Chapter 19 13: A Shoulder To Lean

Fareeda walked into the house and she immediately walked to her side because the first thing she wanted to do was call Adam to let him know of what had happened, she was ready to do whatever it took for her to get out of this bondage they held her in. Starting from her living room, Fareeda s jaw nearly dropped to the floor and she stared at the three women that were having their lunch in the living room. The living room looked disoriented, and she was certain this wasn t the only place they had distorted. Without glancing their way or saying anything to them because she was sure if she talked, she wouldn t be able to see the rest of the damage they had done to her. As she walked into her room, the first thing her eyes got in contact with were her packed luggages. She gulped down her anger and controlled herself to cross-check everything before she would go and make an outburst. She opened her closet and there was nothing left inside. Her mirror had been cleared, everything. She stared back at the luggages and flicked back her tears. This would either be Alhaji s order or Ummah s doing, but whatever it was, whoever was behind this filthy act, she would have to make sure she make that person regret what he had done. She flicked back her tears and stomped out to the living room, they were peacefully eating their lunch as if they haven t done anything wrong. First, they barged into her chamber without her permission. Second, they tore her privacy open and checked even the places she didn't want anyone to check in her life. And third, they tempered with her things, how dare they? She roared outwardly and the next thing that happened was, Fareeda was throwing down all the food they had on the table and before Ummah could utter a word out, she had slapped Asma u harder on both cheeks and threw Dahlia on the ground before she turned to look at her. Fuming as though she were a lion. "What do you think you just did, Ummah? How dare you do this to me?" "What? You slapped me, Fareeda? How could you?!" Asma u thundered as she intended to slap her back but Fareeda was so furious to even wait until she slapped her back before she could retaliate. She punched her so hard in her stomach that Asma u cried and she fell on the floor, holding her stomach. Dahlia came to get Fareeda s hands off her sisters and Fareeda lifted her chin up and gave her the two most painful slaps of her life. "If you want to live here alive, get out of here before I kill all of you!" Her eyes were clouded with rage. How dare these people do this to her? Who the hell did they think they were? Before Ummah made her next move, she had went to the standing lamp and plugged it out of the socket and she walked toward her. "You ve always done what you think is always right, you might have not believed me whenever I say I can kill you, Hadiza, but today you ve pushed through your limits and I have no other choice but to do exactly what I've been stopping my heart from doing for the past years I've lived with a disgusting monster like you!" The four walls echoed with her voice and they all shook with fear. She had never been like this before, and they wondered if what they did was the sole reason she was like this. Despite the fear, Hadiza looked at her with a stoic expression and scoffed, "What do you think you re doing, Fareeda? Have you gone mad already with just a few hours you married the gateman? What s wrong with you? And it s only right that we did what we did, you ve gotten married to him, there's no way you ll keep on staying in this mansion. Go and live where you belong now..." "Ummah!!!" She thundered! Throwing the lamp she was holding and it got shattered, the pieces of glass splattering everywhere in the living room. Fareeda furiously walked to where Ummah was and strangled her neck, not minding that she might really kill this woman. "You ve done enough damage to my life, how dare you keep on torturing my life?! What do you want from me? What have I ever done to you? Can t you ignore me the same way I ignore your foolish and baseless life? I'll have to kill you today, I'll rather be killed than have a monster like you walking around freely in this mansion!" She tightened her hold on Ummah s neck, she was aware of the grunts Asma u was making, trying to stand up so she can help her mother but she couldn t. Fareeda knew the exact place she had hit and it wouldn t be an easy job for her to do something now. "And this..." She said through gritted teeth with her eyes turned bloodshot due to anger. "This is my father s house, and you have no right to say that I should leave this place! I choose to stay where I want to..." "Fareeda!!!" She heard his voice thundered as he rushed into the living room, careful not to have his feet on the pieces of the glasses everywhere in the living room. "What do you think you re doing? Let go of her!" He said and when Fareeda kept strangling Ummah, Mujaheed