The Soulmate

Chapter-2

"I brought a proposal for you!" That's what Halima said as soon as I stepped inside the radiology department and spotted her.

For a moment I could only gape at her open mouthed in shock and then tried to ease my expression into a smile, as I glanced at Muznah standing behind her; silently questioning her through my eyes, what the hell? Muznah was the one who had called me to come here urgently, while I was working in my department in the next building.

It had been a few months into our house-job year and I had randomly been assigned to work in a department other than my group of friends and as fate would have it, that batch just happened to be the one with Farah and others. So it was a win-win for me anyways. Although my friends had protested against it, but I had already made up my mind. I missed them and tried to hang out with them as much as I could but I was much, much happier and really grateful for this coincidence. This one year together with them stirred everlasting and essential changes within me, which wouldn't have been possible if not for this coincidence. Almost as if Someone up there had carefully and especially planned this.

"Hello to you too, Halima. What brings you to Islamabad?" I said instead and she came forward to engulf me in a hug, which was definitely not something I was good at.

Halima was also a friend from class, who had moved to Lahore after marriage. I got on well with almost everyone in class, and was a prominent part of the clique. But subconsciously I often wondered, had I been more true to myself like Farah and others and didn't stand out in my pretty and high fashioned attires, or wasn't a part of the high society, would they all still have had cared to be with me, because of who I was and not my popularity, just like Farah and others did?

Nothing but silence would come in response.

"I had come to get some of my documents. And! Officially ask for your mother's contact number!" She gushed and I tried to smile through a frown.

"Mama's?"

"YES!!! My Mother-in-law saw you at the reception and wants to send a proposal for my elder brother-in-law! He is so handsome, Musfirah! He lives in France, did his bachelors—" She started narrating his profile and I could only watch her through a fake smile plastered on my face.

"Ohh! He is really handsome and good looking." Muznah exclaimed after looking at his picture on Halima's phone.

"He is!!" Bisma chided in and I could only watch them with a sigh.

"Take a look Musfirah!" I stepped forward and spared a dismissive glance at the picture on Muznah's insistence. And he was pretty good looking. Yet, I felt nothing except a hint of aversion.

"My mother-in-law even zoomed in your picture from the wedding. We were all going through them on the Plasma screen; even bhai was there and when we asked him about it, he expressed his consent!!" She was going on animatedly and I felt the fake smile slip from my face and instead had to try hard to gulp down the distaste creeping through my existence at the revelation.

"Send me your Mother's number. So the adults can discuss it." Halima was saying and I sufficed to nod, before making some hurried excuse about having to return to my department.

Somehow or another, I had managed to escape the situation without involving my parents. Because I knew if my parents knew about him, they would've pressured me into seriously consider him just because of his good looks and family background. But although Halima was a friend, I wasn't most especially fond of her. But most of all it was because I was starting to feel less and less sure about what kind of a person I was and where I stood.

It wasn't until a few months later that I accidentally found the truth through another friend from class. She was also working in the same Hospital as Halima and it was completely by chance that she told me how Halima had revealed to them about her one and only problematic brother-in-law. Her mother-in-law was trying really hard to get him settled because he was unwilling to give up on his French, Non-Muslim girlfriend, whom he had been in a live-in relationship with for the past 3 years.