Chapter 21
Whatever came, we watched it go.
Some things gently.
Some things not.
But all of it — gone.
Nothing stayed.
Not the rain. Not the fire.
Not the soft laughter in the dark.
Not the breaking.
Not the bloom.
But we stayed through the gloom.
I held your hand.
You let go.
Then held it again.
That was enough.
And then some more.
Because whatever came, we let it come.
And then watched it go.
“Stop,” Atharva ordered.
“Inside,” Altaf added, and had the car turn into the gates along with their convoy. Atharva got off and strode back to the edge of his house’s gate. The old man wasn’t budging. Weeks had passed, and he still came and stood here at this time of his homecoming.
“What time did you come?”
“Six o’clock.”
“Iram is inside. Nobody has stopped you from going and seeing her.”
“I want to meet you.”
“Sir?” Altaf whispered in his ear. “We cannot have you stand here without cover.”
He nodded.
“Come with me.”
Atharva turned on his heel and strode inside his estate, the winding way lined with his convoy on one side.
“Take the cars and dismiss everyone. I will walk with him.”
“I’ll be here with you,” Altaf nodded and went to execute his orders.
“Yes, Rahim miyan, I am listening,” Atharva began walking. The old man kept pace, wheezing in the cold. Atharva could not find in his heart to sympathise. That he was letting this man walk with him was the limit of his control.
“Iram baby was not good when she came to me,” he panted. “She was…”
“We have moved on from that. If you came here to talk about those days, then you can turn right back.”
“Please, Janab, meherbani karith… listen to me.”
Atharva slowed down, eyeing the man with his hands folded, still struggling to keep up. The fog was dense ahead, the night dark. He was in a pheran, and not even one that was thick enough for the suddenly chilled night.
“She was not like herself,” he launched.
“She was crying and then couldn’t cry. She looked at herself in the mirror and went like stone, so stiff that she did not move again.
She slept and then woke up in half an hour and did not even shed one single tear.
She told me to give her money. I had no money.
So she took my phone and called a number and asked for money.
She asked me about her parents again. She asked me how I would have taken her across the border all those years ago as per Bhabhi’s orders.
I did not understand at first. I wanted to call you.
She wanted to call you and go back to you. ”
Atharva stilled.
“But then she didn't. She said her children were dead. And I did not know if she was running towards her home or away from you. She did not even eat what I served and left before I came out of the bathroom. How could I let her go alone? At night? In that state,” his eyes crumpled.
“Janab, she was bleeding. She was not even concerned about it.”
Atharva kept his face schooled, staring at this man’s rant.
“She was stumbling. She could not hold herself straight but kept walking. I had to go with her, take her where she wanted to go. I still had some people in Kupwara and we crossed from there. Janab, it was safe. I promise it was. I wouldn’t have taken her if it wasn’t.”
Atharva nodded. “I listened to you. Now you can go.”
He turned around and began to stride home.
“You claim to love her?” Rahim yelled. Atharva slowed down.
“For me she was my Iram baby and I could not see her like that. You would not have been able to even look at her in that state.”
Atharva stopped.
“She fell into a river.”
Atharva’s throat dried.
“When I pulled her out, the water was red.”
Atharva’s eyes began to burn.
“She fell asleep in my friend’s hut and did not wake up for one full day.”
Atharva’s eyes shut.
“She would not eat, not talk to me. And then she would finish a meal at night and cry quietly in a corner looking at the sky. She did not sleep. And then when she did, she slept all day.”
Atharva could not hear any more, and thankfully, Rahim veered.
“She lived like a prisoner in her own father’s house.
She lived like that to make sure to come back safely to you.
Mir wanted to hand her over to ISI. She fought it quietly and kept fighting, going into her shell every night.
Chocolate, khajoor and pista made her ok.
Every morning. At 9 o’ clock. You wouldn’t have been able to see her, Janab,” Rahim began to wail.
“Iram baby was not like this. She was not like this. Whatever happened to her, don’t do it again, Janab.
Don’t let it happen again. She will die this time. ”
Atharva turned on his heel — “Why are you telling me all this?”
“Because she will not tell you.”
Atharva stared at the man in the fog of the night, the crickets croaking around them.
“Don’t punish her, Janab. She was a mother.” Running away from her dead children.
Atharva stared at Rahim. He could snap this man in two, that’s how angry he was at Aamir Haider’s man Friday.
