Aamina

There was something about her that was simply delicious, and he couldn’t figure out what. He looked down at her with eyes wet with sweat, and the look she returned to him was so full of pain, so full of love, that he could have easily stayed in that position forever, gazing at her little round face as he thrust… Just what was it about her that drove him insane? He had harbored such…impure thoughts…of her ever since he met her, first laid eyes on her. Since he saw her that fine summer day, with her equally as luscious mother, and she had wrapped her tiny fingers around his own and smiled up at him. And from then on, he was inseparable from her. Day after golden summer day in his vibrant youth he had spent with her, giggling and tossing and turning as they tackled each other in the cornfield; sometimes at night he would traipse over to her room under a starlit sky and just look in on her and think as she slept. She was his savior, his little angel, always there when he needed her, never leaving his thoughts not even for a smidgen of a second. As he plucked the tender yellow ears of corn under the Sun that was always so round and full of heat, his mind wandered and he was somewhere else and he thought of her. Then at dinner, as he looked around the table to stare at the listless eyes of his twin and sensed the foreboding presence of his father, he took tiny bites of his food and thought of her: wished she was there and he with her. When he was in the bed, alone and at night and frustrated, he thought of her and he groaned. But he had been young back then. Young and afraid and breaching into the confines of bittersweet adolescence. Maybe back then she was nothing for him but an incessant, simple longing. But now, as he looked into her deep russet eyes and saw the tears in them and the weak smile, he knew what this was. Love, which had begun as his simple childhood seed and blossomed into a thing of complete and tantalizing beauty. Of course, if his father would have seen them, her legs and arms wrapped around his hips and neck as he made sweet, sweet love to her, he would have disapproved. But what use did he have for him? He was twenty-five now, and her, a nubile, ripe age of sixteen. He was a freestanding adult and she was ready and they both wanted it and how could he resist her? She was all his now. After years and years of frightful waiting, she belonged to him. He burrowed his nose into her warm neck, licked at the succulent flesh of her collarbone. Watched as a trickle of red meandered its way down the bronze tint of her thigh, staining the sheets with little splashes. He thumbed at her nipples and kneaded her breasts and followed the turns of her waist with his fingers and knew… He knew… Oh, his little Aamina! He loved her so much. Nothing else in the world mattered. He no longer cared about anyone, anything. Just being here, where the bed was his center and she his fruitful prize… He could be here forever. He whispered his love to her, over and over, in her ear in between delicate licks and nibbles, and then when they switched positions, so he could stare up at her, seeing the full swing of her bosom and the pained smile on her face as she rode him, he knew that this was what heaven felt like, and she was his little slice of Paradise, all just for him. Coming back home was worth it. Crossing the Atlantic was worth it. Just to be with her was worth all the riches in the world. The wrath of his father didn’t matter. The rage of the husband from which he stole her from that night and tore into her yet-unbroken sex was nothing. Even if he had to spend the rest of eternity burning in the gaping maw of Hell, the red tongues of fires licking at his flesh, he didn’t care. He didn’t—

And then he dug his fingernails into the soft flesh of her waist, groaned and came, and burst out in a flood of tears. It was too much. Too much.

“Ahmad?” she asked, and then she was there by his side, and he felt her head on his chest and watched it bob up and down with the quick rises and falls of his chest. She looked at him, with those eyes, large and brown, and he looked away.

“What’s wrong?”

And then he looked back. Took his hands and fingered his way through her dark hair, inky as night, and stared at her face, red with blush, wet with sweat. And then he dropped his hands and turned away.

“God damn it, Mina,” he cried, calling her by his little pet name, and then looking back at her again with such intensity that she teared. He took her warm little hand in his and squeezed it hard. How could he say this? How could…? He sighed and held his face in his shivering palms, then suddenly turned back and grabbed her by the shoulders, nails digging into her bare collarbone, shaking her so harshly that her poor neck threatened to snap.

“Aamina!” he cried, face wet with tears. “Aamina, you’re my sister!”