1 Chapter 1: Khizar Ajmal

I loved her like I had never loved anyone before; Sara Ajmal, my cousin that I had just met for the first time at my 7th birthday party. We were a low class family in a low class town…but when she walked in the room all prim and proper, with her hair twisted in perfect curls, her feet warm in fuzzy boots along with her furry coat… she was glossy just like the expensive nice-smelling dolls in the big shops that were on display in the windows. She was so bright and shiny…and pretty just like those dolls…she brought in so much light into my dark and dusty home; no matter how hard my parents worked it was never enough. I was alway always the poor smelly kid in our rich school no matter how smart I was. No matter how many showers I took it was never good enough, not even when I started stealing toys from the street markets to fit in, no one wanted to play with me long enough to be a real friend with me but now…now there was this beautiful girl who had the room's attention made her way towards me and handed me a bag as big bas the both of us. I had my mouth open for a while until my neighbour who had no choice but to come who was also equally in shock came over and nudged me to open this bag of presents, each one more expensive than the other. She could have only gotten them from the big shopping malls I watched my classmates meet their parents in after school just waiting to pick up their new toys and expensive nice food that I will never get the chance to eat. She wished me happy birthday in the sweetest voice I had ever heard from anyone…it was like it was dipped into honey…before she left again to meet up with her parents outside. And just like that she was gone.

But I never forgot her even once or the favours she did for me. Because everyone saw her come into my house and hand me presents suddenly everyone wanted to be my friend, even in school. I was lonely for such a long time and had to only rely on myself for a long time but because of this one rich cousin of mine that I barely had the chance to talk to suddenly everyone wanted to know about her…but they were selfish. They only wanted things from her, whereas I…i vowed to protect her from the world, no mater who it was who came for her. I would do an even better job than her parents did….and I have never forgotten her since.

I pestered my parents about her all the time but they were reluctant to talk about them. My father and her's were brothers but they weren't close for some reason. It was only years later that I found out that apparently when my uncle got rich he cut himself off from the rest of his family and climbed his way up to the top by himself…but my father just must have been lazy and jealous. He worked on s contraction site…and from what I had seen he had no ambitions to do anything else. He always came home late reeking in his own sweat and dust and tried to wash himself off in our broken shower but it was never good enough…he must be the reason why I stank so much that no one wanted anything to do with me before. As for my mother…she never pushed my father to do well or even helped me in my studies like other mothers. She was illiterate, dirt poor and always engrossed in a pot of food that she couldn't even cook well…well it's not like my father made much already. At that same age I was already able to decipher that he made 1/5th of my classmates parent's salaries. They could never provide me with what I needed despite putting me into a well-off school.