Maha Kamal

Peace Ganey

Winner of the 2023 American Literary Review Short Fiction Contest, Judged by Mike Robbins

I started killing Hamza after he began work in Islamabad. His affair began years before his assignment, but I discovered the cassette tapes only after he’d left. At first, I did not inquire about this change to his schedule. His job was metropolitan enough that promotions came with relocation, and I was used to staying home as the weekend wife. But he was away for several days and nights during his first trip. When he returned, I finally inquired about his schedule because we did not have immediate family in the city. So, I asked him where he had stayed. This angered him.

“Do you think I work for a company that is cheap enough to cast me into the streets?”

I shouted back, seeing that I had no real love for Hamza.

“A man with nothing to hide has no problem answering his wife’s practical questions.”

His fists began to shake, a sign it was coming. He lunged at me, spittle flying from his clenched teeth. To him, I was a rag doll to beat up and throw away. A punching bag for the family’s truce. He grabbed my throat, screaming obscenities. I managed to slip away like a rabbit. Before he could catch me again, I slapped him back. He snatched my wrists hard, dragging me into another room while I screamed. It was daylight, an otherwise unexciting Sunday afternoon. The radio was playing in the kitchen not too far from the living room, where he threw me, his rag doll, into the coffee table.

The neighbors were used to our fighting, and the police never came. Noor Jehan’s tinny voice weaved notes into the air.

“Some garbage wife you are, not even fit for a street boy, let alone a king.”

His nostrils flared, his words toppling over themselves and growing hotter as I lay over shards of glass and oak. There was blood on both our hands. He stood above me, his slick hair like stacks of banana leaves on his head. I spit blood, rolling to one side to stare at my transgressor. The music held steady, Noor pushing into a crescendo:

That’s when I first knew her songs were a kind of magic.

*

I did not go to hospital for several reasons.

First, the hassle. I experienced this for the first time a little after Hamza and I were married. He grew irritated during an Eid function hosted by our families. Too many children, a lack of sleep, and his disdain for superficial niceties led to my innocent question about when we would leave the following day back to Pindi. For that, he gave me a black eye. Jehangir noticed this and mentioned it in passing at breakfast. I offered an elaborate story about how I’d tripped over my dupatta, my face hitting the railing of the stairs and giving me an unexpected blow to the right eye. Jehangir knew this was a lie because I had been with their family the whole day. My own father was absent because we had stayed with Hamza’s family, as was customary. “Beti, we must go to hospital and get this treated.” He cleared his throat, glancing at his son from the corner of his eye. Hamza said nothing; he concentrated instead on his plate of egg and paratha.

“Some ice will smooth it over,” Hamza’s mother interrupted.

She placed a cup of tea at my side. At Jehangir’s insistence, we visited the hospital later that day. Despite the obvious holes in my fantastical fable, not even one of the male attendants reported the incident. Jehangir stayed close. He interrupted almost every chance a provider seemed they might want a private word with me. Hamza did not come. I felt nothing inside, despite the outward pain. At times, I questioned whether I was crazy—maybe I had tripped over my dupatta. Perhaps I was making all of this up to get away from Hamza. Didn’t a roomful of professionals know what was best?

The doctors prescribed a mild painkiller and ice. “Be more careful,” one male nurse said, as if he’d never seen a battered woman in his life. Maybe he hadn’t. Perhaps in his world, women tripped over staircases, fell on the pavement, bumped into furniture, and accrued injuries at a rate he could not have expected before working in this hospital. Maybe in his mind, he wondered about the specific gracelessness of the women of his city.

I thanked him and followed my father-in-law out of the building. Was Jehangir so little a man of character that he could allow his son to get away with these crimes? With each following hospital visit, time slowed. I would insist on going alone, then force an appreciative smile each time Jehangir said he’d come along with me. After several hospital visits, we stopped going, and my mother-in-law fetched ice for me at their home.

