Chapter five – Ibtisam
The wind tangled in my scarf as I climbed the narrow fire escape outside the hospital, each rung creaking beneath my weight. Saal followed behind me, slower, more cautious. Typical. He always thought two steps ahead. I thought in collisions.
He'd begged the nurse to let him breathe something besides antiseptic. I told him I knew a place. No cameras. No staff. Just the roof and the night.
The rooftop welcomed us with a sweep of cold air and silence. The city below blinked with sleepy lights, cars like fireflies winding between buildings. I walked to the edge and sat on the low ledge, legs swinging over a drop that could end everything.
"You brought me to a rooftop to kill me?" he asked, settling beside me.
"No," I said. "That part comes later."
We sat in silence for a while. I liked it. The kind that doesn't ask anything of you. The kind that feels like maybe, just maybe, you're not entirely alone in the world.
Saal leaned back on his palms. "You always come here?"
"Only when I feel too much."
He looked at me then, really looked. His eyes didn't pry, they waited. So, I spoke.
"Sometimes, I think I was born wrong. Like my soul's stitched backward. Like… I don't know how to do this. Be this. Whatever this is."
"You're doing it now," he said softly.
I scoffed. "Sitting on rooftops and spiralling doesn't count."
"Talking does."
I glanced at him. His face was half-lit by the moon, the rest shadowed. He looked older like this. Sadder. Or maybe I was just seeing him clearly for the first time.
"When my mum died," I said, "I didn't cry. I was two. I didn't even know what I lost. But growing up… every time someone left, it was like she died all over again."
Saal said nothing. Just let me keep going.
"I think that's why I ruin things. Because I'm scared, I'll lose them anyway. Might as well burn it all before it slips through my fingers."
"You haven't ruined this."
I looked at him. "Not yet."
A long pause stretched between us. The kind you can either fill with lies or leave sacred.
"Don't fall too deep, Saal," I said, voice barely a whisper. "I'm not made to stay."
He turned to face me fully. "Then I'll take what I can get. Even if it's brief. Even if it hurts." That did something to my chest. Like my ribs forgot how to hold my heart.
I leaned my head against his shoulder. He didn't move. Just breathed, steady and warm.
We didn't kiss. We didn't make promises. But that moment—quiet, tragic, painfully alive—was more intimate than anything I'd ever known.
And in the back of my mind, I wondered if this was the last time I'd let someone hold my silence.
Because love, I was starting to learn, wasn't about who stayed.
It was about who saw you—be
fore you disappeared.
I hadn't spoken to anyone since the rooftop.
Not Saal. Not Salma. Not even the house staff, who'd learned to stop greeting me.
I stayed in my room, curtains drawn, phone off, silence ringing in my ears louder than any fight. I thought being seen would make things better, lighter. But it only made the weight shift from my chest to my bones.
He saw me.
And now I couldn't un-feel it.
I walked barefoot through my room, the tiles cold against my skin. My boots lay in the corner, still caked in old dirt. My combat jacket was slung over the edge of a chair, half-falling. Everything looked untouched, but everything felt different.
There were no voices. No arguments. Just the creak of floorboards under my pacing.
I opened my wardrobe. The bag was still there. Folded into the pocket of my old racing jeans.
I stared at it.
I hated that it still called to me. Even now. Especially now.
I pulled it out and held it in my hand. Translucent. Familiar. Cold.
My fingers trembled. I wanted to feel nothing. Just once more.
But his voice came back to me. Not loud. Just a whisper in the corner of memory. "Then I'll take what I can get. Even if it's brief. Even if it hurts."
I dropped the bag.
It hit the floor like a bullet I refused to load.
I collapsed onto my bed and curled into myself, pulling the duvet over my head like it could protect me from the truth. That I was falling. That someone was falling for me. That maybe I didn't want to be saved—but I didn't want to be lost either.
Tears came silently. No theatrics. No sobbing. Just slow, steady grief leaking out of the cracks.
Not for him.
For me.
For the version of Ibtisam that could have been something more.
I fell asleep like that—wrapped in borrowed warmth, still hearing his words echo in the corners of my broken silence.
He saw me.
And I didn't know how t
o survive that.