Page 53 of The Circle of Exile
She nodded. Then looked around.
“There,” he pointed with his eyes at the rocking chair she had found and he had ordered. The one where he had given her foot massages. Iram trudged to the same chair and sat down. He came to her with their son but she balked, her arms falling away. “I don’t know how to hold him!”
Atharva looked like he would abort the mission. She wanted him to abort it. But also didn’t want it. Was she crazy to want both?
Maybe he was too, because he went to their bed, picked up a pillow and set it on her lap. “I used to feed him like this when he came home.”
Iram didn’t want to hear about it. Was starved to hear and yet was too raw to picture that.
She made a cradle of her arms and set them atop the pillow.
“Open your umm… get ready for him first.”
She swallowed. Gazed into his eyes. Her hands froze. He looked so much like a stranger. How could she…? Suddenly nothing felt comfortable anymore. Atharva took his eyes away from her and let them wander to the window. He stayed, silent, rocking their son up and down quietly, eyes nowhere on her body.
And she slowly reached for her kurti, opening the top buttons. She was wearing her maternity bra, one from the collection she had stocked four months ago. It snapped in the front and she curled over herself to hide herself. Her hands trembled.
“Ready?” He asked, eyes still on the window.
“Hmm.”
Atharva’s eyes lowered but only to her face as he leaned down to place Yathaarth in her arms. Iram immediately zeroed in on him. He was completely at ease now, eyes on his father. She gathered him close as he turned his head towards her breast. It was already leaking white, thank god. Iram palmed his little head, holding him close, hoping he would recognise something. Some bond, some connection, some scent of his home of 9 months.
His mouth opened and his tongue lapped at a rivulet. She gasped. Dark grey almond eyes snapped to hers. She looked into them, trying to hold a smile. Atharva’s hand was on his back. He pushed Yathaarth closer to her breast and her son tried to reach for her nipple. She leaned forward, making it easy for him. His mouth opened and clamped tight. The pain was blinding. She hissed just as Atharva withdrew his hand. Yathaarth let out a scream and fell away from her breast.
“Here, here…” she tried to latch his mouth back. But he resisted, his back arching, threatening to fall off the pillow. “Atharva, hold!”
His hands were immediately there, swinging Yathaarth up instantly.
“Hey, hey, why are you crying so much? What is it with you?” He brought him close to his face, pressing his lips to his temple, again swinging him in the cradle of his arms. Atharva’s eyes snapped to her and she looked down, pulling her bra cups and hooking them in place. It was mortifying, to be here, rejected not once but multiple times, to be a criminal in the eyes of a soul that did not recognise her and another that could not accept her.
“I’ll give him a bottle today.”
She nodded, unable to look at him again.
Silence reigned in their room. She heard the telltale hiss of the boiler, then Atharva was crooning. She felt him move in her peripheral vision and followed the tracing of his feet as he reclined on their bed. When Iram looked up, Yathaarth was happily lying in the middle of the bed, Atharva curled on his side, holding his bottle as he suckled.
“Maybe you should see Dr. Baig,” Atharva said, eyes on their son.
“Dr. Baig?”
“For… breastfeeding. If you want to. He is perfectly fine with formula. But if you want to.”
She blinked back tears. It was so tempting to say no. To spare the rejection. But what kind of a mother would she be if she did not keep trying? God had blessed her with this baby when everything had burned down around her. What kind of person would she be if she did not try her best to be worthy of it?
“Ok.”
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Iram did not ask Atharva how he was free at 11.30 in the morning to take her to Dr. Baig’s nursing home. She thought she would be going with Begumjaan when he had left the house before she woke up, Yathaarth quietly moved from their bedroom to Begumjaan’s room. She had woken up to a bed as empty as the one she had gone to sleep in last night because he had fed Yathaarth, quietly put him to sleep and then gone to the couch to work.
Their car sped down the road of an autumnal Srinagar. Iram stared.
“Where is Shehzad?”
“Off your duty.”
Iram did not ask more. That tone, those clipped words, they were enough to tell her what had gone down. How would she apologise to Shehzad? She didn’t know how to peep out of her own mind long enough to keep looking, and here was so much carnage left behind. She didn’t even know what was going on in the city, at his Secretariat, in the state. 24 hours back in Kashmir and she knew nothing but a tiny boy who did not like looking at her and a man who did not see her.
