• 4 •
One day, pain seemed to start lurching around. Ambhika Bisswass was taken away. Her name had been changed to Khansaa, just as I had been renamed Naanaah and Merikar had been renamed Misbaha. Even the Muslims among us, who were not unbelievers, had their familiar names replaced with other quite complicated ones like Dhat al-Nourein, Suhaiba, or Umm Emran.
It seemed that the glorious revolution, or the glorious destruction, was complete, and the gasps of women were needed to redouble the exhilaration – the exhilaration that comes when you raze a safe and secure city, when you kill people who had no aspirations but were simply people, and when you hold sway like bats roosting in desolate ruins. Whatever the case, it really marked a strange beginning to start with a heavily pregnant wo
