It was strange, this feral creature, the body. It would stay denied for months, for years, and then, at one touch, a moment’s trembling indiscretion, it would raise itself and reach out without a moment’s hesitation for what it wanted, in complete contravention of all previously held notions of honour, propriety and morality.

When you lose a spouse, no one tells you about the other loss, the loss that the body must deal with. That of a body against a body. Of sweat, of scent, of bliss.

Home was perhaps just this body I inhabited and this too was alien to me at times, its folds and creases, its pains and needs. Home was everywhere andnowhere. Home, I realised now, was anywhere the heart slept in peace. Home was where one unpacked one’s cares and settled them into the wardrobe with one’s clothes. It was where one was complete.

...realising that all the time he had been hunting for Aisha in her, and found nothing but the warmth of another body and the chill of a soul he couldn’t touch.