The second reason I did not go to hospital was the shame. My body ached. Shards of glass had cut into my palms and torn the linen of my shalwar kameez. It would be easier to clean this mess and stay home than to transport myself to hospital. In this state, tattered, bloodied, and disoriented, I’d be a spectacle for all the neighborhood to see. I expected no help or sympathy from Hamza, who now was in the bathroom washing off our blood and blowing his nose several times over the sound of rushing water.

Lastly, I did not go to hospital because even if I were miraculously received for once by a female attendant and could begin the process of registering the assault, it would result in frustrations in the court and bring unbearable agony upon my father. While Hamza and I fought to near death every night, my father slept unbothered in the truce that followed our wretched union.

*

Our families had warred for decades. A slight between great-grandparents led to years of disputes over property and social alliances, and an attempt to rectify the rift: marriages between the younger generations. As a little girl, I heard of Shakespeare’s story about the lovers Romeo and Juliet. How, through desperation and lust, they created a union between their warring families. Years later—after marrying Hamza—I would read this story. It always seemed dramatic to me. What kind of woman would kill herself for her lover? Had she not considered her family, the women of her household, and the babies to be raised with proper care and culture? Suicide was a privilege. Juliet had agency to leave. She wasn’t woven into a fabric that would rend without her.

My household, the Baig household, ran much like the old zenanas of the Mughal days. The women in the harem lived in a separate wing of Dadi’s grand house. I remember the bustling days of cooking, studies, and gossip among the matriarchs and even down to the little ones, myself included. There were hardly any lovers for a woman to kill herself over.

Hamza lived not far from my family’s house back then. Despite the ongoing feuds between the Baigs and the Mirzas, we were much more alike than we were different. It would be his father, Jehangir Mirza, who would come to my father years later, after the feuds, to settle a property dispute. A courtyard lay between the family homes, claimed by both himself and my father. It was in terrible condition. Neither family wanted to pay for the upkeep while the other enjoyed the fruits of the labor. The grass was dead, wet, and drowned. Jehangir appeared one day at the center of this courtyard—he had invited my father to walk to its center in a phone call the evening before. “Baig sahib, it is time for us to settle this war, do you think so?” The story goes that my father, stunned but eager to end the battle, agreed.

“It would only make sense, then, that my Hamza would wed your Samra,” Jehangir continued.

It was a brilliant move of familial chess to invite my father to the center of a neighborhood battleground and corner him to prove his sincerity. However, my father also understood that with me came a hefty dowry that would enrich his adversary.

“That would make sense—if she is to wed without a dowry,” my father said. Checkmate.

The men stood in silence for half an hour.

To my father’s surprise, Jehangir agreed.

I married Hamza a month later. I did not kill myself, but after marrying, him I was often jealous of Juliet. Our parents began speaking of marriage when I was nineteen. Later, after reading the story, I discovered just how young Juliet was when she married Romeo: fourteen. But she’d had an ally, a supporter, within her family who dissuaded the others from rushing to give her hand away. Like Nurse, her guardian. I had no such support, no such ally who would whisk me out during the battleground exchange and marry me to my true love. I also did not kill myself because I had no one to kill for, like Juliet. She sacrificed herself for Romeo. I had no Romeo but a Hamza. And not even a rat was worth dying for a man like him.

*

After the bloodied nose, Hamza did not come home for three days. I spent them happily by myself. I finished the complete works of Shakespeare, a compendium I’d bought and picked through over the years. Hamlet spoke to me more than the childish tantrums of a fourteen-year-old Italian girl. I fantasized about Hamza killing me, and my death avenged by my sister or mother. Silly dreams, but one could hope, couldn’t she? I cooked, experimenting with a book I’d found at the depot. I swept the broken glass from the living room and allowed the cuts to heal. The radio played each day in the kitchen. Once strong enough to walk again, I headed to the bazaar and purchased a stack of cassette tapes of Noor Jehan’s best hits.

