31-08-2026, 09:06 PM
The second month was a slow, suffocating descent into a new layer of hell. The confusion curdled into a thick, toxic suspicion that poisoned every glance, every silent meal. The date of my father’s second monthly call loomed like a grim beacon. This time, I wouldn’t be passive. Two days before, I cornered her in the kitchen, my voice low but steeled with a resolve I didn't know I possessed.
“When he calls this time,” I said, cutting off her small talk about groceries, “I am talking to him. I need to hear his voice.”
She looked up from chopping vegetables, her expression flashing with immediate irritation, as if my request was a vulgar intrusion. “Fine,” she snapped, the knife hitting the board with a sharp thwack. “If he calls, I’ll connect it to the home landline.”
The phrasing snagged in my mind, a fishhook of dread. If he calls. Why ‘if’? Why wouldn’t a man in a Dubai jail, facing God-knows-what, call his family on his one precious lifeline? The doubt she planted was a tiny, malignant seed.
The designated day arrived, a Friday. The air in the empty flat was thick with static anticipation. I sat by the old, beige landline phone in the living room, staring at it as if willpower alone could make it ring. The morning passed. The afternoon crawled by. The phone remained silent, a mocking lump of plastic.
Panic, cold and sharp, began to needle me. I called her office. No answer. I called her mobile. It went straight to voicemail. A terrible, sinking realization dawned: she wasn’t just missing the call; she was ensuring it couldn’t be taken. And it was a Friday. Her night. The night she now stayed over.
The hours bled into a long, dark evening of impotent rage and crushing depression. She didn’t come home. I cried, not just for my father, but for myself. How could she do this? How could she withhold my one chance to hear him, to offer some pathetic scrap of comfort across the miles, just so she could spend the night with the man who put him there? The betrayal wasn't just of her marriage; it was of me, of my basic need as a son. It was a cruelty so specific it felt designed.
She returned the next day at 7 PM. She walked in looking tired, but with a peculiar, sated looseness to her movements, a faint smell of hotel soap and expensive air conditioning clinging to her. The sight of her, returning from her lover’s bed while my father rotted in a cell, shattered the last of my restraint.
I was on my feet before she could put her bag down. “What are you doing?!” I shouted, my voice cracking with a week’s worth of bottled fury and grief. “Where were you?! Why didn’t you call?! Why didn’t you let me talk to him?!”
She froze. For a second, she just stared at me, her face utterly blank, as if I were a stranger shouting in a foreign language. Then, the blankness was incinerated by a rage so pure and sudden it was terrifying. Her hand flew out—a vicious, open-palmed slap that connected with my cheek with a sound like a gunshot. Pain, white-hot and blinding, exploded across my face. My head snapped to the side, tears springing instantly to my eyes.
“How DARE you raise your voice to me?” she hissed, her voice a low, venomous tremor. “How DARE you ask me these questions as if I am your wife?!” And before I could even process the first blow, her other hand came around in a backhand that caught me on the same tenderized cheek. The world swam. I stumbled back, the physical pain a shocking counterpoint to the emotional devastation. I broke down into loud, heaving sobs, the humiliation complete.
She didn't say another word. She turned on her heel and stalked to her bedroom, slamming the door so hard the framed picture of a generic waterfall in the hallway rattled.
The pain in my face throbbed in time with my heartbeat for hours, a tangible reminder of her new allegiance. But the need to know was a stronger ache. Later that night, long after my brother was asleep, I crept to her door. I knocked softly, my cheek still burning.
“Maa?” I called, my voice small, stripped of all anger, just a child’s plea. “Please… what happened? What did he say?”
She was sitting on her bed, still dressed in her going-out clothes, staring at the wall. The fury had banked, replaced by a cold, weary tension. She looked at me for a long moment, then gestured to the space beside her.
“Sit.”
I did, keeping a careful distance.
“He did call yesterday, but i didn't answer ,” she began, her voice flat, devoid of emotion.
I was about to raise my voice when she suddenly looked at me and picked up a manila folder from her nightstand, one I’d never seen before. It looked official, with stamps and seals. “He is not just in jail for fraudulent transactions, Arjun.”
She opened the folder and slid a single sheet towards me. It was a formal charge sheet, transmitted via the Indian embassy. My eyes scanned the dense, bureaucratic text. The financial crimes were listed first: embezzlement, forgery, fraud under UAE commercial law. Then, my eyes caught on the next section. My blood turned to ice.
Count 1: Sexual Harassment in the Workplace (Section XYZ of UAE Penal Code)
Count 2: Sexual Harassment in the Workplace (Section XYZ of UAE Penal Code)
Count 3: Fraud of 100000$ and above
Count 4,5,7
and so on..
