The Secret Words of My Mother

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My mother never said "I love you."

Not in English. Not in Urdu. Not even in a glance.

She wasn’t cold. She wasn’t cruel. She just existed in silence—an expert in unspoken affection. Warm roti at 6 a.m. Fresh oil in my hair before school. Her love was folded into actions, not words.

Except for once.

She whispered four strange words before she died. And now they won’t stop following me.

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An Ordinary Life with a Quiet Woman

She raised me alone. My father disappeared when I was five. She never explained. Never cried in front of me. She worked at a garment factory and came home exhausted. She never brought friends over. No relatives stayed the night.

Once, I heard her whispering in a language I couldn’t recognize—quiet, almost melodic. Not Pashto, not Punjabi, not anything I'd heard on TV.

When I asked what it meant, she put her finger to her lips.

"Those are just old words, beta," she said. "Words that protect us. Don’t repeat them.”

At the time, I thought it was just superstition.

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The Deathbed Whisper

Years passed. She grew older, thinner, quieter. Then the illness came.

Cancer spread fast through her body. By the time she agreed to treatment, it was too late. We had weeks, maybe days. Most of her final days were spent staring out the hospital window, lips moving silently.

Then, one night—when the machines had slowed to a dreadful rhythm—she called me over.

Her eyes were glassy, her hand skeletal.

“Come close,” she said. “Closer.”

I leaned in. Her breath touched my ear.

And she whispered:

“Khala-mor destan vii.”

Four words. Gentle. Foreign. Carved instantly into my brain.

I pulled back. “What does that mean?”

But her eyes had already dimmed.

She was gone.

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The Words Won’t Let Go

I thought it was grief. The way the words replayed in my mind, over and over again.

Khala-mor destan vii.

They echoed like a lullaby wrapped in static. I began murmuring them under my breath without realizing. In the shower. While walking. Before bed.

Then the dreams began.

She would stand at the foot of my bed—draped in the clothes she was buried in—eyes black, mouth stitched shut.

She would point at something behind me. But I never turned around.

One night, I awoke at 3:03 a.m. to the sound of her voice—not in a dream, but from the hallway.

Whispering.

Repeating those same four words.

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The Locked Drawer

I returned to her house a week after the funeral. Dust settled on every surface. Her scent lingered—jasmine and cloves.

I began clearing her room and found an old wooden dresser I had never opened before. One drawer was locked.

Inside was a bundle of letters, a faded photograph of a mountain village, and a small red notebook filled with her handwriting—in the same language as those words.

Most of it was gibberish to me. But one page stood out. It had been written in shaky English:

> “If you hear them speak back, don’t answer. If you say the words again, they will know. And once they know, they never forget.”

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I Said It Again

I stood in the hallway that night and whispered the words again.

Khala-mor destan vii.

This time, the walls responded.

A creaking in the floorboards.

A breath in my ear.

Then the mirror cracked.

Not shattered—cracked, like a line drawn through reality.

And in the mirror, I saw her.

Not my mother as I remembered, but something wearing her shape. Hollow-eyed. Staring back. Smiling.

I ran.

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I Asked a Scholar

I brought the notebook to a retired linguistics professor in Rawalpindi who specialized in dead languages.

He went pale after flipping through it.

“This... is ancient,” he said. “Pre-Islamic. Maybe a lost regional dialect. The words appear to be protective. Maybe even magical.”

He paused, then asked, “You haven’t said any of these out loud, have you?”

I lied and said no.

His final advice? “Burn the notebook.”

I didn’t.

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The Mirror Is a Door

I stayed at her house that night.

At 3:03 a.m., I awoke again. The mirror in her room was glowing faintly.

From it, a whisper came—not my mother’s voice anymore.

Deeper. Older.

“Come closer.”

I approached it slowly, notebook clutched in my hand. I saw the reflection change. The room behind me warped. Shadows slithered. A thousand whispers in languages I’ll never understand crawled into my ears.

Then I saw her again.

She was inside the mirror, standing in the room that no longer looked like mine. Her eyes were filled with sorrow. And fear.

She mouthed two words I had never heard from her before.

“Help me.”

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The Final Entry

I burned the notebook.

The mirror no longer glows, but the cracks remain.

And still—on some nights—I hear her whisper.

Khala-mor destan vii.

I don’t know what they mean.

But I think my mother wasn’t trying to curse me.

I think she was trying to pass something on. A warning. A spell. A torch in a dark tunnel she never escaped from.

Maybe it’s my turn to carry it.

Maybe… it’s already too late.

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