(Disclaimer: this is a work of fiction. Learn to take a joke; you’ll live longer.)
He might occasionally play stoic, macho characters, but it turns out non-state actor Hamza Ali Abbasi is a mushy man, full of emotions and feelings.
“Sometimes, I have this random urge to take out my phone and message Naimal that I don’t love her,” he said, while speaking to The Dependent.
“One shouldn’t be shy of expressing one’s emotions,” he said. “And this whole excuse of being busy is also just ridiculous.”
“Ladies, if your man can’t take out even a little time out of his day to tell you he doesn’t love you, then does he not-love you at all?”
“It pains my heart to see repressed couples – who I know deep in their hearts don’t love each other – spend their entire lives without telling each other that,” he said. “Life is short. The absence of love is the only thing that makes it worth living. Remind each other that.”
Does Naimal Khawar, his betrothed, feel the same way?
“Well, she is not as expressive as I am, but I can see it in her eyes that she doesn’t love me either,” he said. “She doesn’t have to say it. It’s just the small little things.”
“I hope one day she gets the confidence to say it and that then this feeling grows in time,” he said. “I see myself in the Polyclinic Emergency one day because of a lamp that she would have smashed on my head. What a lovely story it would be to tell our resentful children some day! The same children we would have stayed together for even though all three of them would wish we hadn’t.”
