The flight from Goa was not an end, but the start of a long slow suffocation.
I was sitting next to Danish in business class, which was like velvet ropes being thrown around, forming a cage around me. Under the thin airline blanket, my fingers were caught in the grip of my brother-in-law's, as though he were desperately trying to say some of the things that we couldn't say in the cramped aircraft cabin.
We didn't speak of Alex. We didn't speak of Leo. We did not mention the sand that was in the spots that itched for memory.
I felt I was leaving behind, my true existence in the coastal town, and I saw the clouds through the oval window, and the hum of the engines were between us, and we sat silently.
Once we had arrived, the heat was another thing. The humid climate of India enveloped me like a familiar blanket, unlike the coast breeze at Goa. It was so long getting home. Jaw set, knuckles white on the steering wheel, Danish drove. I was seated in the front passenger's seat, the inch of space between us was a gaping chasm, my thigh smacking into his.
The house awaited us. It was dusty and dilapidated, and when I crossed the threshold, I could sense the weight of what we had done on my shoulders.
It was the spot of our first sin, where I became a lover instead of a sister-in-law, where I had already been a dead thing.
Danish came to me that night with a slowness which broke my heart. He didn't speak. He just stood in the doorway of my bedroom, our bedroom, but Zeeshan's photo on the dresser, was unaware, and he watched me undress.
Not jealousy, but a grief that took my chest in its hands, he followed every mark that Alex and Leo have made, he followed it. Eventually he made his way across the room, and he was shaking. On the shoulder first, the pads of his fingers against my collarbone as if he is learning it over again.
"Zeenat," he whispered, and my name was like a prayer and a curse. That night we had sex in the light. He was being very tender, like he was frightened I was made of glass and he was trying to hold me together with just a little tough love. He touched every part of me, every inch, at my hip, inside of my thigh, my throat.
The first time he came, it was slow as if he were drowning; slow as if he were drowning in warm water that was shutting over our heads.
"I love you," he said into my mouth and into my ear, moving it in a rhythm that we had already found, a language that we had created together.
"I love you; I love you don't forget me." I knew that my body would hold him, that it would never let him out; my body would remember the way he was shaped by it and carry him to the sterile future I would have.
Then, he held me as if he couldn't get back to sleep until he could see the dawn, breathing gently on my hair, his chest on my back. We didn't sleep. We took our breaths together and counted the hours till the dawn.
The phone rang 3 days later. There was a crackle with excitement in Zeeshan's voice when I heard it. "Zeenat! My love!"
Over phone, heard some papers rustling in the background, and I heard his office chair creak as he leaned back. "Your visa is approved; the residency permit. It came through this morning. I've booked your flight--next Thursday, you'll be here with me."
The cup that I was holding fell and broke on the tile floor. It sounded as if a gun had been fired.
"Zeenat? Are you there?", he asked.
I whispered, "Yes," looking at the pieces of pot shards that were strewn on the linoleum.
He added, "Zeenat, I can't wait to show you Dubai. Our apartment. I've bought you clothes, Jewellery. I have a lot of stuff to make up for, for all this time apart."
I uttered the right words: thank you, excitement, love.
But I was looking at the doorway where Danish stood, looking at me as though he were losing his colour as he realized from my expression what was going on.
I hung up on the phone and he was still there, his hands hanging down at his sides, he was totally lost.
"Danish!" I started. "Don't," he said hoarsely. "Don't say a word, don't say it yet."
But there was nothing that hadn't been said in the dark, there was nothing that was not said in the bed, there was nothing that was not said in the silence of the last three days. We had been warned this was coming. We were already aware of this. The ensuing weeks were like crazed, frantic, final nights.
Danish was on leave and we hardly left our house. We would lie in bed all night each night and we weren't necessarily making love, but just lying next to each other and remembering how we breathe next to each other. When we did love, though, it was an intensity of love that was almost brutal, like we could penetrate each other so deeply that we would overlap, survive without being separated by that much.
There were several moments of sex.
In shower, he took me from the back and his teeth marks were purple on my shoulder.
He spread me out on the dining table, and ate on me with his mouth until I cried out, my fingers knuckled on the table.
