Bound in your Bones
Tags : @hum-suffer @natures-marvel @geometric-circle @multifandom-boss-bitch @akshi-the-nirmata @helios1960 @ramayantika @tehmam @daydreams9 @sebbymybaby21 @mainyahaankyunhoon @dc-reign @charmie-pie @rhysaka @rehmandakaitswife @nessa41890 @harrystyleskiwi9 @tojisloft @nooriyat @nerdreader @chaotickittydreamer @meavlin-io8 @sparksfromhell @prahelika @tere-naal-nachna @kidofmisfortune @doresthings @shotsyfeather @strawbxx-blog @tessa-bl @ulfatsrehman @golgappalicious @euphorkive @lessbutliving @cloudmast @pavbhajisupremacist @patrakilekha
Disclaimer : This is based on Akshaye Khanna's portrayal of Rehman Dakait specifically in the movie, Dhurandhar and has nothing to do with the real Rehman Dakait who was a terrorist shitstain responsible for the 26/11 Mumbai attacks. If there is an afterlife I sincerely hope he is being roasted on a grill.
Chapter One | Chapter Two
A/N:- Everyone thank me in the comments right the fuck now . Also @chaotickittydreamer this chapter is for you :)
Warning: Indication of SA, mild homophobic language.
Chapter Three
To heal a wound you need to stop touching it...
It has been an year since Uzair—
Since Rehman has had to literally pull himself through sheer will and flailing limbs to some semblance of functioning. Some days he still felt the phantom pain of a torn stump bleeding inside him— relentless, unbearable and as fresh as the day that cursed bag had landed in his front steps.
Loss had rewritten the way his body worked.
Now every step felt measured, every breath was consciously drawn in and let out. Sometimes, he felt like he would have to physically push his veins and arteries to pump whatever rotten blood he has through the shrivelled mess his heart had become. It was like his frame was a carcass, lifeless yet artificially moving to mimic a live creature.
Rehman was relearning how to live again.
If only for the sake of Ulfat and Naieem.
They were his sole reason for getting up from the bed. His focal point of existence.
Before his brother was killed, he used to at least have some desires of his own. A drive for the game, ambition to see himself on bigger thrones, shaking hands with bigger people, orbiting a level of power and success only a choice few have ever been privileged enough, or rotten enough to have achieved.
But now, the world felt colourless, meaningless, like he was wading through a viscous fog. The crown held no attraction anymore. What use was all this power when he couldn’t even save his little brother? What use would be a kingdom that he couldn’t rule with his cousin?
The air was stale.
The food was ash.
And only his wife’s eyes and his son’s innocent laughter were Rehman Baloch’s tether to the land of the living.
The rest of him felt like he was buried underground.
Anger had always been his armour throughout life. It had kept him safe from expectations, from hope, from sorrow and anguish and all those pesky emotions that made his throat swell and his chest crack open. But this time, his wrath had not been able to shield him— his grief too great, too sharp and too vengeful to stay bound within a cage.
It had branded him deep inside.
Hollowed out his bones and left him for a husk.
Some days Rehman would catch the hint of sunlight on raven curls in the market and his heart would jump in excitement, some days he would be so sure he had seen those same teak brown irises sparkling from the darkened corners of the warehouse that he would almost call for him, some days he would do it unconsciously— extend his hand for something, seated on his study before remembering there was no one to respond.
Rehman saw Uzair everywhere, in everything and in everyone.
In the way Naieem would throw a tantrum whenever Ulfat or he would try to give him a bath, in the way Donga would make a mess of the pomegranates while trying to eat them, in the way Jamali would sometimes start humming those Nustrat Khan songs under his breath in between long meetings, in the way the sun would beat down on him midnoon, in the way the stars would mock him during long nights, in the way the rain water drenched him down to his bones.
It was like a punishment and a deliverance being meted out day in day out, slowly driving the gangster king to near insanity.
One day, six months after the tragedy that had turned his world upside down, Rehman had almost tripped and taken a head first down the main staircase of the haveli because he had seen Uzair or rather his apparition grinning up at him from the bottom, collar wrinkled, clothes stained with dust from the football pitch and a little dirt on his freckled nose.
