PROLOGUE #2
Iram looked down at the board. No space left.
She turned the board sideways, like Abba used to do when writing inland letters when she was a child.
Abba. He had taught her how to write a letter, made her practise her address for her school letter-writing assignment.
Abba must have taught her how to write words. Alphabets too.
Abba.
His name did not make her feel depleted.
She perked up. That was a win, wasn't it?
He had been her father all her life, as much as she remembered.
Nothing wrong with acknowledging that. Yes?
Yes. Iram felt a strange fizz bloom inside her.
A strange… spark of peace. Yes, her giddy chest shook.
Yes. Yes. Abba. Aamir Haider had been Abba.
Whatever his intentions, whatever the compulsions, whatever his misdemeanours, he had been Abba.
This too shall pass, Jannat. Tears blinded her eyes but she let that voice reverberate inside her ears.
This too shall pass.
But we will remain, Iram.
Iram wiped her eye on her shoulder and read her last sentence.
But can it be so that my haven still waits for me?
She continued on the margin.
That the lotuses I plucked left their roots in you?
She turned the board again, suddenly heaving — with fear or excitement, she didn’t know. She wanted to write. More. She needed to write more. The thought of lotuses did not make her want to black out. Or skip. Or skim.
So one morning if I come knocking at your door
She turned the board again.
Knowing that you will still be plagued by sleep
And again she turned, writing under the already crammed lines, feeling lighter and lighter, like her feet had hit rock bottom of Kishanganga and she was floating up. Up, up, up —
Knowing that you won't be dreaming of me
But a rectangle was made of four sides and all of them had been used now. Her eyes roved the space of the entire board, seeing it filled with tiny white lines — no space left. And so that last line remained in the hollow of her chest, screaming quietly.
Please, for the woman you once knew, open the door. And see me.
That scream echoed inside her.
The scream felt sweet inside her.
Her heart began to race. What would it be like?
Did she want to find out? Would he be waiting just like that?
Angry, torn, aggrieved. He must have searched for her.
Turned heaven and hell over to find her.
Whatever her misgivings, he would have tore the land apart…
did she want to walk back? Face him? His wrath? His grief?
Her racing heart silenced. But this time, she did not let it go completely cold.
Did she want to peep? She asked herself.
Iram took a deep breath and swallowed the telltale fear that always accompanied the thought of turning back and seeing the carnage that she had left behind.
Him. Atharva. The man who was hers without any reason.
A dry sob left her lips.
Was she ready?
Was she his again?
Was she hers again?
Iram. Iram Haider. Iram Kaul. Myani zuv.
Zuv.
Life.
His life.
She gasped. She had stolen not only his children but also his life…
“Jannat?” A soft-knuckled rasp made her stuff the sob back inside her mouth.
“Jannat…” the voice softened.
“Yes?” She croaked.
“The house is waking up. Faiz is coming for breakfast with some officials. You will need to be downstairs…”
“Yes. I’ll come.”
“I am so sorry…”
“It’s ok, I am just getting up. One minute.”
Iram rubbed her eyes clean. Setting the blackboard down from her lap, she stored the chalk inside the small drawer of the bedside and craned her neck.
It was stiff from sitting with her back to the bedpost all night.
Her bum was cold and stiff from the naked wooden floor.
In spite of the dim fire burning in the old fireplace, her finger joints were frozen.
A shrill cry of a child sounded from somewhere and her breasts felt heavy.
She knew what was coming next even before it happened.
Her pheran stuck to her chest, the wet, cool trails slithering down to her stomach.
Iram turned to get up and clean herself but stopped, caught by the chalk lines on the board.
Then, breasts wet, breath heavy, for a person who would have screamed bloody murder if even one word as much as vanished in a computer crash, Iram simply took the edge of her dupatta and wiped the slate clean. Including his name.
She glanced back — mad rain pattering on the window, Atharva standing alone, empty onesies left out of the hospital bag she had stolen for herself. Iram kept staring. Joy had passed, sorrow had passed. Nothing remained inside her. But, even this nothingness belonged to him.
“Jannat? Are you coming?”
Iram did not turn away from the rainy window — “Yes.”
————————————————————
The house of Soni Mehrunisa was alive at dawn, the kitchen its epicentre as her servants prepared a feast for breakfast. The Mir, her younger brother, was coming here with some ‘officials’ after their night hunting trip.