had no choice but to forcefully pull her hands away from Ummah s neck who immediately collapsed on the chair next to her as she kept coughing to give air to her lungs. "Let go of my hand!" She said through gritted teeth as her bloodshot eyes turned to look at him but Mujaheed tightened his hold on her wrist. He turned with her wrist still in his hold as he stared at a crying Nana at the door, "Make sure you clean this place before someone gets hurt, Nana." And he forcefully pulled Fareeda out of the chamber not minding the way she was trying so hard to fight him off. She successfully shrugged her hand off his hold when they were in the downstairs living room and shouted, "You have no right over my life, just like they have none! No one is allowed to dictate what should happen in my life! No one!" She shouted and that was like an opener to her tears, she broke into painful tears and tried walking back to the chamber so she could kill that terrible woman and have peace in her mind. He held her back and she turned while clearing her tears away, "The best thing you can do to me now is divorce me, Mujaheed. I beg of you, please. Or else, let me go and kill that terrible woman, people like her shouldn t be alive!" She looked at his hand that was holding her wrist and Mujaheed shook his head before he pulled her to him and despite the way she was crying and trying to get out of his hold, he kept pulling her until he was sure they were in his living room and he had locked the door behind them. She was about to start shouting on him when he looked at her with a hard expression and ordered, "Sit down." She moved a feet closer to the door and Mujaheed repeated his order, "I said you should sit down, Fareeda. What s wrong with you?" "But..." She began, and he cut her off. "No buts, just sit down as I told you to." He pointed at the sofa and she cleared her tears even though more kept pouring down to her cheeks before she sat down and palmed her face and cried painfully. "How could they do this to me? What do they mean? Who are they to determine what I should do with my life or not? What have I ever done to them to deserve such hatred from them? They should know that I hate this marriage, they should sympathize with me, not add more salt to my wounds. Isn t that what families do?..." She let her words trailed off as she cried even harder. It pained her, so was hurt beyond words could say. She knew Ummah and her daughter had done terrible things to her in her life, but this pained her a lot. It was as if they couldn t wait to get rid of her. She wanted acceptance, but everyone but pushing her off. With her face buried in her palms, Fareeda cried as much as she wanted. She just wanted to be out of here. She wanted to run far away to a place no one knew her and she would start afresh. This was among the reasons she wished she hadn t miscarried her baby, because if she had given birth to that child, she knew for a fact that even if the whole world would go against her, her child would always stand by her. She placed her hand on her lower abdomen and cried as painfully as she had never cried in her life. She cried so hard that her lungs threatened to suffocate her and her whole body shook with her cries. The only hope she had with her happiness had been cut off today by Alhaji, and if only Mujaheed would let her go, set her free, she would have gotten the chance to start all over again. What had she done to deserve this kind of life? Just what? She wondered and broke into even more painful tears, not minding the fact that Mujaheed was seated inches away from her and was probably staring at her. "Now, that s enough, Fareeda." He said soothingly and Fareeda turned to look at him. He was now seated on the same sofa as hers and she was sure he had once seen her cried in her life, but she couldn t point a finger at the expression on his face that night because she wasn t able to see it. But today, for the first time in her life, after Nana, someone had looked at her with pure sympathy. She turned away from his sight, "I don t want to talk to you, go away." She was stubborn, he had known that since and right now he wanted to make her feel better in any way he could. "I know that you re angry at me because I ve stopped you from killing your mother..." "She s not my mother!" She thundered and he immediately nodded his head. "I know, she s your step mother, but she s your father s wife and that makes her your mother, Fareeda. You should stop being stubborn for a while and think about this, what you wanted to do was a grievous sin, it s only right that I stopped you from doing that." She was still not looking at his side and her shoulders shook with her tears. He turned her to face him and tried to smile at her, "You re no child like you say, Fareeda. Won t you at least understand this? Now, look at me and tell me what do you want me to do for you? Do you want me to take you out of the house for a while?"