He pronounced “Talaq Talaq Talaq.” A smile or conceivably a mocking twist of his lips. This despite a hairline fracture to his jaws. Was it was the hindering sound of her daughter’s wails? Was it the echo of her taunting relatives or maybe the ricochet of long lost memory of the psychic woman? Doesn’t matter because it ends. Life is too short to run to courts.
It is time for him to go for a Haj that never will come to an end. Time changes just like how the trees shed leaves, decay and die. A man who abuses the ones that lived for him must never be forgotten but remain deeply entrenched in our minds. So that never again should he raise a hand against a woman who bore him children and kept a vigil all night for his good health. A man who for no reason but needing the excitement of a younger woman with a shy dimple on his bed pronounced talaq on his wife of twenty years. However, it is fine now. After all, as a pious man, he has gone for a pilgrimage to gain blessing for his daughter Ameena and his wife, Aliquam.
Ameena is now in medical school, this was, of course, a dream realised of her mother, Aliquam. She used to take her to the university’s biology lab every day to show her the skeleton specimen of a human being. She explained in great detail the anatomy of the skeleton, especially a hairline fracture on its jaws. Today, it is Ameena’s favourite pastime. She spends hours understanding the femur and medulla and touches the little crack on the jawline occasionally.
“Umma, tell me would Abba ever return from his pilgrimage?”, asked Ameena one day. “Defeat doesn’t come to those who trust in you, but those who rebel against you. Your Abba is where he belongs, and every day is his funeral”. The strain of “Ae Watan” hummed quietly on the radio. Aliquam quietly stirred her tea reminiscing the idle thought of the hairline a smirk that will desperately watch her every day without being able to reveal the truth.
A woman’s worth doesn’t lie in the sindoor on her forehead. Neither does it lie on a little red stain on her marital bed. It lies in her self worth. Ameena proved it. Didn’t she?
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