Hallow.

My chest felt hallow like a bullet had pierced through it. Emptiness welled inside, bubbling beneath the feeble surface of my skin as my scars burned through my shirt, dull, stinging pain slashing against painful reminders of my life.

Darkness welcomed me, followed me into a pit of loneliness where my only comfort rested in the torturous memories of all that I lost, in the swirling images of my parents' amicable smiles. Their eyes were embedded in the back of my mind.

I sat outside on the edge of a curb, numb to the world around me. A sleek coat of rain had wettened the roads earlier, slippery like the media and prone to disasters. A distant horn beeped into my ears, the epitome of city life, yet my mind was elsewhere, far from reality.

Was crying even an option anymore?

Gazing up, dark gray storm clouds flew above, concealing the bright stars from mere mortal eyes. The infinity of the galaxy seemed like a speck of dust against thundering weather. I sighed. Perfect, I thought sarcastically, more rain on my nonexistent parade.

Nothing excused Gavlik for what he had done. He took a business matter and twisted it into a scheme of lies and deception, where naive women spread false stories about me and old, white men spoke of my family name as if another hurricane had hit the shores. Gavlik went too far.

Small drops of rain pattered softly against the pavement, a light drizzle coating against my clothes and hair, damping my roots until it lay flat. I felt it slide down my cheeks, and I wasn't sure if it was the rain or my tears.

Slowly, my restraint crumbled. The past infiltrated my thoughts, my mind fluctuating from memory to memory, Turkey to America, my parents to my wife. It blurred past me, leaving me in all the debris that was left behind.

That was my life.

I was only a beating heart. I was only a businessman. I was only a shell of a human soul.

Every time I tried to climb out, I was thrown back into the lion's den, allowing the hunger-filled system to devour my mind, body, and soul. The media only picked at leftovers like crude vultures.

My shoulders slumped more, the rainfall began to intensify.

I couldn't blame the media or journalists. They were only doing their jobs. Their lives revolved around leads and potential stories. I couldn't blame them for Gavlik. Not entirely.

What can I do now, Allah? How can I fix the past?

Closing my eyes, I let myself go, letting my memories take over. I couldn't keep running from my past. It controlled my every action, my cautious nature, and my family life. The past ate at me, sinking its canines into a tainted life.

* * * *

There had been blood, so much blood. Warm, crimson liquid spread from my father's body, growing and growing and growing until I stood paralyzed.

He still reached out towards me as his life slowly drained from his dark eyes, a strained smile hiding his discomfort. He was drowning in his own blood, yet he continued to hold his hand towards me, offering one last supporting gesture before his demise.

Another shot rang out. My mother's body fell with a thump, knocking against the hardened floors like a glass shattered against pavement.

My father's body unnaturally turned, twitching slightly as his body shivered, shock ricocheting through him. His wife was dead. His soulmate passed almost instantly right in front of him.

Recovering from the initial shock, small tears welled his eyes, lining them with anguished love. The woman that he created a future with had been brutally slaughtered in front of him. Her hijab had been ripped off, torn to pieces as her silky raven hair covered the scarred face beneath. She laid still, unnaturally still.

"Mom," I whispered. "No, Allah. Please, no."

"Ibrahim," my father gasped, trying his best to distract me. "I..."

"Shut up!" yelled my uncle, a psychotic flare igniting his eyes. He craved the blood lust. He craved the shift in power dynamics. A general of high esteem and military recognition now shuddered under his muddy boots. He gripped his knife tightly, stalking towards us, slow and cautious, a look of madness entering his soulless eyes.

He was the hunter. We were the prey.

"M-My son," choked my father, gaze unwavering from me. His gentle, kind-hearted eyes made the world disappear, made the blood vanish as he glanced at me like everything would be alright. "P-Pray for us."

I couldn't speak, couldn't move. My limbs were paralyzed. There laid my father, dying at my feet, and I just stood there in tears, sobs ripping through my chest until my balance was lost.

