Chapter 60 In too good times and too bad times, sleep evaded
It was worth checking, if only to look at him.
Amaal rolled out of the bed and landed on silent feet.
She quietly pulled open the door and sneaked out.
The hall was quiet, the garden punctuating the silence with croaking crickets.
She quietly made her way across the hall and the main stairs to the observatory stairs.
They spiralled up in a confined tunnel to the glass dome that Iram had made into a relaxation space.
Amaal went up on noiseless feet covered only in socks.
She held one hand out to hold onto the wall but they had left a light on to keep the way lit.
“…boys seepover no have piyowfight.”
“Then what does it have?”
“Fighting.”
“Who is teaching you all this?”
“Dani guy.”
“Dani guy, huh?”
“Bro yaps alot.”
Deep chuckles of a voice she knew all too well. Amaal beamed.
“If your Baba finds out you talk like this…”
Soft giggles.
“Don’t tell Samar.”
“Samar, now?” His voice was bright, happy, amused. “Am I your friend?”
“Feinds do seepovers.”
“True, I did many sleepovers with your Baba, now it’s your turn.”
“What you do?”
“We… uhhh… stayed awake.”
“Yay!”
“But slept before… 1 o'clock.”
“Noooo!”
“Yes,” Samar’s low laughter rang out.
“At SFFF?”
“Who told you about SFF?”
“Baba.”
“You are too young to know about SFF.”
“I big!”
“How big?”
Rustling, and groaning, and then Samar’s dramatic grunt.
“Ok, you are big, and now it’s time to sleep.”
“What happen here?”
“I went too close to the fire.”
“Why?”
“Because…”
“Your Baba no shouted?”
“Hmm, my Baba didn’t shout at me on time.”
Tears came to her eyes and Amaal blinked them away.
“Mmmkay.”
And then, suddenly, silence fell.
She frowned. She turned the handle silently and pushed the door enough to take a peek.
Samar’s head came up. And Amaal’s heart thudded, then stopped, then melted.
Under the glassy dark night and still trees, on a pallet mattress, Yathaarth lay cocooned on Samar’s chest, covered in a blanket, out cold. The heater supplied a steady hum.
Samar’s brows rose inquiringly. Amaal shook her head and smiled — Goodnight.
Wait, Samar mouthed. I’ll come out.
She nodded, left the door ajar, and took two steps down. He came out a few minutes later, keeping the door half-open, carrying his jacket.
“Come.” He put the jacket around her and descended a few more steps, far enough to keep their voices from waking Yathaarth but close enough to keep an eye out in case he woke up.
Amaal left her weight in his arms, going down with him as he sat down and pulled her into his side.
She set her head into the crook of his neck, inhaling.
His arms came around her and she pressed closer into him, nuzzling the textured skin under his kurta.
He did not mind it, in fact, he pressed the back of her head close into his flesh.
And Amaal wrapped her arms around him, finally letting it all go and melting into him.
He leaned back into the wall and she felt her body meld with his.
“Exactly what I needed at the end of this,” she sighed, feeling all of him around all of her with her eyes closed.
He stroked her hair and pressed his mouth into the top of her head. “It’s the start of something new now.”
“Mmm…” she nodded. “I can’t believe this is happening.”
“What?”
Amaal pulled back and looked at him; his specs had slid down his nose.
She smiled, pushing them back up — “I got a lot of time to think when I was in London. And I thought about the last ten years. Honestly, until I saw you at the airport today, I did not let myself fully trust that this would happen, and until right now, I did not let myself fully believe it either. Something always happens and we are the first to give away.”
“Not anymore.” He threaded his fingers through the hair at her temples, his voice a low whisper.
“I have wasted too many years, and now that I look back, I realise maybe they were necessary. Life did things to me and I did things back to it, without letting myself live it like it is supposed to be lived.”
She raised her brows.
“For the love of life, and the person next to you.” His fingers tightened in her hair.
“I cannot think about this life without you in it. So, trust that this has happened. We have happened.” He pressed his mouth to her cheek.
“And we will keep happening.” His forehead met hers, and their eyes fell closed.
“I have so much to say to you, and so little time again.”
“We have all night.”
She felt his lips curl up. Samar finally let her go and she moved down a step, widening the V of his legs and lying back on him. He widened his stance even more and wrapped his jacket even tighter around her with his arm, holding her head on his chest.
