Hayom's body went rigid as his fingers closed around the rust-covered doorknob. His breath caught. His throat felt strangled. Behind the door of the dilapidated house, he heard sobs tearing through the silence. Hayom knew exactly who was behind the crying he heard.
Hayom drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. He tried to dampen his own emotions, hoping he could summon a little more patience tonight, unlike all the nights that had come before. Of course he was angry. The voice that should have brought warmth, the voice that should have been the foundation of a whole family, had instead become a terrifying source of terror for Hayom. The sobs he heard every night made every corner of the house feel like a prison.
The front door opened slowly, revealing a thin man sitting on the floor. His face was lowered. His body faced a wall covered in ink scribbles. His shoulders trembled. Hayom remained silent in the doorway, letting the last wisps of clove-cigarette smoke drift out.
“Enough, Dad. How long are you going to keep this up?” Hayom sounded desperate.
The old man turned around. His eyes were red. He clutched an old photograph in a worn frame. He could not hide his tears.
“I miss your mother.” His voice was quiet between sobs.
Hayom glared at him. His hands clenched, pointlessly gathering the anger he had been holding back all this time. He hated having to go on like this. The resentment he kept to himself haunted his life every day. To him, his father's tears were no longer a sign of love, but a betrayal of the bitter reality they had been forced to accept: they had been abandoned by a woman Hayom was no longer even willing to call Mom. That woman was truly not worth remembering.
His father's words passed over him like a breeze. Hayom no longer cared. He strode forward in anger and shoved aside the curtain behind his father's bedroom door. Seething, Hayom opened the wardrobe and took out his mother's belongings, which were still neatly stored inside.
Mr. Idris, his father, followed him into the room. “Don’t, Hayom … don’t ….” He grabbed his son’s arm.
Hayom refused to listen. He carried everything in his hands outside, even as Mr. Idris held onto his arm. He threw the belongings onto the porch.
“I’m going to burn all of this!” Hayom shouted angrily.
Mr. Idris sat on the floor and picked up the discarded items one by one. He had always taken care of the belongings of the woman he loved most—cleaning them and keeping them neatly stored, hoping his wife would return after being gone for decades.
“Wake up, Dad! That woman is never coming back!” Hayom’s voice trembled slightly. He might not have been able to hold back his anger, but he tried to hold back his tears.
This was not the first time they had gone through a scene like this. Hayom was sick of repeating the painful scene that had become his life. Even worse was watching his father worship the shadow of a woman who had thrown their family away. He hated the mother who had abandoned them. He also hated his father for ignoring the fact that his children were slowly falling apart.
“She’ll come home. I have to take care of these things,” Mr. Idris replied as he gathered up his wife’s belongings.
“I’d actually be grateful if she really were dead, so she wouldn’t have to come back instead of letting us rot like this.” Hayom walked away, leaving his father with a wound in his heart.
In the three-square-meter room, Hayom lay on the mattress. His eyes were closed as he tried to forget what had just happened, though it was impossible. The night beneath his feet was anything but peaceful. The night felt heavy, and his days seemed unbearably long, without a trace of happiness for him to feel.
Outside, the city never truly slept. Its sounds were merely muffled, leaving behind the roar of vehicles that sounded like exhausted breathing. Inside the house, Hayom never truly slept either. Only his eyes were closed; his heart remained shattered. The nighttime atmosphere in Mr. Idris’s family home was always suffocating. There was no warmth, no sound of laughter. Only the ticking of the wall clock, clashing with the sobs from Mr. Idris’s room.
Hayom felt no peace in that house. He hated the fact that every day he had to come home only to watch his father pick through the remnants of memories belonging to the woman who had destroyed their lives.
Home was not where Hayom lived. To him, home was just an old box of memories left open and untouched, let alone cleaned. The dust of the past had never been swept away, piling up into layers of pain that hardened like stone.
Hayom got up from his bed. He rubbed his tired face. A moment later, his eyes fell on the mirror. A small green note was stuck to it, complete with a message.
“If your world feels too tight to breathe in, tune in to 274.9 FM. Someone is waiting to gather the shards of your broken heart.”
Hayom moved closer. His hand immediately pulled the note down. He studied every word written on it. The note had not been there when he left for work that morning. Had it actually been there all along, and had he simply forgotten to read it? Or had Kala, his younger sibling, put it there?
“Who wrote this?” Hayom read aloud, puzzled. It clearly wasn’t his sibling’s handwriting or his father’s. But who had sent him the message? Why did it feel like more than just a message—as if it were an order he had to follow?