In From the Ashes, Rana, who is Amira’s best friend, makes a mistake that haunts her for a long time.
Rana is Principal Hayat’s daughter. While Rana is a good student, her mother is not satisfied with her grades.
Hayat expects Rana to be the best and prove that she is worthy of being the principal’s daughter.
Unfortunately, Rana fails to surpass Amira, who is the top student. The pressure of making her mother proud eventually takes a toll on Rana, and she ends up making a grave mistake.
Desperate actions
Rana tries her best to score the highest grades and be chosen as the student of the month, but her efforts are in vain. It is Amira who gets that award every month.
Rana does not give up. She gives her teachers no reason to complain and studies as hard as she can, but that is not enough for her mother.
Hayat constantly makes Rana feel like a failure. On top of that, she does not let Rana speak to her father due to their ongoing legal battle.
Rana becomes desperate to earn her mother’s approval. She starts feeling jealous of Amira, something that she has never experienced before.
One day, Amira loses her book and goes to the school’s storeroom to get a new one. Rana follows Amira and locks her in the storeroom.
Rana took this step because she wanted her name to be on the list of honor and thought that her teacher might write Amira’s name.
Soon after, a fire broke out. When the teachers were helping students evacuate, Rana wanted to go and save Amira, but it was not possible because she herself was trapped in the building.
Rana helped her classmates, and after a close encounter with death, she eventually made it out alive, but Amira was not as lucky.
Taking accountability
Amira’s death leaves Rana shaken. Her mother finds out that Rana was the one who locked Amira in the storeroom, but she does not talk to Rana about it.
While Hayat tries to frame other students for Amira’s death, Rana is made to stay home, as her guilt does not let her sleep.
When Amira’s father brings the painting that Amira wanted to gift Rana, she can no longer hide her crime and tells her grandmother everything.
Like Hayat, Rana’s grandmother wants her to keep quiet about what happened that day, but Rana cannot continue doing that when she finds out that Heba is being punished in her place.
The fact that Hayat knew about it all along and did not care about ruining others’ lives to cover Rana’s crime makes Rana angrier.
For the first time in her life, Rana stands up to her mother. She now understands that she was a failure only in her mother’s eyes.
She goes against her mother’s wishes and contacts her father. With his support, Rana goes to the police and confesses to killing Amira.
Rana not only regrets locking Amira in the storeroom but also not standing up to the bullies for Amira at school.
Although Rana comforted Amira whenever she was bullied, she never took action to stop the bullying, as she was too scared.
Rana now wants to be held accountable for her actions. She goes to prison for killing Amira, but now that she is repenting, she can finally sleep.
Also Read: From the Ashes summary and ending explained
