08/04/2026
𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐎𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐖𝐎𝐌𝐀𝐍
𝐁𝐘
𝐀𝐁𝐁𝐀𝐒 𝐑𝐇𝐀𝐌𝐎𝐓𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐀𝐇𝐈 𝐄𝐉𝐈𝐃𝐄
𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐎𝐍𝐄
I came into the house, breezing in as though I were being carried by some unseen wind; partly because of the joy swelling in my chest, and partly because I had always been known to be light on my feet. My mother used to say I never walked anywhere; I floated.
Today, I believed her.
In my right hand was a small white envelope, its edges already softened from how tightly I had been holding it all the way from the hospital. I had gone there earlier that morning to confirm the quiet, suspicious changes that had begun to take place in my body. The fatigue, the sudden waves of nausea, the strange tenderness that made me cradle my own stomach unconsciously.
It has been three months since we got married.
And the outcome of the test folded neatly inside that envelope was the kind of news that people prayed for in a marriage. The kind of news that turned houses into homes and husbands into fathers and women into mothers.
I was so excited that my heart had been beating all the way from the hospital gate to the front door of our house.
I had imagined everything on the drive back.
The way his face would change when I told him.
The way his brows would first crease in confusion before the realization dawned on him.
The slow smile.
The disbelief.
Maybe he would even lift me up the way he did on our wedding night, spinning me around the room while laughing like a boy who had just been handed the world.
I pushed the door open softly, already rehearsing how I would tell him.
I didn't plan to drop the bombshell immediately.
Perhaps I would sit beside him on the couch and tease him first.
And then I would say, smiling. “You’re going to be a father.”
Just before I pushed the door into our bedroom open, I heard my husband’s voice coming from inside the room. Only then did I notice that the door was slightly ajar. Not wide enough for me to be seen if I walked past, but open just enough for his words to float into the quiet corridor.
I hadn’t meant to stop at the door without entering and I certainly hadn’t meant to listen.
But the sound of his voice held me where I stood.
He sounded, distressed.
That alone was enough to make me hesitate. In the three months of our marriage, I had never heard Imran sound that way. He was always composed, measured, even when he was upset. He was the kind of man who swallowed his emotions before they ever reached the surface.
So I stepped slightly to the side of the door instead of pushing it open.
I told myself I only wanted to understand what was wrong so I would know how to enter the room without making things worse.
But as I leaned closer, pressing my ear lightly to the wood of the door, I realized something that made the floor beneath my feet feel suddenly unfamiliar.
He wasn’t alone.
He was talking to a woman.
Now, that alone wasn’t the problem. A man could talk to a woman for a thousand innocent reasons. Perhaps she was a colleague, cousin, client.
But it wasn’t the fact that he was speaking to a woman that made my heart begin to pound.
It was what he was saying.
“Ife, please don’t do this,” He had said to whomever was on the other side of the phone; his voice cracked.
Not the kind of crack that comes from anger or frustration.
The kind that comes when someone is crying, ugly crying as a matter of fact.
“Please don’t leave me alone.” He said again.
“I can’t live without you, please, Ifẹ. You’re the only one I love and you know it.” I froze when I heard that part. The hallway seemed to tilt.
“You know I can’t divorce her either,” he continued, his voice thick with desperation. “Please, my love, please, my love, please don’t do this.”
I felt the envelope in my hand tremble.
“What will be left of my life if you leave me? I’ll be utterly alone in this world without you.”
His words struck me like small stones, each one hitting somewhere fragile inside my chest.
“Please just tell me where you are and I’ll come and meet you there.”
And then for the next few seconds there was total silence.
Then he spoke again, softer this time.
“You know you’ll always be the first and only woman in my life.”
My fingers loosened around the envelope.
“Please, Ifẹ, you’re my life. I don’t even know what I was thinking when I married her. Please, please.”
For a moment, everything inside me went still. Even my breathing. I thought the world was turning upside down, or maybe it was turning against me.
Then abruptly, I heard movement inside the room.
The creak of the bed, signifying that he'd just gotten up from it.
Then, his footsteps.
My heart leapt into my throat as I realized that he was coming out.
And because I didn't want him to know I heard everything hi just did, I moved instantly, stepping away from the door and walking back toward the sitting room as though I had only just entered the house. Somehow, Allah alone knows how, I managed to arrange the biggest, brightest smile on my face.
The door opened behind me and I turned.
He looked startled when he saw me.
Only for a second.
Then his face smoothed into a smile.
A smile that looked even more artificial than the one I had just forced onto my own face.
He lifted his hand in a casual wave whilst still holding the phone to his ear.
He leaned slightly toward me and blew a kiss in my direction, the gesture landing somewhere near my cheek but never quite touching me.
He could have leaned forward and actually kissed me.
But he didn’t. The kiss remained suspended in the air between us like a lie neither of us acknowledged.
Then he hurried past me, still holding the phone to his ear, though he was no longer speaking into it.
A moment later, the front door closed behind him.
I walked slowly to the window and watched as he got into his car.
For a brief moment, a wild instinct rose inside me.
I felt the deep urge to follow him and find out where he was going. Find out who she was.
But the thought died almost as quickly as it came.
My legs were suddenly too weak to move.
The car disappeared at the end of the street.
And the moment it did, my body seemed to realize it had been holding itself together for far too long.
I crumbled. And it was nott gracefully, neither was it slowly.
I simply collapsed to the floor.
Exactly the way my world had just collapsed.
I had heard every word.
And with each one, something inside me had cracked.
I did not yet understand the full story. I did not know the beginning of it or the end of it.
But I knew enough.
There was another woman in the life of my husband.
And not just any woman.
The woman he had just called the first and only woman in his life.
So what, exactly, was I?
𝑻𝒐 𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒏𝒆𝒙𝒕 𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒑𝒕𝒆𝒓, 𝒍𝒊𝒌𝒆 𝒄𝒐𝒎𝒎𝒆𝒏𝒕 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒔𝒉𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒑𝒐𝒔𝒕 .
