Mad Woman

“Is she alive?”, he asked as he opened the window. I could feel the winter wind wrap itself around me as it entered through the newly opened space.

“Breathing”, I responded immediately.

“Why did she slap her?”, he tilted his head towards me but only slightly enough to catch a glimpse of my face and yet not turn all his attention to me.

“Sarah called her a mad woman”, I tightened my grip on the mildly warm cup of tea in my hands. It was the only warmth that the room offered me that night.

He didn’t respond. There was no response.

Mad.

I recalled the last time Haider teased me with that term. It was the ninth of September in 2020 and we were engaged in a conversation about going out for dinner.

“Can you cook tonight? I don’t feel like eating out”, he had said as I came out of the office room in our house. My meeting with a corporate client had just ended.

“I will order then”, I had opened the food delivery app on my phone immediately as I knew that I was too hungry to wait for long for the food to arrive.

“Here”, he handed me his credit card as his eyes were fixated on the football match on the television.

“No, my details are already entered, I will order it”, I placed his card on his lap and proceeded to tap on the “place order” option on my phone.

“Wait, are you mad?”, he turned towards me in surprise. His expressions told me that he was slightly offended but mostly bewildered by this act.

“My treat”, I shrugged.

He stared at me for a few seconds then proceeded to watch his game.

“Do you think we should talk to her?”, Haider’s voice brought me back to reality. I was still facing his back while he stared out of the window at nothing. The sky was deserted as if the stars had abandoned their fine abodes and the moon had escaped to an island.

“She needs to rest”, I couldn’t help but feel guilt tripping down my throat as I swallowed my own words.

“We should take her to a doctor tomorrow”, he whispered as if intending to communicate his thoughts with me without lending them his voice.

“She isn’t sick”, I took the last sip of my tea. It was disgusting. It was cold and distasteful. I would never drink tea again.

“If you keep saying something, it doesn’t become the truth”, he turned his face towards me. This time he was facing me completely. I couldn’t see his expressions because the room was dark. It was dark enough to hide the tears that welled up in my eyes. I was afraid to wipe them as my hand movement was bound to be noticed by him. The last thing I wanted was to make a public display of my emotions.

“She isn’t sick”, I made sure that my voice was louder this time and my tone was much more assertive. I did not let my emotions affect my voice.

“What else explains her violent behavior?”, he gently grabbed my left shoulder and rubbed it. He was consoling me. I hated it.

“She wasn’t violent. It was the first time that she slapped someone”, I argued in my sister’s defense.

“One slap does not account for violence then?”, I could feel that he was raising his eyebrows. Was he mocking me? I wished that I did not care.

“When her husband did it, it did not”, I swallowed. I could feel a loss of control over myself. I was not going to start a debate when my sister was showing signs of mental illness and my husband was the only person that supported us.

“I know a psychiatrist”, he ignored my words so effortlessly that I was forced to question if I had only imagined myself uttering them. I did not know if I was pleased with the reaction.

“Can you let me handle this?”, I pleaded. I pleaded because I knew that nothing I said made any sense to rational or sane person but to me, it did. Everything my sister did made sense to me. Every time she screamed when someone called her mad, every time that she refused to be told what to eat, every time that she refused to cry when she physically hurt herself and every time that she forgot to turn off her bedroom lights before falling asleep, I felt her. I knew her.

Not because I was her sister.

She was a mad woman but so was I.

Every mad woman knows another mad woman.

Haider nodded. He embraced me in a hug. A hug that a husband offers his wife when she needs reassurance. A hug that a man offers a mad woman.