Details: The accused, Arun Arya, is alleged to have demanded sexual favors from two female employees (names redacted) as a condition for promotion and continued employment over an eight-month period prior to his arrest.
At the bottom, in stark, bold letters: Potential Penalties if Convicted on All Counts: Imprisonment for life, or Death Penalty, as per the severity of financial fraud combined with moral crimes.
The world tilted. I couldn’t breathe. “This… this is a lie,” I whispered, tears blurring the awful words. “He wouldn’t… he couldn’t…”
“I didn’t think so either,” she said, her voice still that terrifying monotone. “Not until about two weeks after we first heard he was arrested. I got this file through the embassy. And then… I started getting messages. Anonymous. On a new phone number.”
She picked up her current smartphone, swiped, and handed it to me. It was a messaging app I didn’t recognize. There were many video files and images. With trembling fingers, I tapped the first one.
The footage was grainy, taken from a hidden angle in what looked like a hotel room. My father was there. He was with a young woman, he was talking to her while she was half dressed, when i tried watching it full, she took the phone from me and said, " you don't want to see these videos fully."
I gave her the phone as if it had burned me. I was beyond shock. I was in freefall. The father I knew—awkward, gentle, perpetually anxious—was being replaced by this grotesque, predatory stranger in official documents and clandestine videos.
“When… when did you get these?” I choked out.
“The file, two weeks after the arrest. The messages… a few days after that.” She finally looked at me, and in her eyes, I saw a horrifying justification taking root. “I didn’t tell you. I didn’t think it was right for his sons to know… these things about their father.”
“Do you…” I swallowed the bile rising in my throat. “Do you think he did it?”
She didn’t answer immediately. She looked at the folder, then at the phone on the bed between us. “The videos don’t lie, Arjun,” she said softly, and in that softness was the most devastating condemnation of all. It wasn’t anger anymore; it was a settled, grim acceptance. “He is not the man I thought he was. He is not the man you thought he was.”
And with those words, she didn't just give me the horrific truth. She gave me the narrative. The perfect, damning narrative that explained her distance, her coldness, her retreat into Aakash’s arms. My father wasn't just a victim of a business rival’s plot; he was a predator, a criminal facing death in a desert prison. And she, the wronged wife, was finally free. The slap on my face wasn't just for shouting; it was for daring to question her new reality, a reality built on a foundation of someone else’s expertly manufactured sin. The confusion was gone, replaced by a cold, horrifying clarity that was infinitely worse.
“When he calls this time,” I said, cutting off her small talk about groceries, “I am talking to him. I need to hear his voice.”
She looked up from chopping vegetables, her expression flashing with immediate irritation, as if my request was a vulgar intrusion. “Fine,” she snapped, the knife hitting the board with a sharp thwack. “If he calls, I’ll connect it to the home landline.”
The phrasing snagged in my mind, a fishhook of dread. If he calls. Why ‘if’? Why wouldn’t a man in a Dubai jail, facing God-knows-what, call his family on his one precious lifeline? The doubt she planted was a tiny, malignant seed.
The designated day arrived, a Friday. The air in the empty flat was thick with static anticipation. I sat by the old, beige landline phone in the living room, staring at it as if willpower alone could make it ring. The morning passed. The afternoon crawled by. The phone remained silent, a mocking lump of plastic.
Panic, cold and sharp, began to needle me. I called her office. No answer. I called her mobile. It went straight to voicemail. A terrible, sinking realization dawned: she wasn’t just missing the call; she was ensuring it couldn’t be taken. And it was a Friday. Her night. The night she now stayed over.
The hours bled into a long, dark evening of impotent rage and crushing depression. She didn’t come home. I cried, not just for my father, but for myself. How could she do this? How could she withhold my one chance to hear him, to offer some pathetic scrap of comfort across the miles, just so she could spend the night with the man who put him there? The betrayal wasn't just of her marriage; it was of me, of my basic need as a son. It was a cruelty so specific it felt designed.
She returned the next day at 7 PM. She walked in looking tired, but with a peculiar, sated looseness to her movements, a faint smell of hotel soap and expensive air conditioning clinging to her. The sight of her, returning from her lover’s bed while my father rotted in a cell, shattered the last of my restraint.
I was on my feet before she could put her bag down. “What are you doing?!” I shouted, my voice cracking with a week’s worth of bottled fury and grief. “Where were you?! Why didn’t you call?! Why didn’t you let me talk to him?!”
