The Khan Saima Mir (best short novels TXT) 📖

forehead smeared grey, her eyes focused, a cloth around her nose and mouth, calls of ‘Allahu Akbar!’ still reverberating around her. The carcasses of cars burned on either side as she stepped across a river of shattered glass and debris, Idris, Malik and Nadeem stumbling in a line behind her, coughing and spluttering as they came. Paramedics hurried forward with silver blankets to wrap around their shoulders, but Jia walked past them towards Elyas and and collapsed into his arms. Elyas held her tight, and she let him, the fight having left her body. She reached out to her brother standing beside them, grateful for his presence. He held her hand and nodded, then went to check on his cousins. The paramedics moved in to help, checking Jia’s pulse, wrapping her blistered hand, administering oxygen, asking questions. Elyas heard nothing, saw nothing, except Jia Khan.

CHAPTER 46

‘I’m pregnant,’ she told the doctor in A&E, then turning to Elyas, added, ‘ten weeks.’

Elyas was speechless. The doctor seemed unconcerned. ‘We’ll do a scan just to make sure everything is as it should be, but you seem fine,’ he said. ‘It sounds as if your quick thinking kept your exposure to smoke to a minimum. Wrapping those wet tablecloths over your face and mouth was a brilliant idea.’ He turned to Elyas. ‘Keep an eye on her. If she has any shortness of breath or chest pain when you get home, you’ll need to bring her back in.’ He left the two of them in the examination room.

‘When were you going to tell me?’ Elyas said.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I was waiting for the right moment. I haven’t had time to process it myself…but it’s going to be OK.’ She was going to say more but a nurse came in.

‘Ms Khan, the police are here for you. I’ve told them that you’ll be a while,’ she said.

The doctor discharged Jia after the scan. She was ready to answer police questions, but the arrival of Mark Briscoe put her on edge. ‘I know you’ve had a long day,’ he said, ‘but, if you don’t mind, I’d like you to accompany me to the station. There are a few things that need clearing up.’

Though they were on friendly terms these days, Jia still didn’t fully trust the chief of police. But she agreed to go. The adrenaline rush had worn off, leaving her exhausted, and she wanted to get this over with fast. Elyas walked her to the police car, acutely aware that sirens and ambulances had been involved the last time Jia had been carrying his child, and that he’d lost her then. ‘I’ll call you when I’m done,’ she told him.

‘I’ll be waiting,’ he said, as he watched the car drive away.

It was late evening when she finally rang Elyas from the police station. She knew he’d be waiting by the phone, but that wasn’t why she’d called him. She wanted to tie up loose ends, return life to a kind of simplicity. The gates of Pukhtun House were swarming with news reporters when they arrived, so Elyas suggested they go to his place. She agreed.

They climbed the stairs of the building in silence, both too tired to speak. And when he brought her a cup of tea he found her asleep on the sofa. So he covered her in a blanket and sat down alongside her, watching her breathe, afraid to touch her in case he broke the spell.

She awoke to find him snoring, the TV tuned to some late-night shopping programme. His eyes closed, his face emptied of worry, he looked younger, almost like the boy she had married, and she was compelled to lean in. He smelt like stale cigarettes and the aftershave she had bought him for his birthday the first year they were together. She kissed his cheek. He tasted like her youth and the years she could never revisit. She kissed his lips in the hope that time would roll back, that she would open her eyes and find herself innocent again, just shy of three decades of life, that his kisses would somehow cleanse her soul and set her free. Maybe it was the years of separation and the secrecy accompanying the rekindling of their relationship that brought a sense of newness to each time she was with him. Whatever it was, she knew it had to be fleeting; she was surprised by its having lasted this long.

He reciprocated, tasting her lips as if they were ripe fruit, opening his mouth wider and wider, extending the promise of passion he’d made her years earlier.

The rhythms of their love-making were slower than they had been in their youth. But in his bedroom, behind closed doors, his arm around her waist, their legs intertwined, his kisses deep and heavy, she received him as hungrily as she had done the first time.

‘The thing about sex in your forties is that you take the time to fold your clothes neatly before you begin, because you know from experience that you’re going to need them when you’re done,’ he’d joked afterwards, as he handed her an oversized T-shirt. She’d laughed at his commentary.

Later, she sat on the edge of the bed, her back to him, thinking of what to say. ‘You wouldn’t want any more than this if you really knew me,’ she said. The darkness hid her face, but the curve of her shoulders, her back, her lips and the slant of her neck were all clearly outlined by the slivers of moonlight that slipped in through the curtains.

Elyas watched her from the bed, his back against the pillows, knowing that one wrong word could make her bolt. Her fears had pushed her to the edge of the bed; had he put too much pressure on her in his desire to have her back, not just for Ahad’s sake, but for himself? But he owed it to them both to be honest. So he took his time, thinking, weighing