aab e hayat ( English version)

chapter no 20

"Baji! Where were you?" She woke up the next morning when the maid rang the doorbell. Opening the door, the maid asked as soon as she saw her, "I had gone to stay at my house for a few days," she replied evasively.

"Are you feeling alright?" The maid asked, scrutinizing her face. "Yes, no, just a little fever, nothing more," she tried to smile. "No good news, is there, Baji?" The maid's enthusiasm made her pause as she walked towards the bedroom, and then she felt deeply embarrassed.

"Nothing like that, just clean up," she instructed. When the phone rang, she came out of the kitchen where she was preparing breakfast for herself. It was Salar, who usually called her around this time. After so many days, his voice on the phone sounded very strange to her. "How are you feeling?" he asked.

"I'm fine," she said. "Did you have breakfast before going to the office?" She noticed there were no used dishes in the kitchen. "No, I was running late. There wasn't time for breakfast."

"You could have woken me up, I would have made it," she said. "No, I wasn't hungry either." After the usual pleasantries, there was now an awkward silence that both wanted to avoid but couldn't escape. They suddenly had nothing to say to each other.

"And?" After failing to come up with anything, he asked her. "Nothing..." She was just as empty.

"Let's go out for dinner tonight," he suggested. "Okay." The conversation returned to square one. Salar said goodbye and hung up.

She sat holding the receiver for a long time. There was a big difference between the conversations they used to have on the phone a week ago and the ones they were having now. It was much harder to fill the cracks because the scars never truly go away; he was feeling this difficulty too. What she had learned in this one week, she hadn't learned in all the months of their marriage. A person's love can never be unconditional, especially when that love is bound by a relationship called marriage.

 Salar's love wasn't unconditional either. An unpleasant incident had brought her down from the sky to the ground. For the first time, she saw the harsh realities that had previously been hidden from her eyes. She was no longer just a beloved; she had become a wife. It was now easier for a man to remove her from his life, heart, and mind. Although Salar had maintained her respect in the eyes of others, he had greatly diminished her worth in his own eyes. The mountain of illusions and expectations was slowly crumbling into pieces.

He came home early that evening, and she knew it was intentional. When she opened the door for him, he didn't embrace her warmly as he usually did. Making eye contact, smiling, and coming close to her had perhaps become just as difficult for him. Before, everything used to happen spontaneously, but now, even with effort, it wasn't possible.

 Even while going out for dinner, there was a similar silence in the car. They both asked each other something occasionally, but after a brief response, they would fall silent again. It was the first dinner they had together where they sat across from each other, staring at their plates, and both ate without any interest.

Their return was marked by the same silence. Once again, she went to the bedroom to sleep, and he went to the study room. The next day, they sat at the breakfast table together for the first time in about a week. Talking was easier than making eye contact, and they were trying to converse. Both were struggling in their ways to overcome the shame and the painful emotions that lingered at the table like uninvited guests, but those guests were not ready to leave.

After a week, he was finally taking a home-cooked lunch to the office. He couldn't bring himself to tell Imama that he had stopped eating breakfast and meals at home altogether for the entire week. The house had felt like a haunted mansion to him during those days. As he was leaving, he said to Imama, "Your ring is in my drawer; you can take it." Imama felt as if she had been jolted with electricity and looked at her hand. "My ring?" She had forgotten about the ring until that moment. "Where did I put it?"..." In my office washroom," he said in an indifferent tone as he walked out, leaving her standing there.