I want to blame my behavior on the heat, which was heavy, pressing in, juicing me like a lemon. That or the wine. I have never been a skilled drinker. Remember, please, the tenseness of the moment. The images of broken bodies seared behind our eyelids. The paranoia of invisible ears always listening, always growing. And the beatings we were still recovering from. I’ve never been hit so hard in my life. My brothers always pulled their punches. The Virtue Keepers did not. All this is to say, there were reasons why I was not on my best behavior.

“Slow down a bit, yeah?” said Adil, nudging me gently in the side.

I finished my glass. It was my fourth, maybe fifth. My throat was starting to smart from the acidity. But at least my hands had stopped shaking. That was reason enough to keep going.

“Keep your eye on somebody else.” My voice sounded steady to my ears. Loud, but steady. “Watch Moeed’s hands. Look—they’re wandering again.”

For that, I got another jab—this time harder.

There were seven of us in attendance, seven so-called leaders. The Saturday before, there were nine. We’d lost a teacher, Ram, and a housemaid, whose name I’m ashamed to say I have forgotten.

Rice steamed on our plates, untouched. We were thirsty, not hungry.

Amina sat with her hands folded in her lap, calm amidst the chaos.

“You ever wonder if she’s praying?” I made a weak attempt at a whisper. The truth was I wanted her to hear me. “Wouldn’t that be rich.”

“Don’t start,” said Adil, without looking at me.

I knew Amina Shahid did not pray. She had famously served seven years in a lightless cell for refusing to do so during her own college commencement. Then three more for wearing her tattooed arms bare within sanctified grounds. I remember reading about the latter in the newspaper. The girlfriend I was with at the time pushed the article under my nose, said Amina would be the one to change everything.

“Did she need to make her mom’s memorial service into a political stunt? It’s a little inappropriate, no?”

This turned out to be an extremely unpopular take. Everyone, enemies and friends alike, seemed to marvel at how Amina kept her sanity through her two imprisonments. If you ask me, she didn’t.

“We have to lick our wounds and move on,” I heard her saying to her neighbor at the table. Samine nodded, her face assuming a grave expression that seemed a little put on. “The next demonstration will be along New Trunk Road.” Our friends’ bodies were still cooling down in the morgue and Amina was already moving on, her mind whirring hummingbird-like, planning her next spectacle, because she had to, because stillness might kill her. “We’ll need to find a new source for amplifiers and other electronics, megaphones, that sort of thing. We lost eight amps last week. Gio’s stash was raided too, so he’s got nothing. Or so he says. He seemed jittery when I saw him. Maybe he’s just lost his nerve. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Gio’s the good kind,” said Samine.

“Oh and just word of mouth this time. Give people the date and place, nothing too specific. I’m still not sure how safe the digital outreach is. It seemed to work this time, but the VK might’ve let us have that one, feel like we got away with it, you know? Word of mouth is safer.”

As she spoke, all other conversations waned. The room was hers. When she was done, no one had anything to add. My knuckles rolled restlessly through the quiet that followed.

Even if they were here now, the others still wouldn’t admit that none of them wanted a new plan—they wanted a punching bag. Someone to hate, other than the VK or their patron on his cobalt throne. Something smaller. Bite-sized. So I let them have me. Isn’t that a kind of martyrdom?

It was for them, in a way, that I let my mouth run all night, ranting first about the food—called it shit—then about the dog—questioned its pedigree—and finally about the photos of our host's grandparents—words not worth repeating, even now. But things only reached a fever pitch when I started going after Moeed and Samine.

“Are you sneaking away already?” My voice, even when questioning, came out like a bark.

Moeed had peeled his coat from his chair ever so slowly—like he thought we wouldn’t notice. Samine was tipping cheek to cheek, like she was kissing her chair goodbye—restless.

“Sorry?” Moeed asked, a hairline fracture running through his sweet voice. Poor boy. He suffered from such easy color, his cheeks ripening before our very eyes. I think of him most of all, the beauty lost.

You see, Moeed’s wife was at home, in bed with a wet towel over her eyes. Tear gas takes a while to recuperate from. Samine, on the other hand, was here and more than available. Don’t get me wrong, I was not offended by Moeed’s philandering. Despite what people say about me, I am not a convert or a prude. That is not why I did what I did. Moeed’s cheating made sense in fact. With death drooling down our necks, we needed every bit of life we could get our hands on. He was, however, an easy target.

“Don’t worry—this is a safe space. The blinds are closed. Our phones at home. No one’s listening, but us of course.” My voice kept getting louder and louder. There was no stopping it.

“I really don’t—” His fingers tightened around the lapel of his coat.

“Don’t be shy.”

“Alma is still on the men—”

“Play, Moeed! Play along! A little rough housing won’t kill us. Look—there’s room on Amina’s carpet for a little tussle.”

I felt Amina’s stare like a spider climbing up my neck. She had a way of looking at people that made them want to correct themselves, straighten their backs, apologize. I resisted her stare better than most, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t affect me at all.