“Bhai! Come on! Let's play! You always work and never play with me—”, the spectre had whined in that ever familiar pleading tone. Then his head was gone, blood seeping from the jagged severed portion of his neck, arms sliding off from the shoulder joints, legs falling off the knees. Lifeless lumps of muscles rolling on the ground.
Ulfat had come out from their bedroom only to see her husband, white faced and clutching the bannister like his life depended on it, eyes bleary and unfocused in the way that had nearly terrified her.
“Rehman—”, she had touched his shoulder.
“I can’t… I can’t unsee it…”, Rehman had whispered back, tremulous, helpless against the cruelty of his own mind.
Ulfat’s lips had spasmed once and then she had tugged him away from the ledge and had pulled him into their bedroom where Naieem had been trying to crawl off the bed desperately. She had made him sit on the bed and plucked off their son and deposited him on his lap.
It had been some sort of a placebo effect maybe that had Rehman instantly trying to dial back the darkness and the sadness and the agony in favor of cuddling his squirming infant close to himself, inhaling his powdery milky baby scent as opposed to the cloying metallic odour of fresh blood.
Time was a cruel mistress and life stopped for no man, not even if their hearts struggled to remain frozen in the past.
Naieem had turned one and had realised the merits of walking.
And thus Rehman had got the blessed distraction of trying to stop his very fragile toddler from crashing into every furniture possible in the haveli.
“Arre arre.. dekho toh isse, pair nhi gaadi ke chakke hain mano—”, he would chuckle seeing the one year old run circles around his mother.
“Aap ka hi beta hain, ek jagah pe aaram se baith jaae par nhi!”, Ulfat would try and fail to look infuriated at them both.
“Uzair would have loved running around with him, the boy literally had no breaks to those mile long legs of his…”, Rehman had said unthinkingly. And for the first time, taking his name hadn’t immediately made him want to curl up into a concentrated ball of agony on the floor.
Ulfat’s grey green eyes had softened considerably, perhaps thinking about her brother in law as they watched Naieem play, blissfully ignorant the way only babies can.
So yes, Rehman was living again.
If only for the sake of his little family.
The ghost of his cousin hooked into his throat like an unmissable apparition.
And then one day, one year after, it all came to head in a way no one could have even dreamed about.
It was Uzair’s birthday and like every year, Rehman had taken the responsibility of feeding the entirety of Lyari. Though, for the first time, he had delegated it to his lieutenants instead of being at the forefront.
He simply couldn’t do it.
It was a chore to even sit up straight today.
Ulfat and Naieem were at her parent’s for this week. Ulfat’s mother was sick and she had expressed the desire to spend some time with her daughter and grandson. His wife, God bless the woman, had been a little hesitant to leave him alone, especially considering the occasion approaching soon.
“I can visit her some other time. You shouldn’t have to be alone on a day such as this.”
Rehman had forced himself to smile lightly, kiss her forehead and his son’s cheek and had quite literally pushed both of them inside the car.
“I will be fine, darling. Go be with your mother.”
It was besides the point that he had wanted to pull both of them back in his arms, heart almost leaping out of his throat in terror on seeing the convoy turn the corner.
He couldn’t live like this anymore.
In the constant fear that someone would take them like they took his baby brother and all the security and protection in the world wouldn’t be able to save them if they go out of his sight for even a second.
This petrifaction was suffocating him.
The haveli was hauntingly quiet without the chinkling of Ulfat’s gold anklets and Naieem’s giggles and running feet. Just a year ago on this very same day, the Baloch household had reverberated with the noisy yet warm cacophony of cheer.
Uzair bossing around Donga and the boys into decorating the haveli, Ulfat taking the reins of the kitchens and Rehman trying and failing to keep his blood pressure from going haywire because of the chaos.
And a year later— there was only a gaping yawning darkness in every inch of the mansion and a silence so deafening it threatened to make Rehman’s ears bleed.
He was lying on Uzair’s bed, staring at the ceiling, half of his legs on the floor, feet pressed to the ground from the side, torso twisted in an uncomfortable position over the headboard.
Rehman hadn’t let anyone touch anything in the room. If he could he would preserve the last dust molecule as it was on the day Uzair left, first the house and then— him. The football was still gathering dust at the corner of the bedroom, a single kurta hanging from the peg beside the cupboard, a few study books stacked haphazardly on the table, that goddamned guitar which Uzair had been obsessed with for a few months.
Every piece of his little cousin— preserved like priceless artifacts in a museum.
