Behind closed doors.

When I was a kid, I used to live with my grandparents in their house, with my parents.

It was a joint family system, each couple only had one room, and the rest of the house was for mutual use.

There were a couple of suspicious rooms adjacent to my grandfather's. We had heard scary stories about the rooms but didn't dare to look behind their closed doors.

We believed that monsters lived inside those rooms because we had never seen light there.

We all cousins used to play cricket and once the ball went towards the direction of the room, we all were scared as hell.

No one was ready to fetch the ball. Our innocent ball would lay there silently cursing its cowardly owners.

But it was a forbidden room. We couldn't do anything except to be careful next time while playing with a ball.

It was our firm belief that monsters live behind closed doors.

When I grew up and moved to our new house, my uncle built their store room anew on those old scary rooms.

Still, there was something bone-chilling about that area.

An Aura or it was all inside our minds due to continuously listening to mysterious stories about them.

It was a charade to solve and to know what happens behind closed doors.

Anyhow, 3 years ago I saw a beautiful young couple at the wedding of my cousin.

It was a love marriage, both were cousins also and highly educated people. The man was earning bread and butter for his family while the girl was a housewife.

During the whole time of the function, the husband didn't leave the side of her wife and his 2-year-old son.

We would all look at them with admiration and think if that's not true love then what is?

The girl was also on my friend list on Facebook and a week after the wedding I saw this girl's status:

Enjoying with husband

Below were their pictures of enjoying in Murree and having dinner in Monal.

I couldn't help but smile.

Exactly after 2 months and 2 weeks I heard shocking news about this girl.

It was December 24, I even remember the date, early at 7 am when a thick fog covered everything, that:

the girl had committed suicide the previous night.

I was like seriously? Why? She was alright. We had seen her two weeks ago with her husband during a family gathering.

Why did she do that?

You don't know what happens behind closed doors: The answer came.

Stories unfolded and I came to know that she was having a difficult time surviving in her relationship.

The husband was keeping her behind with his parents in a small city. He was in Lahore for his job. The girl couldn't stay there as she was from a well-off family herself and kept asking him to take her with him.

He didn't and even used to hit her.
I wonder how people in love marriage can do that.

She was having depression and suicidal thoughts which she shared with her family.
They were ready to call for a separation but the girl was not ready. She said I am a mother now, how can ask for a divorce, what will happen to my son.

The society never allows a divorcee to live.
They say:
she must has done something wrong for her husband to hit her. There must be a reason.

We don't sympathize for a wounded woman until she is found dead.

Why does daughters have to die for the world to know that they have been wronged for years?

Why can't we welcome our divorced daughters and sisters as we do when they are dead?

She had the guts to end her life, did she?

No, it wasn't a sucuide but a murder.

Her husband killed her and told the world that it was a suicide. Everyone believed him at first but the postmortem report said otherwise.

He had closed the door for several hours. He was actually a psychopath and had family history of violence.

Neighbors said they heard their fighting at noon. But then we heard no more voice, we thought they may have sorted out(a murder).

It was never this way.

He used to torture her behind closed doors.
But in front of the world, he portrayed himself as a loving husband.
(who doesn't leave her wife's side to make sure she doesn't tell anyone anything)

It disgusts me.

I had finally managed to know what happens behind closed doors.

That no monster lives behind closed doors but Humans.

When I finally got the courage to look inside the scary rooms in our old house, do you know what I found?

One room was showered in the dark but there was a light to switch on.

On turning it on, we saw a room full of woods to burn as a fuel beacuse we didn't have gas facility.

There was no monster but the means for our survival.

And what about another room?

Oh, it was more shocking than the previous room.

The room was empty, it had only one thing in the corner on the floor.

A prayer mat and a candles

For whom? For unknown, it was a thing old people used to believe.

We ran out of the room and they became forbidden rooms for us again.

We can never know the story behind closed doors, by seeing superficial things, we have to gather the courage to open the door.

I pray no one has to see monsters behind closed doors ever, Ameen.

Inviting @neelofar @yaladeeds @dave-hanny