“Farzi—he lost his job? You didn’t even tell me.”
She takes another drag and looks up at the sky. Her hair is bundled in a knot, her face clean of the colors I have become accustomed to seeing on it.
“My brother may be a prick, Bela, but he is right about one thing. I did everything the way I was supposed to. Everything.” She reclines on her side, facing me. “We moved to Manchester a couple of months after the wedding, to live with Doctor’s family. They’re good people. Doctor joined the family business—table linen for restaurants. He works really hard. Or at least, he says he does, all those times he’s late coming back home. You can never tell with a man that attractive, you know?” She pauses. “But I don’t even think that’s the worst part.”
“Then what is?”
Farzana puts out the cigarette. “The worst part, Bela, is that I don’t care. He has these phases where he’s all possessive and jealous about me, and it makes me think, I don’t care the same way about him. When I wonder if he’s with another woman, I feel—God, I feel relieved. Can you imagine? Me? Relieved by the idea that my husband could be in bed with another woman? Nibbling on someone else’s toes, licking someone else’s pink titties, rubbing his bloody groin all over someone—”
“Stop it! Please, Farzi!”
“Prude.” She pokes my arm and laughs. “You know, Doctor’s been all about having a child lately. And I grin at him with my perfect teeth, acting as though the thought makes me shy. It’s absurd, the whole thing.”
An insect alights on her arm. I brush it away, my fingers leaving a trail of goosebumps in their wake. Behind her, the sky is a creamy, cloudless purple.
“Farzana-khazana,” I whisper, reaching hesitantly for the lock of hair along her cheek. “Leave him, no?”
“Leave him?” Her eyes widen. This close to mine, her face brings a memory of that long-ago intimacy. Those dark lashes, those arched brows. Without her makeup, she looks more like the Farzana I remember. More like my Farzana.
“And then what, Bela?” she asks. “Do I come back home? I don’t think Ammi would survive that. Two failed children? Abbu gives her a hard enough time about Aslam already.”