Chapter 9: Tauba Ka Waqt
The call to prayer had long faded into the pre-dawn stillness, but Usman remained. The prayer mat was an island. The dim, candlelit alcove was his only sanctuary. Here, in the scent of old sandalwood and worn wool, he could almost believe the last two nights were a fever dream. He pressed his forehead into the familiar texture of the mat, the Arabic script embroidered there brushing his skin. In the sajdah—the prostration—he was meant to feel closest to God. Now, he only felt the hollow ache of his own collapse.
He was repeating a third cycle of voluntary prayers, his lips moving silently over the verses, seeking a numbness no verse could provide. His knees ached. His back, still feeling the ghost of her oiled touch, was a tense rod.
The door opened on silent hinges.
He knew it was her. The air changed, growing denser, warmer. A new scent cut through the incense: clean sweat, and underneath, something skin-warmed and subtly sweet. He didn’t move. He couldn’t break his prostration. It was his shield.
He heard the soft rustle of fabric. A quiet, deliberate step onto the Persian rug.
Her shadow fell across the mat, blotting out the candle’s glow. He squeezed his eyes shut. Perhaps if he did not move, she would become a mirage. Perhaps he could pray her away.
Then he felt it. The heat of her body, close. The touch, not of hands, but of something softer, more intimate. She was lowering herself onto him. He gasped into the mat, a sound muffled by wool and desperation.
Suhu settled her weight onto his lowered back, straddling him as he remained frozen in sajdah. She wore only a tight, black sports bra and a pair of sheer, discarded shorts pooled near the door. The damp, hot center of her pressed against the ridge of his spine, separated only by the thin cotton of his kameez. She was dripping. He could feel the wetness seep through the fabric, a shocking brand against his vertebrae.
“Don’t stop praying, Dadu,” she whispered, her voice a low thrum that vibrated through his body. “Finish your rakat.”
She began to move. A slow, grinding roll of her hips, sliding her slickness along his back. The friction was obscene. He trembled, a full-body shiver that started in his knees and rattled up his chest. His forehead stayed glued to the prayer mat, his hands splayed beside his head. He was pinned, not just by her weight, but by the blasphemy of it. Trapped between heaven and hell.
“You’re so tense,” she murmured, leaning forward. Her small, firm breasts in the sports bra pressed against his shoulder blades. Her breath was hot on his ear. “This is a kind of prayer, too, isn’t it? Surrender.”
He tried to form a word, a denial. Only a groan came out. His hips gave an involuntary, shameful jerk against the empty mat beneath him.
“See?” she said, her voice bright with cruel discovery. “Your body knows. It wants to pray with me.”
Her hands slid from his shoulders down his arms, her fingers lacing with his where they rested in prayer position. She pulled his hands back, forcing his posture to arch deeper, pressing her cunt more firmly against him. The movement was stark, brutal in its symbolism. She was dismantling his prayer, muscle by muscle.
“Allah will forgive us, na Dadu?” she breathed into his ear, her tongue flicking the lobe. “He’s the Most Merciful. And this… this is just nature. Just a granddaughter helping her grandfather… connect.”
The word ‘connect’ was a serpent’s hiss. She rocked harder, her rhythm becoming more urgent. The soft, wet sounds of her flesh against his shirt filled the silent room, louder than any recited verse. Usman felt a pressure building, a terrifying, unstoppable wave of sensation that had nothing to do with will and everything to do with the animal reality of her heat on his back, her whispers in his ear, the complete annihilation of his world.
“I can feel you shaking,” she panted, her own breath becoming ragged. “Does it feel good? To be this close to sin?It must. You haven’t told me to stop. You haven’t moved an inch.”
He hadn’t. He was paralyzed, a tableau of deviance. Tears of shame welled in his eyes, soaking into the prayer mat beneath his cheek. His own traitorous body was responding, a thick, aching hardness pressed against the floor, a physical betrayal that shattered the last of his dignity.
Suhu’s movements became frantic, her grinding losing its deliberate control. She released one of his hands and reached between her own legs, her fingers working in quick, circular motions against herself as she rode the rigid line of his spine. Her moans were short, sharp gasps that echoed off the Quranic verses framed on the walls.
“Fuck… yes… right there…” she cursed, the filthy words sacrilege in the holy space. “Take my weight… take it all…”
Her climax hit her silently, a sudden, taut rigidity that locked every muscle in her body. She pressed down onto him with a force that drove the air from his lungs, her head thrown back, a silent scream etched on her face in the candlelight. He felt the violent pulsing of her through the fabric, a series of wet, hot clenches against his back.
For a long moment, the only sound was her ragged breathing and the distant cry of a waking crow.
Slowly, she slumped forward, her sweat-slicked torso molding to his back. She nuzzled his neck, placing a soft, almost chaste kiss on his damp skin.
Then she pushed herself up and off him. Usman collapsed, his limbs finally giving way. He rolled onto his side, curling into a fetal position on the mat, his soiled back to her. He could not look at her. Could not look at the room. The dawn’s first golden rays sliced through the half-open window, illuminating the swirling dust in the air, the spilled candle wax, the shame written in the lines of his body.
Suhu stood over him, pulling her sports bra back into place. She looked down at his crumpled form, her expression unreadable. She picked up her shorts, stepped into them, and then leaned down, her voice calm and conversational.
“Fajr is over, Dadu,” she said. “Time for breakfast. Ammi is making parathas.”
She padded out of the prayer room on bare feet, leaving the door open.
Usman lay there as the sun rose, the light exposing every threadbare patch in the rug, every speck of dust on the shelves. The scent of sandalwood was gone, overtaken by the salty, musky smell of sex and sweat. His prayer mat was stained. His spine was damp.
In the distance, he heard the clatter of pans, Zarine’s voice calling something about ghee. The house was waking up. His world had ended, and life, obscenely, was continuing around the crater he now occupied. He drew a shuddering breath, but no prayer came. The words had all abandoned him.