It was a cool October evening, her spirits a little damp for the freshness of the breeze blowing outside this café, where like every other day she had stopped by to grab her daily dose of coffee. This is the same highway café where they, Anya and Sam, often dropped by when incessant drives through the night got a little too taxing.
Today she is here again, but alone. The encounter in the bookshop is still looming in her mind, his words still hanging in the air.
A fortnight ago, during one of her visits to her favourite bookshop she had caught a glimpse of him, or so she thought, and her heart froze. It was the moment, the encounter she was dreading, secretly thankful that fate had taken one of them so far away that now their ways will never cross. That day too, keeping up with their resolve to tread different paths, Sam had decided against entering the bookshop, seeing her but not acknowledging her presence. Then what changed today, after so many such encounters were avoided with such ease?
Right when she was skimming through the racks of books, holding a copy of Azhar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran and Salman Rushdies’ The Ground beneath her feet, she felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned around, and at first her heart skipped a beat like it always did at the sight of him and then the darkness of their history came and stood between them, leaving her glued to the ground.
Sam’s tall, expansive frame engulfed her presence like always, his eyes still as lifeless as a stone – not giving away even an iota of his thoughts, but he looked a little more tired than the last she saw him.
After what seemed like an eternity to her, he finally spoke up, his trademark, “Hey.” “Hey, hi,” she replied in a small voice.
“How have you been?” he asked. Silence. “Still mourning,” she would have liked to say, but could only manage a ‘ummm…fine, thanks. And you?’
He asked her if she cared for a small walk, it was going to be their first, they were used to aimless drives around town amidst making out in which ever lonely corners came their way. The latest fad to increase the city’s green cover had offered them many.
Before she could make up her mind, she found herself walking next to him. This is what Anya would sum her story with Sam as – before she could decide she always found herself doing what he would have liked her to. The imploring look in his eye, which was the only expression they ever wore, was too poignant for her to say no.
After a long stillness, small talk ensued. Neither of them meeting the other’s eyes, consciously avoiding any body contact. Not before long, Sam spoke up. He had come to perhaps redeem himself off the guilt he was bearing for all these years. “I’m sorry,” he muttered.
“What?” she asked, hoping she hadn’t just heard what she thought she did.
He stepped in front of her, cupped her face between his hands and looked her in the eye for the first time since he had denied her the right of have their child, and repeated, this time more convincingly, “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” she felt furious. A sorry is all that he has to say for killing a life, and agony of all those years, she thought, once again even more livid with herself for having come with him in the first place. But breaking down was not an option, she had told herself clearly. Her reply was an icy ‘it’s alright’. Not a word more, not an ounce of her pain getting through her words, though from within she felt as shook up as she was on the day he left her out in the rain to fight her battle alone.
She took a step back, releasing herself from the grip of his hands, turned around and left. There was no scope of bye-byes left between them.
Maira has brought her coffee, just the way Anya liked it – strong, piping hot, laced with chocolate sauce. Her staple ham and lettuce sandwich is lying on the table too, but she has not touched it. Each sip of coffee takes her a notch closer to that dreadful autumn, when some weeks after a drunken night with Sam, she realized she was carrying his baby. No sooner had she broken the news to him than he left town on pretext of some business. For two days, she contemplated, weighed her odds about the possibility of keeping the child. The positives were easily outnumbered by the dynamics working against the it.
“I’ll be back soon and then we will decide what’s to be done,” he had promised. But she didn’t hear from him for two days, his didn’t answer her calls or return her messages, suddenly all his friends didn’t know where he was or when would he return. And time was running out, the doctor insisted if she had to terminate the pregnancy, it better be soon – the sooner the better!
On the third day, after a harrowing night she had made the difficult choice, she was going to have to get rid of the baby, no point bringing it into this world when she couldn’t bring it up the way she would have wanted to. “One last call, Sam will definitely answer. After all, he was supposed to return last night,” she thought and dialed his number. ‘The number you are trying cannot be reached at the moment,’ came the voice from the other end.
She clenched her fist, slammed the phone and wiped her tears, as if to tell herself that she didn’t need that ‘bastard of a man’ to go through this. Hastily, her vision blurred by tears swarming up in her eyes, she picked her bag, grabbed the car keys and headed out. She turned the ignition on, and changed the gears of the car with a vengeance and sped off, stopping only at an ATM on the way to have some extra cash on her, just in case.
The doctor was a middle-aged woman, in her forties, who first coaxed her to arrive at a decision at the “earliest” even though she had a couple of weeks to go before she got into the ‘high-risk category’.
And now the same woman, sat across the table from her telling her how ‘immature, insensitive, despicable’ of Anya it was to land up in such a situation and alone. The moment the doctor had tried to enquire if she was certain with she had actually conceived the child, Anya died some more. She was making up her mind to get up and leave, just then the doctor brushed aside the topic with a wave of her hand and a little snort.
For the next 15 minutes, the doctor was at it with utmost precision, going about it in the most mechanical manner ignoring her pain almost brutally. Tears stung her eyes with her reliving every nano second of that dreadful moment.
A tap on the shoulder, and it was Saara. She has spotted Anya on the terrace, and hurriedly reached out to her. Her ruffled looks told her story, but no, they were not the whining type. So, Saara threw her head back, and then rocked back and forth, before she brought herself to describing her day at the spa…and the new mall, the new line in their favourite store, new books in the shop Anya had returned from, office gossip, and finally, bitching – their favourite sport.
And, like every other time the melancholy was laid to rest. Locked in a corner of her head, only waiting to erupt again.