She froze. For a second, she just stared at me, her face utterly blank, as if I were a stranger shouting in a foreign language. Then, the blankness was incinerated by a rage so pure and sudden it was terrifying. Her hand flew out—a vicious, open-palmed slap that connected with my cheek with a sound like a gunshot. Pain, white-hot and blinding, exploded across my face. My head snapped to the side, tears springing instantly to my eyes.
“How DARE you raise your voice to me?” she hissed, her voice a low, venomous tremor. “How DARE you ask me these questions as if I am your wife?!” And before I could even process the first blow, her other hand came around in a backhand that caught me on the same tenderized cheek. The world swam. I stumbled back, the physical pain a shocking counterpoint to the emotional devastation. I broke down into loud, heaving sobs, the humiliation complete.
She didn't say another word. She turned on her heel and stalked to her bedroom, slamming the door so hard the framed picture of a generic waterfall in the hallway rattled.
The pain in my face throbbed in time with my heartbeat for hours, a tangible reminder of her new allegiance. But the need to know was a stronger ache. Later that night, long after my brother was asleep, I crept to her door. I knocked softly, my cheek still burning.
“Maa?” I called, my voice small, stripped of all anger, just a child’s plea. “Please… what happened? What did he say?”
She was sitting on her bed, still dressed in her going-out clothes, staring at the wall. The fury had banked, replaced by a cold, weary tension. She looked at me for a long moment, then gestured to the space beside her.
“Sit.”
I did, keeping a careful distance.
“He did call yesterday, but i didn't answer ,” she began, her voice flat, devoid of emotion.
I was about to raise my voice when she suddenly looked at me and picked up a manila folder from her nightstand, one I’d never seen before. It looked official, with stamps and seals. “He is not just in jail for fraudulent transactions, Arjun.”
She opened the folder and slid a single sheet towards me. It was a formal charge sheet, transmitted via the Indian embassy. My eyes scanned the dense, bureaucratic text. The financial crimes were listed first: embezzlement, forgery, fraud under UAE commercial law. Then, my eyes caught on the next section. My blood turned to ice.
Count 1: Sexual Harassment in the Workplace (Section XYZ of UAE Penal Code)
Count 2: Sexual Harassment in the Workplace (Section XYZ of UAE Penal Code)
Count 3: Fraud of 100000$ and above
Count 4,5,7
and so on..
Details: The accused, Arun Arya, is alleged to have demanded sexual favors from two female employees (names redacted) as a condition for promotion and continued employment over an eight-month period prior to his arrest.
At the bottom, in stark, bold letters: Potential Penalties if Convicted on All Counts: Imprisonment for life, or Death Penalty, as per the severity of financial fraud combined with moral crimes.
The world tilted. I couldn’t breathe. “This… this is a lie,” I whispered, tears blurring the awful words. “He wouldn’t… he couldn’t…”
“I didn’t think so either,” she said, her voice still that terrifying monotone. “Not until about two weeks after we first heard he was arrested. I got this file through the embassy. And then… I started getting messages. Anonymous. On a new phone number.”
She picked up her current smartphone, swiped, and handed it to me. It was a messaging app I didn’t recognize. There were many video files and images. With trembling fingers, I tapped the first one.
The footage was grainy, taken from a hidden angle in what looked like a hotel room. My father was there. He was with a young woman, he was talking to her while she was half dressed, when i tried watching it full, she took the phone from me and said, " you don't want to see these videos fully."
I gave her the phone as if it had burned me. I was beyond shock. I was in freefall. The father I knew—awkward, gentle, perpetually anxious—was being replaced by this grotesque, predatory stranger in official documents and clandestine videos.
“When… when did you get these?” I choked out.
“The file, two weeks after the arrest. The messages… a few days after that.” She finally looked at me, and in her eyes, I saw a horrifying justification taking root. “I didn’t tell you. I didn’t think it was right for his sons to know… these things about their father.”
“Do you…” I swallowed the bile rising in my throat. “Do you think he did it?”
She didn’t answer immediately. She looked at the folder, then at the phone on the bed between us. “The videos don’t lie, Arjun,” she said softly, and in that softness was the most devastating condemnation of all. It wasn’t anger anymore; it was a settled, grim acceptance. “He is not the man I thought he was. He is not the man you thought he was.”
And with those words, she didn't just give me the horrific truth. She gave me the narrative. The perfect, damning narrative that explained her distance, her coldness, her retreat into Aakash’s arms. My father wasn't just a victim of a business rival’s plot; he was a predator, a criminal facing death in a desert prison. And she, the wronged wife, was finally free. The slap on my face wasn't just for shouting; it was for daring to question her new reality, a reality built on a foundation of someone else’s expertly manufactured sin. The confusion was gone, replaced by a cold, horrifying clarity that was infinitely worse.
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