The Wake.

8

"Did you break this Iraj?" Azfar pointed towards the model of his residential design for his new project.

"I, um, Azfar, it was not on purpose." She shook her head and smiled.

"This is a joke right?" He was in absolute denial.

"Well, you shouldn't have kept it there for it to get in my way." She pointed to the table in the center of his study room. "Apki ghalti hai."

(It's your fault.)

"You're not even supposed be inside this room." He kept on staring at the broken model that was not in a condition to be fixed.

"I came here to just see if this place needed cleaning. The cleaning lady was asking me." She gave a big nod to show her sense of duty.

"That's it. We're going to put an end to this." He closed his eyes for one deep breath and then snapped them open.

"How?" Iraj kept on giving her innocent curious smile.

"I'm going to draft a table for which timings would you be in what places of the house to keep us as separated as much as possible and my things out of your way." He stepped towards the writing pad and took a pen in his hands settling down on his chair.

"What? A table?" Her eyes widened with an annoyed expression, "Azfar will you go to such lengths now?"

"Iraj. These are sensible solutions to the problems that we are facing. Very rational and logical." He started drawing lines on the paper and didn't even look at her face.

"Please aisay mat karein Azfar. Warna mien naraz ho jaongi." Her childlike voice came with a plead.

(Please don't do this Azfar. Otherwise I'll get upset.)

"What you don't understand is that this is for the best of both of us." He continued writing on the sheet.

"You will treat me like this?" She spoke with much sadness.

"I believe I have never been more reasonable." When he said that she huffed out loud and left the room before he could be done with his brilliance.

"He thinks I'm a museebat. Fine then." She angrily lied on her bed with a thump. "But I'm always very careful, it just happens on its own." She kept on talking to herself. Then she remembered that she had herself taken the model into her hands to take a look at it and had lost grip over it.

(Museebat: nuisance)

"Maybe, maybe I can make him change his mind?" She moved to sit. Pouting to herself she decided to go to his study. Azfar had already left, it was late night and she knew he'd be in his room by now. The model was still in crumbles and Iraj picked up the pieces and then went down to the living room. She saw the sheet on which he had made the table hanging on the refrigerator with a magnet on it. Iraj stared at it with much hate. And then blew her tongue out at it, "Never."

She set the pieces of the model on the center table and started to join them using the adhesive glue. Iraj kept on putting the pieces together till she had fixed the entire thing. It took her the whole night to finish it and she fell asleep around dawn with her head down on the table.

When Azfar came down for his morning workout he saw what he could never have imagined and stood like a star struck man in the middle of the living room. The very well destructed thing from last night was placed on the table all fixed up with few cracked lines between the glued pieces and he stared at the woman asleep next to it more than the object. His beautiful and adorable wife.

He felt stupid, so stupid to have made her feel like she had to do something so difficult and deprive her from her sleep. He kept on thinking how hard it must've been for her to put together the entire design without having the layout. She'd probably gotten her fingers scratched because of the broken wooden pieces and its edges.

"Azfar?" Iraj had woken up and lifted her head up rubbing her eyes, "Good morning." She stretched her arms and then stood up.

"Good morning, why did you sleep here Iraj and—"

"And look, I fixed it." She pointed at the model with excitement, "It's all good now, at least that's what I think." She scrunched her nose and neck bending down at the model with observant eyes.

"You didn't have to do this Iraj. It must've hurt your hands. Show me." He extended his palms in front of her to place her hands on them.

"I'm fine, I'm fine." She hopped towards the refrigerator in the kitchen and Azfar followed with astonishment, "We don't need this anymore." She took the table off and tore the sheet discarding it into the bin.

"Well that, I still think would be better if we—"

"No, no. I forgive you for making that thing. You know I have a very big heart." She smiled and ignored his tone.

"Yes, of course." He sighed giving up, "How can I forget, you have a very big heart."

"I'm going to check on my plants." She smiled and leaped towards the backyard.

Iraj felt her hands trembling when she tried to hold her plant pots and her fingers were still numb but she ignored it because she felt relieved now. Her husband wasn't going to do anything extreme about her whereabouts in the house.

Double update ya'll. I'm the best person in the world, I know, I know. 💀

This is because the next chapters are going to be very, 👀🫢 no comments from me.