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His sister passed away when he was around five years old. Since he was so little, he didn't have any memory of the funeral, nor of how she died in the first place. All he remembered were tears, shouting, hurried footsteps and banging doors. Curse the fractured memory of a young child! He didn't have much more than this. And he had hardly anything or anyone to help him.

His mother refused to entertain his questions. If he dared bring his sister up, it left her inconsolable for a half hour. She would bang doors and go on and on about Noor. Noor, Noor, Noor.

They hung no pictures of her in the house. But then again, they hung no other pictures, either. His mother hid them all in a case that she kept under lock and key. The one time he managed to get into it, he only saw the one of his parents before he was pried away. More banging doors. More tears. And he didn’t even get to see Noor, so it was all for nothing. Tch.

Eventually, he gave up asking, and formed his own version of her. His sister. Name: Noor. Age: probably six, seven years older. She liked to draw. He had a drawing, somehow kept safe throughout countless moves, that depicted him and her. Noor had drawn him; Jamil had drawn her. From this drawing he extracted more details. She had long black hair. Pale, rosy skin. Star-shaped earrings.

Other interests: fashion; reading. His mother had thrown books and magazines out of her room when they sold the house a few years after her death. That, too, had been a tearful affair. Noor’s room had always been locked before then. At least this time he got to take a better look at something of hers. The place was small and dusty, heavily decorated, and messy. It seemed as though all her things had been left as they were when she died, even the bed. She’d probably died of some sudden illness, he decided. They took her to the hospital when her health worsened, and she never returned.

This narrative was enough to put his mind to rest, and he tucked Noor into the very back of his memory, where her wobbly image collected dust and grime. So when he found her golden star-shaped earrings, he did not even realise whose they were at first.

“Ma, whose earrings are these?”

From the very first glimmer that formed in her eye, he knew he had made a mistake. He quickly put them down, covering them from view.

She looked at his hands, then up at him, and quickly moved to wipe her tears. “They’re…not mine. Just…throw them.”

He nodded and made for the kitchen. There, he stuffed them into his pocket. Within the week, he got his ears pierced. He tried to hide the earrings at first, but then he stopped caring as much. His mother had to get over it sometime. Therefore, he guiltily avoided her quivering lip when she looked towards him, the scowls that eventually did soften over time.