Chapter 217

“Can you come here? Can you and Moosa sort out and forget the past?” Roshanay asked, her voice barely above a whisper, carrying all the fragile hope she had left after so many sleepless nights of worrying about the people she loved most.

“It cannot happen, Nurie,” Burhan replied, his tone flat and final, the way it always became when he had already drawn a line in his mind that no amount of pleading could erase. The finality was a wall, and she could see no doors or windows in it.

“Can you at least bring Alizeh to meet with her mother?” she pressed gently, feeling the ache in her own chest as she spoke the words. The ache was a familiar companion, born of too many separations and too few reunions. “It’s been months since she last saw Alizeh, and she weeps day and night recalling her daughter, clutching the old photographs and whispering her name like a prayer. The house feels empty without her, and every time I see Afsheen’s face, it breaks a little more.”

Burhan d