Noor Jehan was Pakistan’s darling. Six decades of singing and acting, three divorces, and a scattering of lascivious affairs. Nobody intimidated the Queen of Melody about her personal life. Aise hain tou aise hain, app ko kya? she would bark at any contender. But, I am what I am. What do you have to do with it? She was the first female film director in the country and an untroubled philanthropist known for offering cash to any poor person in need.

I wanted to be like Noor, not Juliet. To milk chauvinist mindsets and prowl these streets like an unabashed sex kitten with the voice of a lioness. Not succumb to the pithy advances of an awkward boy. I tried to sing like Noor, but my voice croaked. No matter, I could still be free. But I was also afraid of divorce and the shame it would bring to my parents. But when she sang the next time he came home, I knew I had to kill him.

*

Hamza returned one night expecting his plate at the dinner table as if he’d never left. I had little appetite while he was gone. As I picked shards from my waist—bits I’d missed buried within folds of skin—I noticed that my belly was more enormous than it had ever been. As a girl, I was youthful and thin. Fair, to the delight of my mother and other women in the household. I had such little appetite that I ate nothing but rice and daal, skipping the butter. It was grainy and meager, but the lentils were soft and coated my throat like a soothing medicine. They also kept me from starving.

“What is this? A poor man’s meal?” He pulled the bowl of daal close, dumping a ladleful onto his plate and piling high the rice. There was little left for me. We ate in silence. His face softened despite his permanent frown. The healed cuts on his fingers glistened each time he brought the fork to his mouth. Good, he will remember me now forever. He reeked. I was never an alcohol drinker—it was forbidden and difficult to obtain—but this was booze and cheap perfume. The cassette player with the radio sat on the shelf behind him. Inside, there was a Noor Jehan tape. I contemplated turning it on to see what would happen now that he was here. The first time she sang, he started bleeding from his nose. And when Hamza bled, the dark red trickled out from the inside, revealing his weakness to the world. He was but a man made up of water and shame. He could try to hide it, but the weakness would stain his hands and chin and drip onto his shirt and plate of food. The harder he tried to hide his weakness, the more it came out and marked him like a criminal.

“Put on a little music.”

“What?” His eyes were glassy, hardened by years of god knows what.

“Put on a little music.” To my surprise, he did not argue any further and turned to pull the radio knob behind him. “No, no radio, cassette.” Growing frustrated, his fat hairy fingers hovered over the dials. He pushed play and half-mindedly returned to the plate of rice and lentils. A familiar voice spilled out into the dining room.

Hamza never minded Noor’s voice because it was one from our childhoods. It could be found in the background of any room, dukhaan, or gali in Lahore. He ate, progressing through half of the plate with his fork (he preferred a fork over his hands to feel more Western) and shoveling food into his middle-aged mouth through greasy, plump lips and an overgrown mustache. He had never been a good-looking man; even as a boy Hamza was average looking at best, unlike his older brother, Yusaf, and his younger sister, Maryam. Until my father made a reluctant truce with Jehangir, he was a ghost to me. Both his brother and sister were the best of his father’s lot—handsomer than most of my father’s children, except for myself and my younger sister, Amna. After we wed—an affair that took three days and involved celebrations of the sort you’d see only during state-sponsored religious holidays—we had sex once. It was dull, painful, and short. We never tried again, nor did I bring up the subject with anyone, not even my sister. Try, beti, try, my mother would lament. But my body refused to accept anything so vile again as Hamza.

He stopped shoveling food in his mouth, his eyes widening as he strained to breathe. Could he be choking? I pretended I noticed nothing. Noor sang over and over again: in our breaths, the sweet scent of henna remains even today. He clutched the fork, creating a fist out of despair as he gurgled and gasped. Our eyes met—his popped out of his face and pleaded with me to forgive every other night he had laid his hand on me for a split second.

“What’s wrong?” I broke eye contact.

