Before Time (The Time Trilogy Book 1) (6 page)

BOOK: Before Time (The Time Trilogy Book 1)
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ME:
Well, I have one number which I can switch on for you.

Impassioned:
That’s better. What time would be suitable for you?

ME:
You can call anytime.

Impassioned:
I won’t be able to call before 12 a.m. PST.

ME:
No problem. I’m awake all night.

Impassioned:
Yeah, of course! I know that.

ME:
Sure, here is my number.

I had tried to find a spare number which I hadn’t used in a long time, but couldn’t. I had to give my real phone number instead.

Impassioned:
Alright, like your picture on Lums channel, there is one channel here where I have spent ten years of my life. Their website has my picture, the real one. If you ever wonder what this idiot looks like, then here is the link.

He pasted a link to his picture, which was amidst many pictures of other mIRC users. I felt shy clicking on the link where his picture was uploaded. A wave of electricity ran through me as I waited for the page to load. This feeling was foreign to me. I just wanted to prolong the moment before I saw the picture, so I minimized the window and sat there, looking stupidly at the screen of my laptop. Breathing deeply, I gathered my courage and clicked on the browser icon, which was already open with the picture displayed. It was a picture of an office room, but what caught my eye was the man sitting behind the desk. He seemed to be busy working on his computer in the picture.

I had no experience with judging people, but I could see the dominant aura that exuded from him, the determination and the power that emanated from him. I blinked severed times, believing myself to be hallucinating. I hadn’t formed a picture of him in my mind yet, but the image in my subconscious and the person in the picture were similar. There he was, radiating power and energy. Perhaps that was my overactive imagination working again. He had perfectly sculpted features, black eyes, and jet black hair.

What attracted me before I’d seen him was his patience, his nature and his ability to understand the situation without words. Like his attentive nature, his picture captured my attention as well. Although, when I later thought about it, his voice and personality were kind of opposites of each other. Right at that moment, I thanked God that he was a normal human being.

Impassioned:
Hear you at 12 a.m. your time. Over and out.

I laughed at the statement, and with that, he left.

I enjoyed talking to him, a stranger, about whom I knew nothing. Perhaps that was the beauty of our friendship. Knowing too much about someone makes you either hate or love that person. While knowing nothing, I was safe from those emotions, but for how long? We hadn’t even asked each other our names, and we felt comfortable with that. Well, come to think about it, the last time we talked properly was only the day when we had such a long conversation. However, I’d really liked that.

I’m normally a happy person who has no issues in life except for what I’m going to do next—at least, it’s how people see me. What I am inside, that’s another story. I am an emotional wreck, true. I didn’t even know the root of my problems or the ways in which I could have solved them.

 

 

 

 

The digital clock on the laptop showed 11:25 PM. Stifling a yawn, I stood up from my desk and plugged in my cell phone to charge it. I had totally forgotten that he was going to call and the battery was low. I’d turned around to switch off my laptop when my cell phone rang. It was only 11:30 at night, so I thought it must be someone else. I unplugged the cell from the charging cable and looked at the number.

It was an international number.

My heart raced. I still had thirty minutes before he was supposed to call me; why so early? Trying to slow down my racing heart and my breathing, I took my own sweet time to attend the call.

“Hello?” I hated my voice. It sounded breathless and eager, even to my own ears.

There was silence from the other end. I repeated the same twice, but nobody spoke. I rejected the call and locked my phone screen. But before I could place it back for charging, it rang again. This time I had no doubt who was calling, and I took the call on the first ring.

“Hello?” Now I was a little irritated. If he had decided to call me before the time, he should have the decency to speak up.

“How are you?” His voice was hoarse, a little intimidating, but there was an intensity to it that left an impact on the listener. If he had been a debater in college, he would’ve won a lot. It was a politician’s voice.

“I’m surviving.”

“Well, can you please call me back in like fifteen minutes; my phone’s battery is almost dead. Let me charge the phone for a while.”

“Sure. Talk to you later.”

I plugged my phone back on the charger and returned to my bed.

Half an hour passed, and he finally called back. I moved to the other room, as my sister was sleeping right beside me.

“Yeah, you took a long time,” I said as I walked to the adjoining room.

“I was giving you time to charge your phone.”

“That’s fine.”

“Anyway, you know the reason I have called you. What kind of psychological reasons can there be that you had to opt for alcohol?”

“There are many things that you don’t know and that you’ll never know about me. Therefore, you won’t understand why it was so important,” I snapped.

“Well, that was the main reason I asked to talk to you on phone rather than discuss this topic on mIRC. So, what are the reasons?”

“Well, I have family issues, and then my own issues. I can’t really tell you those.”

