Only a few minutes passed before the bride rose and followed him, looking furtively around herself at the men enamored with wine and at the women preoccupied with the remaining young men. She went out to the garden, concealed by the robes of night, hurrying like a terrified gazelle fleeing toward a thicket to escape hungry wolves. She reached the willow trees, and the young man was waiting. When she found herself beside him, she threw herself upon him, clung to his neck with her arms, and stared into his eyes. Then she spoke some hurried words, words pouring from her lips like the tears rushing from her eyes. “Listen, my love! Listen well. I have repented my ignorance and my haste. I have repented, Saleem, until repentance has crushed my heart. I love you, and I love no one else. I shall love you until the end of my life. They told me that you had forgotten me, that you had gone away from me, that you had fallen in love with another. They told me all that, Saleem, and their tongues poisoned my heart. Their nails tore my heart, and they filled my soul with lies. Najeeba told me that you had forgotten me, that you detested me, that you had fallen passionately in love with her. That evil woman wronged me and deceived my emotions so that I would be willing to take her kinsman as a husband. I agreed, Saleem, but I have no husband but you!

“Now, now the veil has been removed from my eyes, and I have come to you. I have left this house and I will not return to it. I have come to take you in my arms. There is no power in this world that could return me to the arms of the man whom in hatred and despair I accepted in marriage. I have abandoned the husband whom untruth chose to be my master. I have abandoned the father whom fate made my guardian. I have abandoned the flowers that the priest wove as my garland. I have abandoned the laws that custom has twisted into bonds. I have abandoned everything in this house, this house full of drunkenness and depravity. I have come to follow you to a distant land, to the ends of the earth, to the hidden houses of the jinn, into the hands of death.