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The Poisonous Memory
The morning sun crept into the Abdur-Rauf mansion slowly, shyly, as if afraid of what lived inside the walls. The house looked peaceful from the outside, but peace was only a costume they wore for society. Inside was tension, buried secrets, and a mother determined to rewrite her son’s entire past before the truth could find him again.
Ajeed woke before dawn, breathing heavily, sweat soaking through his shirt. Another memory had come back, uninvited, sharp, cutting through him like a knife. Not a full memory… just the edges.
A scarf.
Rain.
A woman laughing softly.
“Yaro, ka tsaya mana…”
Nazneen.
He sat up quickly, pressing a hand to his chest. His heart thudded, too loud for that quiet hour. Every day, something new returned. Little pieces. Faces. Smells. Words. He didn’t tell anyone, but his brother Rayhan. Not his therapist. Not Lamia. Not even himself out loud.
But Haj. Rakiya… she knew.
A mother always knows the son she fears losing.
She watched him from the hallway that morning, unseen, her eyes cold and calculating as a surgeon preparing to cut.
“He remembers something again.” she whispered.
And she was right.
She descended the stairs, calling out sharply, “Rayhan!”
Her second son appeared almost instantly lean, eager, always too ready to carry out his mother’s darkness without question.
“Yes, Mama?”
She took his arm, pulling him into the sitting room where no one else could hear.
“It has started again,” she whispered urgently. “Your brother’s memories. I can see it in his eyes.”
Rayhan frowned. “Then shouldn’t we tell the doctor?”
“No,” she snapped. “We handle it ourselves. The doctor said the medication would stop his memories from returning, but now look at this. We need to continue controlling it as you know if he remembers the wrong things first...” She paused, breathing hard. “....and that you have been lying to him all these while we lose everything.”
Rayhan lowered his voice. “You mean… you'll lose everything, and he will go back to her?”
Rakiya’s jaw tightened. “Yes. And it's also you and i, not just me, and whatever it's, i knew nothing of you were the one telling him all.” She added quietly bitterly, “And I will never allow that shameless girl to get her way into this family again.”
Rayhan nodded obediently. “Then we do what we did before?”
She met his eyes. “We tell him the story we want him to believe, continuesly.”
Her hands shook slightly...a rare thing. “Find him. Talk to him. Feed him the past the way I told you.”
Rayhan nodded and walked toward the garden, where Ajeed usually hid to think.
Rakiya leaned back into the sofa, sighing shakily. “If he remembers her fully,” Rakiya whispered, “I will lose my son forever.”
THE GARDEN — SAME MORNING
Ajeed stood near some old trees, breathing in the smell of dust and dew. It always feels like the same smell he grew up with, just that the Mango tree is missing here. The same smell tied to memories he still couldn’t fully unlock.
He heard footsteps.
Rayhan.
“You’re up early,” Rayhan said, forcing a casual tone that didn’t reach his eyes.
Ajeed shrugged. “Couldn’t sleep.”
Rayhan watched him a moment. “Dreams again?”
Ajeed didn’t answer.
Rayhan stepped closer. “Mama told me to check on you.”
“Mama is worried,” Ajeed muttered.
“She should be,” Rayhan said. “You’ve been… distracted.”
Ajeed opened his mouth to respond, but Rayhan cut him off.
“It’s because of her, right?” he asked quietly.
Ajeed tensed. “Who?”
Rayhan laughed darkly. “Don’t pretend, Ajeed. You’ve been whispering her name in your sleep. And you and i both know everything.”
Ajeed’s heartbeat stumbled. “I don’t want to talk about it now, don't you get it, Rayhan?”
Rayhan leaned against the tree, voice sharp and bitter. “Nazneen. You loved her once. Before she betrayed you. She never loved you.”
The air changed. The birds seemed to silence themselves.
Ajeed’s head snapped up. “Love?”
“Yes.” Rayhan stepped closer. “Like I told you she hates you, when you two are about to get married she betrayed you saying you're too young for her and she can't marry someone younger. Which's what hurt our mother the most she was against the married, but for your happiness she accepted it. But that Nazneen at the last minutes rejects you wallahi, it's good that you forgot everything now. If you remembered everything, you’d break again heartbreak.”
Ajeed swallowed hard. “Tell me more.”
Rayhan sighed heavily as if burdened. “She chooses someone else. Her cousin, as i have told you before”
Ajeed went still.
Rayhan continued softly, carefully, poisoning every word, “After that, i don't know anything else in her marriage life. Her father promised her to him before he died. She agreed. And mother tried everything to stop it even you yourself, but Nazneen is adamant and don't wish to even see you. Which's the reason you left the country all these years”
Ajeed’s breathing grew shallow.