We smothered the bedframe in the guest room with our movements; we didn't give a shit.
But also, there was a tender moment to the extreme. Last night he penetrated me slowly, inch by inch, so slowly I could feel every inch being inserted, I could count the beats of his heart on the beating of our chests. He kept his eyes fixed on mine all the way, never allowed me to avert my gaze and look at him, to see him, to accept who we were losing.
"I will wait for you, my Zeenat!", he said as embraced me in his arms. "Whatever happens, wherever you go, you're mine, Zeenat."
I brought my nails, my tears, my body, my fingers, my feet, my blood, drawing all of them on his chest, my body stretching towards his, as if I could unite us at the molecular level.
He didn't show up at the airport on the morning I left. He couldn't. Until the taxi driver honked, then we said goodbye, a kiss that lingered long after in my face like the ghost of a missing body part.
Four hours of purgatory to Dubai. I was in my window seat, in the new clothes Zeeshan had sent me, modest, expensive, new--I felt like I was on a journey to a life I was not meant for.
I was leaving the dancer behind from Goa, and the woman who had slept with as many men as she could, and learned the strength of desire in herself. I was going back to the role of Zeeshan's wife and I wasn't sure whether I would remember the lines.
From the moment I came out of the customs, I saw him coming toward me with smile on his face.
He swept me up into his arms, spinning me about in the arrivals hall as the crowd took it in turns to smile at the romantic act. My wife! My beautiful wife! You're here! You're here!
Instead of Danish's musk, sandalwood soap. His arms were less muscular, thinner. His kiss on my cheeks was pure; his kiss was like the imprint of a brand he put on my cheek and made me feel like property of him.
The trip to the apartment was a rush of facts: his new position, the shipping firm, the promotion he had been aspiring to, to meet the friends he wanted me to meet.
I nodded and smiled as I gazed at the impossible architecture around us--towers of glass and steel that appeared to have been dropped from another planet.
The apartment was in a building in Dubai Marina on the twenty-third floor, all white walls, all marble floors and all the windows looked out over an artificial beach with the turquoise waters of the Gulf.
It was beautiful. It was sterile. I was like a display case and all the other exhibit was a museum. "Do you like it?" he asked as I stood with my hands on my shoulders, facing him.
"It's beautiful," I said, and, I meant it, as I felt the terror building in my chest. This was my cage. Luxury, air-conditioned and costly... but still a cage.
On that first night, he was in a hurry. I could sense the anticipation in his eyes, he was pouring me wine, my first drink in months, since Danish and I had finished off the last bottle in the house, and telling me what he was going to do for us.
He was excited, "I want to show you everything. The desert, the old city, the malls. And I want you to meet my colleagues, there is a party next month, it's important, Sheikh Al-Rashid will be there, if I can make a good impression..." He talked late and I listened, my body clenching as I knew what was to come.
Finally, when he took my hand and brought me to the bedroom, his bedroom, I corrected myself, feeling unworthy, I went with the resignation of a soldier going to battle.
The room had a large king size bed with white linens which appeared unused.
Zeeshan looked at me with his face dropping into a softer, vulnerable look. He said that softly, "I've missed you. Not just... not just physically but having the presence of someone who knows me."
He stepped closer, his hands coming up to cup my face. His thumbs were on my cheekbones; his eyes were on mine. "Zeenat, are you pleased about being here? Truly?"
I forced a smile. "Of course. I'm with my husband." This was the correct answer.
He looked happy, and moved closer to me to kiss me as he always does, for the first time this time. His lips were soft and dry and familiar but foreign.
He kissed me as if he were tasting me for the first time, his tongue touching my lips, asking for permission. I opened my heart to him, like the excited wife, all the while my heart was screaming in my chest.
The oil lamp hung above the bed and cast long, swaying shadows over the silk sheets in the bedroom.
Zeeshan stood at the foot of the bed, his eyes soaking me up like water after long years in the desert sands. My nightgown was slipping off my shoulder and I walked toward him slowly, step by step, to allow his hunger to grow.
When I reached him, I didn't speak. I just came to my knees, as though my fingers had read his belt button even though it was not a button I was familiar with.
