"Bhai Ek cup chai lana." I called the waiter of this dhaba, which means a roadside eatery, where we eat and drink chai maybe some biscuits. I asked him to bring me some chai because my head might explode at any second.
I've been out the whole day, looking for something that can help us get through this. Mr Faisal didn't even let us finish. maybe he thought we were one of those who make up false reality for attention. We'll be kicked out as soon as Ayat gets forcefully married. My savings wouldn't last a month, I made Ifan a promise that I'll help get Ayat out of here but we can only pay for the admission form with this amount of savings, she can't complete a whole four to six year course with it, I made that plan because I thought we'd succesd in convincimg Mr Faisal, and I plan on fullfilling it but how? how am I supposed to handle everything on my own? I'm sleep deprived, dehydrated and exhausted, I went to several places to find us a job but everyone in town refused to help. Everyone has something againist this fucking crackhead uncle and why wouldn't they? he's no good to anyone,
thus they continue to have beef with us even though we've done nothing to them. One day I'll show them who I really am and they'll fear me then but who am I even kidding. God I hate it here. I buried my face in my hands,
rubbing my eyes. Someone tapped on my shoulder, I turn to look its Ifan.
"Where have you been?"
"Bro don't ask, ever since Mr Faisal kicked us out I have no hope." I sigh and slipped down my posture as If I'm melting.
"Don't say that, we'll figure it out somehow"
Ifan scoots his chair toward me.
"Don't come near me you smell like fish" I pinch my nose, I despise fish, he does fishing as a part-time job, far from the middle town area. It's the only place he could find where the owner didn't have bad history with his uncle.
"Fishes are nice, come on let's order chai" Ifan elbows me.
"Nuh you go ahead I've already drank too much for today" I close my eyes to give them a rest.
"Fine by me" He gestures the waiter to bring some chai while I slip even more exhaustingly from my chair.
"what's with you today?" He screwed up his face.
"I don't know its just my plan to–" Ifan's moblie notification interpreted me mid sentence. "It's a missed call from Ayat." Ifan checked "She never calls unless.." We both looked at each other hesitantly.
Unless it's bad news.
We ran to our house which isn't much far, in four to seven minutes we managed to arrive, we're both penting, there's a car parked outside our house.
"We don't own a car." Ifan looked over at me with disgust in his eyes.
"Could be Guests?" I say
"Guests?" Ifan said.
"GUESTS!" We rush through the door banging it open, an old lady and an ugly dude are sitting comfortably while Aunt served them biscuits which can only mean one thing, we see Ayat sitting in between them with her dupatta covering her head.
I look at their Uncle.
Asshole.
The guests, They're here to ask for her hand, I'm late again.
just like I was too late to save my mother from that fire.
Uncle stood up and looked at us with his eyebrows pulled down "leave!" He commands, as if he has any power over us.
"What? No" Ifan speaked up to him which only made him angrier, He took a step closer to Ifan and I came in between covering Ifan behind me, with my left arm stretching. We're going to have to let this happen for now in order to get Ayat out of here, otherwise if we get kicked out now then We won't be able to help her afterwards, though even the thought of her getting away makes my heart wrack.
I shove Ifan aside to the kitchen. "What are you doing Sam?! We have to stop this! are you freaking kidding me?!"
I sush him "We're going to have to wait, we can't get against him now after all these years, our whole run away plan is going to be ruined" I insist
"I don't care about that stupid plan! all I care about is my sister and she's crying her eyes out." his lips curled inwards. "If you care about your sister you wouldn't act so impulsively, Don't be so stubborn" I insist some more, He trusts me so he backed up. Two hours went by making every minute unbearable. Everyone left happily, the ugly fucking man is too happy for his own good, I'll punch him in the face if he ever shows his disgusting face again, I'll even spread dog poo on him like butter— let's just calm down.
Aunt is clearing the table and uncle took out his bottle from under the sofa as soon as the guests left.
Asshole can't even wait for two hours.
Ayat ran upstairs as she weeped.