The mausoleum of Rehman’s heart, frozen in time.
Uzair would have been nineteen today.
He had been nagging him for a motorcycle since his last birthday. He had refused to entertain the mere notion, the idea of his reckless cousin on a bike, swerving around the narrow lanes of Lyari at an undoubtedly deadly speed, borne out of that limitless adrenaline— it had spiked his blood even thinking about it.
Then after a few months, Rehman had seen Uzair looking wide eyed at a motorcycle parked in one of his business associate’s garage. The boy had practically fallen in love and wouldn’t shut up about it.
Even knowing that he was setting himself up for further grief, Rehman had bought the exact same model a day later and had asked it to be delivered on his cousin’s next birthday. Donga hadn’t been able to stop his stifled grin— so impossibly knowing despite Rehman’s glare and Ulfat had sighed loud enough to wake the dead, the very frequent fond exasperation she would get on her beautiful face, seeing his antics on most days—
“You, my husband, have a serious problem. I worry for our future children”, she had said, kissing on his indignant frown.
“I don’t have a problem. If I don’t get him one, he will get it himself, he has been saving up and then I wouldn’t be able to control the situation. I need to have at least one hand on the wheel”, he had protested.
“I am sorry, Rehman but evidently you have no idea that you’ve lost the entire wheel, long back”, his wife had laughed at him, patting his head, playfully condescending.
“That’s it!”
He had stopped that conversation knowing that he was losing by adopting his favourite tactic ever— kissing her senseless. Ulfat hadn’t seemed surprised at all, in fact quite enthusiastically consenting to being mauled at, bringing out her own nails, both figuratively and quite literally as well.
Sometimes, Rehman wondered whether that night had resulted in his son being born nine months later. It would be pretty ironic, if it did.
This morning, as per the contract, the showroom had delivered that stupid motorcycle to his warehouse. Donga had hidden it somewhere but to no avail. The receipt had come to his office, anyway.
It had been a bad idea anyway.
Uzair would have crashed it within a week.
Probably broken a few bones himself.
He could practically see himself yelling at his cousin as the latter is being bandaged and trying his best to look appropriately apologetic.
Rehman could feel the stale air inside the bedroom press into his throat with the weight of the sky abovehead.
He couldn’t breathe.
His mobile’s sharp ringing was what brought him back to earth.
Donga.
He thought to ignore it. He didn’t know whether he could sound remotely composed at the moment. And he didn’t need his right hand to accidentally let his wife know that he might be going through a panic attack again. Bless the man but Donga couldn’t keep a single thing inside of him, especially on facing Ulfat.
But his mobile kept ringing and for some reason he picked up the call. He had to clear his throat before he could speak and yet his voice came out too gravelly for his liking.
“Bol—”
“Bhai woh..”
There was silence on the other line. He could practically hear the other man swallowing hard. Panic sparked violently inside him. Ulfat and Naieem were still at the Jahan mansion, as far as he knew. They weren’t supposed to leave until tomorrow morning.
After Uzair, even the slightest of intuition of wrongness in the air that he felt would flare into full fledged anxiety.
“Donga kya hua?”, he barked sharply, sitting up straight.
“Bhai, he is.. He is alive bhai!”
Rehman’s racing heart slammed into an abrupt stop which stole the rest of his breath in one cruel move. His hands started trembling almost imperceptibly.
It was impossible. It couldn’t be.
He is dreaming.
He will wake up now and reality will hit him right on the face— unchanged and cruel. His blunt nails were digging inside his own palm, seconds away from drawing blood.
Donga won’t play such a cruel trick on him. He wouldn’t. He was too good for that. If not out of pity, then surely his own life was precious to him.
“Bhai…”, his voice filtered in meekly from the other side and Rehman realised he hadn’t spoken in a good long while, the creaking ceiling fan and the static from the line were the only thing audible except the thunderous roar of his own blood.
He said a single word, voice steadying after what felt like a lifetime.
“Where?”
___________________________
The corridor felt endless to Rehman.
He hated how familiar the scent of antiseptic, blood, decay and the stark white lights of a dispensary had become to him over the years.
Donga had met him at the gates of the clinic, looking like he had seen a ghost. He hadn’t even given his lieutenant a second to explain before striding inside the building, glass doors almost exploding inwards. The few inhabitants of the lobby had almost leaped back and flattened themselves against the walls, faces losing whatever color had been remaining on them.
