Free The World We Found by Thrity Umrigar

glance for a moment. “I don’t know,” she whispered. Then she recovered. “Of course I would. Where else could I go?” Her voice took on a forced gaiety. “After all, a woman’s place is by her husband, as my dear mother-in-law reminds me at least once a day.”
    There was another short silence and then Nishta got up reluctantly from the couch. “You know, I could talk to you for a year and still my stomach wouldn’t get full. But I have to go pick up Zenobia from her typing class.” Seeing their blank faces, she said, “Iqbal’s niece. Her parents are in Dubai, so she lives with my mother-in-law. She’s sixteen. Iqbal doesn’t like her to walk home alone, even during the day. So I have to go. I’m so sorry.”
    Kavita couldn’t bear the thought of parting from Nishta so soon. “How about if we hang out until you come back home?” she asked. “And then maybe we can go out for a chai or something?”
    Nishta bit her lower lip. “I’m sorry, yaar,” she mumbled. “Iqbal doesn’t like me to leave the house once I pick up Zenobia. As it is, I’ll have to stop and buy the groceries on our way back. And then I have to start cooking dinner for the family.”
    Laleh looked stricken but Kavita nudged her and rose to her feet in one graceful motion. “It’s fine,” she said smoothly, signaling Laleh with her eyes to also rise. “We understand. We’ll just walk out with you, okay?”
    Nishta hesitated. “If you don’t mind, you two leave first. My mother-in-law sits at her balcony all day long. And even though she claims her eyesight is bad, she keeps an eye on all my goings and comings. And I—I haven’t decided yet when I’ll tell Iqbal about this visit.”
    Laleh looked like she was about to argue but Kavita spoke first. “No problem,” she said. “But we’ll see you soon, yes?”
    “I’ll give you my mobile number,” Nishta said. “And let me have yours.”
    Ten minutes later, they were outdoors again, their eyes adjusting to the ferocious glare of the afternoon sun. “God,” Laleh said as soon as they were on the street. “She’s like a prisoner in her home.” She dug through her purse for her sunglasses. “Could you believe that picture of Iqbal? What the hell?”
    Kavita didn’t reply, distracted as she was by one incessant thought. The small apartment they had just left reminded her of the jail cell where she and Nishta had spent the night after their arrest. She had never seen the inside of a jail again, had made sure that she never would. Whereas Nishta had apparently spent the rest of her life in one. And the bitterest irony was that it was Iqbal, Iqbal , who was her jailer.
    Over the years, she had worked hard to suppress the memories of that horrific night. But now she remembered the suffocating, claustrophobic feeling. The panic and the desperation. We have to get Nishta out of this place, Kavita thought. It would be a repudiation of everything we once were, to abandon her now.

Chapter 7
    A rmaiti stood in the middle of her lush backyard, feeling the soft earth beneath her feet. Her eyes followed the movement of a gray squirrel madly chasing another. The sun felt like a warm, steady hand on her back. The morning silence was so deep, it felt audible to her, like those high-frequency whistles only dogs could hear. This is the world, she thought, and I am here in it. I am here. In this time. And then she caught herself, caught the thoughts that tilted toward morbidity and self-pity, saw the clichéd direction in which they were headed—woman with six months to live finally learns to live in the moment—and felt a rush of embarrassment and anger. Whatever the tumor did to her, whatever it whittled her away to, she would not allow it to reduce her to a cliché. There would be no deathbed conversions, no New Age transformations, no spiritual awakenings. She would not permit it. She would not.
    She brought the little Rubbermaid stool from the garage and placed it in front of