“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, I do. I never knew your father, but I think he gave you bad advice. Passion can be an arrow in your moral compass, guiding you to feel how you ought to feel in certain situations. Passion at injustice stirs us to fix things, to effect change. You can’t tell me you didn’t feel passion tonight when you were listening to those people?”
“On the contrary, Amy: I was calm, because that’s what they needed me to be. If I had grown angry about the young girl who had been thrown out of her home for wanting to go to university, do you think I would have been able to help her? If I had demanded her parents be brought to me to explain their actions, would that have achieved anything?”
Heat simmers in my blood.
“Passion is the indulgence of an undisciplined mind; it doesn’t – and will never – serve me.”
“So when you had my father expelled from this country, you did it from a place of calm? You did it because you were rational and you believed he deserved that fate?”
Something sparks between us, a dark, electric frustration.
“I have already answered this question.”
I shake my head. “No, you haven’t.”
“I make every decision with a rational mind, determined only to act in my country’s best interests. Your father left me little choice.”
“I don’t believe you.”
For a second I feel as though he’s going to say something, something sharp and angry, but he simply shrugs as though none of this matters to him much at all. “I know, little one. Your defensiveness of your father is to your credit. But if you were to remove passion and look at this situation calmly, you would see the truth. Do I strike you as a petty, vindictive man? Do you think I would have expelled your father lightly, or for my own personal gain, without solid evidence that it was the best course of action?”
My stomach twists and swirls. I feel as though the ground is swallowing me. Instinctively I reject his question but not quickly enough. Tendrils of doubt bleed through me, grabbing hold of my heart and stinging it with uncertainty.
“I did not want to exile him, Amy.” He lifts a hand to my chest, pressing his palm to my heart. “This country is in my blood, as it is in his, and every other person who was born a Qabidi. As it is in yours. I would not inflict his fate on anyone lightly. I tried to avoid it. In the end, I had no choice.”
His words dive into the cracks my own doubt has formed. “I don’t believe you.” But my voice lacks tenacity and fire. It says the exact opposite.
“I think you’re starting to.”
Damn him for being so perceptive! He pads a thumb over my lower lip, an intimate gesture that makes my heart stammer, but I shake my head in fierce rejection. “There aren’t many things I’ve sure of in life, Zahir,” I say thickly. “But that my father is good is one of them. That my father is innocent is a cornerstone of my own belief structure. Unless you have evidence that you can show me, to refute that, then I will always support him.”
Zahir
Tell her. Show her the truth. Make her see that the man she defends plotted to kill you!
But I can’t, and for all the reasons she’s just given me. That my father is innocent is a cornerstone of my own belief structure. I cannot take that away from her. I won’t hurt her like that.
It’s not necessary. I don’t need her to believe me in order to achieve my aim. She’s my wife, and already I can feel her presence at my side serving as a turning point in this region. Wanting her to believe me would be a selfish indulgence – a desire to have her ‘on my side’ for the sheer sake of wanting her support.
That’s stupid and emotional and I won’t give into it.
“Evidence is unnecessary, Amy.”
Her eyes soften, and I don’t know if it’s because she’s relieved or frustrated.
“The past is in the past – neither of us has the power to go back and change what happened then.”
“But would you, if you could?” She pushes, her voice trembling. I see how important this is to her. She needs to believe in her father, but she wants to believe in me, too. She’s looking for a way to forgive me.
I ignore her question. “This marriage will achieve what you want most in the world: your father’s return. That’s the best that can come out of this. So rejoice in the decision you have made, without questioning mine again.”
10
Amy
I HATE HIM. I REALLY, really hate him.