Hwang Sok-yong: Princess Bari

“Lady Emily has left for the countryside, so she asked me to come see you.” Then she grew quiet. I suppressed my impatience and waited. “She said your husband is currently being held in detention in another country. They have no idea when he’ll be released. And now the war has started up again … Bari, are you okay?”

I nodded and showed her a smile. Now that I had confirmation Ali was alive, I couldn’t ask for anything more.

The year I turned twenty-one, Ali returned — like a sudden rain shower at the end of a long drought. He was released to his parents in Leeds sometime in March, then came to London carrying a single, small backpack as if he’d only been gone a few days. I went to meet him at the train station. Though I saw my tall man’s head sticking out above the crowd of people pouring off the platform, I didn’t run to him. I stood and waited instead, my heart pounding. He was walking with his father and almost walked right by without seeing me, but I reached out and tapped him on the arm.

“You’re back,” I said.

He hung back for a moment and then grabbed me in his arms. We stood there holding each other as people brushed past. That day, he told his family that Usman really was dead.

His father stared up at the ceiling. “He was just a child,” he lamented.

Grandfather Abdul said: “We are all just children.” He lowered his head and said a brief prayer. When he was done, he said: “This war is a hell caused by the arrogance of the powerful and the desperation of the poor. We are poor and have nothing to give, but we must have faith that we can still help others. This is the only way the world will ever get any better. The Lord said: ‘Beware the flames of anger. They harm only the least fortunate.’ ”

Ali was less talkative than before, but in exchange he’d become a warmer, gentler man. We used our words sparingly, as if we’d agreed not to talk about the ordeals we’d gone through. He made a few brief comments about the dark, sweltering prison cell he’d been kept in and the deep scars on his wrists from the restraints, and I spoke in fragments about carrying and giving birth to Hurriyah Suni and my short time with her. Each time our eyes met, he smiled, cradled my face with one of his giant pot-lid-sized hands, and gazed long and hard at me.

After my husband came home, I became pregnant again. He quit his job driving cabs, with its unpredictable pay and mandatory night shifts. We opened a cute little shop that sold sandwiches and kebabs near Camden Market. In the mornings, I helped Ali out and manned the register, and in the afternoons I went to work at Tongking as usual. In the evenings, we ate dinner with Grandfather Abdul. Our lives were so peaceful that we nearly started to believe the world had changed.

One day, Ali and I had left the house in the morning and were riding the bus to Camden. We crossed Waterloo Bridge and were going up the street toward Southampton Row when we heard a deafening explosion. The cars all stopped, and people started running. We got off the bus and crossed the street. Smoke and flames were rising from the direction of Russell Square, and we followed other people there to see what had happened. A bus had exploded in the middle of the road. People said there had been a second blast at King’s Cross Station. The top of a double-decker had blown off, and the lower half was demolished. Sheets of twisted metal, bus seats and broken glass were strewn all over the street, and the windows in nearby shops had shattered. Bodies lay sprawled on the ground, and there was blood everywhere. Injured people staggered to their feet; others walked around dazed and bleeding. I leaned against Ali, feeling as if I might collapse, and turned my face away. He wrapped his arm around me and we left. The street filled with the sound of police and ambulance sirens.

“Baby, I’m sorry,” I murmured, my hands around my swollen belly, breathing hard as we hurried away.

Ali and I made our way between the stopped cars sitting bumper-to-bumper. With both hands I wiped tears that wouldn’t stop coming, and turned to look back: Ali was crying too.