Courage

I stood staring at my blood stained hands as I backed away from her body. "I'm sorry", I whispered as the silent tears slid down my cheeks. I was tumbling through the air, colours flashing before my eyes, wind howling around me. Reaching out, I hoped to grip something- anything, to slow down my fall.

Around me, there was a world to which I no longer belonged. It was as if a heavy door had shut with a sigh and left me outside, alone. I could remember the morning of the day we first fell in love, the intensity of making love, the courage to pack our bags and to run to find our freedom, but it seemed as if in another time. When I was still alive.

Reminiscing memories from our past, I remember the time when our blood related families lived peacefully in our native Pakistan, where we had grown up together in a rural village underneath the shadow of the Kashmir mountains. Our childhood was spent together playing in the saffron fields and talking things over. We were not brothers and sisters but childhood friends.

At the age of eighteen, our feelings were intensified for each other and we grew a strong lovers' bond. At the age of twenty, as per traditions, our grandfather and parents decided to hold a wedding. Soon after, I joined our family business we got married to each other.

A few days after our marriage, Grandfather died and there began a fight for the ancestral property. As we both were the children of the two sons of a wealthy tribe's men and so we were affected the most. My parents forced me to divorce her as they wanted to restore the family peace while not keeping any kind of relation with her family.

Her parents banned her from meeting me as well. Both of our parents began watching our every move. One day, when they found out that we were secretly meeting in the saffron fields, her mother smacked her hard in the face with a shoe, splitting her lip. It was very damaging; she had no anchor. But still she refused to submit.

I could not stick around to watch her get beaten up by her parents on a daily basis because of me, so I gave up. I fled, surviving by sleeping in a shelter and working at a local café. My parents harassed me at both places, showing up and ordering me to divorce her. Everyday they closed in, like possessed demons, until I lost my job. To my parents, my rebellion was a source of deep shame. The felt embarrassed to have a son like me. They became more determined than ever to marry me off to another woman to restore the family peace.

With the help of my friends, Gulshan and I escaped to Austria. There we both started a new life, changing our names and erasing our family background. The day we fled, I realised why I loved her so much. I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity, and her flaming self respect. And these are her qualities I would believe in, even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she was not all she should be. I loved her and it was the beginning of everything.

Today, when our rebellious families found her but not me, they settled down the fire of revenge in their hearts. Holding her dead body in my arms the world ended right in front of me. It fell apart and shook beneath my feet. Buildings began disintegrating, crumbling, taking me down with it... And it was my fault. I had started the end.

There exist men, extremely shameless but not more than me. I still posses the courage to move on.