The receptionist had looked like she was already living her last seven minutes as Rehman Dakait walked straight up to her, flanked by his monstrous looking men, eyes spitting fire in a way that threatened to burn down the entire town, jaw locked so tight, one could cut glass against it.
“Where is he?”, he hissed.
It wasn’t a shout. Not even a properly worded question. But still landed like a live grenade in the deathly silent room.
“Thi..third flo….floor sir… r..room number 316”, the poor girl stuttered, looking like a deer caught in a lion’s cage.
Rehman didn’t even dignify her with a response, before turning around swiftly. He didn’t even care for the elevator, going straight for the stairs, his men following close at his heels, faces frozen inanimate, even if their eyes bellied the certain nervousness that had settled in the air around.
Donga was panting by the time he could catch up to his boss.
“Basheer heard a rumour…and informed Ashfaq. They went to…check. He was living in Saddar..bhai—”
Rehman stopped him with a single hand, not even deigning to look at him and Donga slammed his nervous rambling shut. His men were having a hard time keeping up with him as he flew up the staircase with the grace of a mountain leopard with no breath left to lose.
He has lived on his ability to run fast and his enviable stamina to keep running when he was just a street rat, surviving the ruthless bylanes of Lyari. It was hard pressed to match up to his speed and reflexes for most men.
Right now, his mind was pulled in a singular direction.
Saddar…
He was living in Saddar.
So close… so far. All this time. All this—
Why?
He didn’t stop even as a nurse tried to bravely catch his eye, “Sir, you can’t—”. The young man shrunk back immediately as he levelled his gaze on him. Just a hint of a warning in his eyes and it was enough.
His men had barricaded him from the side and the few residents in the corridor were wise enough to leap away from his path.
He stopped in front of the doors to room 316. His feet had come to a grinding halt despite his best efforts. It was like his body was cowering in front of facing a truth that could dismantle him completely.
What if he enters and it isn’t Uzair on the bed?
All the painstaking effort he had put to build himself back together again would unravel in one strike. And this time he wasn’t sure he would be able to survive, having that last flickering hope that had been growing its roots through his breaking chest, getting blown out.
The moment stretched out.
Rehman pushed the doors in, gently this time and walked inside.
There was a man in front of him instantly, a blade at his throat. It glinted dangerously in the bright overhead light. Donga and the men hollered, hands reaching their weapons immediately.
But Rehman was unperturbed. Unbothered about the knife kissing his throat. His eyes took in his unexpected assailant with that predatory hunter’s focus.
He was wrong. This wasn’t a man.
This was a boy.
Eighteen or nineteen at the most. His hair was a mess of waves, falling on his shoulders and over his forehead. A pair of pale green eyes were peeking through them. He had a hunter’s gaze — a cool look that Rehman had seen on the faces of men used to violence, to bloodshed and the life of constant relentless danger.
This boy would kill if given a chance. He wouldn’t even hesitate.
But that look slowly turned into one of slowly dawning shock and realisation before a mild horror settled in. So the boy hadn’t recognized him when he had entered. He was not attacking him. He was defending someone. Standing in front of a potential threat.
The boy removed the blade immediately, staggering back a little and bowing his head, almost respectful and trying to suppress the fear that had started showing in the slight tremble of his hands.
“Rehman Bhai… maanf karein. Maine aapko pehchana nhi tha—”, his voice was deceptively soft.
But Rehman wasn’t looking at him anymore. His eyes were stuck on the bed. Whatever air was left inside his chest seemed to get sucked out immediately. He could feel the shock traveling down his spine to his fingers and his toes like liquid electricity.
Uzair was looking back at him with an equally wide eyed wonder on his pallid face.
He had a cast on his right arm.
The supposed arm Rehman had seen in his nightmares, hacked jaggedly off his elbow, rolling on the ground in a pool of blood. There was a freshly stitched cut on the side of his forehead and there were bandages wrapped around his left leg. Most probably abrasions by the small blooming patches of blood visible through the cotton.
The boy was battered and bruised.
But alive.
Breathing, heart pumping, warm skin, alive.
Uzair.
The same curly hair falling all over his forehead like a nuisance of a mess. The same gangly limbs only now with an added meat over them, defined in newly grown adult-like musculature. The same teak brown irises, sparkling and apprehensive, staring at him with that same sheepish, apologetic candour.
