i s h t a r r i a........

Work was increasingly becoming the blissful haven and the umbrageous oasis in which we were fed sweet nectar. Conversely, weekends, days off, and holidays were like the desert, barren, arid and desolate. The few hours away from work each day were an excruciating drag, whereas the time at work would just speed by until the loathed but inevitable hour of our daily parting. I could do nothing to avoid the separation inflicted by the hateful weekends, but he would adamantly refuse to take his two days off in the middle of each week. If personal necessity forced him into some time off, then it wouldn’t extend beyond two or three hours, during which he would call several times on various pretexts, and eventually return to work. He thus increased his weekly working days to seven. But then, notwithstanding my sheer certainty about his daily attendance at work, my eyes would apprehensively surf the parking lot each morning on those two days, in search for what signalled his presence, his car. ...

The trace of blind jealousy that was crowned by my bashful smile and my unstoppable tears formed an instrumental ensemble for imparting openly to him, and beyond any doubt, what my shy love had been withholding. Such exuberant proclamation amounted to turning the light to an out-and-out green for him, allowing him to haunt my office for as many times as he wished and on various pretexts. First, it started with him increasing the number of his visits to two or three daily. Soon they rose to as many as five, some of which were meetings with other advisors, which he would designedly orchestrate so that they took place in my office. Or he would drop in more often than not for casual collegial chats, in which he would position himself in strategic angles that allowed him an ideal view of me. There was for me the unutterable joy of seeing him pop in for tasks he could simply achieve over the phone. But most wonderful of all were those visits that he would resourcefully fix up at those times ...

Notwithstanding its utter incongruity with my wishes and desire, an intermission has become indispensable if I am to continue with this excruciating narrative. The emotional exhaustion that I have undergone recently, particularly in the last two chapters, has taken its toll on me, and a retreat seems an unavoidable imperative. My heartfelt apologies go to all the treasured visitors of Ishtarria. I promise it won’t be long; I shall return after a short respite. I finally leave you with the few words that I insisted my dear friend Doreen leaves here on Ishtarria. Thanks Di; your friendship is like a genuine diamond, precious and hard to find... Liana __________________________ Liana has asked me, whom she has referred to briefly in her acknowledgements, to write a few words at this juncture. I hesitated at first, not wishing to intrude between the writer and her readers. But she was insistent, and in the end I thought that it may be right for me to say something. I want to say that Liana...

I sat behind my desk, ignoring him with head down, feigning business with my papers. After a few tense moments, I sensed him moving closer. He stood facing me, about two feet away from my desk. Suddenly, I heard him whispering, ‘I missed you’. After brushing me off for over two weeks, it was a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turnaround, and I just couldn’t believe my ears. I raised my head to him, unable to hide an astonished face. He was smiling; his eyes were imparting what his mouth said, and they were blazing with passion that could be hidden no longer. The hard-to-get play had seemingly rebounded on him. It didn’t seem to matter much to me at that moment how I responded to this audaciously open remark. I averted my eyes silently, however, maintaining an icy front, but progressively losing my battle as sweet and bitter emotions crushed and shattered me, obliterating what remained of my durability and resistance. I couldn’t help but dissolve into an ocean of tears, which I could no ...

I recognized back then that women bear a resemblance to shadows; they beetle off when being chased after, but they earnestly follow when being cold-shouldered. It would bring upon a woman a shattering sense of inadequacy and unimportance to discover that the intense and evident admiration she had excited had simply passed for no ostensible reason into neglect and disregard. It lacerates the pride and devastates the ego. Yet it can also stimulate, paradoxically, the flames of love, which would flare up obdurately instead of being extinguished. On reflecting back, I realize it was this back-turning demeanour that contributed in particular towards minimizing the sweat and the time that needed to be employed towards appropriating the young heart and the innocent mind. In the absence of diversity, such adroit unapproachability appeared to have attained perfectly its covert objective, without inciting the peril that may ensue from transgressing the heavy-handed regulations of this land of p...

I replied with a nod. ‘ Ma-rrahh nekh-lass , isn’t’ this gonna end at all?’ Fury cried in a jittery protective manner, and she sat next to me, assuming the mantle of an older sister. ‘What did he do this time?’ she calmly asked. Despite the tears, I found myself smiling upon hearing her say ‘this time’, which I construed to be a barb at the angst he was invariably inducing, and which seemed to be inherent to his mode of approach on his three visits. ‘Nothing’, I replied wiping out residues of tears. I didn’t want to talk about it, but she insisted. She was like one of Saddam’s hawkish investigators, extracting every single tiny detail. I recounted, and she listened. Her face was sheathed with resentment and obvious uneasiness, which she could barely smother. Her eyes were fixed deeply on me, while she was seemingly struggling futilely to repress some words that were defiantly striving to find their way out. She drew a deep breath, and began cautiously trying to put some sense into ...

Early in the morning, Sandy turned up for a brief courtesy visit and also to ensure that things were all sailing swimmingly. Al, too, popped in at the busiest hour, launching on , as was habitual for him, one of his daring jokes, but he apologized when Jack reproved him. I seemed to revert to my former mirthful mood and liveliness. ‘ Time has zoomed by’ , I thought, when I peered at my watch and realized that midday was already one hour behind. Things around the offices seemed to have pretty much eased up; Jack and Larry had already hit the road for a lengthy meeting downtown that was anticipated to outlast the normal working hours. Tom, likewise, was in another meeting with Riyadh, and Gerhard had been away for two days on a trip to Basra. Sensing a hint of fatigue, I got up from my chair, and stood to the side stretching my back and arms with left and right twists and turns, and then took a trip to the water-cooler to stretch my legs. When I returned with a ‘ration’ of a cup of cold...