Chapter 12

 -

I couldn’t sleep.

For the fourth night in a row, I couldn’t sleep. I feel troubled, and not myself. Actually I’m not even sure what I feel right now.

The conversation I had with Nissa last weekend had ended when she had asked me if I was in love with Damia. I didn’t answer the question, and when Nissa saw I wouldn’t, she, thankfully, had changed the subject to where we wanted to go after lunch. We decided we’d bring the girls to Paradigm Mall, which was nearby. We shopped, and I treated the Yasmine and Jasmine to a cuddly, plush toy each. They had fought for ownership of this one blue teddy bear, and Yasmine was crying, which had made Jasmine cry, until the matter was settled when I suggested they each have a cuddly plush cat instead. When we had gone home, the girls fell asleep in the car, both of them cuddling their toys. I took pictures of them, and made them my phone wallpaper.

But the short excursion didn’t succeed in taking my mind off things.

Off her.

When I said my goodbyes later that evening, Nissa had this sad look in her eyes. I had asked her what was the matter.

“Nothing. I just wish you could be happy with someone, is all,” she said.

“Nissa…”

“OH I know, I won’t start. I know the topic makes you uncomfortable. But I do wish it, you know,” Nissa said, and gave me a long, loving hug and a loud kiss on the cheek. “Take care Dhani. Do take care.”

“I will Nissa,” I had said. Sometimes I wonder if Nissa suspected how I lived. She’s too smart not to suspect, in fact. But if she did, I wonder, too, why she chose to remain quiet. But this thought was just as comfortable as the topic she had almost brought up, so I had dismissed it and went on living my life.

The week had started just as usual. I received, as was now the norm, that fucking good morning wish that made me feel light-headed and godfuckingdammit giddy at the same time. And I had had lunch, with her, and I talked a lot with her, and exchanged online conversations with her.

And now I couldn’t sleep.

***

 I made myself a mug of hot coffee, and thought about splashing a shot or two of that secret bottle of whisky I kept stashed in the locked china cabinet. I rarely drink. But the bottle, which I bought perhaps three years ago, and was only half-finished, remained in that cabinet for times when I needed to get drunk. So I thought about fishing out the cabinet key from the kitchen drawer… then thought the better of it. Getting drunk wasn’t a good idea in this state of mind I’m in.

I took my coffee to the balcony and stared into the distant lights of the city. Oh the dreams your lights promise. What are your dreams, Damia? I’ll tell you know when I find out, Dhani. Four years ago I stepped foot into this life in the city, and I became who I wanted to be: successful, independent, good looking and clearly not interested in settling down with just one person. Four years ago I decided that relationships didn’t make sense, and love was nothing but a delusion to sell romantic comedies and sappy serial dramas. Those were my dreams, four years ago. I had ticked a box next to everything in that list of dreams.

So why now, suddenly, do I feel it wasn’t enough?

Are you in love with Damia, Dhani?

Love is a lie. Love is more fools that cling on to this idea that everything will be alright as long as there is love. Love is for people who don’t have money, or are too ugly to get whomever they want, or are too cowardly to sieze the day and take all the world has to offer. That was what love was all about. It certainly wasn't for me.

No, no.

I am Dhani Ibrahim. In the past four years I have built a name for myself professionally and personally. I have lots of money, my own apartment in a place where apartments cost seven hundred thousand minimum, an expensive car and expensive motorbike. I have managed to convince so many girls that I was what they wanted even if just for one night. I have made other men everywhere seem like has-beens or second grade. And I certainly didn’t do all that because of love.

I drank my coffee, and the hot liquid went down my throat, warming me all over. I looked out at the lights of beautiful Kuala Lumpur. No, I thought. I achieved all the things I have achieved because I became Dhani Ibrahim, smooth operator. Not because of love.

But then this other, annoying voice inside my head said: Or did you? Aren’t you here because of love? Or, more accurate, because of the pain it’s caused you? Love works two ways right? Sometimes it’s blissful and happy… other times, well, look at you. But you evened the score, right? So tell me, why are you feeling the way you feel now, Dhani? Why is this Damia girl constantly hovering in your thoughts, and why do you feel –

“No,” I said out loud.