But, of course, he was in no position to answer. He was choking. Noor’s voice rose through the house. After the first minute, I realized that Hamza would not die from his sudden loss of breath and that the choking would end as soon as the song was over. He slammed his fist on the table, demanding attention. My heart jammed, the acid burning in my stomach. I regretted that in the shock of hearing his hand’s thunderous sound, I jumped from my chair and hurried to his end of the table. I nearly threw up running to him.

Noor’s voice cut away, and the room softened except for his waning gasps. I turned off the cassette player. He collapsed onto the table like a flimsy rice sack, the fork falling from his unclenched fist and clattering on the floor. Air rushed into Hamza’s drunken body, his lungs sputtering to accept it. Slowly, he gained control of his breathing. He screamed, throwing himself back into a choke. I had done nothing to help him, but he didn’t notice. For months, he believed I had. “She’s useful, sometimes,” he would mutter if he saw a fork reminding him of that dinner. He ate with his hands after that evening. 

Tears stained his dirtied, checkered work shirt. Up close, I smelled another woman’s vagina along with his alcohol binge and dashes of cheap perfume. I fetched him some water, placed it near his trembling hand, and retired to bed.

*

After the dinner incident, Hamza informed me that he would be away for several weeks due to work demands. With this news, a warmth radiated throughout my body—the only words from Hamza that I felt a sincere desire to thank him for. I spent these carefree days in the graces of Noor and new reads. With Shakespeare completed, I visited the local book depot and started on the works of Rumi and Omar Khayyam. I made a habit of visiting the nearby market to fetch the day’s fruits and some goat or chicken for dinner if it was the weekend. The longer I spent apart from Hamza, the more my appetite returned, and I was less worried about my belly. My chest loosened, breaths becoming easier and more enjoyable to take. My body felt whole, rid of shards of Hamza. I made friends with the music shopkeeper, who was eager to show me new mixed tapes of Noor Jehan every time I passed his stall. By month two of Hamza’s extended leave, I had bought enough tapes from the shopkeeper that he agreed to a set price for me, unavailable to any of his other customers.

A beggar woman sat next to his shop, waving at me after each visit. “Noor, she sets any man straight,” she’d say, flashing a toothless grin. I spared her a couple of rupees, thanking her as if I were Noor Jehan. Despite her disheveled state and her poverty, this beggar woman knew the power of Noor. She was jovial, often asking if anybody remembered her name. She hardly asked any passersby for money.

On the weekends, while I stewed the goat for nihari dinner, I’d call my father and ask for the latest updates on the family. The children are well, he’d say. One of the older servants had died of old age, and he and my mother paid for the funeral services. One of the dogs had gone missing, and the children cried for days until my brother agreed to buy the family another pet. Finally, my mother would take the phone and ask me how Hamza was doing, if we were well, and most importantly, when I would have children. This question was repulsive. I imagined a piece of Hamza drumming up an insidious beast inside of me that I would be forced to carry until it wanted out. I felt bile spitting at the back of my throat, my fingers turning dead cold.

My lies became elaborate, much more believable than the tripping incident involving the stair railing and my black eye. Hamza’s gone too long, or my menses isn’t predictable enough. Unlike Jehangir, my parents were much more gullible. They needed constant assurances that what they had done to their daughter was not mere betrayal by the Baigs. I wanted to believe that the family did not understand the concept of violence, particularly against any woman, as such things never occurred in our house. Or so I thought, since not a word of it was spoken in the house, and as a little girl, I’d never witnessed it.

My parents were not an arranged marriage but a marriage of love. They were not blood related but had happened upon each other at a bus stop one day. This upset my father’s mother, my dadi, who insisted he marry in his caste. Ma was from a large middle-class family. Dadi lectured behind closed doors years after their marriage that she didn’t have a dowry to satisfy her. My father ignored these relentless pleas to keep the peace with Ma. Dadi died a few years after I was born. After that, my parents became more affectionate, relieved of Dadi’s unyielding emotional assaults.