"Wait," he panted, clutching my hair in his shaking fingers. "Let me look at you first." But I was already unbuttoning those trousers and his need was urgent and strained and desperate, and my heart twisted with a feeling more of pity than performance. I lifted my eyes to his, and held them to his; and I took him into my mouth.
His hands cupped my head, fiddling with my hair, a sound mucking his throat as he groaned but it wasn't a sexual sound, it was a sound that held him still. I worshipped him slowly; my mouth and tongue moved down the vein of his dick underside, my lips sealed tightly as I took more than he thought and more than he expected. I sucked my cheeks in, buckled his knees, his breathing gasping over my head.
"God," he said in a choked voice. "God, I've missed you. I've dreamed of your mouth, your hands, every night."
I backed off slowly, allowing his dick to fall from my mouth with a wet noise that reverberated through the still room. "Then let me give you more than dreams," I whispered, I rose up and got him to the bed.
I stretched myself out on the pillows, allowing my nightgown to fall off my legs, leaving me bare. The air was cold against my skin, my heated skin, and I saw his face--the way its eyes became darker, the way his jaw tightened with restraint.
I said, "Come here," and my two arms at the same time and my two legs open at the same time. "Taste me, Zeeshan. Remember what you've been missing."
Up came he, as a pilgrim toward a shrine. His face between my thighs was warm, teasing and promising. Then his tongue, hot and wet and achingly tender, traced a path from my entrance to the sensitive peak above. He licked me with devotion, and he licked me in such a way that he had imprinted every contour of my body in his fantasies. His tongue moved slowly over my clitoris, deliberately, and then more rapidly, covering more ground, lapping over me, as though I were salvation and he was a dying man.
He groaned at my cunt, the sound vibrating through me and I arched my back, my fingers clinging to his hair. He came in close to the flesh of my deepest private parts and murmured, "You're sweeter than I remembered. "Sweeter than any dream"
As he kept going, he pushed one finger into me, and started in on those places where I would arch my back without thinking. I closed my mouth to not scream out one more name, to pay attention to the feeling, to the heat rising in my stomach. He added a second finger, stretching me gently, and I felt the slight change in his rhythm; a hesitation, a confusion, as if his fingers were rolling more easily today than they had been before.
But he didn't pull away. He didn't question. But he doubled his efforts, his lips moving more quickly, his fingers gripping with greater urgency, as if he would love me so much, he would not even notice that I was different.
I broke under him like a damsel, crying a real cry and he sucked me, lapping at me until every shudder from my body had gone.
"Now," I gasped, pulling him up my body. "Now Zeeshan, take me, make me yours again." He stood above me; I could hear his heart beating against my chest as he lowered himself down.
His eyes were tears-drenched and his face was flushed with excitement, with desire, maybe even with joy, or with the letting-go relief of returning home.
He whispered in my ear, "I've been dreaming of this. Every night for the last three months." He positioned his dick at my pussy opening and did thrust himself into me once, with a desperate and expectant thrust, and I gasped not for the pleasure, but for the fullness, and the contrast of his eagerness and the inexperience of his form. He wasn't as big as I was used to, but he made up for it with desperation. He walked in a frenetic staccato, the months of virginity showing in each frantic snap of his hips, as if he had to make three months disappear in one night of dancing.
I saw him pause again, the slight furrow of his brow, how he felt my body take him in, how he felt like my body accepted him and he was like, no that's not supposed to happen, it doesn't happen anymore. But he sunk his face in my hair, burying his confusion in the cup of jasmine, and whispered my name like a prayer, "My wife. My love."
I wrapped my legs around his waist, my hands sliding down his back, gripping his ass and leading his rhythm, making all the sounds that he had to hear, the breathy moans, the whispered encouragements. I arched my back into him, whispered his name over and over: Zeeshan, my husband, my love.
He was pushing towards his peak as if a monsoon was coming and breaking in his stride, every push more off-kilter, more desperate. The rubbing and grinding was very real - the pressure of him inside me, the friction of his dick on my cunt flesh, the very physicality of our bodies rubbing against each other. My muscles tightened involuntarily around him as my breath caught and I felt the release building, unwanted and purely uncalled for, but it was there nonetheless.
