love him.”
Zaynab bit her lip, not even bothering to argue what she knew was true. She loved Ara, but that was her problem. “How do I stop?” she said pleadingly.
Her mother laughed again and smoothed her hands over Zaynab’s, lovingly caressing some of the tension from her.
“You know, I loved your father very much. And I know that, once, he cared for me too. But we grew apart, your father’s heart turned away from me, and we weren’t the same people who had fallen in love and chosen to be married. It’s why I left him.”
“You left him?” It was the first Zaynab heard of this. She’d just assumed it was her father who had wanted to separate from her mother. That it was his fault Zaynab’s childhood wasn’t what it should have been had her parents remained married.
Her mother inclined her head. “It’s true. I demanded it, in fact. I sensed the end of our relationship was coming, and I wanted to beat your father to it,” she said with a sad smile.
“How did you know that... Well, that you didn’t love each other anymore.” Although it wasn’t the same for her and Ara, considering he never had loved her, Zaynab was still curious how things could have gone so wrong for her parents if what her mother was saying about their love was true.
“Besides your father saying it to me, I just looked at him one day and didn’t recognize him as the man I’d loved once.”
Zaynab didn’t know what to say. And her mother seemed to understand because she wrapped her in another embrace, and while holding her, she said, “It was hard, of course, and I had my moments of regret, but in the end, now more than ever, and certainly whenever I look at you, I know that leaving your father was the best decision I could’ve made.
“As for you and Ara, I can’t choose what’s best for either of you. As a mother, I want you both to be happy, even if that means living apart from each other and raising your child like that,” her mother said and kissed her cheek. “Just know that I will support you in whatever decision you make, always.”
It was like something clicked in her head, and Zaynab drew back, gazed into her mother’s eyes, and quietly said, “I don’t think I made the right decision...”
After hearing her mother loving fiercely and then bravely embracing her choice to divorce Sharmarke, Zaynab had gained a missing piece of clarity. It struck her just then that she’d never told Ara how much she cared for him, not once. She’d asked for a divorce and hadn’t told him why she had been unhappy with their relationship. And now she was doing the same thing by choosing to remain quiet, staying with him and accepting a loveless marriage.
“But I think I now know how to fix it,” Zaynab said to her mother, and for the first time since she and Ara had argued, she didn’t have the urge to cry hopelessly.
* * *
Not for the first time, Ara had hurt Zaynab, and since it was becoming so frequent he had to accept it wasn’t unintentional. Because he’d been trying to push her away for a while now with his coldly indifferent attitude. He’d closed himself off to her purposefully in the hopes that she would leave him. Spare her the grief of loving him and being committed to their relationship when he didn’t think he could give her what she wanted and deserved: true love.
I would’ve broken her heart someday.
The way he saw it, better that the heartache and grief come earlier than having either of them be invested in each other even more.
Of course Zaynab likely didn’t see it that way. Her stricken expression was branded into his memory, and even though several days had passed since she informed him that she’d changed her mind about the divorce and pleaded for them to remain married for the baby, the whole dramatic scene might as well be imprinted onto his soul. At this rate, he likely wouldn’t ever forget the disappointment and heartbreak in her eyes when she’d looked at him. And he certainly wouldn’t be able to scrub away the taste of her tears when she had kissed him.
Something told him that his injury to her this time might even be irreparable. That he’d well and truly broken her patience with him.
Ara just didn’t think anyone else was aware of that fact until Anisa sighed and asked, “Okay. What did you do to upset Zaynab?”
They were strolling the popular shops of Notting Hill on her request. She’d wanted last-minute souvenirs and, though Nasser was free to go with her, Anisa had asked Ara specifically to come along with her. And now he knew why as she led him into a bookshop, the cool, hushed atmosphere prompting him to lower his voice as he answered her.
“What do you mean?” he said.
Turning her head away from perusing the books, Anisa raised a brow in challenge. “I mean that there’s a weird tension between you two, and don’t you dare try to say there isn’t.”
