*****

"Please, sit down. How are you?"

Faizah smiled at her softly and ignoring the chair sat down on Mayra's bed next to her legs. "Shouldn't I be asking you that? Aamir?"

Both girls turned to look at Aamir's back, Mayra whispered, "he just fell asleep. He's hardly been sleeping at night. He keeps.. "

Mayra trailed off, unable to continue. How could she describe the things that he was doing for her, things that she didn't even understand herself. The sudden kindness, care, concern and affection!

"He keeps doing what?" Faizah persisted. She gazed at Mayra's face trying to reassure herself that she was on her way to recovery, physically and emotionally.

"Never mind." Mayra evaded. "How are you. How's Irfan Bhai?"

"Speaking of which," Faizah smiled and her eyes glazed over lovingly at the mention of her husband, "Irfan is ecstatic."

"Why?" Mayra indulged in Faizah's youthful antics.

"Because he's," she stuttered, blushing deeply, "he's, actually we, umm.. we're expecting."

"Wow. Oh my God, that's wonderful! Congratulations!"

"Thanks Bhabhi. Oh God, I'm so scared. When we went to the obstetrician to confirm the pregnancy, I started crying and Irfan started laughing at me. The doctor actually asked if we needed a psychiatric evaluation! God, that was embarrassing. But everyday since has been so beautiful. Irfan takes care of me as if I'm made of glass. He will make an amazing father. I just hope I make a good mother."

"Of course you will. I'm sure of it." Mayra replied.

Faizah looked away, suddenly ashamed. "I'm not so sure about it."

"Why not?" Mayra asked.

She looked at Mayra tearfully and replied, "I haven't even been a good wife yet. Irfan has no idea of the past, and sometimes I freak out thinking about the possibility of him getting to know about all that happened. I'd die, Bhabhi, if Irfan leaves me, I'll die!"

"Of course he won't. Faizah you're being really silly. Whatever happened is in the past. You let go of it when you, of your own free will, married Irfan Bhai and you started this beautiful journey together. The past won't have any effect on your future, unless you let it."

"What about the effects my past is still having on your future, Mayra?"

Tears pooled in Mayra's eyes. "It was not your fault."

"Of course it was!" Faizah said aggressively. "Half the time Aamir hurt you was because of me. I can't believe how stupid I was at that time. Peppering his coffee, tearing the buttons of his shirt, lying to him about how rude you were being to us. And that awful awful night! When he lost that deal because of me, and he blamed you for it. For the first time in my life, that night, I truly saw the monster in Aamir. I actually was glad that I didn't marry him after he hurt you like -"

"Please. Don't!" cried Mayra.

"I'm sorry Bhabhi." Gazing was startled as tears poured down her cheeks, "I didn't mean to upset you. I don't want to bring it up to rehash all those painful memories, but unless you talk about it with him how are you going to get over it?"

"What do you mean?"

"How are you going to get normal with him? Don't you want a normal life with the man you love?"

Mayra looked confused as she stared at Faizah. "We've had a normal life for the past two years. I don't know what you are talking about."

"Oh stop it Mayra!" Faizah snapped at her in frustration. "What you had was a seriously unhealthy relationship. What you had was pain and abuse and hurt. Nothing more. No love, no concern, no nothing! How on earth can you call that normal?"

Mayra lowered her gaze to her hands that were tightly clasped together. "I don't know what normal is. My life had been one routine for the last two years. And I'm happy with it. I don't think I can bear anything else."

Faizah covered Mayra's hands with her own and asked, "don't you want more? Don't you want more with Aamir? Don't you want him to love you, take care of you, pamper you? Don't you want him to treat you like a princess?"

More tears gathered at the corner of Mayra's eyes at the now-familiar term. "He is already taking care of me. All I want is for him to not hurt me anymore. Nothing else."

"Nothing?" Faizah asked skeptically.

"Nothing." Mayra replied, firm.

"Not even his love?"

"He doesn't love me. He.. He can't love me." Mayra sighed.

