A song drips into my mind like water in a forgotten tomb… it says, “Insha’Allah abaad sare, azaad sare.” I do not know the full ghost of “abaad,” but “azaadi”
that I taste like blood in the mouth. Not the freedom of wings, but the freedom that comes when even memory cannot find you. I am shackled… not by the hands of others, but by the rotting vines of my own cravings, by the silent teeth of greed, by the cold stare of envy. These chains cling to my flesh, drink from my pulse they will starve only when my body feeds the earth. And when the name I carried fades from every tongue, when my bones are only whispers in the dark, perhaps then I will know azaad sare freedom born in the stillness of the grave. Insha’Allah.

-

The world is a crooked mirror, isn’t it?
I whispered to myself perhaps with words stitched into me long ago this is how it has always been.
But did I ever learn it, or did it seep into me like a poison I never saw coming?
I left home once, heavy with dreams, my chest a furnace of restless flame.
Now that flame is nothing but ash cold, silent… and yet, it is mine.
Mine, because I walked so far into the shadows of life that the path back dissolved behind me.
And the truth?
I think I wanted to be lost.
I think I wanted the fire to die.
I think I wanted to feel my own skin turn to ash,
so I could watch the wind scatter what was left of me.

-

The first time I went there, everything felt strangely unreal. It was a small, enclosed area, and as soon as you stepped in, to the right was a large room with three beds but not the kind meant for rest or healing. At the foot of each was a small wash basin, and the beds themselves were nothing more than cold steel slabs. There were no pillows, no sheets just a single, hard block placed awkwardly under the neck, not even under the head. It didn’t feel like a place for the living at all. I remembered when someone dear to me had passed they were placed gently on a proper bed until it was time for the ritual bath. At least there had been that shred of dignity. But here… what I saw was raw, clinical, and stripped of all softness. The people around weren’t mourning they were watching. Curious, almost detached. The woman lying there was about to be autopsied. I had never seen one before maybe glimpsed something on YouTube once, and thought, “How bad can it be?” But when they began to cut her open in front of me, wallah… I felt that even a sheep, when slaughtered, is treated with more respect.

-

The Reflection That Fears Itself
She didn’t remember when she last felt… alive.
Maybe she never did.
Zoya was just 22, but her soul felt ancient. Like she had lived lifetimes in silence, watching the world rot behind glass walls. Every morning she woke up with the thought  "Maybe today, I will stop existing."
Not because she craved death.
But because she feared what waited after.
She wasn’t afraid of the void. She feared that it wouldn’t be empty at all.
She feared that she would still be there… unchanged… unredeemed.
Zoya wasn’t a bad person.
She was kind once. She smiled at birds. She wrote poetry on bathroom mirrors.
But the world didn’t like softness.
So it pressed her until she cracked. Not broke, just... reshaped. Jagged edges, bleeding kindness.

People told her:
"You’re still lucky. You're beautiful, smart, alive."
They didn't see her shadow — the one whispering, "None of this will matter."
And sometimes, at 3 a.m., she would dream of him.
.... TO BE CONTINUED....

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