The painting showed a woman from behind, bare shoulders, and light from a window. Emina worked on it for months in brief hours between her job and ordinary household obligations. Haris often passed through the room while she painted. He praised the colors, said the painting deserved an exhibition, and brought coffee when she stayed before the canvas too long. He never asked who the model was.
At the opening he stood near the painting, visibly proud. He told guests how patient Emina was and how she saw things others missed. Then her friend recognized the small scar on the painted woman's shoulder. She said nothing loudly or with surprise. She simply praised Emina for retaining a detail someone else might have erased. Haris stopped speaking in the middle of a sentence.
He led Emina to an empty part of the corridor. He asked why she had not told him the painting showed her. She answered that she thought he knew, but it was no secret. He said people were now looking at the painting differently. Emina looked through the open door. Visitors stood in the same places as before. The only gaze that had clearly changed was his.
He asked her to withdraw it after that evening. He said he did not want his colleagues imagining her body. Emina reminded him that the bare shoulders and line of the back had been visible while he proudly explained the colors too. She did not ask whether he liked the painting. She wanted to know why his support stopped the moment the woman on canvas acquired her name.
Haris returned to the room and avoided familiar guests for the rest of the evening. Emina remained beside her work. She did not recount their conversation to everyone, but neither did she accept his discomfort as a task to solve during her own opening. When a visitor asked to approach for a closer look at the brushstrokes, Emina showed where the light had turned out differently from her plan.
The painting remained until the exhibition ended. At home they talked several times without quick reconciliation. Haris had to reconsider what he meant when he called her a free woman, while Emina had to hear answers she disliked. After the exhibition closed she returned the canvas to her workroom. One morning Haris looked at it and said he missed the light from the gallery. It was the first comment since the opening that concerned the painting itself again.