Ara closed his mouth, having planned to do exactly that. He hadn’t wanted to talk about it, not only because he didn’t wish to burden his sister with his relationship troubles, but also there was the fact that he didn’t know how to make Zaynab happier and yet protect them both from the torment that love carried with it.
“She’s upset with me.”
“Why?” Anisa tossed back over her shoulder as she walked down the corridor of bookshelves.
She led him to the back of the shop, to a seating area with two armchairs and a sofa, the chintzy material of the furniture pairing well with the homely feeling of the bookshop. There weren’t a lot of patrons in the bookshop, and so they had that area to themselves.
He must have looked confused as to how she knew about the seating area because she explained, “Nasser and I visited this bookshop yesterday.” She then nudged him good-naturedly, adding, “Don’t think you can change the subject. Now I know you’re used to giving the advice, Ara, but I might actually be able to help you if you’ll let me.”
Sighing heavily, he palmed his beard and, after an anxious pause, said, “We argued.”
“Is this about the divorce?”
Right. He’d almost forgotten that Anisa had overheard him speaking to Zaynab about it.
It happened when Zaynab had left him a year ago after he’d discharged himself from the hospital in Mogadishu and returned to Berbera alone. Anisa had been there waiting for him, and Nasser with her, after Ara had tasked him to guard his little sister. Though he and Anisa hadn’t been on speaking terms at the time, he’d wanted her to be safe, and Nasser had proved himself capable of delivering security guarantees. And Ara had been correct in trusting his instincts and choosing Nasser to protect his sister. He just hadn’t known that he was also inadvertently the reason they had met and fallen in love. Now, because of him, they were about to be married.
Meanwhile he couldn’t help but be reminded that the same happiness that Nasser and Anisa shared couldn’t be said of him and Zaynab.
“Yes, and no. We’re not getting divorced any longer.”
“So, what’s the problem then?” Anisa tilted her head, her bafflement understandable. “Shouldn’t we be celebrating?”
Far from feeling in a celebratory mood, Ara bowed his eyes, gripped his beard punishingly and growled, “There’s no divorce, but we’re only staying together for the baby.”
Anisa was silent for a while, but then she snorted and said, “Well, that’s stupid.”
Ara jerked his head up fast, sharp and angry words forming quickly on his tongue. But before he had the chance to utter them, and deal his sister any harm, she held up a hand to stop him and acknowledged his outrage.
“I’m sorry to have been so blunt, but what I meant is that you don’t have to be with each other to raise your child together.”
“We know that. But Zaynab... She wants it this way.” He didn’t know why Zaynab would bind herself to him when Ara was giving her the chance to leave him and be free of the emotional turmoil he was causing her. And maybe, though the thought pained him greatly, she could even find happiness with someone else and be loved as wholly as she deserved.
“Did you think that this might not have to do with the baby? At least for her.”
Ara went rigid, nostrils flaring and his mind turning over what Anisa had just said. “Then what would it have to do with?”
“Oh, I don’t know...” She tapped her chin and rolled her eyes before giving him a sharper look than he could ever. “Could it be that, perhaps, she loves you? That she doesn’t want you to end your marriage because she thinks it’s her only connection to you.”
He was shaking his head even before Anisa finished, unable to digest what she was insinuating. That Zaynab loved him wasn’t the bombshell news here, he always knew she’d cared for him, but that she loved him to the point of accepting the passionless union he could only offer her—Ara was dumbstruck that it could be true.
“Do you love her?” Anisa asked and touched his arm and snagged his attention.
He’d been staring off into the distance, far beyond the walls of the bookshop; the shock that Zaynab’s love could be so strong for him blanking his mind to any other thought. But he’d heard what Anisa had said and now he was having trouble sorting out a response.
“I... Yes.” He wouldn’t lie because admitting it wouldn’t change that he had been right. If what Anisa proposed was true, and Zaynab’s love for him was causing her torment, then Ara had reason to be worried. His fear for love hurting either of them, or even both of them was now real. Which was why he said, “It doesn’t matter. I can’t give her what she desires. I can’t love her the way she should be loved.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” he snapped. Because love causes untold measures of pain that ripple through life. It’s a short burst of happiness that can only end in misery. Instead of telling her all of that, he grumbled again, “Just because.”
