Untitled chapter 1
“Women hate everything divisible.”
— Anis Mansour
I met her in the ladies’ restroom, a chance encounter as I entered to adjust my hijab, which had slipped, as it often did, revealing a rebellious chestnut lock that fluttered against my face—a sight that never failed to provoke my husband’s irritation. But the scene that greeted me there was beyond anything I could have imagined.
She lay sprawled on the cold tiles of the restroom floor, blood flowing like a relentless river between her thighs. She smoked a cigarette, utterly detached, her face calm, as if the very concept of pain or shame was foreign to her.
I knelt beside her, my body trembling—perhaps from the lingering tension of the awkward dinner I had endured earlier with my husband’s boss, or perhaps from the sheer shock of the moment. I shook her gently.
“Should I call an ambulance for you?” I asked, my voice barely steady.
She shook her head, dismissing the notion with casual indifference.
“Do you need any help?”
Without a word, she reached into the pack of cigarettes nestled between her round, bowling-ball-like breasts and handed one to me. I hesitated but took it, despite never having smoked before. Something about her—drenched in her own blood yet smoking with a sardonic smile—defied reason. It unsettled me, but it also compelled me to sit beside her, questioning everything I thought I knew.
As I watched the dark crimson threads snake across the tiles, she leaned over and lit my cigarette with a silver lighter that played a haunting snippet of Mozart’s Requiem. I coughed with each inhale, the smoke tearing through my lungs as vivid images of my husband waiting for me at the dinner table danced in my mind—a table I had no intention of joining. I laughed at the absurdity of it all, and she joined me, her laughter loud and reckless.
Then, breaking the moment, she asked with unexpected gravity, “Are you a mother?”
“No,” I replied with a sigh that escaped me before I could stop it.
She drew deeply on her cigarette, holding the smoke in her lungs for what felt like an eternity. Finally, she exhaled and said, “You should be. When you become a mother, you’ll discover a new flavor to life—like a fruit ripening, growing sweeter and more beautiful. By the way, you’re beautiful.”
Her eyes lingered on me, tracing my form with unnerving precision. I smiled at her compliment, but my smile soon curdled into a grimace as a wave of disgust at my own situation washed over me.
“Beauty,” I murmured, “can be a curse, not a blessing.”
She inhaled sharply, as if to devour the cigarette, her face a mask of defiance and despair. For a moment, I thought she might be trying to burn away her sorrows rather than simply smoke.
“Leave this misery to me,” she whispered.
Her words puzzled me, but they lingered in my thoughts, stirring a question I had long suppressed. Why hadn’t I become a mother? Three years of marriage had passed—three years of staring into the same face, hearing the same hollow voice, talking
