The Fallen Widow

Chapter 31: Haveli Women

Author's update: This weekend you will see chapters drop like missiles. Enjoy. 

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There was no moon tonight. Only the fog, thick and white and patient, swallowing the gardens, the fountains, the cranes on the horizon. As though the land itself had drawn a veil over its face.

Hoorayn had not slept. She lay on the wide bed listening to the silence of a household that had exhausted itself, and felt the weight of the day pressing on her chest like a stone. The argument lived in her body still. In the tight rope of her jaw, the ache behind her eyes, the particular exhaustion of words that had been said and could not be unsaid. She turned once. Twice. The bed was too large, too still.

At some point past three she stopped pretending.

She wrapped her shawl around her shoulders and stepped into the corridor. The haveli at this hour was a different creature entirely. No maids, no footsteps, no distant clatter from the kitchens. Only the sound of her own bare feet on the cool marble and, from somewhere below, the faint thread of a ghazal drifting upward like smoke.

She followed it.

The garden room was lit by a single lamp in the far corner, its amber glow barely reaching the walls. The curtains were drawn. The rest of the room existed in shadow, in the deep quiet of a place that had held too many conversations and was resting from them. The smell reached her first, the sweet, woody curl of hookah smoke hanging in the still air, layered with sandalwood, with the cool breath of the fog that had found its way through the gap in the curtain. Shah Nawaz lounged on the Majlis sofa, cushioned on the floor creating a soft seating area. His back against the low divan, his legs stretched before him. His hair thick and free loos around his kurtha. Quiet times like this she found him alluring awakening her desire. The hookah pipe rested between his fingers and he was looking at nothing, or perhaps at everything the darkness held, his grey eyes distant and unreadable. A ghazal played crackly on a vinyl, Mehdi Hassan's deep, velvety voice melting even the stone cold hearts.

He heard her before he saw her.

"Go to bed."

Hoorayn stepped inside anyway. She made her way across the room slowly, and lowered herself onto the cushion beside him. Close enough to be present.

On the low table between the dishes of dried fruit and the crystal glass sat a ceramic teapot, still warm to the touch. She reached for it and poured two cups without asking, the sound of the pouring loud and ordinary in the quiet room. She set one cup near his hand.

He let it sit there.

A minute passed. The ghazal turned, slow and aching. Outside, the crickets continued their indifferent chorus. Hoorayn looked at his hand on the cushion beside her, the heavy rings on his fingers, the roughness of his knuckles. She placed her hand over his.

He did not pull away. But he did not turn toward her either.

"Come to bed." Her voice was low, no demand in it. "I can't sleep."

"Go." He took a slow pull from the pipe, exhaled. The smoke drifted upward and dissolved.

"I hate this feeling between us. I don't want to leave it like this."
Guilt bore into her, she knew how he was bewitched by her beauty, maybe she could use her beauty to seduce him? She leaned in and breathed in his scent, her hands now against his chest, secretly her fingertips sneaking between his open collar and brushing against his skin. She needed him tonight, she needed his forgiveness, if not his words, his body.
"I miss you." She whispered.

Shah Nawaz's strength was waning, he couldn't hold back for long but remained steadfast. She was close, his beautiful wife's hands plastered against his body, trickling her way trying to break his defences.