I sunk to my knees, lifting his head onto my lap as the tears streamed down my cheeks as my shoulders shook uncontrollably.

"N-No," I cried, sniffling. "Don't go. Don't leave me."

My uncle's right-hand man cursed under his breath when he ran out of ammunition, fumbling to find more, but at that moment I didn't care if I died. Momentarily distracted, my uncle spat orders out, blue and green veins popping from his forehead as the physical stress of murder dragged him down, tugging his stone heart with it.

I didn't care if my uncle skinned me alive or if he mutilated my body or if he tortured me for all eternity.

I just wanted my father alive. I wanted my parents to be alive.

"Please," I begged once more, desperately holding him to my chest as if my touch could keep him alive longer. "Don't leave me! I can't lose you too!"

Clutching his fragile body closer to me, his body shivered under my touch, my father's life hung by a thread, flashing before my eyes as reality drilled into my mind like a permanent scar. Despair clawed against my skull, shrieking uncontrollably from a brutal realization. This fear, this fury, this fleeting grasp of existence escaped my lips in desperate pleas. Deep down, I knew no amount of begging could save my father.

Nothing could save his life.

"I-Ibrahim," he gasped, struggling to live, to breathe a second longer. My hands pressed against his wounds, but the river of red refused to cease, staining my hands in the blood of my own father. His death was in my hands.

I shook my head furiously. "No. You're going to live. You and Mom and Bashir will stay alive. We'll move away and start a new life and go to Hajj (Muslim pilgrimage) together. You're not going to die, Dad!"

His gaze was so soft, so pain-ridden with agony. Those warm brown eyes stared back at me with overwhelming, almost suffocating, intensity. "I-I'm sorry," he continued through his own tears, smiling sadly up at me.

I couldn't move, couldn't react. The world spun on my heels, chasing after me with nightmares at every corner, preventing me from a fast escape from my tragedy. The hairs on my arm stood up as his next words would continue to haunt me for the rest of my life.

"Run, Ibrahim. Run away. L-Live, my son."

Just like that, my father was snatched from my grasps. Strong arms pushed me back as I fell a couple feet away from my parents.

A glint of metal sparked the corner of my vision, a deadly weapon so simple yet so precise for murder. It rose higher in the humid air, striking past all tension. My stomach fell. With every bit of strength in his body, my uncle plunged the knife back into my father, his guttural groans broke like the melody our house once held onto, the laughter that once brought people to our presence had been wiped.

I couldn't tear my eyes away. Their fates had been sealed, trapped under the unchanging tides of time. My parents' blood marked my childhood home, a thick metallic stench drowning my senses.

How?

Why?

They were dead. I was alive. It wasn't fair. Life wasn't fair. Nothing could ever be fair again.

Suddenly, the soft cries of a child was heard nearby, a toddler shuddering with unmasked fear behind closed doors. My father's demand rang into my ears. Run, Ibrahim. Run.

Perhaps Allah had planned for all this. Perhaps Allah kept Bashir alive for a reason. Perhaps my parents' deaths were not in vain. An innocent life had been protected. An innocent child had been sheltered away from the bloodshed of politics.

I ran to the other room faster than I thought was humanly possible. Bashir's cries motivated my burning limbs, my injury worsening. I didn't stop. I couldn't. Ignoring the throbbing ache in my fatigued legs, I continued onwards like the honorable soldiers that once walked my country's history, those who protected their people even when the Europeans threatened to bring them down through a war. History pulsed through my veins.

Opening the door to his room, I wildly searched for him.

"Brother," Bashir had sniffled, his body hiddened by layers of wool blankets.

Pulling the blankets away, I found my shaken little brother, begging to be comforted. At once, I felt my heart soften. Although my parents' deaths had traumatized me, nothing could compare to the relief that flooded upon seeing Bashir's rosy cheeks, maple eyes, and messy hair.