Uzair.
Uzair.
Uzair.
He wasn’t dreaming this time. The scent of antiseptic and cloying metallic copper and the bitter nervousness in the room was as real as it gets.
“Bhai…”, Uzair spoke tremulously.
And that small ever familiar voice that Rehman had resigned himself to only hearing in his dreams and his nightmares was what snapped something in him. Reality came roaring back with a vengeance and the world tilted at a dangerous axis around his rapidly darkening edges.
There were purple spots in front of his eyes again and he cannot faint, goddamnit.
There was a flurry of panicked voices of Donga and a few others overlapping but Rehman staggered and caught the doorsill to steady himself. Then he surged forward, balanced himself on the railing of the hospital bed and used it as a crutch and rounded and came directly in front of his cousin.
Uzair had almost half stood up from where he had been perched on the side of the bed, eyes having turned saucer-like in bewilderment perhaps, the little color remaining on his face having drained off by then and the next moment he was trapped in a vice-like grip.
Rehman was clutching the boy to himself like he would drown otherwise.
Uzair. Uzair. Uzair.
My cousin. My brother. My child.
Relief was such a nauseating fall down a cliff that it made him lightheaded. He had buried his face inside those messy curls, inhaling the heart breakingly familiar scent of his baby brother in huge panicked gulps. He would brand his arms around that lanky frame, he didn’t care if he was strangling the boy in his hold.
My child. My child. My baby.
He was alive. He could feel Uzair’s heart beating like a frantic bird trapped beneath a stone against his own hammering chest.
Oh it burned.
The speed with which his heart was pumping out the circulation inside him. It was like he had been drenched under an ice storm, frozen numb for weeks and then suddenly he was alive again. The sun was bright and warm again. The stars burned his vision and the air was so utterly sweet, it made him feel sick.
“Bhai.. bhai.. I am okay…I am fine”
He could barely hear Uzair’s words muffled against his chest as the boy’s one good arm trapped in between their bodies was trying to wriggle out, maybe in an attempt to reciprocate the stifling hug he was being attacked with.
Or maybe he was trying to push Rehman away because he couldn’t breathe.
Rehman unpeeled himself from his brother, reluctantly but he had to check for himself that the boy was relatively unharmed. He lifted that beloved face with his hands, cradling those sunken cheeks, turning his face from one side to another.
“Bhai main theek hun. Bass chota sa accident ho gaya tha—”, Uzair whispered strangely gently.
“Chup”, Rehman snapped and the latter shut up immediately.
His fingers trailed the cut on his forehead lightly and then went inside his hair, stroking his curls almost habitually. He checked the back of his head and scalp for uneven bumps. Anything to suggest a head injury the doctors might have missed.
His heart just wouldn’t settle back down, still hammering wildly, a thunderous beat against his creaking ribs.
He brushed his lips in a near kiss on the flaming stitches on his forehead, feeling his eyes sting dangerously. Uzair’s free hand was tangled in the back of Rehman’s kurta in a steadying grip. He had closed his eyes at the contact.
Finally after what felt like forever, Rehman was satisfied enough to momentarily remove his hands off his cousin. Even if he immediately wanted to wrap him back inside his arms and this time, literally refuse to open them.
“Prepare to get him released. We are going home”, Rehman instructed Donga, eyes not leaving Uzair’s still lightly dazed face. The boy shifted at that and a mild frown started to build on his face.
“But—”
He ignored Uzair’s half formed protest and turned his gaze back on the other boy, finally. He noticed that the latter was battered in a similar kind of way, a cut on his lip and a bandage around a bicep on his left arm. The boy was beefier than Uzair. Shorter in height and looked like he could pack a punch.
“Naam kya hain tera?”, Rehman asked, eyes trained on the boy in a way he knew made him look particularly unnerving.
“Hamza..”, the boy muttered, eyes lowered.
“Pura naam”
“Hamza Ali Mazari.”
“Where are you from?”, Donga asked this time, taking over the interrogation. The bigger man was well versed in his boss’s silent commands.
“Kharotabad, Quetta”, the boy answered.
“Ghar mein kaun kaun hain?”
“Koi nhi. Badein bhai Azhar, Baloch United Front mein mujaiddin the. Shahid ho gaye.”
