OBEY THE FLAME

THE BABY WITH HER EYES

OBEY THE FLAME

​CHAPTER 7: THE BABY WITH HER EYES

​“You took something sacred, and buried it under your hunger.”

​The airplane’s engines roared with a deafening pitch, sounding to Buraq’s ears like it knew exactly what he had done, as if carrying his sins into the clouds. He sat perfectly stiff in seat 17A, his shoulders tense and his breathing shallow. Raem was asleep directly on his chest, a tiny, warm bundle who was far too innocent to carry the heavy weight of the blood that tied them together. The infant's small fingers occasionally curled around a plastic button on Buraq’s winter coat. For a fleeting second, Buraq thought about ripping that button off—anything to keep this pure child from clinging to a man as damaged as him.

​But Raem was only a few days old, helpless and entirely dependent.

​And worst of all, he possessed Riya’s eyes.

​They were wide, unblinking, deep brown, and endlessly searching. They looked exactly like hers had on that final night before she passed away, when her bruised, pale lips had repeatedly whispered a single, phantom name into the sterile hospital air.

​Ahyan.

​It was never his name. She had never called for him. Buraq closed his eyes tightly against the memory, knowing deep down that he didn’t deserve her thoughts anyway.

​In the cramped apartment he had rented on the quiet outskirts of Melbourne, the air felt cold and carried the sharp, unnatural smell of cheap disinfectant and pine. He carefully placed Raem into a second-hand wooden crib that sat in the corner of the living room, right beside a potted plant he had already allowed to wither and die.

​The ensuing silence in the apartment was too loud, ringing painfully in his ears.

​"You sleep just like her," Buraq whispered, leaning his head against the wooden bars of the crib as he watched the infant. "You cry out in the dead of night… just like she used to do."

​Raem stirred slightly in his sleep, letting out a small, miserable whimper. Buraq flinched and immediately pulled his hands back, refusing to touch him.

​Instead, he went to sit by the open window, lighting a cigarette. He smoked one after another, watching the gray ash crumble away. The toxic smoke was the only thing in his current life that didn’t cry back or demand answers. He stared out at the unfamiliar city lights, his mind drifting back across the ocean. He thought of Waleed and Arbaz—cowards who had panicked and run at the first sign of trouble. He thought of Rehan, whose dark blood still seemed to permanently stain the invisible sleeves of his mind.

​And most of all, he thought of Riya, broken and pale in that final hospital bed, her baby crying in the background while her fragile body leaked the last remnants of its life into the white linen sheets.

​No court of law had punished him. No stray bullet had ever reached his chest. But the crushing weight of his guilt now lived rent-free in his spine, a crooked, heavy thing that distorted his every movement. It felt like a cancer with sharp teeth, slowly eating him from the inside out.

​The nightmares never left him alone. He dreamt of her almost every time he closed his eyes. In those terrifying visions, Riya would be standing right in the center of the delivery room. She wouldn't be screaming or crying; she would just stand there, staring at him with a hollow gaze, while dark blood leaked from her eyes instead of tears.

​"You touched me when I was screaming no," her phantom voice would whisper coldly within the dream. "Now carry my son—and see if he ever dares to call you father."

​He would always wake up from those dreams gasping for air, his sheets soaked in cold sweat, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped animal.

​By the time the baby reached his one-month mark, Buraq attempted to read to him from a children's book he had bought at a local store. But the moment he opened his mouth, his voice cracked with a deep, suppressed emotion.

​"This is… Raem," he muttered, his thumb tracing the letters on the birth certificate. "Your name means mercy. God’s mercy, Raem. Not mine. I have absolutely no mercy left to give to anyone."

​The child simply gurgled in response, his dark eyes tracking Buraq's face.

​Buraq paused, a bitter, twisted smile touching his lips. "Maybe… just maybe you’ll completely forget me one day. Maybe you’ll call some other man your dad. Maybe you’ll grow up and never have to know who I really was." He stared down at the innocent face. "I truly hope you never do."

​One stormy night, Raem cried uncontrollably for hours. There was no physical fever, and he wasn't hungry—it felt to Buraq like the child was simply channeling a deep, inherited grief. Exhausted, Buraq finally lifted him up, holding him tightly against his chest, feeling the baby's rapid heartbeat against his own.

​"What on earth do you want from me?" Buraq asked, his voice breaking in the dark room. "I’m not the man you need, Raem. I’m the monster who let her die."

​For the first time in years, hot tears slipped silently down Buraq’s cheeks, burning his skin. "You look so much like her," he choked out, staring into the baby's eyes. "Please, don’t do that to me."

​He didn’t dare sleep for two straight nights after that.

​Later that same week, while searching through the very bottom of the cluttered diaper bag, his fingers brushed against something small. He pulled it out; it was one of Riya’s old velvet hair ties. It still faintly smelled of cheap lavender perfume. The scent cut through his defenses like a sharp knife.

​With trembling hands, he placed the hair tie inside a small shoebox next to the crib, right beside her plastic hospital identification bracelet and the single, blurry photograph the nurse had taken of her holding Raem right before she slipped into the fatal coma. It had been the only time she had smiled in months.

​"I’ll raise him," Buraq whispered into the empty room, looking at the box. "I will teach him not to be like me. Not to be like any of us."

​That night, as Buraq leaned over the crib to check the blanket, Raem looked up at him and offered a tiny, instinctual smile. Buraq froze instantly, his breath catching in his throat. For a single, fleeting second, the suffocating shame seemed to drown. For a brief second, something resembling love threatened to rise within his chest.

​But the guilt was faster. He harshly pulled himself back, turning his face away into the shadows.

​"Don’t smile at me, boy," Buraq whispered bitterly into the dark. "I don’t deserve it."