Those nights, for the first time in what felt like a lifetime, he slept.
Not the restless kind of sleep filled with screams and memories.
Not the half-awake state where his body rested but his mind kept bleeding.
This time… he slept peacefully.
Inside Professor Farooq's house, the walls quiet, the air calm, his body finally gave up the fight. There was no headache drilling into his skull. No flashbacks tearing him apart. No sudden jolts of fear pulling him back into reality.
He slept for real.
The kind of sleep he hadn't known in a very long time.
The kind of sleep he used to have when Nani Rahima was still alive — when her presence alone was enough to silence every storm inside him. When her hands would brush his hair and tell him everything would be okay, even when it wasn't.
Today it was something different...
Back then, sleep had come easily. It had slipped over him like a promise kept. Like a world that, for a few hours at least, chose not to hurt him.
Tonight felt dangerously close to that memory.
The mattress beneath him didn't creak. The house didn't whisper secrets. Even the night seemed to hold its breath, as if afraid to wake him. Somewhere down the hallway, a clock ticked steadily — not sharp, not threatening — just proof that time was moving without demanding anything from him.
For once, his body trusted the dark.
His breathing evened out, slow and deep, the way it used to when he was small enough to be carried to bed. His fingers unclenched. His jaw loosened. The invisible armor he wore every waking hour finally slid off, piece by piece, and rested on the floor beside him.
In his sleep, there were no nightmares waiting to ambush him.
No blood.
No shouting.
No faces frozen in loss.
Instead, there was warmth.
A faint echo of jasmine.
The ghost of a lullaby hummed off-key.
A presence that didn't need a name because his soul recognized it instantly.
It's okay, the silence seemed to say.
You can rest now.
And for the first time in years, he believed it.
Outside, the night carried on — dangerous, unfinished, full of threads yet to tangle. Professor Farooq's walls could not protect him forever. Morning would come with questions, with consequences, with paths that would demand choices.
But that was for later.
For now, in this fragile pocket of peace, he slept on — unaware that this single night of true rest would quietly change something inside him.
Not heal it.
Not fix it.
But remind him of who he had been
before the world taught him how to stay awake.