“Because it means you are just taking this in from one ear and out the other.”
“I assure you I am not.”
“See, I am always asking for marriages and babies. Atharva and Iram delivered.” Her face did not lose even a bit of its light at the mention of Iram’s name, as if she was confident that Iram was alive and coming back sooner or later. Samar aspired for hope, trust, faith, belief like that for his own future. “Now it’s your and Amaal’s turn.”
He scoffed.
“Aah, that’s like the Samar I know.” Her mouth broke into a grin. “Now you are listening.”
He shook his head. “Look at me…”
“Not right now!” She scolded. “You must be crazy to even think about it right now. But heal for that. Now forget about whatever the world and your party and these partners have demanded from you and concentrate on what your own life is demanding.”
“And what is that?”
“Care towards it.” Her voice went even softer. “My advice is, as always, free, but binding.”
He smiled.
“And therefore,” she pressed. “The next time I see you and Amaal together, I want to see you two actually together. Don’t make her life miserable like you did in the hospital.”
He looked away.
“Don’t make that girl cry.”
“I don’t want to.” He stared out of the window, blindly.
“But you can’t help it.” Begumjaan completed for him.
“Hmm.”
“Time.” She said.
His gaze whirled back to hers.
“Nothing and nobody is found before time.” Begumjaan drilled, looking straight into his eyes. “The trick is in spending the interim without causing too much harm.”
A second of silence ticked by, as those words settled and swelled inside him.
“I…” he hesitated. “I think to myself that I won’t. But I still end up causing some harm.”
“Learn to be silent before speaking in anger, then. Your Zorji has mastered that trick and made his married life a breeze.”
Samar felt his mouth tighten. “By morning I feel hope and silence myself, and then by night everything is so badly destroyed that I lose all control over myself.”
“Look, Samar, right now, in the morning it feels possible, then at night impossible. But a few more days will pass and some nights will start feeling possible. Then more nights. Then even more. And then one day, without you even realising it, a future will become possible.”
“Will it?”
“You know it will. Remember after SFF?”
He stilled.
“Look what became possible after that.” She nodded at the window, and the Kashmir outside whichhadchanged,hadevolved,haddeveloped, and come closer to the Kashmir of their dream.
Her hand came to his cheek, a tenderness she had never shown him because he had never opened himself up to it like Atharva and Adil had. “You have lived it once, done it once. You will do it again. If nobody else believes it, I believe it.”
His head fell into her hand.