“Let me tell you a story, then. You don’t even understand what issues really are. I have been on mIRC for almost ten years now. While I have seen and heard a lot, there have been some events that are branded on my mind. A long time back, there was a group on IRC called the Pakistan Airforce Group. There was a girl who used to come on their channel. She was the most beautiful, educated and decent girl I’ve ever seen there, and every guy was after her to win her favors, but she wouldn’t trust anyone. Then there was a guy who was also a friend of mine talked to her. Slowly, they started getting closer and closer. She started sharing everything about herself. She told him her real name, her address, her pictures, contact numbers, everything. He even knew about her family. In short, she had opened up to him and told him everything that was there to know about her. Some months later, they had a major fight and they broke up.

“Nobody knows the truth, but that guy started telling people that he had slept with her. Not a month had passed when her improper pictures were shown to the public.”

“What kind of pictures were they?” I asked, totally unaware of what he was trying to imply. He cleared his throat.

“The pictures were indecent, not for public eye.” At that, realization dawned on me and I mentally scolded myself.

“After that I heard that this piece of information reached her family as well, she committed suicide. There are many such incidents in which girls have been forced to commit suicide because they trusted the wrong guys. I am not trying to scare you here, but I want you to understand that there are things worse than what you think you are going through.”

My heart melted at the thought of a girl going through so much and having nobody to whom she could speak. Compared to that, my own problems looked minor and guilt washed over me. Even though I had family issues, my parents were providing for me, sending me to the best schools and getting me the best of everything.

On the other hand, she was innocent. She just trusted the wrong guy, and it cost her life. In our society, such cases were quite common. I could understand her mental condition when she’d decided to commit suicide. She must’ve belonged to a conservative family, with firm social and moral values. She wasn’t supposed to consort with men whom she didn’t know because it was against our religion, as well as our moral values. I was aware of the fact that some conservative families murdered their own daughters for such a thing. Every other day, newspaper ran stories about honor killings. But her life was more important than society, wasn’t it? Our society tried to be liberal, but this was just the place where they stopped thinking. These kinds of situations always angered me because people knew what was happening, but nobody took notice.

“I understand what you are trying to explain,” I said, my voice soft.

“I hope you do. There are many females who have suffered because of men. Some people don’t even know about them. I’m telling you this story because I want you to be safe and sound from such deceiving people.”

“I have been told that before as well.”

“I know a lot about people here, both people who used to come here and people who came and left to live their lives.”

I didn’t understand what he was trying to imply. His words were intimidating, and he was scaring me. Well, I knew how the people here ran after girls—men acting like dogs do, wagging their tails, their tongues hanging out.

“Okay, so coming back to your problem. Since when have you been drinking?”

“This was my first time.”

“You mean to say that you’ve never been drunk before this?”

“Yes.”

“That means your blood is clean.”

“Hmmm…”

“Will you do something for me?”

“What?”

“Will promise me to take care and protect yourself?”

“I promise.”

I didn’t intend to drink again, anyway.

He talked to me for three hours that night, telling me one story after the other about mIRC and how people had spoiled so many lives of the girls who had come here. My mind full of the new information, I finally slept.

 

Chapter 5

The doorbell rang loudly. I ran towards the door to open it because Maheen’s impatient nature.

“Why don’t you open the door?” she called out.

“I’m coming,” I said, and quickly unlatched the door.

She stepped inside and closed the door behind her.

“Where is Anisa?” she asked.

“In mom’s bedroom. She’s sleeping.”

“Okay.” She opened the door of Aliza’s room and entered. I followed her inside. They both rounded on me.

“What’s the problem with you, Onaiza?” Maheen asked angrily.

“What problem?” I was totally confused.

“Mom told me what you did yesterday,” she said.

“Don’t you care about Mom?” Aliza said.

“Of course I care. Otherwise, why would I go for interviews, knowing that I will never get it? I do it for her.”

“Well, that’s not enough. You need to spend time with her and stop misbehaving,” Aliza said.

“I didn’t misbehave. I just asked for something to eat,” I defensively. At least they hadn’t mentioned the alcohol.

“You need to change your attitude with us, Onaiza. This will take you nowhere,” Maheen said resignedly as she sat down on the bed beside Aliza.

“I said I didn’t do anything. Both of you always need a chance to pick on me,” I said. Angrily, I left the room. I came downstairs and saw that my phone was showing a reminder that I had to go to Kuch Khaas at six p.m.

I decided to go. It would help me get out of the house and away from them.

 

 

 

 

I smiled as I brushed my hair and pulled it back in a tight ponytail. Finally, the day was here. Today was the meeting of the Writer’s Guild, organized by a Lahore-based literary company, Open Letters. I had submitted a piece weeks back and was now looking forward to going there, a step towards fulfilling my life-long secret desire to be a writer.

BOOK: Before Time (The Time Trilogy Book 1)
4.6Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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