“No, Ma, no kids yet.” I smiled and rearranged the cassette tapes sitting next to the phone in the living room. I told her that my nihari was waiting. “Try, beti, try,” she said and hung up. My arranged marriage to Hamza was nothing new, but it bothered her. She had never seen my bruises—they cleared before Jehangir would allow contact—but Ma knew. Ma could see the bruises in my heart that the hospital attendant couldn’t heal with ice. She prayed that a baby would heal those bruises, as misplaced as her prayers were.

While Shakespeare lingered in my head as a little girl, we learned about the history of the Mughals in school. I took a strong liking to the women of this dynasty, asking the women in my household questions about their knowledge of the lavish and extraordinary zenanas of the Mughal emperors. My favorite was Khanzada, the elder sister of the first Mughal emperor, Babur. She would later serve as the matriarch of the dynasty for many years in her advanced age. But when she was young, the story goes, she accompanied her brother on an expedition (as harems did, which were not limited to consorts or wives of the emperor). There was an intense conflict between their family and the Uzbeks, led by the powerful Shaybani Khan. Eventually, they fell under siege. Shaybani offered Babur a long-lasting alliance between the Mughals and the Uzbeks under one condition: marrying his sister Khanzada Begum to him. Babur gave away his sister to his sworn enemy in exchange for a truce. Wed to Hamza, I shared the begum’s deep disdain for such an act of betrayal.

Hamza returned six weeks later, in the middle of a Friday after Jummah prayers. The azaan quieted overhead, and shopkeepers returned to their work. He again smelled like alcohol and vagina. Given the long walk from the station to our house, I was surprised that he had not raised suspicion of his debauchery with any of the neighbors chatting casually in the streets. He set his briefcase on the console without noticing it was new, and that the shattered coffee table was gone. He mumbled something about an extended work project as if, at this point, it mattered what his excuse was for the long absence. I pulled the radio from the kitchen and placed it in the living room in case he was in a foul mood.

He was.

“Where are my fucking things?” He spun out of the bathroom, a thunder of anger jolting from his wretched breath.

It was true. I had thrown most of his toiletries away except for necessities like a toothbrush. Not out of malice, but to clear his bad energies from the house. They were numerous and took away space from my own toiletries, like face lotions, soaps, and perfume. I leaned against the cassette player, my finger rounding the play button. In my rested days in his absence, I had become so used to Noor’s tapes that I’d forgotten which was in the player at a given time and which was not. With Hamza, it was a game of roulette.

Surveying the room, he caught me at the console and lunged like a madman. My spine pressed into the table’s edge, my finger pressing into the Play button. It occurred to me that Hamza did not find any part of what I was doing odd; perhaps it was calculated, since the music was loud enough to muffle our fights. I stepped aside, ducking underneath him as he crashed into the table. The cassette player bounced, tripping Noor’s voice for a few seconds before it resumed.

Hamza pulled himself out of the clutch, regaining his balance. I stood at the opposite end with a lamp in my hands, ready to fight. It would have been so shameful for his father to see what had become of his courtyard truce, ending in battle across a threadbare Persian carpet in a living room. But I felt my father would have been proud that his daughter, a Baig, was finally standing up to a Mirza boy’s disrespect and betrayal. I was replaying the courtyard exchange in favor of our family. The song played as my hands gripped the lamp, wringing it as I waited for him to recover from his failed attack. Instead, he cried out and grabbed his face with his hands. Trickles of blood seeped out from in between his fingers, dripping onto the floor as the song reached its final moments. He reeled over, running toward the bathroom and slamming its door behind him.

“My eyes,” he screamed. “My fucking eyes!”

I returned the lamp to its table and left the cassette player on. I waited in the living room until he left.

The song had left Hamza’s eye scarred. A lid hung halfway over it.

He did not return for several months.

