While each of this series can be read individually as there's no specific order of events. I do implore everyone reading to read The Prologue ahead of reading any specific part.
I always liked the Saw series. Don't get me wrong, as far as quality goes, they are horrible. But I still like them. I am actually not fond of the trap technical aspect as most of the fandom. I am a fan of two aspects. The first is the aesthetic of the "Here's something you should have noticed" type of ending with a quick montage to tie it all up. Much of it is nonsense, don't get me wrong, but I eat it up with a spoon. The second is the idea of giving up on your worst habit just to gain freedom, though mostly they just die.
My cousin, Salwan, who is 8 years older than me, is bad at jigsaw puzzles, or good, depending on how you look at it. He might actually be the best. He would play it with a pair of scissors and glue, and he would cut and glue everything to make a big, disfigured picture.
I have to admit something, that there's a third thing I like sometimes about the Saw movies: blood. Not always, I am not a big fan of gore as a whole, but I often have that odd feeling of just watching gore. Sometimes I just want something annihilated, completely deleted from existence. Since I know the past can't be changed, a bloody end to the devil seems like a great second option. A tragedy must befall those who do harm.
Many years later, my friend Ahmed, whose wife, Hanan, was heavily grieving the loss of her father. Her grief was deep, and he felt helpless about helping her. I knew from a conversation with her that she hated feeling this way as well. But there were times when no one could stand her.
Her situation made me realize how each tragedy comes with a specific level of tolerance. You stub your toe, you get a ten-second free pass to curse. Somebody breaks your phone, maybe half an hour, and so on. You lose someone you hold dear, you get like three conversations about it and then we're done. Sadness and depression are easily quantifiable, as our species has agreed.
There's a formula we agreed upon as a species: How much you care about the grieving person multiplied by how significant you think their pain happens to be equals time spent listening. In a perfect world, the husband would have listened forever, but the formula is subject to change due to the listener's feelings, past, present, and life as a whole outside.
How long can you tolerate someone having difficulties dealing with their sadness? And how long does it take a helpless husband, facing the possibility of losing his business while he feels the cold shoulder from his distant wife, before he acts out?
The answer is a few weeks. But the tragedy of this story stems from its delicate parts. You see, Ahmed and Hanan were rich enough to hire a housekeeper, Zahraa, and a driver, Rostom, who are unhappily married due to the abusive behaviour of the alcoholic husband. There's a whole story, but what you need to know is that they had a sixteen-year-old daughter, Zaina, who grew up troubled in this abusive environment.
In a police interview, Rostom described his reason for turning into alcoholism as his son's death. Which could take us down a rabbit hole of action and reaction that would end up somehow being a political statement about nepotism in the Iraqi government.
Both families were as close as they could be considering who worked for whom. However, Rostom's alcoholism and abusive behaviour intensified just as fate would have it, Zaina developed a crush on Ahmed. One night, Rostom started acting crazy, leading Zaina to run away. Fate had it that she ran into Ahmed and Hanan during a time when Hanan decided to travel north of Iraq to find herself, as she described it. A moment of weakness, they ended up having sex.
Both feel guilt, Ahmed for cheating on his wife and Zaina for losing her innocence, which in Iraq is a huge deal. Both continued carrying that weight. It took Ahmed a few weeks to come clean. Hanan had gone through her journey, forgave him, and they started becoming a happy couple again. But that's one side of the coin.
The other side is a girl whose mistake is unforgivable by society, her parents specifically, and even herself.
During the school exams season, Zahraa got sick, which meant that it was Rostom who should be taking care of Zaina, who always came off distant. Rostom found himself enjoying taking care of Zaina, but sadly not enough to quit drinking. Now it's mathematical. If your day consists of driving as a job and then drinking for the rest of the day, then the addition of new responsibilities results in you arriving late at work, smelling like cheap vodka. You get dismissed by your merciful boss who still pays your salary on the condition that you would go to rehab.
Rostom liked the idea, and it all ended up well as he became an attentive father. However, this happened as his daughter was going through an existential crisis made worse by the fact that Rostom showed up one day with five thousand dollars, which is like a nine-month salary he received from Ahmed, who said he was doing it to help Rostom get through as he deals with alcoholism.
Communication absence can be horrifying as it leaves hearts ached and minds dazed. When you're a sixteen-year-old who just lost her innocence from a man who you have loved so dearly but no longer answers your calls and even had your number blocked to fix things with his wife, your mind starts wandering.
Matters were made tragic when the new atoned father gave all the money to the daughter to buy herself whatever she wanted. Communication absence could mean that five thousand dollars is either a reward for working hard on yourself or the price of Zaina's virginity as appraised by Ahmed. Ahmed swore the latter wasn't at all what he intended and that he suggested fixing it "a thousand times", but I can't blame Zaina for going there. I, myself, still don't know which is true.
In a moment of boredom and heartache, Zaina found herself drinking the remaining alcohol her father swore off. A drinking teenager is wild. It took only one question from her father, if she was okay, to angrily shout that the five thousand dollars weren't for his superiority but the price of her virginity.
"You sobered up way too late" - a hysterical Zaina laughed at Rostom
Rostom then disappeared for a few hours. On the other side of the social class, Ahmed was celebrating getting his wife and business life back at a party. He was dancing with his wife when Rostom showed up with a gun and pointed it at him. But a drunk, angry man isn't the best shooter. Rostom ended up shooting Hanan, killing her on the spot with multiple shots before he was dropped to the floor.
God isn't that good at writing stories. There's never a cohesive theme of what he is trying to do, and there are no lessons to teach. Sometimes, it is just a story.
Just like it is just a story that my cousin cuts and glues jigsaw puzzle pieces. These are the stories I think about whenever I see my cousin and how much my life's jigsaw pieces would fit together if I used his blood as the glue.