Flashback
That night, I found her shirt in the old cloth box.
Her scent was still there—faint, as if ashamed to remain.
I don't know why I kept it. Or why I smelled it.
I was alone in the room.
And finally… I cried.
Just once.
And then—nothing.
I stopped feeling anything.
Words I can't forget. Scenes that won't fade.
— "Are you going to eat that?"
— "No, take it."
Arafa laughed—a soft, early-summer kind of laugh—and stole the piece of bread off my plate.
— "You'll starve to death, idiot."
— "I said take it."
— "No, you said take it, not eat it. Learn the difference."
I didn't argue. I didn't smile.
I just looked at her… as if I were trying to etch her into my memory.
I didn't know it would be the last time.
Currently
Sometimes I wonder—Why don't I feel like other people do?
Even when Arafa died, I cried like a child… then nothing.
It was as if she took my heart with her.
I don't believe it beats anymore, regardless of what the machines might say.
Something inside me died that day, and it never came back.
I'm not trying to be dramatic.
But that's just how it feels.
Yasmine says I suffer from "severe attachment disorder" or "trauma-induced detachment."
I don't understand the terminology…
But I hear her whispers.
I remember her.
I see her—her shadow still lives in my life.
There was no one else.
My paternal grandfather—a rough man, a drunk, bitter, sometimes cruel—
But he was the only one who ever spoke to me as an equal, not as a child.
Maybe he didn't think I'd live long enough to grow up.
Or maybe he saw in me a reflection of his own regrets.
He used to stare at me with a look that unsettled even my withered soul—
As if he were watching a ghost, not a grandson.