*

Gossip travels faster than phone lines. Three months into Hamza’s second absence, I received a call from my sister. She said there was talk of Hamza having an affair with his second cousin, a woman named Gulbadan, and that he planned on divorcing me over it. My thoughts wandered, rumbling over the titles of recent Noor Jehan tapes I’d purchased and the beggar woman’s face with the toothless grin. Although my suspicions now had a name, this was not new to me. My sister was not one to make gossip unless she had heard it enough times to believe it. Her call was unexpected as we rarely talked and were not close.

“He’s been in Islamabad for some time now,” I explained on the phone. She did not respond. “For work, you understand,” I added. 

“This is the fourth time I’ve heard these things. Has Hamza called you at all? Papa is very upset; he’s been saying things like Hamza’s father betrayed him, and how could he treat his family with such disrespect.” Amna continued for several minutes until I interrupted.

“We’re better than this, you know. We shouldn’t be busy with gossip, especially Papa. Tell him that things are fine, and I plan on visiting shortly. Maybe within the next few weeks, I’ll come by train. But, no, Hamza will not be coming. He’s too wrapped up with his work these days.” I hung up. My ears pounded from my heartbeat exploding in my chest. There was no use lying now. Our marriage was over.

Papa would be humiliated, to a point where I saw flashes of his heart attack. Ma crying over his corpse. No phone calls from the family for years, blaming me for their downfall.

The only flashes of death I wanted to see were Hamza’s.

*

Gulbadan. Also the daughter of Babur, niece of Khanzada Begum. The name had degraded over the years, gussied up for the pretty things of the red-light district. Was it Gulbadan I’d smelled on his dirtied work shirt? It didn’t matter. What mattered was that my name was associated with these two, and the marriage no longer served the purpose of allowing our fathers to sleep peacefully at night. No, the truce of the families was a sham, a mastermind deception of Jehangir. I contemplated calling my father-in-law and inquiring about Gulbadan’s whereabouts. I decided against it, reminded of our hospital visit together. My ears pounded harder, the pressure of my heart compelling me to move, to scream. I picked up a lamp in the living room and smashed it on the carpet, its base shattering with coils of wires and the light bulb filament sticking out like dry grass. I screamed until my throat dried up, and I could no longer scream. It was fine. The neighbors had never noticed me before.

I decided to check on my Saturday nihari and listen to Noor Jehan. If he showed up, we could share one last meal—a meal fit for kings, not the poor boys or street rats. Perhaps Amna’s call earlier that day prompted Hamza to show up for dinner finally. He was rough, fatter, with decent work clothes to stumble down the street without attracting attention. Alcohol reeked from his hair and mouth, strong enough that any trace of the whore was undetectable. Did she drink, too? It didn’t matter, I told myself. These two were suited for Qasai Gali. There wasn’t much left of the Gali, with its old, dilapidated houses and narrow stairways. The women dancers hardly sang in the streets anymore—they were now available for inquiry for weddings. Word had it that the eunuchs of the Gali were favored over the women. I wanted to tell her to run, run away. He was not the knight in shining armor who would save her. He was a monster. I gathered up some of Noor’s tapes, stacking them on the clutch and mulling through my mind for ways I could send them to her. For protection and as a warning. To run.

Hamza stumbled into the dining room and fell into his usual chair.

“No music,” he shouted. He’d been gone for so long that he didn’t offer any excuses. Instead, his lazy eye glared at me. Gathering plates to set the table, I placed utensils near his fat hands. He grabbed my wrist, drawing me close. The alcohol was strong, the cheap cologne of a drunkard.      

“You fucking witch. Look at what you did to my eye. Look at it. No music,” he snarled as he batted my hand away.

I brought out the large pot of nihari, placing it in the center next to a piping hot basket of rotis. Normally, I would eat a small portion and give the rest to the children wandering outside, some begging for food and others watching their more desperate peers. He snarled like a rabid dog, snatching a roti from the basket. He looked around the room, noticing the radio sitting in the kitchen. He lunged at it from the table, shattering his glass to the floor. “No more fucking music,” he shouted as he took the tiny box and smashed it to the floor. I said nothing.

