She took a last sip of the golden liquid, finishing the whole bottle, till she lost all sensation and wept. What was her reason to live? Or did she live at all this vaporous life, this entanglement of incomprehensible dimensions? Her red lipstick outlining her thin lips, her clear eyes clouded, her auburn hair tautly pulled back, she drew in her lungs the cold air that expatiated her brittle chest and mimicked tripping, so if there was some instinctive commotion that would cause her to waiver, would not take place. The chair fell down and the rope coiled her neck like a mamba. Her body pulled her down and the rope pulled her up, playing a little tug-of-war with her delicate neck. But the rope broke just in time. She fell down. Her forehead and lips bled. She gasped for air but her mental passive questioned the involuntary reflex. Why was she to breathe when what she breathed for was unclear to her? She pushed her palms against the floor to get up, wobbled and lost her balance, landing her fingers on a table, a razor’s blades cut through her fingers.

No, no! She shook her wounded hand in exasperation and pain, and gave in to tears again.

Behn chod!—she said, as she feverishly clicked a lighter, whose flickering flame would go off whenever she brought a cigarette near. She finally lit it up and inhaled but the vexation could not be numbed.

No memories came to her, no vivid imagery, no plays of color, no seraph of Death, but she knew she had to die. She had to, because life had lost all meaning. She had left Sind in search of employment. A vision, she was—a ballerina stature, with exaggerated curves, toned belly and thighs, ‘those lips and eyes’—as admitted by whoever in the village had seen her raise her burqa. When she moved to Lahore, however, she took her burqa off too many times. It paid her good. The rougher it was, the more she was paid. She used her religion as a tool: if a Muslim knew she was Christian, it was bound to be rough. But she was able to fill her family’s stomachs, and that is what counted. The alcohol, the cigarettes kept the world hazy enough for her to bear the molestation, the raping, the scratching, the roughage and exploitation. The haze separated her from reason but now she was sober and she had no one to feed—the flood had taken them away.

Now that she was thinking, nothing made sense.

All those induced abortions, the pain, the torture, the torment and horror, for whom?

Her kids? Her blind husband? No, the flood had taken them away.
And her sins? Would God understand?
God, who? She could not make sense of Him anymore.

For the sole reason of existence? Existence and material life made no sense if she did not believe in Him.

The walls closed onto her and she fled the house. She put one foot in the water, then another. She walked into it and let the water take her like it took her family. She closed her eyes in peace that maybe she would find the answer to life.

Maybe.