Diya

It’s a nightmare. A game of hide-and-seek that ends in death. We sneak along, trying not to make any noise. We slide along the wall. The first window we find has an iron grill on it. We keep going. It’s a long way to the next window. He holds my hand. I cling to it.

We reach the next window and realize our fate is sealed. It too has a grill. Every window has a grill. We are not going to be able to get out. Only the show windows on the ground floor are glass. And Salim Mukhtar is between us and those windows.

Kabir just hangs on to my hand. ‘There has to be a way. There has to be a way!’ he keeps saying as he searches desperately. He knows as well as I do that once Salim gets his hands on me, there is no hope.

We search and search. So many sections. So many doors. Corridors. And no windows that can let us out.

We find ourselves back at the bathroom, doubling back on our tracks. Kabir looks at the door to the closet. We climb back in, and Kabir shuts the door. It’s an admission that there is nowhere for us to go. We can’t get away.

We wait in the darkness. I close my eyes and lean against him. He puts his arms around me, and we wait. There is nothing to be said. The minutes tick by. He puts his lips against my ear and whispers. ‘I will be waiting for you in the house of stars. Far away from other people’s hate.’

Then the bathroom door slams open. Salim comes in with a gun in his hand. We can hear him kicking open the bathroom cubicles. He slams them one by one, and each one sounds like a gunshot. It sounds like he is about to leave when everything goes silent. Kabir turns so that he is shielding me with his body.

The door flies open.

One.

Two.

Two bullets thud into Kabir. He falls. And I am standing there, screaming. Salim reaches out and grabs me by the hair. I stumble over Kabir, and then I am being dragged away from him. I try to go to Kabir but he won’t let me.

I am screaming as he drags me away. Kabir is lying on the floor, so still, blood pooling underneath him. I am screaming his name.