Peace be upon you

Every time he stared out of the Burj Khalifa into the panorama of Dubai's clear skies, he pressed his fingers to his eyes to stop the tears that threatened to overwhelm him. It was 3 am and he had not slept a wink since he walked into his new apartment.

He covered his mouth with his palm the minute he walked in and saw the view through the floor-to-ceiling windows. All his life he had been used to putting his head out of a wooden window infested with cockroaches. Not like that was a bad thing for him anyway, he was fond of chasing the cockroaches to any length and wiping them off the face of the earth with just a swat from his sandals.

Source

Those flowery sandals which his granny gave to him as one of his inheritances.

The entire neighborhood mocked him for wearing a woman's sandals but what could he do? He couldn't afford another pair then and it was a gift from his favorite person so he kept on wearing it. Year in, year out.

He used to be the son of one of the most influential men in his neighborhood. His father was sheriff and because of that, local cases were brought to their table, such cases meant a few notes were pressed into his father's palm too and his father in turn would press a few gifts into his tiny hands when he was returning home from work.

Being the only son, Mujid didn't have to struggle for a place in his father's heart. His father had 3 wives, yet, only his mother had successfully given him an heir but just like his first wife, Salimat asked him the day his father was brutally murdered, “What are you the heir to now, Mujid?”

His father didn't keep the other wives in the same apartment with him. They both lived together with their children a few blocks away but Mujid and his mother lived with his father.

Maybe that was why it was so easy for them to make the strategic plans they did and by 1 am on the 15th of October, Sheriff Ismail was shot dead in a mock robbery operation.

Everything was looted from the house.

Mujid’s mother had to take them to her own mother's house almost 6 miles away that same night.

Every time he remembered that night, the way the robbers stomped their feet on his father's head as if it was a rag doll, the way they moved out the black and white television he loved so much and the colored one his father had only recently gotten, the way his mother's voice pierced the air when she went to wake her husband up from his eternal slumber immediately the robbers were gone, the only thing he could think of was revenge.

To him, that was the moment that changed everything.

His mother could no longer bear the trauma of having to look at the expensive rug in their living room knowing that her husband's blood drowned in its furry look, so she packed all their things and sold the furniture which was the only reasonable thing they left them with, and relocated to her mother's house.

Mujid returned to sit on the exotic orthopedic mattress that stood in the middle of the magnificently furnished master bedroom and held his head in his hands.

Now that he was here, and had seen luxury at its peak, he felt it was all for nothing. This was not what would erase the graphic memory of 15/10 from his mind's eye.

He had thought that when he took his full revenge, unleashing his anger on his father's two wives, then tackled his third enemy, poverty, he would finally be free, but right now he was feeling like the worst person in the world.

And that was not a wrong feeling, he was the worst person that existed in his own eyes because he had walked into Nana’s house as quietly as he could and silently put a bullet in her head and that of her daughter, Mina. He left the child who was sleeping just beside them drenched in blood. That one would wake up the way he woke up, to discover that his or her entire world had come crashing down in one night.

The child would eat scraps from the dustbin like he did because his mother could neither get a decent job nor marry a good man who would take care of them.

And that was not the end. He took out all of their priceless property and sold them, including the two houses that his father had built, and then headed back to his base. The place where Abdul Rahman had groomed him to sit and make billions just by posing as a girl to chat with men from different countries.

Now three days after his operation, he sat with all his dreams actualized before him but did not understand the reason there was an ache in his heart.

He knew just the right person to contact and the moment he heard his mother say, “As-salamu alaykum”, he knew that everything would eventually be alright.

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PS: As-salamu alaykum means Peace be unto you.