How do people realise they actually love someone?
I realised what I have for my husband was real love, the kind I will take to my grave and that will make me look at his wrinkled 80 years old face and still want to kiss everything about it, when we had another setback in our married life.
Seeing a doctor is not particularly the best thing i like in life, quite the opposite actually.
Not even Eliyas's presence helped in my consultation with the gynecologist, that experience was much harder than i thought it would be, i needed to do many tests including the blood draws i was terrified of, but that's not even the tough part about it at all, it was in reality the fact that i had to go through all this only to be told when the results were out that my chances of having a child were miraculous.
When the doctor said this to us while reading through the results in his hands our reactions were different like sky and earth, they say that sometimes accepting hard news is easier for the patient himself more than his family and i guess it's true: i accepted and Eliyas couldn't. In fact a part of me knew that we will get such results and somehow i gained enormous strength at that moment and found my self whispering:
_" Allah has decreed it, and what he wills, he does."
I asked the doctor about all the possible solutions I have and i accepted the lack of them, Eliyas on the other hand was silent like a grave, which is something very unusual of him, he usually puts his emotions to the side and takes the best conduct in every situation we face, While I asked the doctor and tried my best to gather my strength he stared absently at the doctor's desk, when I finished speaking he soon stood up and left without a word of comment, On our way home he asked the driver to take us home instead since he was not too well to drive, he didn't eat properly nor held his laptop to work that day and spent hours only looking pensive and didn't even try to talk with me to see how I was doing nor I tried speaking with him, I understood that no matter how he bluffed about this matter in the past he in reality didn't think that the results would be this bad, I'm not a selfish person.. While watching tgis state of his I already promised myself that if he wanted to have a child of his own then I will give him the freedom to do that with another woman, it wasn't until we were late in night and I walked out of the bathroom after taking a shower before bed that I finally gathered my courage to go speak to him, he was sitting on the sofa leaning his head on the back of it while closing his eyes, he opened them when I stood in front of him.
I took a deep breath, I merely called:
_"Eliyas"
When he suddenly hugged my waist and brought me closer to him, while resting his forehead on my belly he finally whispered:
_"Noursine, I will fix this.. I promise"
You see, Eliyas being the man that he is didn't accept it afterall, he took me to see so many other doctors next and although their answer was always the same: "that my uterus can hardly conceive for it's atypical anatomy and especially after the miscarriage I had, if a case of pregnancy happened which is pretty improbable then I can have a healthy child but the pregnancy itself will be risky for me and I should be continuously examined. the best thing they can do for me at the moment is to give me medication to raise the chance of an implantation."
Eliyas got more enraged with every visit, he even started threatening doctors who were innocently just doing their work, he asked if a surgery should help, if i should take more medication.. At the villa he started to ignore his work to read medical books instead, to simply put it he was turning into an obsessed man, and into a desperately hope seeking man.
I understand him.. I really do, i know how guilty he must be feeling and how scared he was of my reaction towards all this.
I inevitably noticed how more caring he was getting towards me: the fewer reports i had at work, the shrinking working hours of my whole office and the payment bonuses. He started to spend more hours with me in the villa, stopped telling me about the problems with the work, he smiled more often and kept introducing me to more and more gynecologists promising everytime that the result will be different.
Although i understand his feelings.. But i have feelings as well.
Everytime i heard those words the knife that was stabbing my heart penetrated me even more, i hated it everytime he spoke about a new gynecologist.. I hated how some of them acted smarter than the others and asked for more tests and blood draws that still showed the same results!
I hated hearing that i can not be a mother over and over.. But what i hated more than anything else is that i tried to be considerate to Eliyas and indifferently agreed to see every doctor that he suggested, but he was not considerate to my feelings when hearing those devastating words.
A part of me knew that i lost my chance of becoming a mother with my baby, i had mourned this in those two months of recovery and i moved on.. I had already accepted this, so there was no meaning in torturing me again and again.
