LOVE TRIALS

viii

When is a martyr not a martyr?
When he saves everyone else but himself.

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"I can feel your eyes on me, Sophia."

She pulled the comforter to her neck and folded her hands on her stomach. She redirected her eyes to her right, content with touching his shadow on the wall with her eyes as rouge burned in her cheeks.

"What is it?" Hamza asked, beckoning her eyes back to himself, still focused on the pages of the book he held in his hands.

"Nothing."

"Then, take your eyes off me," Hamza said, his lips curved into a slip of a smile.

"You haven't flipped the page for some time, now. What's so interesting?"

She shifted on her side as Hamza slipped out of the bed, he laid the book upside down on his side table.

"Where are you going?"

"I'll be right back," Hamza told her, switching off the lamp.

Darkness engulfed Sophia but it couldn't quite smother the spark of curiosity flickering in her chest, she should have known better than to satisfy it.

She scooched to his side of the bed and turned on the lamp.

Sophia stared at the door of the washroom where her husband had disappeared with his book in her lap, she didn't even bother to find the name of the book with Sabeeha's photograph in her hands as she caressed the delicate features of her face with the pad of her thumb.

Half torn, the black and white photo didn't do justice to the beauty Sabeeha Ansari was dressed in simple jeans and Kurti.

Sophia took a deep breath when the door opened several minutes, later. She turned the book in her lap and tucked the picture between the pages. She didn't close the book, straight away.

Sophia tasted the betrayal in the air, the growing lump in her throat made it exceptionally difficult for her to speak as her vision blurred with hot tears.

Hamza had been rubbing his wet hair dry with a towel when he came out, "Why aren't you asleep, yet?"

His hair stood at different angles when he slung the towel around his neck, Sophia couldn't be amused. She would've laughed or chuckled, she would've at least smiled if her heart wasn't sinking, drowning with incredible sadness.

Hamza swallowed, thickly as he walked to her and picked the book from her lap, his face void of emotions.

Sophia wiped her red eyes and looked at him, "Sit."

Hamza obliged, wordlessly, looking into her eyes. He sat by Sophia's hips, the book- her photograph in his lap and stared right through her when he should've avoided doing precisely that.

An apology without words, if you may.

But he didn't offer her any apology, with or without words. He wasn't ashamed. Sophia looked for something that might have suggested that he was sorry.

But for what exactly?

Night after night, He slept beside Sabeeha and woke up with Sophia.

Despite, his face a blank canvas. Black- remorse painted his insides, his breath stuttered in his chest when Sophia sniffled, the tip of her nose red.

"Do you love her?"

Hamza didn't want to see her falling apart, right before his eyes but he did.