‘This is magnificent Saqib.’
‘She was magnificent.’
‘Professor Khayyam?’ One of her students came forward, looking worried. ‘It’s getting really late. I told my father I’d be back by twelve.’
Saqib nearly laughed out loud. Middle class girls were still keeping Cinderella-time. Apparently, parents continued to believe their daughters were more liable to fall victim to their baser desires after the clock struck twelve. Perhaps they thought the boys they were with would turn into humping frogs after midnight. Or was it that the frogs would turn into men, at their daughters’ expense? Not that he blamed them. That was the first thing he’d done every chance he’d gotten.
Khayyam nodded at the girl and looked at him, almost apologetically.
‘Well…’
It was unlike her to be unsure. His own regret was sharp, and unexpectedly, held a trace of panic. She confounded him the same way his birthplace did. He could never determine what drained him more, his love for them, this woman and this city, or that terrible anger they induced in him. They held him captive, but neither his love nor paint was enough to hold them. They eluded him, his vision, and his dreams, mocking his desire to claim, or own them.
Khayyam walked away with her students without a backward glance.
For a long time he stood listening to her footsteps dying away on the stone stairs and into the still cold night. He remained standing there, listening expectantly, until his ears began to ring with the silence.
He returned to the window. Maybe he’d still be able to catch a glimpse of her.
The boy lay curled up in a corner with a skinny dog. Two strays…no, three, if he were to count himself, the eternal stray. Some prostitutes, older, less attractive, were now combing their hair, perched on the window sills, eyeing the few stragglers, who were still eating kebabs and tikkas and enjoying the dangerous aftereffects of homemade liquor, which could just as easily kill as intoxicate.
The wood paneled windows began to close one by one, as if the city were shutting him out. The metallic smell of cold hung in the air. The street had disgorged its human burden back into the holes they’d crawled out of, or into the welcoming arms of the women who provided a simulacrum of love.
The boy stirred in his sleep. He shivered and snuggled closer to the skinny, mangy dog. The street was almost empty now, except for the drug addicts, who slept on the pavement every night with other homeless men and women. These women were like animals, mounted and slaughtered at will. These streets had seen so many newborns in its refuse bins, or abandoned in plastic bags where hungry dogs found them. No one commented on it any more. Those who survived lived to die another day.
In the stillness of the night, the sound of footsteps echoed on the stone stairs that led up to his studio and his rooms. The small leap of his heart, the ripple of relief that increased with each footfall getting closer, pushed back the fears and doubts. He turned. She appeared in the shadowed doorway, not shy or hesitant, but glorious and challenging, intimidating him with her fearlessness, so that he snapped at her.
‘Are you sure this time, Khayyam?’
She laughed.
‘You asked me that the first time you found me here too, when I was all of twenty. Maybe I should tell you I’m always sure, or perhaps that I’m never sure of anything.’
A drunken man’s voice rang out, a snatch of a song, a shout – Motherfucker! Laughter. She came and stood by him, put her head on his shoulder. Together, they looked out into the night.
Saqib’s eyes closed for a moment, perhaps in prayer, or gratitude – if agnostics prayed, he gave thanks. He turned towards Khayyam, took her face in his hands, blocking out the other images, all other images. He ran his fingers through her short cap of glossy hair. His hands still remembered the silken feel of it, even after ten years…
His hands dropped to his sides.
‘Khayyam, it’s been a long time. Do you really…’
She tossed her head and muttered, ‘Don’t, Saqib.’ Her breath held a trace of tobacco and smoke.
And Saqib had a sudden, brief recollection of the bitter, smoky taste of it on his tongue. And then her breath dissipated into the air and he lost it.
‘Where’s the alcohol?’ She asked.
‘You know where it is.’
She went to the little cupboard at the far end of the room. Neither of them had forgotten anything it seemed. They slipped back into old habits they hadn’t practiced together in years.
She poured them both a drink and caught him watching her.
‘I was hoping you’d have learned to respect women and their wishes by now, Saqib. I don’t think I could stomach one of your moods just yet.’
‘I’m the last man to not respect women, Khayyam. Your idea of respect is quite warped, you know.’
She smirked.
‘You think doing the “right thing†and “protecting†women is respecting them. That’s not true. It’s romantic and suffocating.’
‘And you think I haven’t changed? What made you come here tonight?’
She shrugged and sipped her drink.
‘Nostalgia. You. I heard you’d come back, but I wasn’t sure if you were ready to see me after…what happened. But I came nonetheless. I had to see you.’
He laughed.
‘After what happened? You mean how you used me as the catalyst for your rebellion and then cast me aside? I often wonder why you chose me for that particular role…was it the romance of my family tree?’
‘I didn’t cast you aside, Saqib. You tried to put labels where none were required.’
Saqib took the glass she offered.
Maybe she was right, maybe he couldn’t respect women. How could he, growing up the way he had? A woman’s body was both sacred and profane, and Khayyam had given herself to him so easily, as if it didn’t matter. And maybe to her, it didn’t, because he’d expected her to at least try and blackmail him into marriage. She hadn’t. And that had shocked him, maybe even disillusioned him a little.
Her eyes, full of mirth, held his, as if she knew all of his fearful doubts, and found them laughable. Time is a great healer, it was said. Time could also be irrelevant. Time could inflict more wounds, even as it healed the old ones. And now, Khayyam standing so close, her face lifted to his, her hands on his chest, almost made him forget the lapse of Time.
She’d walked back into his studio of her own free will. She liked the celebrity attached to him now. She’d laid claim to it all evening. Her answer could be different this time.
And so later, when they lay together, limbs and hands entwined, feeling secure and content, he said, ‘I have a small flat in Rio. It’s in a part of the city that’s quite similar to home. The vibrant chaos, the smells, the noise…Often I used to think, if Khayyam were here, I’d show her this or that.’
He kissed the top of her head and said, ‘You’ll like it there. Maybe you’ll start painting again.’
She clucked her tongue against her teeth, in irritation.
‘Please tell me you’re inviting me for a holiday, and this isn’t going where I think it is?’
It was so unlike her to be coy. But he said what she needed to hear, ‘I think you know exactly where this is going. Why else would you be here after all this time?’
‘Ten years, Saqib! It’s been ten bloody years. Grow up, move on.’
She turned away from him.
‘Like all men, you have a Pygmalion complex, and that’s just too boring for words. And you know what? I don’t even think it’s me you want. It’s not my past that you want to rewrite, Saqib.’
He laughed and the sound resonated in the hollowness of the night, and he almost remembered something…or someone. But it evaded him, and he had to make her understand.
‘You don’t have to marry me at once, just come with me.’
She lit a cigarette and said, ‘I don’t know what it is you keep looking for. What do you expect to see, Saqib, a whore in every woman, or a mother in every whore? The painter in you knows me better than you do. And it was always the painter I couldn’t resist…even if he chose to put me amongst his whores.’
The night was very still. The smoke curled from the end of her cigarette, and the burning, woody smell of it permeated the room. She wasn’t looking at him, but staring out through the open door of his bedroom at her own portrait that was dimly discernible in the distance. Saqib knew, even as he heard them, that her words would replace that old echo he’d lived with for the major part of his life. These were the words he’d hear for the rest of his life.
Faiqa Mansab is currently doing her MFA in Creative Writing from Kingston University London. She has published two novellas with Indireads, an e-publishing venture. Faiqa is currently working on a novel.