“You don’t have to come in front of them,” Mehrunisa informed her, sitting her down on the edge of the platform built outside the kitchen. “But in case they ask, I needed you to be ready. Cover your face if you have to come, ok?”
Iram nodded. A warm hand came to her forehead — “Do you have fever, gurun?”
Iram lifted her eyes to the soft, concerned ones of her sister.
Her elder sister. She was so beautiful. Her face was round, her cat eyes gleaming hazel green with kindness spilling out, her smile just like a mother’s.
Any mother’s. Right now, her brows were knitted in a frown.
And her eyes were wide, like they always were with her own little daughter.
“Jannat, is it happening again?” She lowered her voice. Iram snapped out.
“No,” she felt the word come out of her mouth but not loud enough.
She cleared her throat. Mehrunisa took her hand and pulled her up.
They crossed the kitchen and the alleys and the vast hall of the house that was a palace that the Mir had given to his sister to live in.
Her husband wasn’t around, having married again after stealing her jewellery and swindling her to sign over her offshore bank accounts.
Mehrunisa, in her own words, was happier with that outcome.
She opened the door of her bedroom and walked Iram in, then closed it.
Iram glanced at the small lump on the wide bed.
Her 8-year-old daughter. Gul. A smile pulled at her lips at the drool running down the side of her mouth.
Iram reached down and wiped it. Then pulled the double duvet tighter around her.
“Jannat?”
She turned. Mehrunisa’s small, rotund body was barring the door and her hands were on her waist. Iram had always thought that if one wasn't a certain shape, one wasn’t beautiful. Soni Mehru challenged that claim silently and came out looking so glorious. Or maybe it was Iram’s own bias.
“Gul will wake up,” Iram whispered.
“She sleeps through earthquakes. Sit down and tell me if you are ok.”
Iram wanted to nod and lie that she was.
She lowered herself to the edge of the bed and was about to do just that before she stopped.
What was the use of lying? She had confided in Mehrunisa about her condition.
About her circumstance. Not the full name of her husband or father or their profession, but she had told her everything she could without names.
Sensing the delicacy of her situation, Mehrunisa had never questioned her on anything else.
“It’s different today,” Iram croaked. Her sister stepped close and sat beside her. “Different how?”
“I… wrote. After a long time. And…” she stared between her legs, at her hands, palms up, cupped, asking for what, she did not know.
“And what, gurun?”
Tears fell down her eyes and into her cupped palms. She fisted them and more tears fell, on her knuckles this time. Kept falling.
“I want to go home.”
No sound. Just the steady breaths of Gul’s breathing.
“Do you want me to call your husband?”
“No!” Iram whirled on her. Her husband, the Chief Minister of Jammu & Kashmir? Call him and tell him what? Take your wife from her sister’s house in PoK?
“Then?”
“Rahim Chacha and I will leave the way we came.”
"Rahim Chacha and you cannot leave from here without raising questions. Faiz… he is curious about you. If you leave like that,” Mehrunisa’s expression turned solemn. “I will not be strong enough to stop him, or the ISI officers he tips, from coming after you.”
“You can say I went back to my husband.” They had lied that she was a local from PoK, married to a man on the Indian side. It wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for her to return to her husband.
“I could say that if you leave here just now and cross the border within the hour. Jannat, it’s two days of travel from here to the border. And they will not spare you…”
Trapped. She felt trapped. But strangely, this feeling of being trapped made her feel more alive than she had felt in days. To get out of here, to go to Atharva, to finally go to a version of her she had begun to recognise again, even if partly — it lit a tiny spark of purpose.
“Are you feeling better? Is that why you want to go? Or you don’t like to stay here with me?”
Iram looked at Mehrunisa’s hesitant face.
“In the days that I have been here, I don’t even know what months have passed. I just remember snippets. All of those have you. Your dates dipped in chocolate hidden for me…”
“You need it every morning when you start to lose yourself,” Mehrunisa countered. Iram felt her own lips widen.
“The way you shield me, sit with me and say nothing for hours…”
“It’s to see how long you can keep silent. Once upon a time you did not stitch those lips even when it was time to eat,” Mehrunisa’s face split into a grin. “Ammi used to say you were born with a loudspeaker screwed inside you.”
Iram chuckled through the water in her eyes. And then a thought struck.