So one morning of June when Eliyas was suggesting that we should go to W country to see a doctor there i said:
_"Enough"
He was holding some medical magazine at the time and showing me pictures of this private hospital in W country and reading me statistics of their success in the field, but i was not even looking at them nor listening to him.. I was just feeling this deep sadness that can not be explained with words.
I snatched the magazine from his hands and i walked towards the trash bin and threw it there, then i walked to the room's bathroom and slammed the door shut behind me.
You see, that day everything started perfect.. It was a weekend, Eliyas coincidentally decided to take the day off as well, i already put on a beautiful flowery dress which is something unexpected of me to do since i rarely act feminine, i spent a long time trying to put proper make up and style my hair beautifully at Nana's room so as i give Eliyas a surprise, but when i walked inside our room expecting to draw a smile on his face or get some words of compliment i found him reading those stupid medical magazines again, he didn't even notice i looked different.. He immediately started speaking about traveling half the globe to see another doctor.
I was tired .. I completely was.
When i slammed the door shut behind me i started to wipe my makeup clean like an insane person and then i looked at my reflexion in the mirror.
And somehow the emotions i accumulated for long months suddenly started to attack me all together.. And i cried.
That was the first time i cried over this, you know that feeling when you're in so pain that when you cry you suddenly forget how to ?
It was suffocating, unbearable.. And my sobs were painful even to my ears, when Eliyas forcefully opened the door and tried to lift me up from above the wet floor i unexplainably hated him so much at that moment that i just pushed him away and shouted at the top pf my lungs:
_"Go away! Leave me alone!"
I forgave him for the past, but a part of me still considered him the culprit who took this precious gift of being a mother from me, i tried to supress this selfish thinking of mine but it still showed at that weak moment.
As i looked at him in that devastated state i yelled:
_" I can not be a mother! I told you i don't want to see a doctor anymore, do you think i enjoy hearing this? It's killing me! .. Why can't you see it! You already took my baby.. You're killing me now!"
He didn't leave, although i punched him and fought him he still hugged my tight so as i don't hurt my self, when i finally stopped crying i found my self engulfed in his embrace.. It was such a hot day outside the vila, but even our embrace was cold.
When my sobs stopped only one sound filled the silence, it was the noisy splashing of water in the sink since i deliberately opened the water tap on its maximum earlier to cover my sobs, that eventually turned into a useless waste of water.
Eliyas didn't say a word while his strong arms encircled me and his heart beat widely against my ear, at that moment for a reason i shall never know i was calmed with the sound of water and his strong heartbeats, it suddenly occured to me to say:
_"i can't give you a baby, but if you want it so much i can't selfishly keep you from that, you can marry another woman, i can't accept you having a second wife so we can divorce."
Once i said that, i felt his arms tighten even more around me and his heart going even crazier, and he finally said:
_"don't you dare speak about leaving again, Noursine.. Don't you dare mention it."
His voice was threatening me.. But it just sounded like a pleading.
He never spoke about a gynecologist after that, but somehow something broke inside me that day.
You see, people are like a time bomb, they endure .. They ignore and smile in face of their pain for so long.. But it's only a matter of time before they burst.
And once that happens.. They inevitably will be left in wreck.
It's exactly this what happened with me, once i cried and a part of me admitted that i was not ok anymore i changed, somehow, in a way i didn't notice but Eliyas sure did.
So, i was standing in front of the mirror brushing my hair in the end of that long summer when i noticed that the brush i was using had too much of my hair on it,
"i'm losing my hair"
i thought while i pensively looked at the black brush full of my brown strands, while i was doing that, Eliyas suddenly stood right behind me, he pushed my hair away from the right side of my neck and he started to kiss my neck and my shoulder.
I stood like a stone while he did that, i just watched his reflexion in the mirror while he kissed me like if it wasn't me who was being kissed.
