CHAPTER No.4 ||PART 4/29||
He once sent me to the next-door neighbour to borrow some sugar. The instructions
were very clear. I was not to deviate from them. But the neighbour had met me for the first time, and
started chatting to me. A couple of nights before, her 7-year-old had been on her own, and had rung our
doorbell in the middle of the night. I had comforted the scared child and tracked the mother to the
hospital. She wanted to thank me, and offered me a cup of tea. I declined. I must have stood with her for
10 minutes at most, but when I came back the smile was wiped from my face in less than 10 seconds.
Ijaz was outraged that I had not come back immediately. It took a couple of hours for me to calm him
down with promises that I would never do such a thing again.
A week later, I was sent to buy a bottle of red sauce from the store downstairs. It was my first time in
a shop after getting married, and I was in a new town. I knew it was not yet dinner time. I bought the
sauce but stopped to look at the greeting cards like a typical teenager of my generation. I wanted to get
my husband a romantic card. My older brother had been visiting, and accompanied me to the shop.
When we returned upstairs, Ijaz asked my brother what had taken so long. He replied innocently and
absentmindedly “Reham was looking at some stuff”. It was the wrong thing to say. In private, I would
receive a dressing down. If I had been told to get a bottle of sauce, that’s all I was meant to do. I never
bought that card for my husband in all those years together.