The boy was Baloch then.
“How did the accident happen?”, Donga asked.
“We were on the motorcycle. Lost control”, the boy replied, a tad sheepish.
Rehman wanted to laugh hysterically. He could practically feel Uzair vibrate in nervousness behind him. He wished he had a cigarette. But he had forgotten the pack in his blind panic to reach the hospital. Now his hands were itching.
He hated how his mind refused to stop for one single second.
What was Uzair doing with this boy? Where had he been all these months? Why had Hasheer lied to him? Whose body was in that bag? Had Uzair been aware that they all thought him dead, for all these months?
Had he.. Had he faked his own death for some reason?
No.
No, he won’t do that to him. Would he?
Did it even matter?
He was alive.
His baby.
Donga was looking at him for further orders. The boy was still staring at his feet. There was something strange about this kid. But he had evidently befriended his cousin. And he was ready to kill for him, as shown by the knife that had been on his throat just a few minutes ago.
“Take care of him. And get me Basheer and Ismail. I need to have a talk with them—”
“Bhai— don’t.”
Rehman turned and stared at Uzair who was standing upright by now, and staring at him beseechingly.
“Don’t punish them Bhai. They… they helped me run. They did it for me. I..I am sorry. I wasn’t thinking straight and I needed to get away for a while. They didn’t betray you, they just helped me.”
The silence in the room was a palpable presence. Donga was looking at Uzair incredulously. The rest of the men had filtered out by then as per the former’s direction. And thank god for that because Rehman was feeling sick.
The incessant beeping noises of the medical equipment was grating in his ears.
Uzair looked incredibly guilty and more than a little ashamed. It was clear, he hadn’t expected to get caught. Hamza made an aborted movement towards the former but didn’t dare to cross the room to get to him.
“Did you try to fake your own death?”
His voice was remarkably steady, despite the havoc going on inside. Uzair was looking at Hamza, face a little ashen in a way that made his stomach twist. He didn’t turn to check the other boy’s expression. It wasn’t of import.
But the answer to his question was.
“Uzair…”
“I didn’t think Hasheer would make such a spectacle of it. That wasn’t the plan at all. By the time I knew what he had…done….it had already been too late.”
Uzair’s voice was a whisper.
Yet it tore through the older man like a canon ball through a dirt wall.
Rehman wished he had never asked at all.
___________________________________
Ulfat was ecstatic.
It broke Rehman’s heart a little when she wrapped her arms around his little brother and started crying. Uzair had tears streaming down his face too and apologized to her repeatedly. He didn’t tell her that his cousin had faked his death. He couldn’t. It would break her heart.
And it was just his pain to bear.
Naieem was ecstatic too.
Rehman didn’t know whether the toddler could even recall Uzair properly but he was seemingly pretty happy with being picked up and cuddled by the taller boy.
“I missed you too, you little rugrat”, Uzair had whispered against his nephew’s round cheeks and pressed scratchy kisses on them making the boy laugh breathless.
It was like life had been breathed back into their house in one go. The servants seemed unsettlingly energized, his wife couldn’t stop hovering over his cousin and Naieem had found a playmate whose energy was at par with his own.
The first few days, Rehman was so terrified that this was a dream and if he closed his eyes, it might all vanish into nothing, that he could barely sleep. He would prowl around the haveli, like an insomniac owl and more times than not he would sit beside his younger brother’s bed like morpheus guarding his sleep and tiptoe back into his own room before the latter would wake up.
He had tried pushing the thought of Uzair faking his own death deep inside his mind and forgetting about it but it kept erupting out like a particularly stubborn gash which refused to scab over.
He wanted to shake his brother and yell.
What could have possessed him to do such a heartless, cruel, idiotic thing?
But he was a coward.
He was more afraid of the answer than the avoidant and guilty glances his brother kept giving him. Was living with him so hard that he had to run away like that? Could he not bear a distant supervision, if only for his sake?
What had changed in that one year that made his cousin take such an extreme step?
He wanted to drag Basheer and Ismail through the streets till their hides fall open and demand that they give him all the answers he is petrified of asking his own brother. But what should he punish them for? For helping Uzair even if going against his orders?
Well, they get to keep their lives because Rehman is not a hypocrite but they are never getting close to his inner circle again.
