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An image of Anwar rose from the warm bubblegum pink water. She shouldn’t be thinking of him, she thought as the bubbles glistened and danced, just like her stomach did as she thought of him and the child they had conceived together. A blush heated her face. That night, that exciting, totally intoxicating night. What she’d give to make love to him again.
No! Stop it. She sanctioned thrusting her hands in the water and feeling for the plug. She gripped the metal ring and wrenched it free. Her gut slopped as the water, still carrying Anwar’s memory, drained away. She stared down at her bare feet. She liked to paint without shoes. Barefoot and pregnant, she laughed to herself despite her pain.
As she turned to leave, she looked back at the studio. She bunched her hair up and tied it in a scrunchie. She liked what she had achieved. She had just let go. She had let go of perfectionism and striving to figure it all out. She had let go of trying to see into the future.
She felt a wide smile lift the corners of her mouth. She liked the way the studio shimmered with wet paint. She loved how glossy it looked. She wanted to stick her fingers in the thick, glistening oil paint, scoop it all up, and eat it like cherry compote pie.Instead, she savored the texture so rich it mimicked clotted cream tinted with pink food dye.
She glanced around the oversized studio and felt her heart surge. Were it not for Anwar’s encouragement and his colossal wealth, she would never have been able to afford a space so ample. She had always had to be careful with money, and now she could afford to paint as much as she liked, as large as she wanted, thanks to Anwar and his generosity.
What was their relationship? He was her patron, she decided. That’s how she would reconcile that she was a kept woman. Whatever they had once felt for each other was in the past. She would paint her way to freedom, as Leonardo da Vinci had. Leonardo thought nothing of having the support of wealthy, powerful men. Without his rich patrons, he would have had nothing, Lucy reminded herself as she admired the day's work.
Prolific.That was the word that came to mind now that she had begun. Inspiration had possessed her. She hadn’t confined herself to one style, suite of tools, or muse. She had unleashed everything she loved and knew.
Lucy glanced at the buckets of paint, mops, and giant sponges littering the floor. She didn’t want to be dull or predictable. She wanted none of that. She had never belonged, so why start now? She was always the pink sheep surrounded by a pack of grey wolves.
Why try and paint what she thought people would want? She wanted, no,she needed, she corrected herself,to paint what she felt. What was the point of being an artist if all your paintings looked the same? She was a sea of cascading emotions, ever-changing like drifting sand across the desert.
More so now that she was pregnant with Anwar’s child and the exhibition celebrating his birth was looming. Her emotions changed so rapidly she didn’t know what she felt, but her paints did—flying across the bare canvas in cyclones of color. Whirls of carmine red collided with torrents of passion-infused pink, flooded in tumultuous crests of yummy yellows. Her paintings were like rainbow-coloured kaleidoscopes. Her paintings were landscapes from her heart.
Nothing she painted was half-hearted, she mused as her gaze swept over the artworks. She gave everything, just as she had given Anwar everything that fated night over eight months ago. But not again, she reminded herself. Now, she would only express the longings of her heart through her art. She feared getting attached. She knew that one day, she would find a way to leave before she surrendered to the impossible desert dreams that refused to die.
Love that lasted.A family that stayed together. Just the three of them.Not a harem of wives and half-siblings. Not an uncertain future where people would stop at nothing to rule. She wanted to live in peace and bliss, not expose herself to unbearable pain.Again.
She’d rather live alone with her son and raise him as a single mother than endure her arranged marriage, whose only purpose was blind obedience to a man incapable of love.
She studied her hands. She was a compassionate finger-painter in the mud and tears of life, a co-creator of its sorrowful joy and beauty. She loved painting. She loved the freedom and thrill of it. She loved the way painting loved her back. Unconditionally, all-encompassing, enduringly.
And now she had a purpose. To fill the vast aircraft hangar with the deepest part of herself. To expose the pain she kept hidden, to paint the love she had not expressed. Her paintings would last forever, and her love would live on when she was gone. Perhaps then Anwar would realize what he had lost.
The best art is painted from a love of painting, she reminded herself. Not a preoccupation with self or pleasing others. She loved the rebelliousness of being creative. It was the one domain Anwar could not rule. She remembered growing up, being forced to shut her artistic tendencies down. She remembered the blatant disgust on his parent's faces, their ruthless impatience when she lingered too long to study something beautiful, their fortified disregard when she won prizes for her art, their constant put-downs and attempts to shame and blame her when she excelled.
What was wrong with them?
They hadn’t understood her sensitivity to light, color, beauty—to pain. She grew hard or tried to, walling off her emotions, trying not to feel, to be like they were. She tried everything to be loved.
Only when she moved far away from her parents’ hateful gaze did she start to paint and blossom. The first painting she created was of flowers. Big bright yellow flowers. A giant watercolor complemented with lime green leaves. It symbolized spring, hope, and new beginnings.
Her parents tried to steal her joy. And she had claimed it back. Now, she had been stolen by the sheikh. How ironic. A man who commanded that she paint with joy who couldn’t, or wouldn’t love her back.
She was unlovable. Not enough. Not worthy. Why else would her parents have treated her so? Why else would Anwar refuse to love her like a wife worthy of his adoration?
She was his possession. A surrogate of sorts, valuable only to bear his heir and help curate his collection forMaerid al’ahlam: The Gallery of Dreams.
And then what? What would become of her when the child was born, and the museum was open? Would he toss her aside like a used dishrag wife? Or would he surprise even himself and find room in his heart to love her? No, she was dreaming again.
She didn’t know how or when she would escape with her son. She only knew she must.
CHAPTERTWENTY-FOUR
Anwar stood beside Lucy on the moonlit terrace, tall and commanding, exuding an aura of regality that seemed to permeate the air around him.
He looked so handsome, she mused as he was bathed in the soft glow of starlight. He had once told her he would never buy her flowers. She thought it was a strange thing to say. Now, surrounded by a natural aura of romance, she wished she had asked him why he felt that way. She sucked down a gulp of disappointment that he hadn’t surprised her and gazed up at the stars. Heaven’s flowers, she mused. Always in perpetual bloom.
“Every Valentine’s Day, my friend Jane sends her daughters a box of chocolates,” Lucy said, trying to break the palpable tension. “I used to think she was crazy for spoiling them that way. But now I realize she was showing them extra love. She was defying convention. I mean, who showers their kids with love on Valentine’s Day?”
Jane’s daughters were given more love than anyone could possibly understand. Why had she been so love-starved as a child? Lucy found herself wondering. Why was she being so malnourished now? She sighed. She would settle for a teaspoon of love, she reflected. No, That’s always been your problem.Settling, she corrected.
“Valentine's Day is pure commercialism dreamt up by marketers to manipulate the masses,” Anwar said. “The marketing executives probably sat in some stupid meeting and said, ‘Sales are down. How can we spike demand? Wait, even better, how can we repeat it every year? We know—let’s guilt trip, men.’ Then they turned their attention to the lucrative female market and guilt-tripped mothers, only they’re too easily manipulated to see.Valentine's Day means nothing.”
