Imperious

Chapter 6

Among His proofs is that He created for you spouses from among yourselves, in order to have tranquillity and contentment with each other, and He placed in your hearts love and care towards your spouses. In this, there are sufficient proofs for people who think. (Quran 30:21).

Tears welled up in Falak's eyes as she read through the second article documenting Sadia's story.

She had collected several of them over the course of the day. Each told the bitter tale of her sister's plight from a different perspective but neither of them made her feel any better about the situation. Some sections compared her burns to those of the women attacked before her, whilst drawing up the statistics and displaying the various Bride Burning events in a bar chart. Feminists had articulated their view on the situation whilst political scientists argued about the propaganda benefits that could be gained in the upcoming provincial elections. Numerous theories were being proposed. Uxoricide? Homicide? Accident?

Falak did not recall her family having ever gained this much space in a newspaper. They kept to their business and to their villages and her father had long stopped having anything to do with the political mainstream.

Her sister, a woman who shied from the very lens of a camera, was now covering inches of newspaper headlines. She could not bring herself to wonder what she had done to deserve such brutality.

Falak touched the bullet wound on her left shoulder.

Her own marital life was far from flourishing.

Her husband was out of Karam's realm and his family an epitome of civility. But Falak's relationship had its own difficulties: Adham wanted to divorce her. After a targeted attack (executed by one his numerous enemies) he no longer considered himself a suitable spouse. He did not believe that Falak could ever be happy with him and neither could he seem to fulfil his duties as a husband properly. His profession was abridged with difficulties he had never been able to come.

Onahra. His city, his kingdom, his place of reign.

'Brother Adham' was what they called him and a brother to the land was what he was. A Mafia Papa controlling his ancestral diamond business, a trade that his family's enemies had sought to destroy for decades; that very trade that had forced him into the gangland after his father's death. He did not recall ever having fallen as deep as he found himself but in his defence, argued that it was a tactical necessity, which without, he may never have recovered the family business after the unexpected deaths of numerous male family members.

The diamond company was an exceptionally profitable business, one that had brought the Nayyars a status of millionaires. They were the richest in the city, the strongest in the city and by far, the most influential. Such a stance made them subject to attempted overthrows for which Adham must always remain vigilant.

Being affiliated with the underworld seemed to bring him better trade and wider opportunities to exert his influence. At a young age of twenty nine, he had already secured ties with various politicians who regarded him as the better half of the underworld, a Brother that they must not disregard. His presence controlled the crime rates in the once blood-pooled city and his philanthropic institutions aided hundreds of those who sought refuge.

And it was this humanitarian concern that Falak found herself helplessly attracted to.

She could not count the widows, the orphans, women and men he had rescued, else she would run out of fingers. Her memory could not capacitate the events in his life and the events he had created in the lives of others. But whatever she knew of him, she loved dearly.