The floating grey clouds were
gradually disappearing from the sky and finally vanished as if it had not been
there. The sun has unveiled its face on the horizon of the terrain behind the
suburb of the small town and flickered through the branches of Cedars. It was
cold morning of an early January. The breeze of winter was still cutting Amber’s
bones.
She sat on the couch, a woolen muffler rolled around her neck. Whole night she
had been thinking how quickly this all happened. She watched the whirling steam
up in the air from the cup of tea like her own life. Her mother came in the room
and uttered something.
“What did you say?” Amber hissed.
“Nothing, if you heard me?” her mother croaked.
“Don’t be silly, mother.” Amber protested. “If I hadn’t heard you, do you think
I would have not been here. It’s only you who swayed me to leave my job and back
here again.”
Her mother quietly left the room leaving her to stare on the rising sun through
the cracked window.
Since many days she had been thinking constantly. Ever since she had arrived
from abroad, she was not sure how she would embrace the change what Monty has
tipped her. Though she had not talked frankly but she had given her the clue.
After steady routine discussion on her activities in the King’s hospital, Monty
had suddenly asked her views about her brother Farhan. Amber, although had met
him many times and had friendly discussions on the professional academic
approach, she had not evaluated the man. She has always considered Farhan as
Monty’s brother and a professional colleague, not more than that.
She had many plans in her mind for her future. Further studies, earning money
and command over her existence were her passion. Living abroad lonely for years,
she had assumed several changes in her physical and mental approach. Now she had
started thinking differently and had overcome her physical desires as young
woman. She never knew what the passing years in loneliness had developed in her
yet strange fear of someone’s bed partner had taken away her sleep.
Amber was a classical eastern type of girl. She belonged to a moderate family
where fathers did do only one thing to eradicate the symptoms of poverty that
was called work. Nothing more nothing less. She had grown up among other five
children without noticing anybody anything special in her. It was only her
mother’s obsession that took her into the medical college where she proved
herself. She used to walk in hot sunny days in kilometers from her home to
college and back with howling sounds in her ears yet she had never protested.
She knew it that the small earning of her family cannot buy her many comforts.
Sometime she did afford a Tonga when her mother gave her some money for her
college recess. Despite the financial restraints she was looked like a princess
among her female classmates only because of her personality and attire.
She was now in mid thirties and the agony of past had waxed her. She has been an
innocent young medical student a decade earlier. She was quite pretty with sharp
mind and an instinct to answer every academic question she was asked to answer
in the early medical classes where most of the girls kept themselves quiet in
shy. Her round face, big eyes and petite but sharp nose has made her popular
among her fellow students in the medical college, yet her long and thick brown
hair were her distinction. Almost every male classmate had wished to talk with
her in privacy which she promptly had evaded without harming their egos. She was
friend of all.
Those were the days when town’s weather had appeased her much. Spring with the
lush green lawns with juvenile plants, summer with sweet mangoes, showering
rains and printed cotton shirts, autumn with fallen yellow and mastered leafs on
the pathways and winter with pinkish woolen pullovers were her infatuation. And
amid those laughing days she had met accidently a man named Ali Kamal.
She’d not remembered how quickly both had become close friends, but she still
memorize they both had begun enchanting conversation that always ended on the
quarrel. She had been experiencing her first male friend. He had his own style
and she had too, so the clash of titans had always landed them in a strange
world where feelings took asylum in the buffer zone of the souls. Both were
sincere and surrendered themselves to each other yet respect and dignity
prevailed in every moment. Perhaps Ali Kamal was much fascinated and infatuated
by her physique. He had many times tried to secure her physical closeness, but
she’d never let him touch her body although she wanted him to disappear in her
soul. She had obsessed for such a person for years.
She’d never enthralled by manhood before but Ali’s unequivocal physical touch
had always threw her in mysterious and weird feelings for days. As a doctor she
knew the metabolism of the body and certain physical transformation yet the fear
of her ragged soul lead her to the peace. She had then left with only one
obsession that she could be the bride of Ali, but her mother had never agreed to
this proposal. She had wanted only a doctor son-in-law.
Suddenly the telephone ring banged and she hinged out of her thoughts with a
jerk. She gazed with her empty eyes on the sunny rays that had spread into the
room. She blinked her eyes to catch the vision. The telephone banged again. She
lifted the cradle and said in hazy voice.
“Hello.”
“May I talk with Mrs. Nishat?” a polite voice asked.
“Who is there?” Amber inquired.
“Are you Amber?” the voice said.
“Yes.”
“I’m Farhan. Monty’s brother.”
“Mother is in the kitchen.”Amber said. “Let me call her for you.”
“Amber, I want to talk with you.” Farhan groaned. “Amber, we are wedding tonight
you know it. I just wanted to have your permission myself. I don’t know whether
you like me or not but still this were all family arrangements and I don’t want
to be your life partner unless you agree to this arrangement.” Farhan paused for
a moment. He was bold and frank. Amber didn’t answer him. He heard only sounds
of her breath in the microphone. She was silent.
“Amber, you didn’t say anything?” Farhan grumbled. “Why are you so silent?” if
at all it is your disagreement, I would be the first man on earth to agree with
you, but please answer me.”
“Ali, yes I agree,” a cracked cry sounded in the earphone of Farhan and she hung
up the phone.