The Smile of Dinah

I am not crazy yet I see rainbows stretched across the horizon and smell the blood day and night. I can’t scratch her smile – the smile of Dinah – off my mind. She seems gazing at me with a mockingly triumphant smile, face drenched in blood, eyes fixed upon me as if saying,’ You are a lair, dastard, unfaithful retard.’ I try to avoid for I have nothing to tell in reply.

It was one cold afternoon when I summoned Dinah. She sat across the table, facing me like they do in an interrogation room. I didn’t know where to begin from. I sighed. Complete calmness had enveloped the room. I sighed again. She looked at me smiling, fiddling with her rainbow bracelet. Can’t say what her smile carried that moment. Sarcasm? Sympathy? Though it was annoying to the core. I sighed once again. She lit the cigarette and puffed smoke into my face. The clouds of smoke parted from her luscious lips left me in a fit of cough. I cleared my throat and sighed.

‘Darn it!’ I mumbled. ‘I am sighing like a…’

‘Loser’, she completed my barely audible sentence.

‘I hate you sometimes Dinah.’

‘So?’ She uttered indifferently leaning back in the chair.

‘I am a Muslim.’

‘So?’

‘I’d be disowned if… if I didn’t… purge myself.’

‘So?’ She yawned.

I grew silent. I despised her totally non-sense, irritating ‘so’. I knew Dinah was a very obstinate person. Changing her mind wouldn’t be facile. The wave of suffocation engulfed me and I stood up like a shot, looked around at the grey walls and took a deep breath.

‘You are in pain!’

‘More than you can imagine.’

‘You knew what you were getting into… now face it dauntlessly.’

‘Huh! Easier said than done!’

I settled into the chair in that windowless room. Shoulders slumped. Head tilted to the left in a reverie. My heart, the ruffled, demented heart began to shuffle all the terrific moments spent with Sofia. Her name brightened my eyes. As her thoughts seeped into my mind I began to feel delight wrapped up in distress. Type of emotion you feel when you love someone dearly but you know is beyond your reach.

‘Ah! Sofia, the love of my life, the splendor of my eyes, call me coward, call me mean but not an unfaithful. You could never explore the depths of my heart to know what you mean to me.�

‘Cowardice is equal to unfaithfulness.’ Dinah commented, running fingers through long layers of her hair.

‘Stop rubbing salt into my wounds.’

‘Wounds?! There would have been none had you been able to take on the world.’

Dinah’s words, I must say, pinch. They sting as if hundreds of bees are clinging to my skin not letting go any opportunity to insert the poisonous, thorny needles in every single pore they find.

‘Sofia’, I inhale and exhale that name. I can’t tell what’s special about her. I think the fact alone that I madly love her and so does she is enough to make her special. I’ve spent my life’s brightest, wittiest and remarkable time with her. It was tough to imagine a day without her. I would shed my cocoon to be myself in her company. The real me, cracking wicked jokes, teasing her while our thunderous laughter making the whole environment enliven. It was as if she dragged me out of the crypt into the mirthful life.

‘You seem lost?’ Dinah derailed my thoughts.

‘I am trying to collect…’

‘Memories? Or the pieces of your duteous conscious?’

Dinah’s dissing. She should be helping but adamant souls are hard to handle. I’m caught between desire and duty. Right and wrong. Morality and immorality. Everything seems so inferior, inconsequential compared to love. Someone had rightly said there is a very thin line between platonic and physical love. The line begins to blur when emotions soar. Don’t know how that line diminished and never for a moment had I repented. It feels great to be in your lover’s embrace. The feeling stays with you for eons, like a frozen moment captured on the canvas. I shut my eyes to recall the tenderness of her lips. Mother… instead, she appeared. Crossed, indignant, outraged. After all she is a mother. A typical one who found it next to impossible to approve of my relationship.

‘But we are Muslims honey.’ She said in tears as if I didn’t know we were. The next thing I remember hearing a big, fat lecture on chastity, the institution of marriage and our no drinking, no smoking values. She coaxed. I didn’t budge. She cried hysterically. I didn’t cringe. She threatened. I walked out.

I kept on meeting with Sofia. She asked me to elope. I promised. It was raining that afternoon when I got back home daydreaming about our independent, gleeful life that was awaiting us. As I stepped in, I found the entire house buzzing with myriad of voices. Uncles, their gossiping wives, aunts, their obedient men, cousins of all ages were whispering in alarmingly low tones. As they set their eyes on me, everyone fell silent as if they turned into stone. You know that is why I hate small towns where all the relatives live only a stone’s throw from each other and don’t miss a single piece of news or rumor doing rounds in the family. But mother had told them everything… intentionally… I read that on her face as her eyes failed to meet mine, despite knowing how much I hated that. They gave sermon, each one of them. Dull and lengthy. They preached considering it their holiest duty. When they left by midnight I was drained. My courage had been totally depleted. The next day when I was walking down the street, I felt everyone was behaving like a klutz, avoiding me as if I was a leper even Mrs. Ikram’s dog seemed to be barking differently. I hated being treated like a fucking pariah.

‘She must have waited long. You chicken!’ Dinah broke the chain of my thoughts in her typical piercing manner.

‘Gutless… I am.’ I said struggling to maintain equanimity. She was getting on my nerves. Her presence was choking. Her guilt trips were exceeding.

‘Sordid is the word.’ She hissed.

‘Cut it out!’ I yelled almost breaking down.

‘You are nothing but an unpleasant, miserable loser.’

I completely lost it. ‘Stop it you bitch, my head’s bursting!’ I grabbed the chair and hit it hard on Dinah’s temple. She fell down; her face covered with blood looked terribly horrible. Her eyes were fixed on me, lips curved in the painfully mysterious smile. I stood still. Somewhat shocked, somewhat mourning!



A few weeks after that meeting, I am sitting crossed leg like a yogi in the corner of the backyard, facing the woods. Spring is in full bloom. It’s a new beginning, a new life for everything around. But I am so apathetic. I hear someone calling me from the other side of the tunnel. ‘Dinah!’… ‘Dinah!’

‘Yes?’ My voice sounded disgustingly hollow.

‘Let’s get inside. It’s getting cold.’

‘Okay… mother.’

I started after her like a zombie. Things were successfully straighten out. But don’t know why those eyes keep staring at me. The desiring Dinah is dead long ago but it’s hard to get over her smile – the smile so haunting and sadistic.