Once In A Blue Moon

24 Chastity

I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live.

— Jonathan Safran Foer

☾

"When I was young, I'd see mother cry many nights in the living room or hallways, sometimes even locked up in her room. I would ask her what was wrong, and she would either make an excuse or shoo me away. When I grew up, I understood the reason behind her tears. They were for a justifiable cause-- her tears, I mean. Every night that baba wouldn't come home to her and spend outside with another one, it would break her."

The sun is midway down the sky close to falling and inviting evening. The sky is in pastel shades of orange and pink, unlike the melancholy of their moods. Mikael sits beside her in the balcony of his hotel room as she narrates to him the events that has unfolded in her life.

"You think she would understand me, but she begs for me to stay. I get her though-- she's helpless at the hands of her love for her children and the authority baba has over us. She longs for Zoraiz but doesn't see him in years. She doesn't want the same with me."

"I told you I can accept what your family is asking of me," he offers but she shakes her head in denial.

"And I told you I don't want that."

"Because you're afraid I'll give into temptations?"

She looks away from the sky to him and smiles sadly. "No, but because I know you don't want that yourself. So I don't want you to make this sacrifice for me."

"Doctor." He takes her hand in his and presses it to his heart. "This sacrifice is so little. I can die for you."

"But I don't want to start our relationship upon sacrifices already. I'd rather build it upon trust. Besides, what good would you be dead to me?" she adds the last statement jokingly and he chuckles lightly.

"You need time to trust me again, I can wait for you to eternity, until you give into my love."

"No, Mikael. I don't want such love. I don't want a love which is so patient to wait forever for me." She retracts her hand and instead, holds his face in both of her hands, staring into his eyes intently. He burns into the fervor of her gaze like a moth to a flame. "Do you not love me with the intensity I love you with?"

"Banafsha." He tilts his head closer to hers, his gaze fleetingly flicking to her lips before back up. "Words are words, too limited for feelings. But even if I try to show you with my actions the intensity of my love for you, I'll still fail-- it still won't be enough. This is how much I love you."

A smile slowly creeps up her mouth in contentment. "Then don't tell me you'll wait for me. Tell me you'll fight for me. Tell me you'll win my trust back-- that you'll not lose my love. Because I too, love you, that with the passion of insanity. And even when I tell you I don't need saving, please save me. Because this heart hurts at the thought of leaving you-- it aches for you."

He stares at her, speechless, wanting to tear open his breastbone and cage her within his ribcage, within the chambers of his heart, feel her into his every heartbeat. As if he doesn't already. As if the madness of his heart is any less now. Mikael cups her the back of her neck and pulls her closer to himself until their noses touch.

"Come home with me. I don't want a life without you."

She grazes her fingers down the angle of his jaw to his chin. "Sometimes, you're a dream, Mikael. I'm afraid of waking up and finding you gone. It's difficult to assure myself you belong to me."

"Why so?"

"Because for so long I've envied Shirin for having your love-- I wanted to be loved the same," she confesses, and he hears the guilt in her voice. "I'd see you wearing the ring of her name-- you never wore the ring my family gave you on our nikah." Her hand drops to his shirt buttons and she starts toying with them mindlessly. "Lala said that I'm either blind or shameless to be head over heels for you. Blind because the things I accuse them for, they accuse you for them too, saying that you married a prostitute yourself and you can very well treat me the way I fear. But I said even if Shirin was a prostitute, she must be dignified in the sight of God to be blessed with someone like you, no matter for what good deed, even a little deed counts in the court of Lord. And you're dignified in my sight to give a woman your name society was trying to dishonor, despite everything." She looks at him and he drowns in her eyes, sinks to the bottom and promises himself to breathe his last in her love. "And shameless because I fell for you when I didn't know who you were, taking you for someone else than my husband, thus cheating our marriage."