After listening patiently, Asrar asked, ‘Is this the same Yaqoob we were talking about the other day?’

‘Yes. May god give him a place in heaven. Had he not taken revenge, we would have been living in fear till now.’

Asrar did not reply.

That night he dreamt that Mumbai was burning. The flames were spreading everywhere and he was lying on one side of the road covered in blood and his soul was about to depart when Hina ran towards him and looked into his eyes. Suddenly the dream changed. Blood was oozing from one of his eyes. Hina removed a rose from her bun and placed it on his eye. He felt that the rose cured his eye and it stopped bleeding. He wanted to see her with both his eyes, but she was nowhere to be found. He was surrounded by glittering smoke. He then saw that his body had become very frail, and he was flying among the clouds. The direction he was moving towards was darker.

He tried recalling the dream many times on Friday, but he couldn’t. He only remembered that Hina had placed a rose on his eye.

He woke up at five in the morning on Saturday.

He kept thinking about Hina while lying on the bed. He started guessing the colour of her clothes. Where would he see her? How would he greet her? What would he talk about? What questions would she ask and what answers would she give?

He spent the entire day looking at the clock. He felt that its arms were being deliberately lazy and slow. The time in which the watch completed five minutes that day was equivalent to an hour on a normal day. He pulled out a perfume from his pocket called mogra and applied it all over, fearing that he might forget doing so in a hurry. He had carried his toothbrush along to work. He brushed his teeth in the bathroom after lunch. He had already combed his hair a couple of times and stared at himself in the mirror for long. There was a pimple above his right eye, and he had tried removing it with his nail but unfortunately it had swollen even more. Asrar thought that Mohammad Ali might notice his anxiety and comment on it, but he was busy working.

After completing his work, Asrar remained lost in thought for some time and then went and stood in front of Mohammad Ali at around 5.30 p.m. Mohammad Ali looked at him and said, ‘Do return early to the room. We will go out somewhere.’

‘Inshallah,’ Asrar uttered and went out of the shop.