Fari Hadi Saga Finale

I don’t know what I should write in the last post of this series, everything is so much scattered in my mind that I can’t even recall what happened earlier and what latter. Moreover, I am afraid of reliving the whole experience and the events connected to Fari after I met him last time. So, I will write this post in snippets of events as they are coming to me. After that meeting with Fari, my love story ended even before blooming (like nipping the evil in the bud). Itna kuch beet gaya hai yaad nae kya fasana tha kya haqeeqat thi. (I have been through a lot, can’t even remember which part was fictional and which was reality).
• Fari started avoiding me, actually he was never into texting me or getting back to me, even between those two meetings of ours, but after the last meeting, he made sure not to text me again, I guess.
• I didn’t like the fact that he considered me a ‘big brother’, it made me feel sick and disgusted. I felt an incestuous rascal, craving for a guy younger than me, was I becoming a pedophile. Yuck!!!
• Tina told me that he had started asking his parents to marry him off as soon as possible. Then he grew a beard, become ultra-religious, started having fights with his parents and siblings, preaching them how much wrong they were in their ways.
• Their (Tina’s & Fari’s) mother came to know about my sexual orientation and started bugging Tina to stop seeing me anymore. She didn’t know that I and Fari were also in contact, I guess then she would have a heart attack.
• As Fari was working in Lahore so in all this familial tension he stopped going back to home where Tina was adamant to talk to him about it. I didn’t want to create any problem for Fari or for Tina or for their family, so I strongly advised Tina to keep her mouth shut.
• And I knew he don’t love me that way, anyway….
So, I started deleting him from my system. Lost me cell one day, unintentionally although, but I knew it will happen that day when after a few months, as I was passing by the café I met him last time, I became so much nostalgic that I couldn’t resist myself calling him up. I thought I was over him but as I heard his “Hello” my heart started throbbing like always. I managed to talk to him in a normal tone and ended it up in a friendly manner. But I was shocked that he was still there inside me. I went for some research work and on my way, I lost my cell and as I was traveling back to my place, in the bus, I didn’t know what happened, tears started flowing out of my eyes. I could see people looking at me, but I was so composedly shedding tears that they didn’t come close to me. Even I wasn’t bothered about anyone at that time, I was in deep pain and that’s all I knew.
Tina remained on my side throughout. She stood in front of her mother and didn’t stop meeting me. She so much wanted to make me and Fari a couple, she was angry and agitated about all that. She wanted to make him love me but I told her to relax. I even stopped talking to her about Fari as it would enrage her. I still remember her saying many times, even that day at terminal, “Fari doesn’t deserve a strong, kind guy like you. You are too good for him. He will ditch you, he’s a spineless coward.”
After a whole year, he got my new number from Tina and came in contact once again. But this time it was completely different. I know he still listens to me, whatever I say. I tried to bridle his ruthless religious bigotry through puns, sarcasm, and discussions and they worked. He got married this February and I was invited. I didn’t go not because I am still in love with him or once I was in love with him but because I wasn’t sure about the reaction of his mother and secondly I was busy that day (it was mid-week, strange time for a wedding though). It drizzled for two days in Lahore, the day he had a Nikah and when he had Walima. It was really funny, you see, I used to think that I‘ll die without him, or will die if he will share physical intimacy with someone and that was going to happen after his wedding and I wasn’t feeling any such thing. I prayed for his marital bliss, after a long time I prayed, actually after leaving Fari, I prayed very first time, the day he got married.
I remember I used to be so sure about getting him in my life. I fell in love very late although, I was 24 then. I was such a nice, optimistic guy who used to think that Allah will grant him to me, as I had never asked anyone from him before. Because I had never cheated, never deceived, never lied, had been a good boy. I knew that Tina was right about his spinelessness that he lacked what should be in a good partner but I used to think Allah will change him for me. He’s Allah Almighty, He can do anything, and He will make him mine. I was telling this to Gaia and Zeb when Zeb said, “Hadi! I am having goose bumps right now. And I am afraid what will happen…if…?” she left the sentence incomplete. Exactly at that time, call for evening prayer started and I smiled and said, “It will not happen.”
I am not sad over Fari a bit now, he has never been that much important seriously. But what is bothering me immensely is that in all this, I lost my faith, I lost my Allah. Now I fear praying, fear calling Him, fear talking to Him. He made me fear. He made me fear myself. And now I am a godless creature… and it’s not fair, certainly not fair.


(Image Courtesy: Bartek Ambrozik)