“She wouldn’t have asked. Divorced women are looked down on as having done something wrong. And she’d already lowered herself by marrying me.”
“How could she think like that?!” Fern couldn’t even comprehend such a thing.
“Because of what I was. Illegitimate with tainted blood. Birthing Tariq was her duty and she fulfilled it, but when I say she gave him to me, I mean it. It was like he had contaminated her. She didn’t breastfeed him, didn’t care for him. I changed him and gave him his bottles along with the nanny.”
She found herself shaking her head, the new mother in her feeling the cleave in her heart at the thought of anyone rejecting a helpless infant. “Amineh said you always talk about her like you loved her—”
“Amineh has no idea. No one does,” he said with a snap of impatience. “Do you think I want Tariq to know his mother felt nothing toward him? Reviled him as much as she was repulsed by me?”
Fern’s heart broke for the boy and the man. “Oh, Zafir. I’ll never breathe a word to him, I swear.” She would, in fact, do everything in her power to be the mother Tariq should have had. “But I can’t believe anyone would look down on either of you for anything, especially something you couldn’t help!”
He said nothing, only stared back into the harem, jaw pulsing with tension, brooding.
“So you didn’t even try for more children? You love Tariq so much. I can’t imagine you not wanting more.”
He choked out a laugh, following it with a pained pinch of the bridge of his nose.
“I couldn’t bring myself to try. Our wedding night— It was awkward, obviously. We didn’t know each other. She was a virgin. I thought she was just bashful. I did everything I could to make it nice for her. I stopped more than once, aware she wasn’t responding, but she insisted...”
He dropped his hands to his sides and closed them into fists, swallowed, his mouth a line of disgust. “I thought the second time might be better, but I felt like some kind of monster. It was just wrong. I wound up leaving before we were even naked. I couldn’t work out where I’d gone wrong. I carried that. I agonized for weeks. Just when I found the nerve to talk to her about it, she turned up pregnant and made it clear there was no need for me to touch her again. She delivered a boy and, aside from one night when Tariq went into hospital with a bad fever, never offered herself to me again.”
“What do you mean. She actually came to you...? What did you say?”
“I asked her if she wanted another child. She said no, and I said I hoped he would be fine. He was.”
“She sounds so mean,” Fern breathed, hurting for him. Here were the shades of suffering she’d seen in Amineh that she’d thought Zafir too strong to feel, but of course he felt it. He was just better at hiding it.
“I don’t think she was capable of sexual feelings for me. There is a lot of prejudice in this world and I was subjected to it from both sides of my life. I know what it looks like and that’s what it was. She was pressured to marry me for my position and her father’s political gain. She saw herself as a martyr.”
“Zafir, I’m so sorry.” She went across to him, setting a light hand on his arm. “I can’t believe anyone would not see what a remarkable man you are and feel privileged to be near you.”
His face spasmed with emotion. Hooking his arm around her, he pulled her in close, one hand crushing into her hair as he pressed his mouth to her temple for a long moment.