I followed him over, when he shivered and bummed into me and cried out and surrendered. I let go, squeezing him and his body bowing in rhythm, my back off the bed as I cried his name, seemingly with passion. He pumped away and when he gave out, his body fell completely over me, his weight against the mattress, his breathing against my neck. With his heart pounding in my breast, yet sheathed within me, I heard him pant out: "I love you. I love you; I love you."
I touched his hair, my fingers knotting into the sweaty manes, and looked at the ceiling, where the shadows of the flame of the lamp played like ghosts. "Welcome home, Zeenat," he whispered, his voice tender.
As he softened my seed fell out of me, it trickled down my thighs, warm rivulets that I thought of as Danish, known Danish, with his knowing smile, his bigger hands, he would have known, immediately, that someone had come before him.
I remembered our house in Prayagraj, which was now empty and the life I had had to leave behind for this act of married life.
His arm across my waist, his face pressed to my shoulder, his breathing lost in sleep, Zeeshan was convinced that he was being adored.
Early days in Dubai became a kind of routine, one that was luxurious and stifling. Zeeshan got to work early and I was left alone in the glass tower with a housekeeper who didn't speak English and a view of the sea that scoffed at me for its beauty.
Zeeshan at night comes home, he's hungry, he wants someone to be there, he wants me. He was romantic as in a way he was too enthusiastic in kissing me. He had three months to catch up with and he did with that of a man climbing a mountain.
On the third night, after we both undressed, he took me against the window, and pressed my boobs against the cold window glass glittering lights of the Marina flashed below us like fallen stars. He was confident that no one would see us.
He was inserting his dick into my pussy lips from the back, his hands on my hips and he was getting more confident, more skilled. I saw us in the dark glass, my face had flushed, my eyes hollowed out, there was the pleasure that rose in my body while I was lacking in my heart.
His fingers clumsy and eager, he reached around to touch my nipples, I sprang up and came with a shudder, and he took it for passion. He marvelled after me, "You're so responsive." I laid my head on his shoulder, nothing said.
After a couple of weeks, he had established his own routine. When he'd arrive home, he'd shower, and he would find me in the bedroom. He would kiss me more and more confidently, his hands exploring my body with more confidence. He enjoyed taking his time now, investigating, testing out new positions.
One evening, he carried me up onto the kitchen counter, spread my legs and acted as if he owned them. Slowly he enters me, watching my face: "You're mine. Say it." I repeated myself with a breathy voice, and my body reacted to the friction as my mind wandered elsewhere, "I'm yours." Then he finished with a shout as his head was thrown back and his hands clutched my thighs so tightly, I could feel the pressure, yet there was something both sad and exciting about it.
He was working so hard. He loved me so much. I was turning myself into a ghost in my life, intimacy without a heart a thousand miles away. But my body--my traitorous body--began to respond to his attentions.
On one Sunday afternoon, he spent an hour with his head between my legs, his tongue exploring my cunt, and his learning with commitment, dedication, and sincerity that was to be expected, but hollow nonetheless. He made me go off two times, three times, and all times his pride was shining in his eyes, and his face was slick with arousal. When you come, you're so beautiful," he said and he was crawling up my body, kissing me and making me taste myself on his lips.
I want to make you do that every day; I want you to feel good the rest of your life. I smiled and pulled him down for another kiss, his need pressing hard against my hip, knowing that, before dinner, before sleep, we would make love again and that I would give him my pleasure; the explanation of feeling dead inside was easier.
After 3 weeks, I was in crisis. It was like an Egyptian tomb in the apartment. I wasn't feeling the love at any of the shopping malls I entered. I didn't experience all the drama of India. I didn't catch the danger in my affair with Danish. I missed feeling like a woman with agency, and with power.
Zeeshan felt my unease, and thought I was bored with the daily routine. "The party will be next week," he reminded me, his hand on my thigh as we watched television on the expensive sofa.
"Sheikh Al-Rashid. It will be good for us to get out, to socialize. You'll look beautiful. Everyone will be jealous of me." He kissed my neck as his hand worked its way up my thigh underneath my dress.
"So, are you happy Zeenat?"