Status Updates From In Other Rooms, Other Wonders

Melancholy invaded him, and also peace, borne by the whirring of cicadas nestled among the rocks that punctuated the grounds of the estate.

… into their life together — the pull of her old life, of other lives. Why did he have to speak so slowly, to explain in such detail the mechanics of the sprinklers in the greenhouses?

She had believed that her personality would be subsumed in their larger personality as a couple, living into each other, but already the strangeness of the initial engagement wore off and she went back to being — exactly — herself. A little crack opened up as if in the perimeter walls of the compound at Jalpana, through which a poisonous scent, like very strong attar, overpowering, overripe, musky, seeped…

This is life, this is real and actual. This is ours.

As Murad sat facing the river, aloof, the breeze raising goosebumps on his bare arms, the towel pulled tightly around his shoulders, she felt immense tenderness toward him.

The well inside her stirred, all the sorrows of her life, the sweet thick fluid in that darkness, which always lay at the bottom of her thoughts, from which she pulled up the cool liquid and drank.

She said, “you wear me on your back, and I wear you on my face.” Her face had softened.