The Colour Turquoise

When Nafeesa was a little girl, she dreamt of becoming a warrior, a warrior princess, fully clad in turquoise. She would look out the window of her shack, located somewhere in the middle of unmanned deserts of a village in Rajasthan. She would dream of pink and red flowers blooming in lush green gardens, blanketed by the turquoise sky. She would dream of cool breeze grazing against her innocent, naked body. She would wish for her bruises, the red scars on her marble like-skin to fade away. She would dream of dolls and paper boats and rains and the glowing sun. She hardly ever had a chance to get a good look at them. She would think of all that which was far, far away, out of her reach.

Her world has eclipsed. Nafeesa’s abbu had married her off to a man thrice her age. She had to live in a room that was shackled just like her body would be, every now and then, by hands that were boisterous and reeked of tar and alcohol. These hands handled her often, in a way; her soul would have otherwise craved for, had it not been for the malady in those hands. The sadistic sexual malady.

Her husband worked in an oil factory in the nearby village. He earned what he earned for his gut to earn alcohol. He would come back at night, to refuse the chapati duly served to him, only to drink some more alcohol. He would drink and drink until he could not make sense of his own senses. He would thrash her into submission and then she would fell ate him. Close to swooning, he would sometimes hammer into her private parts, making them bleed, her turquoise bangles piercing right into her bloodless, purple veins of her wrist. Both the husband and the wife would pass out, one from the sheer loss of sense, the other from an utter gain of fright. This was a routine, the part and parcel of Nafeesa’s life. All the pumping and the fisting and the kneading on her body had scarred everything that was benign in her. Still, she continued to dream of the sky wrapped in turquoise.

Nafeesa is fifteen now. Five years of her nikah and yet her daily routine has undergone no change. She has, though, started to bleed. She is almost a little woman now. Her abbu and ammi, as it seems, has forgotten her but she still remembers and recalls what it’s like to be a child, what it was like for her to be their child. Nafeesa dreams of having a child of her own, a baby girl. Tiny little fingers moving to find hers, hazel eyes shining to wet hers, hued lips smiling to melt her. She dreams of walking her, running behind her little butt, her daughter’s banter echoing in the emptiness of the spaces in her house. She dreams of laughing and crying as little Nafeesa would. She dreams of dressing her up in the color turquoise...