Author's Preface
A week of endless searching yielded no answers. It wasn't that their enemy had covered his tracks well — it was that Gais himself had simply been foolish enough to trust a suspicious stranger.
But everyone understood the deeper reason behind what he'd done. Every man in this world craved a woman by his side, deep down, and with such a severe, age-old shortage of them, plenty of men were driven to desperate measures. That was the real wound underneath all of it — a problem centuries old, a scar left by their ancestors' sin that had never quite healed.
Gais, weakened by the aftereffects of the poison, was physically unable to face the punishment owed for a false accusation. The case was closed.
Having dealt with it — or rather, forced to let it go — Yahya's mind circled back to another matter he'd set aside. The sleeping draught.
While the investigation into Gais had consumed him, he hadn't let himself think about it. Now that case was shut, and the frustration hit twice as hard: he hadn't managed to keep the promise he'd made his wife, to find and punish whoever was behind the conspiracy.
He sat in his working tent, weighed down by it all.
So the day passed, working through tribal matters, until evening came. After the communal prayer at the mosque, Yahya headed home.
Halima was waiting in the tent. These past days — caught between the stalled investigation and the still-unresolved question of the draught — he hadn't been able to fully relax around his wife. A double weight pressed on him: shame over the broken promise, and questions about her motives that night he'd never voiced aloud.
He'd turned it over endlessly and still couldn't work out what she'd actually meant to do, putting him to sleep. Or why she'd changed her mind at the last moment.
Halima smiled and greeted him, and they sat down to eat.
She knew he'd thrown himself into the investigation, and that it had gone nowhere. She'd felt hurt over the whole thing at first, but had since made her peace with it — learning that Gais had only been a scapegoat, and that he was already suffering from what the poison had done to him. Serves him right, she thought. He'd gotten his punishment already, and she'd put the whole thing behind her.
What mattered most to her was the support of her husband and family. And, of course, the support of Hayat, her first true best friend, had played no small part either. All through the week, Hayat had been there to encourage her, taking her out for walks to lift her spirits and chase away the gloom. That sense of having something solid under her feet turned out to matter more than anything else.
"Don't let it weigh on you," she said, warmth in her voice. "Don't be upset. I don't blame you. I've made my peace with it. What matters most to me is your support, and the family's. Thank you, all of you. Alhamdulillah."
The praise to Allah left her lips almost like a confession.
"I thank Allah every day for a husband and a family like this. I've moved past it. You should too."
Yahya looked up and gave a thin, sad smile.
"I didn't keep my promise," he said quietly. "And that shames me."
He looked down for a moment before going on.
"Forgive me. But you're right — I can't keep circling this. That's probably exactly what our enemy wanted. To drive a wedge between us. Let's not give him that."
Halima laid her hand over his. He turned his palm up, lacing his fingers through hers.
"You're right," she said. "We need to put this behind us and not let him win. It was just a trial. Everyone who believes goes through trials in this life, sooner or later — big ones, small ones. That's how this world works. Hardship doesn't come to break you. It comes to strengthen your faith, to show you what actually matters. The point is to get through it with your dignity intact, without losing what's truly precious."
Yahya smiled, and something in him finally loosened — a knot he'd been carrying in his chest for days.
Yes, he thought. Life is made of trials.
He decided not to darken the moment by bringing up the draught. This whole year, Halima had been a good wife to him — her presence had become his only place of true peace.
Maybe she had her own reasons for what she did that night, he thought to himself. Maybe she was just afraid of the first night together. We barely knew each other then. To her, I was still practically a stranger.
And the thing he kept coming back to, the thing that mattered most: she'd ordered the draught poured out. She hadn't gone through with deceiving him fully. She'd pulled back at the last moment.
That mattered more than anything else. That was what he chose to accept, and to let go of.
And so, having reached this quiet peace between them, the couple settled back into the calm, steady rhythm of their days.