“This is about hooyo and aabo.”
Hearing Anisa mention their parents only incensed him more. But he was too angry and too distraught to tell her she was wrong. Or maybe she’s right...
Anisa didn’t give him time to decide which it was. “I know what you’re feeling, Ara. It might not be the same for me as it is for you. You knew them better than I did, and I was so young, that sometimes... Sometimes I can’t even remember their faces it feels like.” She smiled sorrowfully at him and tightened her hold on his arm. “I get so sad knowing that they won’t be with me at my wedding, and they won’t ever meet Nasser.”
“Anisa,” he rasped her name, taking her hand over his arm and squeezing her fingers.
“I want them with us so badly, it physically pains me.” She looked up, breathing out slowly and fanning her face with her free hand to stave off the tears he saw glimmering in her eyes.
Instinctively, he reached for her and drew her into his arms. Anisa hugged him back as tightly as he was holding on to her. It felt like a while before they pulled apart and his sister wiped at her face, her smile wobbly but not as colored by the profound loss that changed both of their lives.
“I miss them, too,” he confided, chuckling when Anisa stared wide-eyed at him. She had a right to be surprised, it wasn’t often that he shared his feelings. His humor dissipated soon enough though, and with it came a hollow realization that Anisa was correct. At least about the part that their parents’ deaths had forged his trust issues with love. If he were being honest with only himself, losing them had shaped who he was today more than he cared to admit.
And it had undoubtedly influenced his decision to keep Zaynab from getting closer now.
Though he survived his parents’ passing away, Ara couldn’t say the same for Zaynab. “I don’t want to love and lose her. I won’t survive that.”
Anisa grasped his hand. “I won’t say that losing her isn’t possible. But what I will tell you is that when I first met Nasser, and as I gradually got to know him, I didn’t know how I felt until he walked away and I allowed him to leave.
“The thing is, him leaving wasn’t what I regretted most. It was my not speaking up about how it broke my heart, and I was only heartbroken because I loved him. And he felt the same way. But if Nasser and I hadn’t loved each other, we wouldn’t have fought to be together.”
Normally Ara wouldn’t have cared to hear about his sister’s love life in detail, but in this instance it was illuminating.
The question though was, did he want to fight for Zaynab, their marriage and their family?
To fight for their love?
Ara seemed to have his answer when he asked Anisa, “How would I even fight for her?”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“ARE YOU GOING to tell me where we’re going?” Zaynab asked, nervously plucking at the ruffled trim of her beige tunic before forcing her hands into the lap of her long black skirt. She glanced over at Ara as he sat behind the wheel and confidently steered through the thickest parts of London traffic. They were nearing the Thames, and it was busier than usual on that temperate spring night.
The smile lifting up a corner of his mouth should have caused her some alarm, mostly because they barely spoke to each other these days. She’d hoped to change that since speaking to her mother a couple days ago, but every time she set out to talk to Ara, she had a flash of his coldly unreadable features when he’d told her that he would sign off on their divorce and her heart froze from fear to see that look on his face again.
Despite that, now all she felt was an answering flutter when he turned his dark eyes from the road and briefly settled the force of his gaze on her. “I could, but I’d rather you see it for yourself.”
She saw what he meant a short while later after they parked and walked from the footpath between the dazzling London Eye and the Thames to a pier where an impressively long boat floated gently on the dark river waters. Encased by a glass roof and walls, and lit up so brightly that it glowed, it reminded her of a giant, buoyant snow globe.
Only as they neared it Zaynab could see it wasn’t a snow globe at all but a restaurant, warmly lit and redolent of polished refinement and a menu that had to be seriously pricey. But that wasn’t why she hesitated halfway up the pier to the boat, looked at him warily and wondered, “Why are we here?”
It wasn’t like she and Ara were on the best of speaking terms right then. Although she didn’t mind the promise of dinner, Zaynab also couldn’t pretend everything was normal with them either. It’s far from normal...