Rayhan added the final twist of the knife. “They married two months later. She even had a daughter with him. Naila, that's what they called the girl.”
Ajeed felt like the ground tilted under his feet.
A daughter.
She had really moved on.
Rayhan watched him quietly, satisfied at the pain in his brother’s eyes.
“She loved him, Ajeed. Not you.”
Ajeed stepped back, gripping the bark of the tree for balance. A wave of betrayal surged through him sharp, ugly, twisting inside his chest.
“She left me…” he whispered.
“Yes,” Rayhan said gently. “She cursed you with shame. Mama sent you abroad so people would stop mocking our family. Everyone knew you ran after a woman who didn’t choose you and even older than you.”
Ajeed looked away, swallowing pain like acid.
“Maybe it's time to let those memories go,” Rayhan said softly. “Remember the truth. She’s happy. With her husband. With her daughter. You have Lamia now.”
Ajeed nodded slowly, but his eyes were cold.
“How could I still be remembering her? After everything she did? After she chose another man?”
His chest tightened.
“Why do I still feel like I lost something that was never mine?”
He didn’t know Rayhan was lying.
He didn’t know Rakiya had created an entire story and planted it into his mind every time he's having such.
He didn’t know the only truth left was the one he wasn’t allowed to remember.
ZAYA DESIGNS — SAME DAY
Nazneen sat in her office, hands shaking as she opened her laptop. Another message came at dawn.
A photo of her house.
Taken outside.
At night.
No caption.
Her stomach twisted.
She didn’t tell her mother. She didn’t tell anyone.
Fear had become her new shadow.
She logged into her email. Another message waited.
“You ruined everything.”
Her hands trembled harder. “Who’s sending this? Why are you doing this to me?”
Before she could type a reply, a knock sounded on the door.
Sofia peeked in. “Director… you okay?”
“Yes,” Nazneen lied.
Sofia stepped in, closing the door. “But ma'am, you’re shaking.”
“I’m fine,” she repeated.
“You’re not. What happened?”
Nazneen took a long breath. “Someone… someone is threatening me.”
Sofia gasped. “Who??”
“I don’t know.”
But she felt watched, hunted, blamed for something she didn’t understand.
“Everyone around her had moved on with life. Only she was still living inside an old wound.”
And she hadn’t even started remembering the messages that would follow.
FLASHBACK — YEARS AGO
Nazneen stood in her father’s compound, tears streaming down her face as her Goggo and neighbours whispered cruel words.
“She’s shameless.”
“A girl caught with a boy in the backyard? Ya Allah!”
“She has disgraced the family.”
Her mother cried in the corner, hiding her face.
Her father had died a few years ago, and now his old promise to his sister became her prison.
“You will marry your cousin,” her mother said, voice shaking. “People are laughing at us. Your father promised this before he died. You will honour it.”
Nazneen sobbed. “Mama, please. I love him. Wallahi, I love Ajeed.”
Her mother slapped her sharply. “Love is not food. You will marry where I say. And that boy is too young for you, Naz!”
And because she was young… and afraid… she obeyed.
Her cousin showed his true face a month after the wedding.
Cruel. Jealous. Violent.
He locked her in rooms.
He controlled her breathing.
He slapped her for smiling.
He forbade her from speaking to anyone.
She carried a child through the abuse.
Her daughter.
Her only light.
Until the divorce, when he took the girl from her arms and walked away, never looking back.
“You will never see her again,” he said.
Nazneen broke that night. Something inside her died and never woke up again.
Her mother carried her from the floor, murmuring, “It will pass.”
But it never passed.
It lived inside her like a wound that refused to heal.
PRESENT — EVENING
Nazneen walked home that evening, clutching her shawl tightly around her shoulders. The street lights flickered. The air was heavy.
Then her phone buzzed.
Another message.
“I know where you sleep.”
Ajeed sent it.
But she didn’t know.
She gasped, stepping back, breath shaking.
And then...
Another message came in instantly.
“You will pay for what you did.”
Her knees weakened. Tears filled her eyes.
“What did I do?” she whispered. “Why are you tormenting me? Who the hell are you?”
She didn’t know the man sending these messages was the same boy who once held her under the mango tree, promising her heaven and forever.
She didn’t know Haj. Rakiya had turned him into a weapon.
She didn’t know Rayhan had fed him poison disguised as truth.
She didn’t know Ajeed was slowly remembering... and hating the wrong version of her.
But fate… fate never forgets the truth.
It only hides it until the hour of reckoning.
And that hour was coming soon.
Very soon.
Because love never dies.
Only memories do.
And his were waking up again...
with a vengeance.