He started to move his hands around my body as his desire was getting stronger until he suddenly stopped.. And looked at my reflexion as well, while he was panting.. i stood there just like a wall.
I don't know what he saw in my eyes that looked at him in the mirror.. But it was a sight he couldn't handle, Because he suddenly made me turn to look at him and he started kissing me violently as if he was desperate.
Then he abruptly stopped again and walked away from me, while giving me his back he whispered:
_"you don't want me anymore.."
_"Eliyas" i called his name gently but he turned to look at me with an angry face and yelled:
_"you've been rejecting me for weeks Noursine! it feels like i was raping you!"
He walked closer to me again and said:
_"I want you so much .. But not like this, tell me how i should fix this.. Should i give you time?"
I looked at him with my eyes full of emptiness, then i asked:
_"Eliyas, i want you to think about us seriously, i still remember how you reacted after hearing the news that you and I can't have a child together, if you're staying with me out of pity then i can't accept that, Let's be logical__"
While i spoke he only looked at me, without any distinguished expression, i stopped talking when i saw that, he knew what i was about to say anyways.
_" If there's someone to pity between us both can't you see who that it Noursine? I have always waited for your feelings towards me to change, i tried to have you in every way.. Be it in forcing you to stay or letting you go, if i desired another woman i had all the chances to go, if i wanted a child then i could have had that, i wanted only you.. I have asked you to choose either to stay with me for a lifetime or to simply refuse me before we married, since you chose to stay then don't love me but at least be faithful to your words. " He laughed mockingly.
He took a deep breath, and continued:
_"my reaction? The only thing i thought about after hearing those news from the doctor was that i'm going to lose you again because you'll blame me for this, i don't want a child, i just desperately want to keep you, how can you not see that?"
He stopped speaking.. Not because he had no more words to say but because his voice broke.
Eliyas too was a time bomb that kept ticking for a very long time, he endured and hid the words he needed to say until they all busted in one sentence.. He added after moments of silence:
_" i love you so much it's a torture."
I guess we'll never be a perfect couple, even one individual is contradicted with him self so how can two people be on the same page forever and have a tacit understanding?
He and I have so many knots in our bond that we need 20 years or more to untangle them all, sometimes we're toxic to one another.. But i don't think i'm ready to bear all this pain if it wasn't for Eliyas Filladi, and i don't mean the Eliyas Filladi that all the country acknowledge as the richest man, but i'm talking about the man who once shared a bag of the hawthorns he hated with me on the rooftop of a humble house and spoke about having a compromised love with me.
_"come here" i whispered unhesitatingly.
He stepped closer to me.. So i hugged him tight like he once did with me when i was crying like a crazy person on the ground of the bathroom and like he always did.
I kissed his chest and whispered:
_"Eliyas, for the first time in my life i thought about someone else's happiness selflessly, although i said i would let you marry another woman but i was shaking from the inside and afraid you'd say yes, in the past i thought you just didn't trust me enough so this was the reason why you always feared that i would leave, but it is not the case in fact, it's this feeling.. Isn't it? I want you so much that the idea of you leaving tortures me."
He suddenly put my face in his palms and made me look at him:
_"what are you saying Noursine?"
_" i know the time is not convenient, but who cares? This whole summer i was so depressed not because i can't be a mother but because i was afraid i'll lose you because you won't be a father to my child, I think i love you" i confessed.
_"I love you Eliyas"
We discussed a lot of matters intermittently between our kisses that night, like how we should publicize our marriage since the long waited child doesn't seem like coming, and that we can raise an orphan once we get bored of living alone with one another, at some point i even spoke about taking Nana to Meka which Eliyas found very unsuited as a topic regarding the things we were doing at the moment.
But along that long night Eliyas filladi who was overwhelmed with unlimited happiness didn't seem like getting enough of repeatedly asking:
_"Noursine, do you love me?"
So i answered everytime like i was asked for the first time:
_"yes, I love you so much."