All these unasked questions had stood up like an impregnable wall between him and Uzair. He didn’t know how to cross over to the other side. And he couldn’t for the life of him, understand why his baby cousin was suddenly so afraid of him. The way he would always avoid his gaze, the way his voice would automatically lower in his presence.
Uzair had never behaved like this with him before. Always happy to lock horns with him, nag at him, demand his attention, shout and crib and fight unhesitant. He had always been extremely secure in his knowledge that Rehman wouldn’t hurt him.
He would rather die.
Was it because of that one slap?
Was it because he had finally seen the monster behind the man? After all these years, had his darkness finally scared away his little star?
Rehman would sit beside his bed, night having fallen like a blanket over Lyari and watch Uzair breathe in and out in the even rhythm of a dreamless slumber. He would count the individual inhalations and his fingers would hover uncertainly over his cheek, the one he had hit.
“I am sorry sweetheart…please..just come back to me”, he would whisper almost inaudibly in the dark, apologies and accusations and animal sounds— trying desperately to hold the salt back in his throat and choke words he could never speak in the light.
His brother was alive.
Yet it felt like he had lost him anyway.
_________________________
Hamza Ali Mazari was a quick study.
The boy had an endless curiosity and a strange ability to soak up everything like a sponge. He would follow Rehman around the factory, doing odd tasks for him, sometimes just sitting cross legged and listening to him speak to his business partners on the phone or instructing his men.
“What do you do?”, he had asked the boy once.
“Whatever you want me to”, he had answered back, smartly.
The boy had a cunning he had rarely seen before. If he could polish himself a little more and hold onto that burning ambition that Rehman could clearly see burning in those verdant depths of his lion shaped eyes, then there would be no stopping him.
Somedays it was oddly like looking into a mirror.
“When did you meet my brother, Hamza?”, he had asked him, when the boy had first come to the warehouse, eyes roving bright and hungry.
“Did Uzair say something?”, he had asked back unafraid. No one in their right mind would dare counter question Rehman Dakait. Most of his own partners and allies and more than a few rivals have cowered before the King of Lyari in situations much milder than this.
Yet here was this impertinent mouse, almost a decade younger to him, mouthing off to the lion.
Rehman had liked him already.
Of course he hadn’t let that smirk form on his inanimate face. It wouldn’t do good to make the boy aware that he was impressed, despite the clear disrespect. The boy would learn to fear him. That is the only way this works.
“If you want to learn how to make the world kneel, start by learning whom to bark at and whom to defer to”, he had loomed over the boy in a smooth panther like move, even if the latter was as tall as him, his presence was a gravity that could crush mountains to smithereens, let alone little boys.
There had been a hint of fear in those green eyes battling the defiance.
Good.
“I could have torn your entire arm off for that disrespect back at the hospital”, he had hissed, eyes narrowed dangerously, “but I didn’t. Because you were trying to protect my brother. But I promise you Hamza Ali Mazari, if you have even the slightest intention to hurt my boy or use him— I will eviscerate your entire bloodline from this earth.”
Hamza had swallowed dryly but remained standing rigid and still.
“Understood, Bhai”, he had said simply.
Rehman had nodded, and then handed him a gun.
If the boy had even a fraction of the intellect and drive that he could see then he would rise soon and fast. And Rehman wanted a front row seat to that. Also he needed to keep this kid close. He had been the one who had been in close contact with Uzair that one year of his absence.
Uzair would almost always be seen with Hamza, the two of them chattering away together, fooling around and creating a general headache for Donga. His second in command had taken both the boys under his wing somewhat and often shielded them both from his boss’s temper.
Life was returning back to normal.
Well, as normal as it could get in Lyari.
But normal had hardly existed in Rehman Baloch’s life for too long.
It only took another two months to come to the staggering realisation of what exactly had turned his entire world upside down.
One day Rehman had come home after a meeting with potential buyers, dead tired. Evening had already stretched over the horizon and the air had started to chill a little. The haveli was deceptively quiet and that irritatingly recalling panic had surged with a vengeance and he was already half outside the porch, ready to storm out to the guards stationed outside when he heard Uzair’s laughter boom from inside.
Relief washed the alarm down and he followed the sounds to reach the courtyard.
