Kauthar at the Gym

Sometimes during the night Kauthar would dream that she could touch her own heart, feel it beating warm blood into her body, calm it away from the pangs of hurt. She would wake with a start and find her right hand laying on her chest; that's as close as she would ever get.

II

Kauthar never thought she was exceptionally beautiful. There were the bulges she furrowed her eyebrows at in the gym mirror, the slightly crooked bottom teeth when she smiled, and the generally boyish features of her face. No, definitely not the typical ascetically pleasing woman.

A woman should be symmetrical and thin. Her hair should fall in a perfect wave just to below her shoulders - frizzed by neither rain nor humidity. The curves of her body should be slight, alluring, render her a sculpted masterpiece.

Needless to say - that she was not. And the ugliness she wore on her exterior cloaked her inner demons; perhaps people would not look so far into her heart if she looked unbecoming.

III

Kauthar's kick-boxing class instructor was a petite Caucasian woman with disturbingly bulging shoulder muscles and an unnaturally high pitched voice. The class consisted of moves and routines she'd all but forgotten the names of. Uppercuts, roundhouse kicks, and something about breaking a man's nose by slamming his face into your knee.

The room was large, made up of clean wooden floors and ceiling-to-floor mirrors. While the women around her pumped their fists to the beat of the music, Petite High Pitch Instructor shouted orders at them on her wireless microphone. It was an odd sight - 40 women violently uppercutting the empty space ahead of them, yelling in unison as their fists hit the air.

For weeks, Kauthar could not get into the groove of the movements or memorize any sequence of moves. She would lose herself in the sea of women with unrequited anger - focus on the new ones in class and notice the build up of sweat on their necks, and the constrained look on their faces. The instructor's voice was lost in this - she did not exist.

On the 4th visit to the class, the instructor walked in and chirped: "alright ladies! It's time to picture that one person you've wanted to just clobber, but have always been too nice to!" Kauthar scoffed at the ludicrous suggestion. She was here to lose her bulges, not take out her violent tendencies.

She turned away from the instructor to hide her upturned eyebrow and looked at her reflection in the mirror. She saw ugliness.

Her eyes lit up under angry brows as she curled her fingers into fists. She saw his head jerk back as she rammed her fist into his nose, she saw him stumble onto his hands and knees when she forcefully kicked the hollowed side of his head. She slammed his head into her knee, and threw him aside like a used tissue.

She angrily twisted her body back to the mirror, hands still clenched as if to challenge its reflection. And for the first time in months, behind her reddened face, she saw raw, limitless beauty.