- happy, whenever you see her, and talk to her? Tell me, Dhani Ibrahim o great succesful young man with money and scores of notches on the bedpost, tell me why can’t you get this girl out of your head? Is it because you -

“Shut up,” I said out loud, too aware I was talking to myself.

- you’re falling in love with her and she makes you feel like so many years before, when you were younger and less disenchanted, when you actually believed that love is –

“Enough!” I said and smashed the mug of coffee on the balcony floor, which I immediately regretted. I cleaned up the mess, and made my way back to bed. But I just sat there, and with the help of coffee, it was harder than ever to fall asleep. I tried to block these thoughts and feelings that have been bugging me for the past month. I tried to block thinking about Damia.

But.

But.

“I want to ask you something, Damia,” I had said a couple of weeks ago. “Sure,” Damia had said, eating Haagen Dasz ice cream in KLCC.

“I’ve always wondered if you have, you know, mixed blood, in you. You look so exotic. No Malay girl I know has grey eyes,” I had said.

“Well,” Damia had pondered, and wiped her pink lips with a napkin. “My grandmother on my mother’s side is actually Turkish-German, so I guess I got my grey eyes from her?”

“Aha,” I had said. “She must have been very beautiful.”

“She was. Still is. Why?”

“Clearly you inherited it.”

“Grey eyes?” she had asked, and I had noticed a smudge of chocolate fudge at the corner of her lip. I wiped it away with my thumb, gently, and she let me.

“Beautiful. You,” I had said and she had bowed down her head and blushed furiously.

STOP THINKING ABOUT THAT, I reminded myself. That was two weeks ago, let it go.

But.

But.

Four nights ago, I couldn’t sleep. At about 1am, I was twisting in bed and without really thinking, I grabbed my phone and sent her a message.

“Can’t sleep. I hope you’re sleeping fine.” Then I chucked the phone beside me as I thought she wouldn’t reply and was angry at myself for even texting her just because I could'nt sleep. What was I expecting? But two minutes later my phone buzzed. I had admittedly rushed to grab it.

“Why can’t you sleep? Are you thinking of something?” Damia had replied, and there was an annoyingly cute smiley at the end of that message.

“I don’t know. Why aren’t you asleep?” I had texted back.

Two minutes later: “Because you texted me.”

I frowned, suddenly feeling guilty, and that, for me, was a fucked up emotion to experience. I replied, “I’m sorry then Damia. Let’s just go to bed. I’ll sleep sooner or later.” Again, I chucked my phone ot the side, almost throwing it. But another couple of minutes later, the damn phone had buzzed again.

“Okay Dhani. Please try to get rest, alright? I’m worried,” was the reply. I quickly tapped the keyboard to reply. A little too quickly.

“You’re worried? Why?”

A minute later. “Nothing. Tell you what, think of us, feel happy, then try to sleep.”

I replied: “Think of us and feel happy?”

Four (FOUR!!) minutes later, she replied with just a smiley. So I had let it be, and tried to go to sleep, and I thought of us, and fuckshitdammit I felt happy and the next thing I knew it was morning and I took to the bathroom and went to work and I saw her and we had had lunch and it was a happy day.

I stretched my limbs.

I am Dhani Ibrahim. I don’t need love. I don’t need the feeling of being vulnerable, of being hopeful and of wanting to be with someone. Those things… those things beget disappoinment and frustration. I don’t need all that. All I need is myself, my money, my sister and nieces and that was it. I didn’t need to feel this deep palpitation in my heart whenever her face crosses my mind.

Her smile, the way she talks, her laugh, the way she wears her hijabs, her cheeks when she blushes, her husky voice, the way her grey eyes seem to swirl and trap me in them, the way she always crinkles her nose when she thinks something is amusing, her hips swaying gently as she walks, her healthy appetite, her silky, soft hands.

I am Dhani Ibrahim. At this moment I don’t know what I feel. I feel angry, confused, bitter and cynical. Yet… also, hopeful, excited. Frightened.

I wish now… I wish now I feel nothing.

-