He lengthened his agony, standing stoically under the cold night sky, seeing him shiver and rattle with dying wails.
And yet he couldn't stop thinking about what would have happened to Iram had he not gone with her.
Had he not come to her aid. Had he not known the right routes that he termed safe.
Whatever he was, he was loyal to Iram.
“Altaf?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Kaangri.”
Within half a minute, a coal kaangri materialised. He nudged his chin towards Rahim and the watchman handed it over to him, helping him slip it under his pheran the old-school way.
“Go home.”
Atharva began to turn around, not ready to give him the satisfaction. Then thought about his wife.
“Iram is happy in her home.”
————————————————————
Atharva pushed his bedroom door open and burst inside.
Empty.
Yathaarth was quietly asleep in his cot. Even though every logical part of him knew she was here in his house, he began to panic.
“Myani zuv? Myani zuv!”
He took quick steps back to go check the attic when the bathroom door burst a crack — “What? Keep it down,” she peeped with her towel wrapped around her, her hair soaking wet. “Don’t wake him up.”
Atharva let out a quiet sigh of relief. Then crossed the distance between them, pushed the door open and slammed his mouth on hers.
Her body stilled, then immediately went slack.
Her lips softened, tasting of sweetness and mint, opening up for him.
His tongue pushed inside and hers was ready, welcoming him into its softness like no day had passed between the last time he was here and now.
Her shoulders melted into his, the water from her body seeping into his shirt.
He held her face and tipped her jaw until she was on her tiptoes, her hands garlanding his neck and pushing into his hair.
She gasped and he pulled back, allowing her a moment to breathe.
Her eyes were at half mast, staring up at him. “What happened?” She whispered, catching her breath.
Atharva pushed tangles of wet hair from her cheeks, staring at the face that was the dearest to him in all the world.
How had he let rage come in the path of loving it?
Why had it taken him eons to understand that this girl, this woman, had seen the worst that the world had to show and her limit had crumbled.
He hadn’t been her roof then, nothing had.
“I am sorry.”
“You said it to me, I forgave you.”
“I am still sorry.”
“Atharva.”
“I am sorry, sorry, so sorry,” his forehead dropped on hers, eyes not leaving hers. “I am sorry, myani zuv. I am sorry.”
She pulled his head into the crook of her neck and he banded his arms around her, curling over her until her back hit the basin sink. She smelled of vanilla and strawberries and of all his sleeping desires come to life. She smelled of his life finally come to life.
“You have been my destination, Iram.”
“I know, Atharva.”
“When I do not see my destination, I am a lost man.”
“I know that now.”
He pushed his mouth into her skin and opened it, tasting her presence, pressing into that crevice that held countless memories of his most intense emotions.
His hips pressed into hers and pinned her to the basin.
She responded in kind, moving across his waist, her hands suddenly turning soft, nails trailing up his neck and into the back of his head.
He pulled back, eyes lowering from her face to the column of her neck, down to the knot of the towel that covered her from him. His hand reached the knot, an inch above the fabric, hovering.
“May I?”
Her chest expanded.
When he glanced up, her brown eyes were stringed into his. Her mouth opened, her sweet breath so close to his. Soft lids fell over those eyes; and when they rose, her gaze was weaving with his again, the tapestry tightening again.
She gave a nod.
His hand closed around the knot, ready to tug it when she covered his hand with hers. Her fingers were hot, trembling.
“What is it, myani zuv?”
“It’s not how it used to be.”
He held her gaze. His hand contracted, then expanded, slipping her grip off his.
With his eyes still on hers, Atharva tugged at the knot and the towel pooled to the floor.
A silent gasp left her lips. He stepped back, still holding her gaze, then slowly let his eyes trail down.
Jaw, throat, clavicle, breasts, stomach.
She was changed. Breasts swollen, stomach not turgid, skin no longer silky smooth.
What a beautiful battleground it was, breathing slowly but steadily.
For him. Breathing for him. Living for him. Here for him.
“Did I tell you I love battlegrounds, myani zuv?” He gripped the side of her neck and pulled her up for a second kiss.
This one slow. Gentle. How had he only kissed her the second time when she had been here for weeks?
Atharva grasped her closer. Her naked body met his clothed one and she whimpered in his mouth.
“Battlegrounds are destroyed,” she murmured over his lips.