“I need something to distract me from this heat,” I said. Sweat dripped, brackish, stinging my eyes.

I blinked.

That brief darkness was all it took for me to fall into nightmare and memory; Amina on top of a car, megaphone to her lips, voice pouring out like oil. Slick. The pop pop of a gun. Bodies vaulting over her. Not running. Not hiding. Throwing themselves between her and the bullets. Boys, girls, practically babes, their eyes fixed on her as if she were salvation itself. As if dying for her was enough.

It was not enough.

I shook my head, a wet dog—scattering.

“Please!” 

“We don’t like the way you play,” said Amina—her voice almost patient. The room settled around her words. She didn’t have to say the rest. We don’t like the way you talk. The way you think. The way you are. The way your knees shake.

“Then open the blinds.” My gestures were wild. Only then did I really appreciate my drunkness. My fingers curled into tight fists, clenching onto the last of my wits.

“Can we lower the volume a bit,” said Adil. His ears hadn’t stopped ringing for years. Not since he was hit in the back of the skull with a VK’s nightstick. That was not my fault.

“Not in this heat!”

I knew why the blinds were closed. And if someone, Adil, Moeed, even Amina, had actually moved to open them, I would’ve been the first to jump up and slam them shut. What I mean to say is that all this bluster was just that—bluster. I was providing circulation in a room filled with stale air.

“See, I stop, and the world pauses on its axis.”

“Give us a moment,” Amina said and the room bent to her voice. “We are still recovering.”

Her words made my blood pump harder into the bruises on my back. I could feel the blue of my skin turning black.

“You’re recovering?” I coughed up some wine, staining my white shirt. The red rorschach stain startled me. I was seeing death in everything. A boy riddled with holes. A girl, eyes so wide, but without any light.

Then there was a hand on my shoulder and I was back. The dinner. The heat. Adil was looking down at me through his round spectacles, the only one smiling.

“I’ve got the cigars you like. Come outside and smoke one with me.”

It was the way you talk to a baby or a dog. Dangle some food over their heads. That night, I was a dog. I’ve said that. I admit it.

“Do you ever wonder why we can’t keep the dust off the street?” I asked. Within minutes of being outside, my black shoes had collected a layer of grime. “I went to Tharsis when I was young. Garbage everywhere, just like here. But none of this red dust. I feel it in the back of my throat, I swear. You can’t breathe here.”

“I always thought it had something to do with the dry climate. That and all the construction. Tharsis is old and finished. Wetter too.”

I sighed. “Sometimes I don’t want answers. I just want to complain.” I ran a hand over my face. “It’s unnerving, really—screaming into the void and having it scream back.”

Adil huffed a quiet laugh. “You’re in a mood.”

I don’t know how I earned this man’s affections. Maybe because I never tried. I didn’t care enough to weasel my way into his good graces, to flatter him, to feign interest in his tweed jackets. Maybe that was enough.

He exhaled, slow. “Do you know how you look when she speaks?”

I tilted my head. “No, but I have a feeling you’re going to tell me.”

“Like you want to tear something apart.”

I snorted. “That’s not how it feels.”

“Then how does it feel?”

I rubbed at my temple. “I can’t be articulate right now.”

He clipped the tip off a cigar and handed it to me.

“Do you ever miss prayer?" I said, before lighting up. The smoke filled my lungs—made me feel full and whole.

“No.” Adil’s voice hardened around this word. I don’t know his story, even now. He never offered it up and I never asked.

“I do. Sometimes. Do you hate me now?” My hand was shaking again.

“No.”

“She hates me because she knows I don’t hate religion. Not completely.”

“That’s not true.”

“You know what’s funny? Last Saturday, when I thought I was going to die, I prayed. There we were, literally dying to say fuck you to their religion, and I’m lying there, thinking about God and my mom and the smell of burning incense.”

I watched the way his fingers tapped against his thigh, measured and steady. Counting something.

I looked at my hands, unable to meet his eyes, suddenly flooded with shame.

“Don’t know how much I’m willing to lose.”

"We’ve all had to give something up. Clothes. Names. Faces. Amina had to change her hair after last month’s march."

“Hair. Hair is nothing.”

“I know it’s not what you want to hear, but I believe in her.” He met my gaze then, holding it just a second too long. “It’s easier than believing in myself.”

There was something careful in the way he said it, something weighted. I didn’t press him for more. Instead, I let the silence settle, thick as the dust in the streets.

On my walk home, I looked up at all the buildings I passed, noting all the shuttered blinds.

As a boy, I used to watch my neighbor shower through her open window. I still remember the shape of her breasts, the size and color of her areolas. Two beautiful brown ellipses. At the time, those open windows felt like such a gift.

There were very few people on the streets at this time of night. Without my phone, I had no idea what time it was. If the VK’s instituted a curfew, I would have no way of knowing. Amina’s luddite tendencies left me nightblind. 

Every time I heard the rumble of a car or the clicks of feet against pavement, I would duck into the shelter of a shadow and try to dissolve into the black.