Change of idea, we can't wait any longer, that'll only ruin more of us.
I place my hand on Ifan's shoulder.
"We're leaving for the city tomorrow."
. . . .
"You got everything?" I zip my bag.
"Yea you?" Ifan threw his bag over his shoulder, I nod.
I'd say we're both pretty good looking, me with my dusty brown hair, and Ifan with his almond brown hair.
My eyes are more foxy and his are doe. I get slight dimples when I smile, and Ifan is bit more on the pashktun side. We're both tall, broad, me more than Ifan, but all that matters is that we make a good pair as a team.
Before we leave Ifan stopped by Ayat's door, checking to see if she's okay, I took a peak, too. She's sleeping, it's five oclock in the morning, we sneaked out from the back door and got to the train station as quick as we could, The train will take us straight to the central train station of Mapleton City, in about two to three solid hours. These past moments of us sneakily managing to come here went by so quickly that we didn't even got the chance to speak about anything else.
"tickets are that expensive? I never knew" Ifan draws the curtains open.
"Thats because we've never been to the City" I said, as we sat in train. The train compartment is tight, and small, enough for only a couple of people to sit. In ours, we're the only people, with our little luggage stored over our seats. We didn't tell anyone where we'll be the entire day.. which is why it's risky, but we had to do something. We only have time till its bright outside, by sunset we must go back.
If according to our solution we find a suitable job for ourselves we can pay for our bills and Ayat's fees, most probably. I don't want to sound pessimistic, I'm someone's hope and I can't let them think otherwise, I don't know why I burden myself, maybe because it keeps me occupied from me. Maybe I'm too scared to face my own thoughts.
"When we head back home we'll visit Mr Faisal again" I scoot over.
"Wait why? Didn't they specifically told us not to come back?" Ifan raised his eyebrows in skepticism.
"We'll go just in case."
"Why are we here than?"
"For back up" I fix my collars.
"So we're risking Ayat's life for back up?" Ifan said in disgust.
"We're risking everything for her, otherwise if that wasn't the case we'd still have two whole more years for a bigger picture to plan. you do realise we're not twenty-one yet, we're barely nineteen We can't get my fortune legally."
"It's not her fault she's in that situation"
"I know, of course not, she's just a kid, that is why we are here." I tell Ifan all the possibilities of those several plans and ideas that might work or get us out of the drain. Either way we'd have to risk it all. The whole journey goes by in a flash and we reached where we needed to.
The central main City of Mapleton. A rustic, charming and rural sitting. It's amazing how a place just a few hours far from our town made this much of an advancement. A city full of lights they say, but we're here in the morning, it's crazy how we small town people don't get to see how huge the world actually is, I wish we didn't had to come here in this scenario, I wish it was a different shape, and not such a crisis, than we must've had fun.
But it seem quite hard to stay here.
Trust me when I say we couldn't last three hours here without getting rushed, bugged, shoved and mugged. But besides the whole city street experience, we gave job interviews but I wish some older people were to guide us before stepping in here.
We have no idea what we're doing.
I wish someone had told us how no one offers job to minors.
How did I miss such basic Criteria.
I had to figure out everything on my own, I thought we just give them application, and we're hired, what the heck is this whole degree thing about? I don't even know what fields are there to choose, I thought they'd just interview us but it's a damn negotiation.
If you were to ask me, the truth is we filled three to four online jobs applications with fake data of course, my friend Chad is an expert in making illegal documents, I don't understand tech and stuff so I let him do his thing, my hands are shaking as the HR manager lady is reading our portfolio, she looked up at us. "It says you can speak various languages, I'm impressed, can you introduce yourself in French?"
What
the
fuck
chad?!
What even is French? All I know is that there's French toast and French fries, how am I supposed to introduce myself in French? Ifan pushed my elbows but I say nothing, we're both looking at her with a wide awkward grin on our faces.
"So?" The lady said
We say nothing.
Her face dimed. "Security!"
And we got rejected.
