I first wrote the earliest version of this story in 2002, after witnessing real events that unsettled me.
A decade later, I self-published it in 2012.
Now, over two decades after its first draft, I have updated it — mostly removing things that no longer made sense.
For example: 40 felt old back then. It is now the new 20.
Tell me how the story lands!

This story is fiction based on real events.
TRIGGER WARNING: This piece touches on themes of mental distress and social isolation.

A police van stopped outside House 26 on Old Quarter Lane.
Two stout female constables stepped out and walked toward the gate with the calm resignation of people who had answered this call too many times. Complaints about the woman inside had become routine.

I owned the house.
I stood there helpless — more spectator than landlord — unsure whether any of this could have gone differently.

A year earlier, I had rented it to Dr. Azra Adelino, a woman who carried a doctorate, a quiet refinement, and a sadness that clung to her like dusk. She said she had returned to Pakistan after twenty years abroad and had been teaching German at the Goethe-Institut since coming back. She was widowed, with no children.
When she offered three months’ advance rent, I accepted immediately.
No background checks seemed necessary.

She moved in the next day.

Her belongings were sparse — some clothes, a few utensils, a stack of books, cigarettes, and an old cassette player patched with tape. Her Sufi cassettes were labeled in neat handwriting, like relics from a life she wanted to preserve.

That evening she invited me for tea.

She served homemade cookies and spoke with an unhurried elegance, her words drifting between Urdu, English, and softened German consonants. When she handed me her doctoral thesis — an enormous volume on Sufism — I accepted out of politeness and curiosity.

When the conversation lulled, she lit a cigarette, opened the window toward the fading light, and said:

“Every night I listen to Sufi music. If you’re bored, leave silently. Don’t disturb the ritual.”

She pressed play.

Abida Parveen’s voice filled the room like a rising tide.
Azra’s eyes closed. Tears glimmered beneath her lashes. Her head swayed in rhythm.
The trance swallowed her so entirely that when I whispered her name — twice — she didn’t hear me.

I slipped out quietly.

That night I opened her thesis. It stunned me: Sufism in Germany?
I forced myself through the dense pages, propelled by a fascination I couldn’t yet name.8

When I returned the book a few days later, her front door was ajar.
A winter draft spilled out.
Inside, the air was freezing, the windows wide open.
She sat in the dimness, cigarette in hand, listening to Pathanay Khan sing Baba Farid:

“You are my ardor, my friend, my creed…
You are the direction I pray toward…”

Her eyes were closed. She didn’t respond when I called her name.

Three months passed.

When I returned, the neighbors intercepted me.

The man from House 28 leaned forward, voice hushed:

“There is a man inside with her. Foreign accent. Loud. We hear him shouting at night. After that… she cries.”

Before I could answer, the couple from House 25 approached.

“She left colored eggs at our doorstep,” the wife whispered.
“At night. Who leaves eggs like that? It’s witchcraft.”

Then the conservative family from House 24 joined in.

“Besides, it’s not even Easter,” the husband said.
“Why would she give eggs?”

Their claims contradicted each other, but their fear was unanimous.

Not one had ever seen any man enter or leave her home.

I went inside.
The door was unlocked.
The house was dark.
A candle flickered.

Azra stepped out of the shadows, thinner than before, her hair unkempt, her clothes loose on her small frame.

“I forgot to pay the electricity and gas bills,” she said.

“You have to miss payments for months before they cut both.”

She shrugged.
“The Goethe-Institut hasn’t paid me in four months.”

The next day, I went to the institute to try to resolve it for her — believing, somewhat naïvely, that I might help.

The HR officer searched their records carefully before saying:

“We’ve never had anyone by that name on staff.”

A quiet dread took hold.

When I visited again, she lit a candle and laughed — thin, brittle, wrong.
Her eyes were elsewhere.

I didn’t mention the institute. Perhaps she used another name; women often changed names after marriage. Instead, I asked gently:

“Why did you give people Easter eggs? It wasn’t Easter.”

“It was Easter,” she said softly.
“Adelino told me. He asked me to give them.”

“Your husband… passed away.”

She stared into the darkness and recited Rabia al-Basri:

“In love, nothing exists between heart and heart.
Speech is born from longing.
The one who tastes, knows…”

Her voice trembled over the last line.

The neighbors’ pressure grew unbearable.
Some threatened her. Others threatened me.
Each time I checked on her, she was either submerged in a trance or speaking in disconnected fragments.

Eventually, the weight of their fear — and my own unease — pushed me to search for the brother she had once mentioned: F. T. Shah.

I called several wrong men.
The right one revealed himself without meaning to — he shouted:

“She is dead to me! Don’t call again!”

And hung up.

The yellow directory listed his address.

I went there expecting hostility.
Instead, the woman who opened the door blinked in surprise, then stepped aside to let me in — as though she had been waiting for someone to ask about Azra.

Over tea, she told me what Azra never shared.

Azra had been the beloved youngest sibling.
Her brothers had pushed for her education abroad, supported her financially and emotionally, and waited for her return.

Instead, she wrote declaring she would never come back.
She had married her German professor — older, widowed, father of three.

Her fiancé was devastated.
Her grandfather had a heart attack.
Her father disowned his sons for supporting her.

For twenty years she lived abroad, cut off from them.

When her husband died, loneliness overtook her.
Eventually, the youngest brother brought her back quietly.

But she was not the sister they remembered — withdrawn, irritable, endlessly smoking, spending hours in the dark with her cassettes.

Then came the voices.

She began speaking to her dead husband.
Arguing.
Pleading.
Screaming.
Sobbing.

And a masculine voice answered.

They panicked. They sought religious help.
Recitations. Intermediaries. Cleansings.

In Pakistan, possession is often easier to accept than illness.

Each attempt pushed her further into herself.

Then one day — she disappeared.

“This was only months ago,” her sister-in-law said quietly.
“She wasn’t dangerous. Just… shattered.
Grief hollows a woman until she echoes.”

Before I left, she pressed money into my hands.

“For her expenses. Please give me the address.
I won’t knock. But perhaps… I can stand outside one day.
Just to see her from afar.”

Her voice broke.

“It’s tragic how easily this country punishes a woman for choosing her own life.”

I gave her the address.

Part of me felt relief that someone still wanted her.
Part of me feared what that wanting might lead to.

When I returned to Old Quarter Lane, the police van was already at the gate.

Two women constables entered.
Minutes later, they escorted Azra out.

She did not resist.
Her eyes were unfocused, her lips moving silently — as though speaking to someone only she could hear.

She was taken to a police-assigned psychiatric officer, then transferred to a public mental asylum — the kind where treatment is not optional, rarely works, and where society sends the people it no longer wants to see.

That was the last time I saw her.

As the van pulled away, one question lodged itself in my mind and has never left:

Who had made the call?
The neighbors had threatened it often enough.
Her family now knew where she lived.
There was no way to be sure.

Who had made the call, I still don’t know—
but I have never stopped wondering whether I helped her… or delivered her.

And sometimes, even now, I hear the lines she loved, echoing through the empty rooms of that house:

“If you ask what I possess… I possess nothing.
But if you ask for my head—
I would gladly offer it.”