We ate in silence. Hamza enjoyed the nihari, helping himself to three plates and all the rotis. The quiet and the thought that my radio had been destroyed killed me. I could not eat, the sudden reminders of my belly flashing back to me in an instant. I was fat, and I was nothing now. The families knew, and I would pay the price, alone, as damaged goods unable to marry again. Hamza ate greedily. I clenched my fist under the table, glaring at the floor. The black tape curled out of the cassette like a nest of dead baby snakes.

Hamza had taken his wedding ring off. This might have resulted from his weight gain, but he was more likely announcing our impending divorce. Pushing his chair back again, he wiped his face with a napkin before throwing it on the table. He stared down at me as I finished my dinner. A fist slammed down on the table, rattling the plates. My ears were ringing. The room muffled into silence as if I were drowning underwater. I stared into his eyes, swiping at my face to hide tears. He didn’t deserve to see what he had done to me.

“Talaq.” He traced his fat fingers across the wooden dining table. He smiled, nodding his head. “Talaq, to this wretched marriage and a woman not fit for even a stray dog to fuck.” He laughed heartily, rolling his sleeves as if preparing himself for a final act. I cringed.

“Don’t worry, meri jaan, I have nothing left to say or do except talaq. Sleep on the couch tonight. The bed is mine.”

He stumbled into the bedroom, slamming the door shut. The door was a specialty—hand-carved with shutters at the top. It was not entirely shut because I could hear what was happening in the room. He stumbled around, eventually settling into the bed, where I’d slept for months alone and in peace.

I resumed my dinner, checking on the pile of radio bits and the cassette tape lying on the floor. I started to hum.

From behind the bedroom door, I heard him hacking his lungs, but he otherwise did not stir. I sang Noor’s song. “All night, I rested on your pillow, asking the stars where you were.” He moaned as if he knew what was happening. But he could not move in his drunken state, which was leading to a slow and steady paralysis of his body. I sang louder, the notes and lyrics tumbling out of my mouth as I collected plates from the dinner table and placed them in the sink. I found a spare key to the bedroom in the drawer next to the gas range and pocketed it as I headed toward the bedroom. He was an angry man but also a stupid one. Entering the room, I sang even louder, gathering my personal effects from shelves and drawers around our bed. My mouth was dry, and I was unsure if I could keep going. I steadied my shaking hands, gathering my passport, underwear, and jewelry. He lay face down, legs sticking out as if he’d fallen from the sky and smashed to the ground like a flattened bug. Finally, I dropped to my knees, pulling out a red luggage piece from underneath the bed. He moaned, unable to speak. He formed tiny fists with his hands, trembling as he curled into a ball on his side.

Humming, I packed the clothes before dragging the suitcase into the living room. Once the song ended, I started again at the beginning as if in an infinite loop.

In thirty minutes, he was dead.

I rang the station and arranged for a late-evening train out of the city. I was not headed home, no—I knew there would be no welcome for me there. I had been their beloved daughter, but through words, I was now a divorced woman and Hamza, a dead man. We were disgraced. I imagined Gulbadan discovering his dead body days later. He must have provided her with our residential address. Or perhaps the police would come after a missing person’s report filed by one of his formidable colleagues, wondering where he had gone after so many months of dedicated service.

*

He sleeps now on my pillow and by my side of the bed. The train leaves in an hour, and the baggage men are waiting for my crimson-red-colored suitcase.

I do not want to keep them waiting.

Maha Kamal is a short story writer and a lawyer. She graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder with a degree in International Affairs and received her Juris Doctor from the University of Denver. Maha’s short stories have been published in The Bombay Review, Masalazine, and The Docket. She draws inspiration from her Pakistani heritage and the ghosts of South Asian women (like Noor Jehan). She is based out of Denver, Colorado.