Page 9 of The Circle of Exile
They entered the dining hall and the two men stopped talking.
“Mir, Jannat is here.”
“Why is your friend always shivering, Aapa?” An unhinged laugh replaced the solemnity of Faiz’s voice. Iram did not look up from her downcast stance.
“I told you…” Mehrunisa cued. “She is not well.”
“Ahaaa…” the crunch of a vicious bite. An apple, probably. “Jannat? Bibi, you are welcome here. But we don’t want to be targeted as the Mir who kidnapped a man’s wife in his state,” Faiz laughed again. It was like he grabbed the idea of his unhinged image and worked easily to reinforce it.
“Actually,” Mehrunisa cleared her throat. “Jannat will be leaving soon.”
Iram felt her hackles rise. Now she couldn’t even run!
“Really? Where? Back to Dubai?”
“Yes.”
Iram could hear the forced courage in Mehrunisa’s voice as she made up the story as she went. “But first she will be going to India. Her jewellery is with her in-laws. She will collect it and then fly to Dubai to her husband.”
“Is it, Bibi?” Faiz asked her pointedly. Iram kept her head down, the shiver setting in hard in the back of her neck. Silence settled in the room when she didn’t answer. The eerie, scary kind. Nobody spoke. Nothing moved.
“Faiz,” Mehrunisa left her side and walked. Iram eyed her feet go farther and farther, around the long table and towards the head chair. She lowered onto a seat in front of him.
“There is a problem.”
“What, Aapa?”
Silence.
Then his secretary cleared his throat — “I will leave for Nagarkhas, Mir. After my collection, I will be at your service at the fort.”
Loud thuds of footsteps left the hall. And silence fell again.
“Faiz, gurun,” Mehrunisa’s voice softened. “I told you in what conditions Jannat crossed over. She had to escape her in-laws. She is here without her passport.”
“I suspected. She shivers like she is a mouse, but what guts.”
“We need to get her a passport to return to India, Faiz.”
“If I were a magician, I would point this stick there and a rabbit would jump out with Jannat Madam’s passport in British… no, American colours. Safe to go everywhere.”
“Enough, Faiz. This is not a matter to joke about.”
Loud cackles — “What else should I do?”
“Find a way to make her passport.”
“For that she has to first show us her face.”
The scrape of her chair and Mehrunisa’s loud words whipped — “Shameful.”
“I didn’t mean it like that. She is your friend, Aapa. Aapa to me also. But who can trust her when she does not even meet my eyes? Haan, Jannat Bibi? Are you an Indian RAW agent? Too many movies about those right now.”
“Go inside, Jannat,” Mehrunisa ordered. Iram turned and walked back inside, her mind running in overdrive. Escaping here in the dead of the night was impossible now. Faiz knew she wanted to leave. He had contacts with the ISI and the Pakistani military. And mostly was their slave, in his own words. He would trade her for a month’s peace.
But what if… she could barter her exit?
Iram stalled. Wheels churned in her mind. Suddenly the place inside her head felt alive. It was dangerous but alive.
