The moment I step inside Red’s apartment, I feel a knot in my stomach, tight and cruel.
Leaning against the open window, Doua faces the snow-eaten night where the moon is no longer visible. She remains motionless, as though in mockery of the dancing snow outside.
“Doua?” I can’t seem to recognize my voice. I peel the white bedsheet off me and toss it to the floor. Instantly, the hairs on my arms bristle in the freezing air.
“I wish I was there.” She turns around, arms folded. “I wish I could see it.”
Something warm churns inside my heart. A kind of longing. A remnant of devotion.
I walk close to her. “What are you doing here? What do you want?”
She waves her hand to where New Pakistan once glowed. “It is over.”
“You did it.” I reach out to touch her but decide against it. “Your war is finally over.”
“Is it?”
“New Pakistan is on fire.”
“The Badlands are on fire too.” She cups her face in her hands, her voice exhausted. “It will not bring anyone back. I do not know what I should do next.”
I take a step forward. Then another, close enough that rogue strands of her hair brush against me. “What are you doing here?”
She doesn’t answer.
“What do you want, Doua?” I ask, taking one more step so that I can feel her breath.
Hands smothering her face, she speaks. It’s the same exhausted voice. “Avaan, I —”
I gather her in my arms, tightly. The softness of her skin, the feel of her breasts, the warmth of her body — they reignite a dream I thought I had woken up from.
“Doua,” I whisper with an urgency that startles us both.
I kiss her.
Her small hands press into my chest, but I grab them in one hand and pin them above her. She moans something, but I don’t care. I kiss her, deeper. The way we always kissed.
She whispers something, but a truck grinds by, drowning her out.
I’m far beyond caring.
My other hand slips up her blouse, feeling her breasts.
She tears her lips away from mine. “Avaan, stop.”
I step back, dazed. She cowers against the window, arms crossed before her.
We both breathe heavily, hands touching our lips. Another truck goes by, and the trailing, alternating sequence of blue and red lights illuminate her face. Despite the dark shadows and her hair, I see it: the scars, the discolourations winding down the right side of her face.
It’s her. Doua. My Doua.
“What are you doing, Avaan? What is wrong with you?”
What’s wrong with me? I’m in love with a woman who’s haunted me for three years. I’m seeing things, hallucinating, dreaming while awake, and I can’t tell the difference. My world is on fire. There’s nowhere for me to go. Everything keeps bringing me back to the hole in the world where she should be.
Above us, a woman yells something in anger. Someone shouts back. Heavy, lumbering steps traverse the entire length of the ceiling. A door slams shut.
I draw close to Doua, but she shrinks into the shadows.
Something has pierced the centre of my chest. “Doua, can you just — it’s me, okay? You don’t have to be afraid of me.”
“I am afraid.”
“Please don’t —”
“You killed Rosa. You killed Maseeh. You killed Baadal.” She pulls her hair away from the right side of her face. “You damn near killed me too.”
“I didn’t know they were working for you.”
“That is your excuse?”
“That — that’s not what I —”
“What exactly did you mean? That it would be okay to kill children if I did not know them?” Another large truck rattles by under the window, illuminating her in faint blue and red hues. Then the shadows return, sheltering her from me. She turns away. “What happened to you, Avaan? What have you become?”
I grab her arm. “What about you? If I’m a monster who kills kids, what does that make you?”
“Let go of my arm.”
“You turned kids into suicide bombers. You filled Baadal’s head with your ideas. How many people died yesterday because of your war? How are you better than me?”
“Let go of my arm, Avaan.”
“What are you doing here, Doua? Why did you come back?”
“You are hurting me.”
I let her go.
She turns her back to me, rubbing her arm.
I stare out into the burning night for what feels like three years. “When Evergreen attacked the library, I didn’t —”
“Do not expect forgiveness. Not from me.”
“I’m not asking for forgiveness.”
“I do not want to hear it.”
