The Fallen Widow

Chapter 35: Let Me Breathe

Twelve long hours had passed since Hoorayn discovered the truth about her husband's death creating a catalyst of events. With the lack of sleep and rest, fatigue set in and she couldn't think straight. Hoorayn stood on the cliff edge, the same place where Shah Nawaz pointed a pistol at her when she tried to run away. That day she chose to jump. She looked down at the cliff and recalled how she felt free, flying, falling and choosing to fall. As she looked down at the gushing river, it felt tempting. The clouds were grey and heavy above promising to explode any time. She stood in her black salwar kameez, she wore the night before. Jahanpur spread below her in every direction.

She had forgotten how much of it there was. From here show saw the whole shape of the district, the patchwork of the fields still green from the early rain, the pale thread of the main road cutting through it, the cluster of the village rooftops, the cranes on the eastern horizon still now in the early morning, the haveli with its gold domed towers catching the first flat light. The river was a silver line in the distance. The brick kilns were cold. From up here the whole of Jahanpur looked like something a person could hold in their hands, could cup between their palms, could choose to keep or let fall.

She had stood on this exact ledge with the wind pulling at her clothes and her heart hammering in her chest and the ground a long way below and she had made a choice. The only choice that had ever been entirely, unambiguously hers. She had stood here and chosen, and the choosing itself had been a kind of freedom even before she understood what she was choosing between.

She sat down on the flat rock at the edge with her thoughts. Her conversation with Kaneez, Shah Nawaz and everything else.
Shafiq would have ruined my life. A shiver ran down her spine. She bought her hand to her face and touched her soft skin. If he had his way, she would have been scarred for life.

From behind she could hear Shah Nawaz's footsteps before he appeared. She knew his men were watching her every move and sitting on the cliff edge with his child in her womb would have terrified him. She did not turn around.

He came and stood behind her. She could feel him looking at the back of her head of free hair, then past her at the view below. He said nothing for a long moment. The wind came up from the valley and moved through the grasses around them, and somewhere far below a crow called once and fell silent.

"You came here." His voice was quiet with concern.

Silence sat between them like a knife.

He stepped forward adjacent to her, his hands held behind his back when he was deep in thought, now dressed in an ivory kurtha, plain and simple. From her peripheral view she could see his profile. His profile was all hard angles, the jaw, the straight line of his nose, the heaviness of his brow. She had memorised this face without meaning to. She had been memorising it since the first time she saw it and hated it.

The silence between them was the silence of two people who have said too much and not enough and are standing at the edge of something.

"You know what I did here." She said it to the valley.

He looked at her.

"The last time I stood on this ledge." She felt the memory of it move through her body, the physical memory, the lurch of the stomach, the cold air, the absolute clarity of that single suspended second.
"I jumped. I chose to jump." She paused. "It was the first free thing I had done in years. The only decision that was entirely mine. And I made it here."

Shah Nawaz's heart pounded with fear. What would she do?

The wind moved through the grasses. Below them a hawk turned in a slow circle over the fields, riding the warm air rising from the valley floor.