“Tell me.” She said, looking at his face.
“What?”
“Everything.”
He pressed his mouth to her temple again. He had been doing it a lot lately. She had zero complains.
“I had been trying to grow out of my mindset for a long time, but the turning point came when we went to Sirmaur last February.”
“The cloudburst?”
“Hmm. There, Atharva told me something and it finally made sense after so much fog…” Samar looked at her over the rims of his specs.
“He said that Shivji didn’t swallow or spit the poison but transformed it in his throat.
And that was the choice I had to make. Until then, I thought the only way to be ok was to either internalise everything and keep suffering or throw it out at him or you or anybody close to me and take perverse pleasure in seeing them suffer.
And then this third option was open to me and I began working towards it. ”
“How?”
“I didn’t tell you then, because I didn’t want to raise your hopes or become an annoying man singing his daily woes…”
“You are annoying but you will never sing your daily woes to anybody… also, you SING?!” She squished his rough cheeks, making him vibrate. She squished them tighter, making his lips pout and open in a low laugh. “Oh my god! What a talent house am I marrying!”
“We all sing.” He chuckled quietly.
“Adil and Qureshi, too?”
“In SFF, everybody sings. You have no option but to join the chorus. And then eventually you learn to hold a tune.”
“If I wasn’t already in love with you, I would have gone all swoony and fallen down…” She tripped her head on his chest. He popped it — “What’s being in love with me got to do with not swooning when I sing?”
“I have already done the swooning part, now I am in serious love with you.”
“Is it?”
“Hmm.”
“Challenge accepted.”
“What?”
He looked away, mysterious.
“What?!” She pushed at him. “Clarify.”
“You’ll know when you know.”
Amaal gaped at him, then burst into a grin. This man had shown her the gates of hell and kept her suspended in purgatory. And just the sight of his mysterious smiles was enough to make her forgive all that and more. She pressed a kiss to his neck. He looked at her, his eyes softening.
He caressed her cheek.
“You don’t know what you have done.” He told her.
“What have I done?”
“You have chiseled this man out of me.”
She shook her head. “I wasn’t with you all this time, you did it all on your own.”
“Without you, if not for you, I would never have done it. You were my answer to every question, every roadblock, every exhausting second. You were my end date and you were my endgame, Amaal. A man like me would have otherwise either destroyed himself or this world.” He held her face, his own becoming solemn.
“I went back to my house, let my parents go, believed in things I never thought I would believe in, and didn’t stop even when I was tired and done for.
At 42, with a body that is half done in, I feel younger than I ever felt.
You made this happen, give yourself credit for this like you give yourself credit for every great thing you’ve achieved at work. ”
Something wet wiggled at the corner of her eye. He wiped it away before it slipped.
“You have nurtured a party’s media wing singlehandedly, you have been a trailblazing Press Secretary to two CMs of a state as torn as ours, you have set your roots in a city like Srinagar and are soon going to buy your own house there, and the world will remember all that but not your biggest achievement.
” He thumbed the corner of her eye. “Saving a man like me.”
The hairs all over her skin stood on end.
His palm pressed into her skin, pushing all the lost touches of the last so many years into it.
“You,” he said, the veins in his neck straining, “have waited. I was doing, and it is easy to do because the mind is occupied and there is a dynamic passage of time. Action makes time pass quickly; the goals, the destinations, they keep you going. But sitting is hard. You sat there for all this time, waiting, not knowing what was happening, on just a promise I made to you.”
“I trusted you.” Broken words scraped out of her throat.
“And that is why, the rest of my life is yours.”
More tears slid down the corner of her eyes. His thumb brushed them away.
“And now it’s time to live this life out.” His mouth split into a smile. The stubble around it pricked her hand as she palmed it. Amaal nodded, feeling like this was the pinnacle moment of her life.
“Tell me now,” he asked. “What are you thinking?”
“That I don’t want to leave you tomorrow.” She pouted. And his smile widened.
“I don’t want you to either.”
“But I have to.”
His sigh was long, and loud, and ended in a puff of his breath. She chuckled.
“Don’t raise my hopes like that.”
Amaal kissed his chin. “My term with Qureshi ends in June. After that, I want to take a proper break. If I can manage to find a house by then, then set it up. And, you know… marry you,” she shrugged nonchalantly.