"You've got to be crazy if you think that. That man for the last two months has been a walking talking corpse, all because you were in the ICU, unconscious. He warned me, he warned Khalid not to go anywhere near you, in case we say or do something that brings back memories. He warned your parents to not interfere in your married life. He's hardly been sleeping, eating, talking. When you regained consciousness, he was so happy. I've never seen him so happy."

Mayra chose to remain silent after that. She knew that Aamir's behaviour towards her had changed. She knew he was more.. more human now than before. But that did not mean he loved her, or that he wanted her love. There was no room for love in their relationship. It was barely surviving on the necessity to carry it on because of their families. She had come so close to losing their marriage. Aamir had denied wanting divorce when his lawyer's assistant had brought those papers without his consent, but he never denied having had those papers made in the first place.

The truth was that somewhere during the course of their disastrous marriage Aamir had actually considered ending it once and for all. No, he didn't just consider it. He was going to end it. Fate had intervened, he had become paralysed, unable to do anything. Even divorce her.

But he was going to do it. That was the truth. She had become so repulsive, so intolerable that he was going to sever all ties between them. She had failed as a daughter and her parents had thrown her out, she had failed as a wife, why wouldn't Aamir want her out of his life?

She was pathetic - utterly and completely useless and pathetic. A miserable failure.

Faizah spoke gently, "he loves you, Bhabhi. You need to believe him. He wants to start a brand new journey with you, start all over again."

"No he doesn't Faizah. He doesn't love me, and even now when things seem to be.. to be changing, there is no love. There won't be any love. I'm not going to build my hopes over something that has no chance of happening. It's unfair to me, and even more unfair to Aamir. I can't ask him to give me something he can't."

"But he does love you! He has said so himself!" interjected Faizah.

"He's being nice so that I don't take him to court! He's doing it to save himself, and in the face of a possible divorce, to save himself from paying exorbitant alimony! Aamir doesn't love me! He can't!"

Faizah was furious. "Who said that crap to you?"

"It doesn't matter!" Mayra retorted, helpless tears running down her face. "What matters is that I was so close to being divorced! What matters is that the first thing I thought when I woke up from the coma was that I had become homeless! What matters is that the only thing I know with absolute certainty is that a person like me cannot be loved!"

Suddenly Aamir sat up and looked at them both. Rubbing his eyes, he said, "Faizah, when did you come? And what has you so upset Mayra? Is everything okay?"

Faizah stood up immediately. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to stress Mayra, we were just talking. I'll come back later. Take care, you guys."

As Faizah left the room, Aamir turned to Mayra, "you okay?"

Mayra nodded slowly, her mind overwhelmed with the thoughts that the small conversation had created. She watched as Aamir got up and went to the attached washroom to freshen up from his impromptu nap. The moment the door closed behind him, her tears of their own free will started flowing from her eyes. Her shoulders shook as she tried to rein in her sobs, she bit her lip to keep herself from crying out loud. She couldn't let Aamir hear her pain.

Aamir stood in front of the mirror hearing Mayra sob. He had heard almost all of their conversation, being awakened by their whispering voices midway between their discussion. He had heard Mayra say how she didn't need anything from him, he had heard Faizah try to explain to her about Aamir's change. What cut his heart was the absolute belief in Mayra's voice when she said that there was no room for love in their marriage. Her absolute belief that Aamir couldn't possibly love her.

She actually thought that he was so shallow that he was being nice to her to save his own hide from the authorities. He knew these ridiculous thoughts were planted in her mind by that moron of an assistant at Zaheer's office, but it hurt him to think that she believed him.

Sighing he splashed water on his face, cringing at the sound of Mayra's cries that she no doubt was trying to control. At least now he knew what had happened all those months ago which made her write her death wish in her own blood. One sentence of Faizah had sparked that memory and that day and night was ingrained as clearly in his head, as though it had happened just yesterday.

He had returned from office. His phone was stuck to his cheek as he stuffed his laptop bag and coat at Mayra who was standing by the door waiting for him. This was a routine, she would wait for him in their room, and he would enter, throwing his things at her as though she was nothing more than an empty shoe rack.