Uzair was sitting cross legged on the ground, Naieem perched on his lap, squirming and clapping his hands wildly. They were both looking up at Hamza who seemed to be in the middle of an incredibly theatrical retelling of some story. The boy was pantomiming like a court jester, throwing his hands around and doing an odd sort of jiggle with his feet, his voice flamboyant and high pitched.
Naieem seemed thrilled at whatever was being told, but that perhaps could be attributed to the weird faces and noises Hamza was making than the subject of his story. Uzair on the other hand was looking up at his friend, eyes sparkling madly and face split open in a grin which seemed to light up his entire face.
There was a strange sort of softness in his gaze as he looked at the other boy who seemed immersed in his own unabashed art.
Rehman had never seen his brother look like that at anyone before.
The expression was so naked on his face, so vulnerable, so goddamned open that it made Rehman want to jump in front of him and shield him or cover him in bubble wrap. Goddamn but the boy had no filters and no masks.
Anyone who walked in right now could take this in the wrong way.
And suddenly something like lightning struck him. All of Rehman’s swirling thoughts came to a grinding screeching halt. His chest was so tight he had to place a fist over it and rub, hoping to restart it back again.
How could he have not seen it?
The looks exchanged, avoiding everyone in the room. The secretive little smiles, the inside jokes, the too comfortable sharing of each other’s personal space— Hamza’s manic gaze while levelling the knife at his throat, Uzair’s rapidly paling expression at being practically dragged back home, Hamza refusing to tell him how they met—
“He was living in Saddar, Bhai, the boy— this Hamza was seen with him quite often”, Donga had told him. He had dismissed it as a mere friendship. A companion Uzair had found in his new life perhaps.
Uzair’s constant nervousness around him.
Is this—
Is this why he wanted to leave the house?
The ground beneath his feet was shifting. Rehman leaned back against the wall of the haveli and struggled to breathe evenly. Memories were a sharp unforgiving bioscope running in front of him. The house at the street end. The boy who would follow him around for the longest time till he befriended him grudgingly.
The innocent friendship he had entered thinking the boy just liked being with him.
He was not much of a boy though, was he?
Rehman coming back home after that night, bruised and battered to hell, blood sliding down his face in a macabre painting, his hands drawn tight around the knife because he wanted the fucking trembling to stop—
Uzair seated on the table, doing homework, staring up at him in utter shock—-
Rehman spitting the blood and saliva coagulated inside his mouth in the sink, nearly rubbing the skin of his hands as he washed them aggressively, disgust travelling like ants down his spine, derision coating in his voice thick, trying to curb the humiliation and the pain and the sheer fury bubbling inside him—
“Fucking gay asshole!”, he had spat, eyes blurred and a poisonous snarl.
Oh God…oh dear god—
Rehman scrambled back inside, bile surging up in an unforgiving merciless wave scorching his throat and he barely made it to the bathroom sink before he could throw up. He heaved the bile out somehow, tears scrunching up in his eyes more from the horror still gripping him in a nauseous hold, than mere reflex.
He washed his mouth out thoroughly yet the metallic taste refused to leave his palette.
Oh dear lord in heaven, what has he done—
One small mistake, one misunderstanding and has his little brother lived his entire life in fear?
The very thought that Uzair might have thought Rehman would hate him, be disgusted at him or god forbid, hurt him if he comes to know of his preference almost made him fold over the sink again, lungs aflame in sick horror.
Everything had started making a scary amount of sense now.
The shifty behavior after Rehman’s marriage. The self imposed exile. The nightmarish way Uzair had tried to escape his sight. The way Hasheer had laughed at him, eyes spitting a sickened sort of glee when he was being murdered. The reason why he had made Rehman believe he had violated his brother—
That monster was present when that man had… he was there in the audience, laughing away to glory. Snarling derisive, depraved insults as a way to hype the brute up.
He was… he knew… he knew that damned fucker—
Oh god…
Oh dear god…
Rehman staggered against the wall and slid down, head falling in his hands.
What should he tell his baby brother now?
He cannot tell him. He can’t. Not why he said what he did that night. He cannot let anyone know. It was his shame to bear, his anguish to bury. He can’t let Ulfat know. Or god forbid, Naieem. Never. Not even when the baby is old enough to actually understand.
But he cannot let his child live in fear anymore.
Not for this.
Never for this.
He only hoped, Uzair believed him and forgave him if he could.
Oh dear god—
To be continued.