Thank you, Allah, for saving him.

Gathering the little boy in my arms, I murmured sweet nothings into his ear, an act my mother used to do for me whenever I awoke from bad dreams. Bashir didn't have a mother anymore, nor did he have a father.

We were all that was left of our family's legacy.

"Shh," I cooed. "I'm here now. I swear that I will always be here."

His body slowly relaxed against me as I rubbed circles on his back.

I had no hesitation when I ran into the cloaks of night, speeding through the streets in search of refuge. I stormed through the endless rows of buildings that towered over one another, fear enraging my blood. They wouldn't have Bashir even if I had to sacrifice my life. Bahsir would live. I only had to live a while longer, a couple days longer.

My grandparents would fly back to Turkey soon. We would be saved.

Although the darkness engulfed us, a fleeting threat whispered with the wind against my ears, and I held Bashir tighter to my chest. My uncle's haunting voice before we escaped brought all the hairs to stand on my arms.

"I will find you," he had seethed, "and when I do, you will never forget it. Those who run always get caught, Ibrahim. Always."

Death could never have been sweeter.

* * * *

I rolled my sleeves, staring at the pale scars that painted across my skin, ruining a once perfect canvas in years of trauma. Snow-like flesh sliced into different sections. My eyes could still remember the oozing red, the glass-shattering screams, and the cowardly acceptance of no return.

I wanted to die when I was a hostage. Bashir would be safe if I didn't live. He could escape without any memory of that horrid night, without any recollection of our parents' heartwarming smiles, without any reminisce of the past. Allah had saved Bashir in many ways that night.

Yet the burden still weighed upon my shoulders.

It was an imbalance of life, focusing on the weak and helpless and leaching off their miseries. I fought through day and night, through allies and enemies, through culture and politics in order to grow my company. There wasn't anything in the world that I wouldn't do to save it at its darkest hours.

I promised those under my tutelage that I would never give up a fight for them, that I would always put their needs before mine, that even if I had to resign I would if it meant saving their jobs. Business coiled a dirty pole, following its ancesterstral policies where the low-income were taken advantage of all for the prospect of business.

As a Muslim and Turkish-American, I refused full-heartedly.

Why do I still feel numb to all this? Why does it still hurt to know what America thinks of me?

I knew the answer all along. Fear. It had always been fear. People knew, and they feared me. They deemed me a threat to society and women without letting me speak, my lips sealed shut through their effortless lies and misconceptions. My life and all those connected to me had all suffered due to my wretched past.

My body felt inflamed.

As if a cold bucket of ice had washed over the blazing fire, soft footsteps pattered against the pavement, my body tensing as her body settled itself next to mine, arms interlacing. Slowly, I turned to face her.

She smiled sadly.

My heart fully surrendered to her touch, and the tears began to fill my eyes once again. Moments later, Tasneem's elegant visage blurred entirely from my vision, mixing into a stretch of obscure colors with a watery appearance and mirroring a moonlight reflection in a small pond nearby.

The world had jumped into my personal life. Politicians argued about my country and my family history. Average Americans whispered about my "disgrace" and "mental instability" as if none of them had ever experienced a period of time where stress controlled every aspect of their lives. They spoke of me as if I didn't exist like I was a mathematical equation that no one had solved and needed revising.

"He did it, Tasneem," I whispered brokenly, unable to stop a fresh new flow of teardrops. "T-They all know. Everyone in this country does."

"I know."

I let out a bitter laugh, gazing at the darkened sky instead. "Man, I'm pathetic."

"Don't say that."

"How can I not? The whole world knows, Tasneem," I turned to look at her again, and I regretted it instantly. My harsh tone had frightened her, but my lips continued to move on their own accord, a sheer vulnerability leaking through my every word. "W-What do I have now? Where do I stand with my business?"

