Ebrah Shakeel

The tea had gone cold again. I must’ve poured it an hour ago, but time has become strange since the accident—stretching and folding in on itself like dough. Some days I forget to eat. Other days I eat three breakfasts without realising.

We live in a quiet suburb of Islamabad, Pakistan. The streets here are lined with trees that bloom pink in the spring, and the neighbours know each other by name. It used to feel like a safe place, predictable and calm. That illusion shattered the day Daniyal died.

My youngest grandson, seventeen years old, full of noise and speed and jokes that didn’t always make sense. Always on that little moped, zipping through the lanes like the city was his playground. He died just down the road from our house. I heard the ambulance before I got the phone call. They said it was fast. Instant. As if that’s supposed to bring comfort.

I’m 75 now. I’ve buried a husband, a sister, and now a grandchild. My daughter, Sabeen, hasn’t spoken a full sentence in days. Her face is pale and drawn, like something inside her is holding everything together with fraying thread. She doesn’t answer the phone, doesn’t eat unless I make her.

The man who was driving the truck—Sameer—isn’t the villain people want him to be. He wasn’t drunk. He wasn’t speeding. Daniyal tried to cut through a yellow light, and Sameer couldn’t stop in time. He’s called us, come by in person, even stood at the gate just to say he was sorry.

He’s not a bad man. In fact, he’s trying to do good now—bringing groceries, arranging Qur’an readings, offering help we didn’t ask for. He calls me Ammi ji, like I’m someone sacred he needs forgiveness from. And still, every time I see him, I feel this knot of sadness—not anger, but the heaviness of two broken lives brushing past each other.

I told Sabeen that maybe talking to him might help. Not to forgive—just to feel something other than this silence. But she’s not ready. And maybe she never will be.