A Deconstructed Heart by Shaheen Ashraf-Ahmed Page B

and she should not feel the need to accompany him. “Oh, alright,” she said, her eyes widening as he took the library book she had brought him without looking at it and wordlessly dropped it onto a pile of books on the ground.
    She had not often stepped inside his tent. It took her a moment to adjust to the darkness after the bright light of noon that had made her squint in the garden. It was still tidy, perhaps a few more books and papers that had not been put away. The air was close and hot, and without any light it was gloomy, even in the daytime. The chessboard seemed to be mid-game, and she looked quizzically at the pieces. He looked at her, and stooped quickly to give her some teacups th at were stacked on the floor, “Please, beti. Thank you,” he called as she left with the dishes.
    He waited until he heard sounds from the kitchen. He figured he would have an hour while she made lunch, to show Khan Sahib the slides. She would probably come looking for him after that. Khan Sahib arrived on cue, sitting in the chair next to the projector as if he were  going to give the presentation. Mirza Uncle was still squinting at each square slide and dropping them into the chamber in order.
    Khan Sahib cleared his throat noisily. ‘What a showman,’ thought Mirza, but he was caught off-guard by the question that followed.
    “What are you doing to the poor girl?”
    “Just what are you saying?”
    “You have turned her into your nurse.”
    “I di-”
    “Yes, and you know you did. She is just a shadow in your life.”
    He could not resist, “You mean, like you?”
    Khan Sahib snorted, and Mirza thought of a horse. “Who is she going to meet, who is going to ask for her, when she is stuck here making your chai and hiding your craziness from decent people?”
    “She’s here because she wants to be. And she’s a modern girl, she’ll do her own asking. Besides, she has her parents.” He jammed the chamber into the projector, hard.
    “Why is she alone? Forced to be your ayah? I don’t see her with too many choices. Do you really think she would choose this”—his upturned hands gestured towards the corners of the tent and Mirza sighed—“if there was something better on offer? She can’t stay here forever, it is not right. You should wipe your own chin for a change.” He was cut off by the noisy hum of the projector, its bright lamp blinding in the small space of the tent.
    As the slideshow began, Mirza sat silently on the edge of his bed. He had chosen the slides carefully, but there was an occasional “oh” and a muttered prayer whenever Khan Sahib noticed that someone or other was missing from a frame. “I remember that photo being taken!” he exclaimed once. As Mirza clicked through slide after slide, Khan Sahib’s fingers slid over his prayer beads; he threw his head back and laughed loudly when he saw Mirza’s uncles posing as filmi heroes. “Sshhh,” he tried to admonish his teacher, with a finger to his lips, his  eyes signaling the house where his niece might hear them, but the old man was unperturbed; a moment later, he was somber again; his fingers clicked rapidly over their worship at the sight of a beaming child who had drowned in the village pond when Mirza had himself been small.
    Mirza was no longer watching the slideshow, or his chess teacher.  He was thinking of Amal, as the little, serious girl she had once been. Of course, she was still a serious person now, perhaps more so, playing the woman of a house that did not belong to her. He glanced out at the kitchen window: there she was,  trailing him in his madness, straining to make things normal with cups of tea and clean laundry, like a Victorian housekeeper.
    He looked up to the second floor, to the bedroom he had shared with this wife. The curtains were open. He imagined her perfume, the fragrance of her hair, her things, passing one molecule at a time through the glass in the rising heat like blood draining drop by drop from a