I massage my temples. “I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but —”
“You murdered your brother.”
“I deserve to be heard. There’s enough history, enough something still between us, that you can do that. Can’t you?”
“Avaan —”
“Tell me I don’t deserve at least that much.”
I take the silence that follows as her consent to speak.
I’ve imagined this moment on many sleepless nights. The moment when I’m reunited with the woman I’ve loved and wronged. It’s when I finally explain it all. My reasons, my moment of weakness. My fears and regrets. Deep down, I thought this was the reason I fought as hard as I did — why I refused to die no matter what this city threw at me. Now, as she stands with her back to me, as her shoulders rise and fall, her head lowered, I realize that I’ve been lying to myself. What I say next doesn’t matter. Not now, when so much sorrow has been sown in its wake. But I say it anyway. “I’m sorry, Doua. I’m so, so sorry. For everything.”
Silence. It’s our song now.
She turns to face me. “Do you remember that morning after we first —”
“Always.”
“Do you remember what we talked about?”
“I do.”
“Then why do you apologize?”
The lump in my throat is impossible to swallow. “I had to.”
“You are right about one thing. Even back then. I am no one to judge you. I am the reason everything is on fire. I am the one who turned children into soldiers and human bombs. I am the reason so many people have died. I am no better than you.” She exhales. “Look at what we have become, Avaan. What happened to us?”
“I lost you,” I whisper, “and the world broke under my feet.”
“Did you tell the army about Baadal?”
“I’d never.”
“You are lying.”
“I’m not. It wasn’t me.”
“Then who?”
“I don’t know. Someone who wanted all this to happen. Someone who wanted revenge. Baadal’s surviving friend who handed me the gun. Asha-Eksha’s dad. Your ex-husband. My mother. Evergreen. Any one of the jilted men who Nargis refused to marry. Or simply any of the thousands of Pakistanis who loathe us for existing.”
“Why?” she sobs. No tears form in her eye. “Why work for Humayun? After Baadal. Why him?”
“I deserved it.” I hold her arm gently, like touching a wounded bird, and guide her fingers over the gun in my hand. My Colt 1911. “I told myself it was to find you, but it’s because I deserved it.”
“I do not understand,” she says.
“It doesn’t matter now.”
I close the window and light the oil lamp. In the reborn flower of light, I watch Doua make her way toward the bed, impressed by how in her blindness she’s quickly mapped out the room. I grab the blanket.
“Here,” I say, wrapping it around her. “You must be freezing.”
The bed creaks as she pulls her legs together and reclines against the headboard. Sitting opposite her, I feel — for the first time in so long — some kind of joy.
Above us, there are low voices. A woman and a man. Lighter footsteps walk away. The same low voice grows louder, choppier. The ceiling trembles as someone slams the door shut.
“I don’t think I told you.” I pat her foot lightly. “I met Asha. Ash.”
“I know.”
“You think she’s safe?”
“Do you think anyone can kill that girl?”
I smirk. “She’s like you.”
“She is nothing like me. That is why she survived this city and not …” Her voice trails off.
“You’ve survived this city.”
“Some days, I think I have not. People who have seen my face would say that is true.”
“Fuck those people.”
“You have survived too. I used to fear that it would be Baadal who would endure and not you. But I was wrong. I was wrong about a lot of things.”
“I died once already.”
“And yet, here you are.”
I place both hands on her feet. “Why did you come back, Doua? Why aren’t you with Ash and the rest?”
She doesn’t say anything for a while, her face lowered. “This war is bigger than one blind woman. Yaqzan’s dream, his words, will carry on no matter who is leading the fight.”
“Who is Yaqzan?”
Doua pauses, patting her hair down over her scars. “Yaqzan was a madman. A myth. A martyr.”
“Martyr?”
“He died a long time ago, Avaan. Before the soldiers destroyed my shelter. Before Eksha. Before you and I. He died a long way outside this city, in the Misty Wasteland, where no one goes and no one returns.”