She squeezed my hand in warning. "You stand proud, Ibrahim. Look at where you are in your life, look at the world around us. You built a business from a few resources. You helped your grandparents raise a lost little boy, shielding him the way a father would to his son. Don't you see, Ibrahim? You are a living representation of strength, a pillar of determination."

"Tasneem," I sighed.

"Do you know why I fell in love with you?"

The question caught me off guard. The thought never crossed or perplexed me. She had been there through everything, holding my hand during the most frustrating phone calls and embracing my inert body during the dark, rainy days of my life. Never once had I questioned her undying loyalty to me. I knew Tasneem, and I knew her heart. In my eyes, that was enough validation of our love for one another.

Regardless, I shook my head, curiosity bubbling within.

She slightly smiled, slow and small, leaning her head against my shoulder as she closed her eyes, losing herself in a loving wisp of memories. A drop of liquid dripped down her cheeks, shimmering a translucent light from my view.

Her beauty radiated through a gloomy night, expelling negative thoughts away with only one smile, one look, one personality. An urge to kiss her worries away overwhelmed my senses, to cling onto her soft body until daybreak floated through my mind and it tempted me with each passing second.

I held back, patiently waiting.

When those fluttering, thick lashes opened her enticing eyes to me, capturing my gaze almost immediately in the process, I sat straighter. The ardor between us was too real to ignore, electrifying as it was addicting in ineffable ways.

"I fell in love with you because of your past," she whispered, clutching onto my arm for reassurance that I still existed. "The past created who you are, shaped you into the man you became today. I always admired your courage to pick your battles when people had been so disrespectful and uncouth towards you throughout your life. You stand here today because you persevered and because you never gave up on your future."

I contemplated her words. The world had been cruel in many ways, but I tried to be the best I could as a Muslim and a CEO. Allah knew what was in my heart. Allah knew of my pain, struggles, and of my vexations in life. He was the all-knowing.

Tasneem's small speech should have reassured all my doubts like what happened in the fairytale books my parents would read to me.

But it didn't.

I felt more alone than I ever did. The nagging thought of my personal history being exposed to the public dug my grave deeper, throwing my corpse of a body in with all the secrets I had buried long ago. It revisited my despair and anger towards the universe, constantly screaming and clawing back and forth over and over and over again until I felt trapped within my own walls.

Escape was futile. There was no escape from the spewing news stories or from the gossip that people whispered, eyeing me as if I were an animal, a feral beast from another jungle who claimed America as his own.

Enemies arose from every corner, rising in numbers, in armory, and in hatred. Lies had twisted into truths, spinning into exaggerated tales about an immigrant who made a name for himself through deceit instead of perseverance.

My wife's words fell to deaf ears. A role model to Muslim community would be able to fight back against the slanders. I should be able to hold my head high and address these issues, yet my instincts were restrained by my rational mind.

I still had not replied to Tasneem, choosing my silence as my defense.

"Say something," she pleaded. "Don't run away, Ibrahim. Tell me."

Not a word slipped past my lips. I felt empty, void of any emotion. The past had triggered a trembling response from my body. My mind begged to display my true hurt to my wife, but she had suffered enough. My family suffered far too much due to my scandal.

I had enough of it.

Suddenly, her warm fingertips pressed against my freezing cheeks, turning my head towards her as she stared deep into my eyes, silently urging a reaction from me, anything to ease her bundle of nerves. She wanted me to trust her, and I did.

"Please," she said barely above a hushed whisper. "Talk to me."

Slowly leaning into her touch, I felt the mental barriers crashing down from the hint of sympathy that laced her lilting voice. Her eyes expressed a sorrow hidden under a melancholic veil, dark irises circling the caramel mix of sweetness under the windows of her soul.

I lost myself from all the torment with one lingering look into her dark pool of love. The rain had continued, soaking both of us through the weight of time, slowly and softly. The petals of colorful hues glistened around us, the serene light of a storming night. Tasneem was the illuminating glow of my life, my world.