the unseen
fanaa, g, zooni-centric. spoilers for the film, obviously.

Two weeks after her recovery, her parents took her to the cinema. They took her to shops, bought her clothes whose carefully crafted patterns she had always felt underneath her finger tips when being dressed, but the colours she had never witnessed. They were vibrant and spectacular, as were the film songs she had previously only heard. The beats became colours and dance steps, movements and expressions. She had heard people smiling, felt them smile, heard them laugh. She hadn't seen her own face, relaxed or tired, happy or bored. She stared at the mirror a lot and tried not to feel vain.

It was all new. It was all incredible.

And yet there was an underlying darkness and sadness to it all, she realized as she cut her finger one time while cooking and saw blood. Thought of Rehan. Thought of fear. How she had learned to see through Rehan's eyes and how her eyes were now Rehan's, no matter where she looked, always a reminder of him there. She couldn't mourn and she wouldn't forget. As if Rehan was still there. Through her eyes, in an odd way, maybe he was.

Maybe she'd just been watching too many films.

After her son was born, she knew all the faces she could ever hope to know, all except one. She tried to compose it. She cut and pasted, combined and copied, examined carefully, matching eyes and nose and cheek and chin and mouth. The pieces never fit, never came together. She remembered, so well, every small detail (she relished in every memory even though most times it didn't help at all). But it was like knowing a phrase but not knowing how to write it. She could remember his face, his body, him, under her fingers but she couldn't see it.

She was still blind, hands reaching out in the dark ahead of her until she'd find him again.

--

She wouldn't find him again, of course, at least strongly believed she wouldn't. Some mornings she made the conscious decision not to think about his death, and then thought about it all day, heart heavy with guilt.

"You'll go to President's Palace, won't you?" she had said.

"Yes," he had replied, and then, attaching a necklace around her neck, "I love you so much."

"I know," she had said, smiling, wondering why he'd say that, with that tone, as if he knew it was the last time.

The dialogue played in her head, his voice fading until she could no longer recall it exactly, its depth and tone, the way it had vibrated against her touch. Hearing wasn't a strong sense of hers anymore. A friend would call her, Fatty or Ruby or someone she knew from school, and she'd say, "Excuse me, who is this?" and the person on the other end would be insulted or laugh, or both, and she'd apologise.

"In order to gain something, you have to lose something," her mother used to say but sometimes Zooni wondered if her sight was worth gaining, to lose Rehan like that, suddenly ripped away just as he had become a part of her.

--

There's a stranger in her house. A chill down her spine, a look, a touch, a vague sense of familiarity, and she's drawn to him like she's never been to a man since. Well, seven years.

He's avoiding her eyes and flinching under her touch, and raising his voice at her, and for a moment she has permanently decided he's an idiot. Eventually she finds out all about why and how, and she's angry, fuming and crying, because her Rehan has come back to her, but it doesn't take away the pain of seven years alone.

But his life is hers, and seven years is not as long as forever, which is why she forgives him, or doesn't, but stops caring, maybe. In order to gain something, you have to lose something. Maybe she's weak for taking him back. Maybe her vision is finally no longer clouded.