They said lying in portfolio is a crime, good thing she doesn't know we were about to be drug dealers. We went through the whole crime procedure, ended up in a police station, As resumes are not official, legal documents, it is not technically illegal to lie on a resume but many companies request applicants for an official company job application, which is an official, legal document. Lying on such a document would therefore be illegal. It was a whole lot of mess but we somehow managed to get away with a fee fine because we're minors, minors in a way because we're not twenty-one, Which is the legal age to beome an adult but our money still got wasted.
The money I theift.
Applying for a job wouldn't even had us hired yet we applied, if we were twenty-one, we would have faced way worse consequences.
We got lucky.
Beginners luck I guess.
But before all of this happened one hiring manager even said.
"We're sorry Mr Gaydon and Mr nick but we can't help you guys. We need professionalism in our work boys, we can't hire just anyone with an interview, we'd need a degree from where you graduated, you filled the forms online to schedule dates right?"
What
What
What?
"The thing is we can even work as ganitors if you just hire us" Ifan clears his throat, almost close to begging. The woman shut closed our file.
"Is that supposed to be a joke Mr nick?" She sighed and puts her hand over her face.
"That is why I don't let small town people come here." she mumbled under her breath.
"Excuse me?" I respond so quick my breath got left hanging. Not the disrespect! Humble yourself lady.
"Security, get these two out of here!" she ordered
"wait—no hear us out"
We got kicked out.
Again.
For the fifth time in a row.
We're sitting down on a street, near a stall of spicy corns. "Those corn smell good" Ifan sniffs, inhaling the food. "go buy them" I give him a slight push. "I wouldn't"
"why?"
"I'm allergic."
"Then don't smell it."
"I can't stop myself, and plus thanks to you we got kicked out again, We can't apply! we can't eat corns! What can we do!" Ifan groaned irritately.
"You can't eat corns, I can" just to clear.
"You can't stay in your senses" Ifan mocked me. "Well you can't—"
"Would you kids like some corn?" stall man interpreted my defence come back. We looked at each other then back to him.
"They do look good but I'm gonna have to pass on that sir" I tell the old man.
"Why? get them, you can eat them." Ifan tries to insist.
"I can't do that to you."
"What do you mean?" Ifan squinted his eyes.
"If you can't have it, we can't have it" I smile.
I wouldn't do or in this case eat something that bothers Ifan, specially not in front of him, it's crazy how you can always see a clear reflection in Ifan's eyes, it's like he's always so sincere, that's how I know he'd never leave me.
"Bro what are we gonna do!" he throws his hands up in the air, he's been chattering like that for nearly an hour.
"Oh for crying out loud, stay silent" We'll either need a degree, diploma, or a certificate that shows we're at least some what close to being educated and aware, we are not skilled, or professional nor do we have experience in any field, we aren't even eighteen plus. This shit is hard, and this is only about the bigger jobs where we applied for.
Even the smaller business, shops and wheres rejected us, we can't be that bad. We were even ready to be a waiter, taxi driver, or security graud, if it wasn't urgent we would have waited till we were capable and strong. Nobody in Cities ever listens.
It's our sob story, you listen when we tell you that but no, they just have to be mean.
I mean sorry we only have desperation and not a degree.
"It's getting dark, we should head back, uncle would figure it out and plus we can't leave Ayat alone for this long, she'd panic." Ifan said as he picked himself up and gave me his hand, he's right we must head home now. I accept his hand and he pulled me up. Got to catch the train now or else we'd miss it, we don't want to do that. The stars are making their appearance, I used to always talk to my mum when they showed up, but I've never felt this way about my dad. I promise my ma I'll find out what actually happened that day, I swear to God if someone did that to my house on purpose, I'd watch them burn in the flames they light in me and I'd light them on fire while they beg for mercy and I won't even be sorry. They will be the one coming to me and I'll be the one making them regret their decision, day after day.
Call me a villain.
Call me a miscreant, or a foe. I don't care.
It's better than pity and being pathetic at least.
I'll figure something out for Ayat and Ifan.
For her I need to.
For them, even if it means being a rascal.