"Listen, I'll add those cost figures into the proposal document but the entire framework of the investment and sector wise allotment of money needs to be rewritten." Aamir spoke rapidly into his phone, barging into the room and dropping his tall frame onto the bed. "Do you have any idea how long that's going to take!"

He listened for a moment, then his expression grew furious as he snapped, "no, you idiot! I can't postpone tomorrow's meeting because its a damned important project and I need it!"

Mayra stood by the bed, watching him silently as he snapped instructions into the phone. Suddenly he turned and glared at her. In a menacing voice he ordered, "coffee!"

She ran downstairs to get it for him, making doubly sure that it was neither too hot nor too cold. She didn't need her hand to be burned again.

That night she watched Aamir work at his laptop for hours at a stretch without a break. Somewhere around one in the morning when she had fallen asleep he threw water at her face. She jerked up water dripping down her head as he clamped his hand onto her chin tightly and said, "sleepy are we? Who the hell is going to make me my coffee, bitch?" He pushed her away hard, she picked herself up and wiping the water and tears off her face she ran down to make him yet another cup of coffee. She ran back upstairs to see that he had already slept.

One look at his laptop confirmed her suspicion that he hadn't finished the presentation. She had studied Finance in college, she knew what he had scribbled down on random pieces of paper. She reached for his laptop when suddenly she realized that she was about to do something that could end up in catastrophe.

The clock chimed three am as she sat by Aamir's side, too scared to wake him up, too scared to finish his work, too scared to do anything. Then gathering all the courage in her heart, she took his laptop and started to finish his work. Halfway through, she realized that his presentation was extremely statistical and boring. He was trying to rope in investors, but there were no visuals, no charts, no diagrams.

Instinctively she made all the charts and diagrams and by the time dawn had started to break the morning sky, her presentation was ready. She saved it in his laptop first and then in a pendrive, and then printed five copies of the documents. Carefully, she made the five folders checking if each had a notepad, a pen, few extra sheets of plain white paper and finally the printed proposal.

Satisfied she went to Aamir and woke him up. He jumped up, and panic struck him as he saw the morning light pour into the room. He was about to scream at Mayra when she handed him a folder. He went through what she had done, pure shock holding him immobile as he read.

He looked at her expectant face and out of sheer relief, joy and fascination with her work he hugged her and whispered "thank you!"

Mayra was so overwhelmed by the sudden show of affection that she watched him as he got ready and picked up the courage to wish him "all the best" as he left the house for the office.

The whole day she prayed for his success, she prayed for him to come back home victorious. Her heart beat rapidly thinking of the way he would react after coming home from a highly satisfactory day at work. He would praise her in front of his family. He would hug her again, he would thank her. He would realize his mistakes and promise her never to hurt her again. They would start again, all over again.

She was sitting on the prayer mat, praying for him when he barged in and threw his bag on the bed. In a fit of rage he kicked the table and picked up the chair and smashed it against the wall. Mayra crept into a corner, paralyzed with fear.

Suddenly he turned to her. "You bitch!"

He lunged at her dragging her forward. He pulled out his belt and started to lash her back as she screamed. With each sickening sound of leather hitting flesh he shouted, "who asked you to touch my stuff? Who asked you to mess my things? You whore! You slut! I lost the deal because of you!"

She screamed and screamed for him to stop, but like a man possessed he just kept going at it.

Farhan ran into the room horrified. He pushed Aamir away from him and punched him in the face. "STAY AWAY FROM HER, YOU MONSTER!"

Mayra crawled back into a corner, whimpering, crying uncontrollably. She flinched when Farhan crouched down beside her. She crept away from him, holding out her hands in front of her head in a desperate gesture of surrender and in an even more desperate attempt for safety.

She had never been hurt as badly as that night. Farhan caught Aamir's collar and dragged him out of the room. She could her screams but the pain in her body was worse than she had ever experienced in her entire life.

She had crawled back to bed, pulled out her diary and dipping the pen in the huge drops of her own blood that fell onto the floor from her beaten body, she wrote,

I want to die.

****