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2nd volume in his San Francisco Quartet by the foremost South Asian American and San Francisco writer!
It gave me enormous satisfaction though, to know that Aneela understood the nature of my love for her. Perhaps that's what kept me in the pursuit. I'd never believed that true love could be possessed. But it could be touched. Even kissed. Or else it turned into bitterness, a cactus growing inside one's body, and that's the last thing I wanted to carry with me into my old age. It didn't bother me a bit that she was with Mobeen, sleeping with him at will. I'd be fine if one day she woke up and left, I repeatedly told myself. It was obvious that I'd remember her no matter what, keep the memory of falling in love with her alive for as long as I could. I had to appreciate her awareness not of my feelings for her alone but the agony she caused my heart. Sadly, she was an expert at offering soothing words to keep the embers from dying.
"I've not read anything quite like "Unsolaced Faces," with its scent of unrequited love, its flavor of deceit. In dense poetic language, Moazzam Sheikh explores possession and madness inherent in the pursuit of love, when ardor turns to anger, and devotion leads to desertion. This odyssey exploring sticky love and intellectual fulfillment in bohemian San Francisco will both seduce and confound you."--William Torphy, author of Motel Stories
Fiction.
