The Fallen Widow

Chapter 32: Unlies

The car arrived without explanation. That was the part that unsettled Hoorayn. No word from Shah Nawaz the night before, no message through the maids, nothing. Only the driver at the door at nine in the morning, his eyes respectfully averted, telling her the car was ready and she was expected downstairs. When she asked where they were going he said he had been told only to bring her. Hoorayn dressed carefully because it was the only thing she could control.

She chose the deep wine red, the one with the gold border along the hem and the neckline, the one that Fiza had picked from the city and left folded on her bed without a word, the gesture itself a kind of welcome. She fastened the gold at her ears and around her wrist, the heavy set Shah Nawaz had placed on the table in front of her one morning as though it were nothing, as though he gifted gold the way other men gifted fruit. She pressed her lips together in the mirror and did not examine too closely why she had chosen red. Why she had chosen to look like this for a destination nobody had told her. What had angry Shah Nawaz planned for her?

The car continued along the road. Hoorayn sat straight and watched Jahanpur pass the window. The morning was already warm, the fog from the night before burned away, the fields green and indifferent on either side of the road. Nadeem drove with his usual steady hands and said nothing. This was Shah Nawaz's way, she had learned. The silence before the move. The instruction given without the reason, leaving her to turn the possibilities over in her stomach until she had worked herself into a state he could walk into already prepared. She pressed her fingers together in her lap and thought about what she had said to him in the bettak at three in the morning. She thought about the way he had sent her away a second time. She thought about the lamp burning low and Mehdi Hassan's voice turning in the dark. Her stomach turned with it. She pressed her fingers to her lips and then her palm flat against her abdomen. The nausea came suddenly. It must be the unknown, the potholes, the agrresive speed over the jagged roads making her stomach somersault. She had blamed the heat. She had blamed the upheaval. She had blamed everything except the thing she did not dare name.

"Parvez." Her voice came out steady. "Slow down please. The road."

He glanced at her in the mirror. "Ji, Choudhrani Sahiba. Sorry."

She turned back and clicked the window breathing in fresh air through her nose until the nausea retreated again, sliding back to wherever it lived between its visits. The fields continued. The road straightened. She focused on the horizon and felt her heartbeat gradually return to something manageable.

They had been driving forty minutes when the car slowed without warning and pulled to the side of the road. Hoorayn looked up. 
The black SUV parked behind them in the dust. She watched the door open in her side mirror. She watched him get out, straighten his kurtha, say something to his guard. Her husband was in black today, the charcoal shawl draped over his left shoulder, the turban a deep burgundy. He looked like he had slept well and was in no particular hurry about anything, which she knew by now meant the opposite. He opened the car door and got in beside her without looking at her or greeting her. The door closed. The car pulled back onto the road.

He sat with his arms resting on his knees looking forward, his presence filling the car the way it filled every room, immediately and without hello or apology. The scent of him reached her first, oud and tobacco and something underneath that was simply him, and despite herself, despite everything, she felt her body orient toward it the way it always did, the way she had stopped pretending it didn't. She greeted him. He did not look at her. 
"Where are you taking me?" She kept her voice even.
"Prison." 
She smiled like he was joking. "Will you jail me for my crime?"
He didn't respond.
"We are going to see your father. Ghalib Saab."
She turned to him fully. "Why? What happened? Is he alright, Shah Nawaz, what happened to him." Her hands now on his hand and panicked.
"I haven't seen abbu for years." 
"Nothing happened to him." He reached forward and adjusted the air vent with two fingers. Still not looking at her. 
"He is well. He is, apparently, teaching the other prisoners. Philosophy and mathematics. The governor told me they call his Friday class oversubscribed." 
She stared at him, he knew more than her. How was that possible? How long has he been investigating her father? She had so many questions, but moved her tongue onto the roof of her mouth to stay silent. 
"A lawyer is reopening his case." Now he turned, just slightly, not enough to face her, enough to be aware of her. His eyes moved briefly over her, her red dress, her gold, her hands clasped in her lap, and returned to the road ahead. It was difficult to control his eyes. He had to curb and controll his body with great difficulty. 
"The evidence is weak. The case was poorly built. My lawyer believes the case will collapse and he will be free. But he has refused to cooperate. He won't speak to the lawyer, he won't allow representation."
"That is Abbu." She exhaled. "He trusts no one."
"Which is why you are in this car." He turned to look at her fully then, for the first time since he had sat down. His grey eyes moved over her face with the unhurried attention of a man who has decided looking is permitted even when nothing else is. He said nothing for a moment. Just looked at her. She felt the nausea stir again, lower this time, and not entirely unpleasant, which was the most inconvenient thing possible.
"Speak to him." He said. "Tell him he must cooperate."
"Of course!" Her voice full of energy. "He will be free?" She said it quietly.
"If he cooperates, yes. That is what the lawyer believes."