Somewhere in the city, every television was casting the same serious news — a government school teacher had been killed, brutally, his testicles burst out. Police had found a blowtorch near the body but couldn't trace any fingerprints. A constable was overheard telling another officer that the murder was so professional, so gruesome, it was hard to even imagine. The CCTV cameras had gone dead right at the moment the murder began, leaving the police confused — who, and why, had this man been killed?
The headmaster found a letter in his cabinet, like a suicide note. The teacher's parents confirmed it — the handwriting was their son's.
The reporter concluded the broadcast: police were still searching, and results were expected within the week.
Iqra didn't cry when she heard. That's what got to me. Everyone else was scared — her friends' mothers standing at the gate that evening, hands over their mouths, saying "hope they catch him soon" like saying it enough times would make it true. But my sister, she just went quiet. Not scared-quiet. Something else. That thought sat with me longer than I wanted it to. Why did she look almost relieved, hearing a man was dead? Two answers kept circling in my head, and I didn't like either of them.
Maybe he'd done something to her. Something she never said, something I never asked, because some doors you don't open unless you're ready for what's behind them.
Or maybe it was nothing like that at all — maybe it was just a school shut for a few days, no assignments, no PT drills in the heat, a child's small relief dressed up as something darker in my tired mind.
I didn't know which one was true. And that not-knowing sat heavier than either answer would have.
I could've asked her. Could've sat beside her, said her name soft, waited for whatever she needed to say. Instead I just walked away, the way I always do.
Robbery, chain snatching, now this — every week the news has a new way to scare a father into locking his daughter indoors. And I'm no father, just a brother working nights, coming home when the sun's already up and everyone else is leaving for the day. What protection is that? I can't even walk her to school myself.
People keep telling me, shift her to a private school, she's sharp, she deserves better. As if my salary changes because they wish it would. As if the price of oil and rice cares what school my sister goes to. Every election, someone promises the numbers will come down. Every year, they don't.
So she stays in that same school. The one every channel is saying on loop right now. And I go to work every night telling myself she'll be fine, because what else is there to tell myself?
Six months passed like a sunrise — quick, warm, gone before you noticed. Mosina and I became close, close enough that I got her a place in my company, working alongside me. Friendship turned into love over two years, but it was one-sided, and I carried two weights I couldn't put down.
One — my family's needs were mine to handle, alone, without ever making it look like a burden.
Two — I had love, but no way to say it. What if she hated me for it, misjudged me for it? So I stayed silent. I built distance where I should have built courage.
Years passed again, like a sunset this time — slower, heavier. I finally made myself strong enough to go and tell her. Too late. Kattapa, my inner voice, had already warned me — she's not yours to keep. But I said it anyway, over dinner, the words I'd swallowed for years.
She said she'd been waiting. Waiting for my answer. But she thought I felt nothing, so she waited instead for her college love to confirm his — and this year, he finally did. They were getting married.
I never complained. Never made a scene the way others might have. I just accepted it — the fate of it — and let the days pass. She married the man she wanted, happily, and I stood there and congratulated them like I meant it. Because some part of me did.
No more reaching out to anyone after that. Just my career now. My sister. My family. Making sure they're happy, even if I stopped keeping count of my own.
I was leaving for the office, keys in hand, when her voice stopped me on the stairs — not the words yet, just the tone. Low. Steady. Nothing like the sister I knew.
I stood still and listened.
"The way he used to look at me. The way he touched — too much, too wrong. He said he'd fail me if I told anyone. But Allah sent someone to end him. My prayer is answered. I thank Allah."
I didn't move. Couldn't.
Everything I'd told myself — a school holiday, a child's small relief — fell apart right there on the stairs. She hadn't been happy that a man was dead. She'd been carrying something for months, maybe longer, silent, alone, while I slept through my days and worked through my nights and never once asked her why she'd gone quiet.
She hadn't needed comfort. She'd needed someone to notice. And I hadn't.
I stood there long after her friend left, my hand still on the railing, my office bag still on my shoulder. Then I turned around and went back down, quiet, like I'd never left for work at all — carrying a guilt that wasn't going to leave with the sunrise.
I went to office that day carrying that guilt like a stone in my chest. I couldn't pick her up, couldn't drop her, couldn't even walk her the short distance to that gate — my shift ate every hour I had. All I could do was hope, and hoping never felt like enough.
But somehow, someone had watched over her when I couldn't. My Allah had sent a guardian in the dark, in a way I still didn't understand, and kept her safe when I wasn't there to.
I sat at my desk that mid-night, work in front of me, my mind somewhere else entirely — on a terrace, on a voice I'd never really heard before, on a debt I didn't know how to repay.
3:30 in the morning, the shift finally behind me, my legs moving on habit more than will. The railway bridge always felt longer at that hour — no trains, no people, just the iron groaning faintly under its own weight and my footsteps filling in the silence.
That's when I heard it.
"Bilal."
A voice, clear as anything, calling out from somewhere close. Not shouted. Almost familiar, like it expected me to answer.
I stopped. Turned.
Nothing. Just the bridge stretching empty behind me, the tracks below catching the little light there was, and beyond that, the sleeping outline of the city I'd just left.
I told myself it was nothing — some worker on the tracks below, someone's voice carrying strange in the night air, echoes doing what echoes do on iron and stone. But my name isn't Bilal. And no one on that bridge had any business calling out a name that wasn't mine.
I walked the rest of the way faster than I meant to.
The voice came again, not from outside this time, but from somewhere inside my own skull, calm as a whisper meant only for me.
"Aslamu alaikum, Bilal. What you did to the teacher — that was good. Those female teachers, those students in that school — they're happy now. Because of you."
I sat up in the dark, heart going fast, breath caught somewhere in my throat. Who is Bilal? Why does this voice keep calling me that name — a name that isn't mine, wrapped around a sentence that made no sense, tied to a murder I only knew from the television?
I didn't answer. I didn't tell Ammi. I just went to my bed, silent, the question sitting heavier in my chest than any tiredness from the shift. Didn't even remember to switch on the fan — the tension from work, the voice, the name, all of it pressing down until sleep took me somewhere I didn't choose.
Who is Bilal?
That question followed me down into the dark.
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