Kissa

"Stranger"

KISSA

Chapter 2: Stranger

The broken glass lay at my feet.

Rain started again. Light. Cold.

Ali stood at the gate. Water dripped from his hair onto his shoulders. His shirt clung to his skin. Raindrops ran down his cheek.

I bent down to pick up the pieces of glass.

I thought, was this all I had come to see?

Twelve years of waiting. And this broken moment.

"Leave it," Ali said.

His voice was deep now. Not the childhood voice anymore.

I was looking at his cold, sharp tone.

I stopped. Looked up.

His gaze was still on me. Sharp. As if he was checking a file. As if I was a case.

"Any special reason for coming after twelve years, Miss Kissa Daud?" he asked.

The word "Miss" hit like an arrow.

"Yes," I said. My voice was drowned by the rain. "I came to finish my incomplete childhood."

Aunt took one step back. She looked at both of us, then left without a word.

Now it was just us. The rain. A stranger. And twelve years of silence.

"So this is how you meet someone after twelve years?" I stood up. The glass under my feet almost cut me.

Ali finally stepped inside the gate. One step. Then another. Water dripped from his shoes.

He stopped at a distance. Close enough that I could hear his breath.

"I treat strangers with manners," he said.

Stranger. That word felt like the rain. Cold. Stinging.

"Oh, so I have become a stranger now, Ali?" I said softly. There was no rain in my eyes, there was something else.

"How can I trust?" he said, looking at me. "When will Kissa Daud change her mind. When will Karachi's princess remember her city."

He smiled a little while saying "princess." But the smile held both mischief and complaint.

"So what do you have here now?" he asked. He put his hands in his pockets.

"My village," I said. "My home. My memories."

"Twelve years have passed, Miss Kissa Daud," he said, drawing out the words. "Now you are a stranger to them. And they are to you."

He pointed toward the old tree behind the window. "See that tree... Look how lonely it seems."

I took one step forward. He did not step back. The distance between us grew smaller.

"At least say my name right," I said. There was complaint in my voice. "Do not talk to me like a client. Miss Kissa Daud... You can just call me Kissa, Advocate Sahib."

For a moment something flickered in his eyes. Something old. Something I recognized. The eleven-year-old Ali who had stood in front of the teacher for me.

Then it was gone. As if someone had switched it off.

He looked away from me and started glancing around.

"People should not change," I said. "Time changes, people do not."

Ali's gaze came back to me. I did not know what he was searching for in me.

"People have to survive, Kissa," he said. "And I just survive. Files. Courts. Staying up all night. Disappearing all day. This is my life."

"This is not life, it is punishment," I said.

"Punishment?" He laughed softly. But there was no humor in his voice. "The punishment came that day when I told the teacher I had broken the glass. You were crying. I thought I would take the punishment on my account."

I smiled and said.

"So why do not you take it now?"

"Do you still have the courage to take the punishment meant for me?"

Ali looked toward the rain. His whole body was soaked by the rain.

"Kissa, you have grown up now. Twelve years, Kissa. Twelve years. If you stayed happy for so long without any contact..."

"No calls, no message. It only means you do not need help anymore..."

"I have come back, have I not?" I said.

"Come back?" He turned. "Coming back is to a place where you have a home."

"Both your home and your heart are in Karachi."

"You have just come to join new memories with old ones, Kissa."

I pressed my lips together. I wanted to say a lot. But I stayed silent for now.

He turned to leave. Slowly. His shadow grew longer in the rain.

"Wait," I said. "At least tell me this."

He stopped. Did not turn. Only his shoulder was toward me.

"Have we really become strangers to each other?" I asked. "Was all that childhood a lie? Was that scar a lie? Was our friendship a lie?"

Silence. Only the sound of rain. And somewhere far, a dog barking.

I held my breath. Waiting for an answer.

Then Ali looked over his shoulder. Half his face was in darkness. Half in the rain.

"Only this," he said softly. "I do not know."

And he left. Into the darkness. Into the rain. Without turning. Without stopping.

Leaving me standing there. With the broken glass. And the broken question.

Twelve years later we met like this. I came with waiting. He left with indifference.

The rain grew heavier. I kept standing there. My feet rooted to the ground.

"Was Ali's manner a complaint?" I asked myself. "Or something else?"

Ali was my childhood friend and also my cousin.

I cannot call it love. It was a relationship of trust and faith between us.

Tomorrow will be a new day. Tomorrow I will ask. Tomorrow I will stop him.

But today... today I only understood that twelve years change people. Or maybe we change ourselves.

See what happens next in the next chapter.

To be continued...