Eventually, I made it home unscathed. But in the morning, I woke to the sound of something heavy slamming against wood. A second later, my door shook again. Not a knock. A warning. The street outside was silent—too silent. No distant car horns, no calls from vendors. Just the slow creak of my floorboards as I stood, my legs weak beneath me. By the time I reached the door, I already knew who was on the other side.

The darkness of a cell twists the mind. Shadow breeds shadow. And I indulged every dark thought I’d ever had, convincing myself that Amina had betrayed me.

She asked me to leave my phone at home. She wanted me isolated.

The timing. I offend her and then they come.

Her rage. That rage in her eyes.

Looking back, I think I was seeing my own anger reflected in the pools of her large, moon eyes.

There were other times when I saw her sitting next to me in the darkness. I flinched away from her. I cursed her name. I then begged for her forgiveness. It felt like an age. Time stops making sense when you are kept in total darkness. Early in my captivity, I found a small crack in the wall, where a single thread of light could seep in. The VK saw this too, always watching. And they quickly plastered over the crack from the outside without ever entering my cell.

The first thing I did after I was released was buy a newspaper, and was shocked when I discovered I had only been in captivity for a week. A single week. Amina had lasted ten years in total—and never cracked. By the time I had that paper in my hand, she was already dead. Moeed, Samine, Adil, Naihjir, Nazia…and still I hated her.

I spat on the ground between my feet.

My interrogator was a small woman, unthreatening in stature, with a large bust. The VK were making no attempt to intimidate me. They knew it wasn’t necessary. I wanted someone to fold into, a warmth to collapse against, a bosom.

“You are still a member of your temple? St. Hosius?” asked the woman.

“Yes.”

“According to our records, your attendance is in the ninety-eighth percentile. Does Amina require you to do this?” Her voice was patient, almost kind. That was the worst part.

“We are not a monarchy,” I said, my voice hoarse. She did not write anything down. Just tilted her head slightly, as if disappointed.

“And yet, you serve her like a queen.”

A pause. The silence stretched. My breath felt too loud. My hands, useless in my lap.

“You know,” she continued, leaning in just enough for me to catch the scent of her soap, “confession is a beautiful thing. A sacred thing.”

“You’re wrong.”

“Let me rephrase. Does your organization encourage this?”

“No.”

“Did they know about your attendance?”

“Yes. I advocated for it. It was my idea.”

“As part of a cover?”

“Yes.”

“Was that all it was?”

“Yes.”

“Your transcripts from the confessionals suggest otherwise.”

It is a frightening thing—confronting one’s own naivete. Up til that point, I truly believed that the government respected the sanctity of the confessional. My hands shook—epileptic. She grabbed hold of me, her palms warm, and soft.

“Your virtue is not broken. Not completely.”

I parked the white van outside the morgue. It had once been a barracks—brick-laid with large green doors, a place built to keep things in. A government-issue pass hung around my neck. It sat too heavy against my chest.

The air was unseasonably cold, the kind that seeps into the bones. Fog was out haunting. I took two deep breaths, then pushed open the doors.

Amina’s body was to be returned to her family as a kindness, or something meant to resemble one. Now, there were whispers—too many, too loud. A shift in the air. The wrong kind of people gathering in the wrong kind of way. It had happened before—a funeral spinning into a riot. And so they sent me.

Officially, I was there to confirm we had the right body. But I knew better. This was punishment. A reminder of how close I had come to sharing her fate.

Her body was kept in a metal drawer—one of many—numbered 408. The mortician, a woman with long, thinning hair, wouldn’t meet my eyes. I felt her fear like a slap. She thought I was one of them. To this day, I don’t know if she was right.

The metal drawer screeched as it slid open. The sound sent a shudder through me. The mortician flinched too but said nothing, her eyes downcast. I could smell the formaldehyde, sharp and cloying.

I had pictured Amina in death before—too many times, in too many ways. Broken. Battered. Diminished. But the woman before me was none of those things. Her lips were slightly parted, as if she had one last word caught between her teeth. Her face was unmarked, untouched by violence, as if death itself had chosen to be gentle with her. That was what undid me. That was what made my stomach churn.

“It’s not her,” I lied. The words felt foreign in my mouth, like I had stolen them from someone else. But I said them again, steadier this time. “It’s not her.”

“Are you sure?” The mortician hesitated, searching my face, giving me a chance to correct myself. I didn’t.

“Positive. It’s not her.”

I confirmed the identities of the others: Samine, Naihjir, Nazia, Adil, Moeed… But I let Amina slip through.

To this day, they whisper her name, in alleyways and bread lines, in the cramped corners of classrooms where teachers pretend not to hear. Amina Shahid. They paint it on walls only for it to be scrubbed away by morning, but always, always, it returns. I made this possible. Without me, without what I did, she would have been another body in the ground, another silence swallowed whole.

And yet—when I close my eyes, I do not see the martyr they speak of. I see her, instead, splayed out under the flickering morgue light, her limbs stiff with the finality I placed upon them. They do not speak of that Amina. Only I remember her. And maybe that is why, even as they chant her name, I do not say it myself.

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