It was a cloudy morning. In her bed, she tried to sleep again, but could not find comfort to go to sleep. Spending early years of her marriage with the delusion of happiness- at least Jamila believed it now- the realities of life began to emerge later period of her life. She increasingly believed that the realities in life are different than what she perceived initially. To perceive these realities, she believed, it is important to go through the intricacies of the life. For her, even smallest nuances and issues became suspicious, she could not believe anything as a result of what she lived through during her marriage years.

Jamila judged purely her ten years with Vahid-her husband- and faced with herself, her own choices, beyond of what people gossiped and thought of her and her family which were often being misleading. Her conclusions on these issues were not heartwarming. In fact, her life with her two children was not bad. She had a life that most people would envy because of its luxury. But expensive clothes, jewelry, weekend parties that they were invited by Vahid’s friends were no longer excited her. In the midst of all this luxury, her soul became more and more lonely. Jamila was beginning to loathe this environment, which was in fact alien to her, and she longed more for her lovely small village where she was born and raised. Such a pomposity and luxury lifestyle suffocated her. Jamila was unable to bring her family into her new life while she had escaped her abject conditions and miserable life suddenly and coincidencely. Although she could help her family members, siblings and parents, staying in the village financially, but her new family did not accept her relatives into this luxurous life. Over time, Jamila was alienated her old way of life and forgot about the people once were her dear ones. Surprisingly, the fact that she was so alienated from her relatives, whom she met once a month, had not made her to have sorrow, grief, or pain, but now all these were tormenting her soul. As she judged her life in the bed with her eyes closed, she was now clearly observing one principle half sleeping that once she had read in a book: everything returns in their origin.

In the first years of her marriage to Vahid, the charm and beauty of Baku overwhelmed her so much that she thought that her life had changed completely and that she would never return to the life of poverty and oppression in the village. In the midst of this radiant lifestyle which began to dazzle Jamila’s eyes, Jason’s proposal her which she had then wished to be happy with him and desired to have family in the village, disappeared. Like everything else, Jason and his love, surrounded by shyness, humility, self-sacrifice, and poverty, were soon forgotten. But now, judging her own life, Jason’s purity, innocence, and indifference, which had disappeared about 10 years ago and had hidden in some dark spot in her mind, reappeared as a shadow in her mind and he had given his place to Jason, who now seemed wiser to Jamila, who had matured in life and gained experience, but who had not yet lost his former purity. And strangely enough, Jason, who had emerged from her past dreams, was now dominating over her emotions and feelings. Like events that seemed insignificant to a person at a certain point in life, but suddenly turned everything upside down in the life, Jason’s love, surrounded by the fears and hesitations he had offered her years ago, was now more and more valuable to Jamila.

Of course, all of this did not happen all of a sudden. Jamila’s illusion of happiness did not suddenly fall, she did not suddenly feel the most miserable of all miserables in so much splendor. And the judgments that changed her view of happiness and created new and pessimistic views about people, events, life, death, and the world suddenly appeared. There were factors that made her question her love and life, which she had not felt the need to question before, but now that she was a mother of two and became mature. Perhaps the most important of these factors was Vahid’s recent demenaors that made her to feel the need to deepen her mental judgments and question his existence, as well as her intuition that Vahid had deceived her with other women. The feeling of being deceived first aroused a sense of humiliation, as if everyone was talking about her when she met her neighbors on the street or when Vahid’s friends invited them for family events. She then needed to re-evaluate her past life, the ten years that she had been married to Vahid.

***

Vahid was the third child of his family. He was a quiet, knowledgeable, educated, intelligent, young boy. Anyway, everyone around him described him that way. His marriage to Jamila was also strange. Although he opposed his marriage with a girl from the village initially, but later  he was relented by her mother’s suggestions. Perhaps there were other subconscious reasons for this relentness, but his mother’s words made sense to him, and he finally agreed to marry a girl from the village. He later fell in love with Jamila, whom he had never met before. However, one aspect of this love was the feelings of boredom of women who gave themselves to him and touched his ego because of the prestige that wealth gave him in the big city. At the same time, Jamila’s behaviors, who lived in poverty in the village, unaware of the riches and entertainment of the big cities, and her way of dealing with these new things, sometimes cowardly, but with curiosity, led to the warming of Vahid’s heart towards her. Of course, in spite of all this, Jamila’s secrecy and seriousness, which differed from Vahid’s low-neck-high-knee girls, mesmerized Vahid. Anyway, Vahid always expressed his love for Jamila. No matter how much she enjoyed the pleasures of a new life, she still maintained the simplicity and purity of her childhood. This simplicity enchanted many, and Vahid was also influenced. Somewhere inside he saw this pure side of Jamila and could not ignore her. But, It is very intriguing that over the years, Vahid had a stronger desire for his former life, for the naked women of that life, for their lustful and seductive laughter, and even for the smells he felt during his short intimacy.

The fact that Jamila became more and more trivial in his eyes made Vahid lose his previous ardor in her, and developed such a desire for other women that also intensified his tendency to go back to his daily youthful days which had been full of adventures. Even though he himself was stunned, Vahid became a captive of these feelings day by day. Although he felt disgust for himself and his personality when he touched a different woman for the first time after Jamila, his lust had extinguished that weak conscience and he desired to be with as many women as possible in these days grasping that he was experiencing the last days of his youthood. After that, Vahid began to return to his previous life. Everything returned to their original state, like the truth expressed by those verses that came to Jamila’s mind.

Surrounded by women again, Vahid, who was sitting with different women, felt a pang of conscience and regretted what he had done at that first moment, when the fiery desires were over. The duration of this remorse was short, and the lust that suddenly flared up again overshadowed his remorse, along with all his other feelings. On the other hand, no matter how much he found comforting moments in the indulgence of ephemeral pleasures, he felt that his life was coming to an end. Thus, the instability and the short-term nature of those pleasures, which were doomed to an end, caused turmoil in Vahid and made him suffer. No matter how hard the clash of these two feelings was for him, Vahid could not give up his adventures, and as he sank into this pleasure, his sufferings increased.

***

As the sparkles of her new life faded away from Jamila’s eyes, the feelings that had been reduced to ashes years before were invigorated, her need for the Jason’s love of those years increased. In her life with Vahid to this day and beyond, Jamila will not be able to fully comprehend how she feels about Jason, even it sometimes burns violently and loses interest in life, and creates a strong sense of indifference in her. Although she repeatedly asked herself if she married to Jason, what kind of life she would live in general, she would not be able to find the answer to this question until the end of her life…