Besabriyan

22|TWENTY TWO

Her stomach turned as she gazed at her reflection in the mirror- dressed in a minimal pastel gray wedding suit and a light makeup, she was beautified to look like a happy bride, only the happy glint was missing from her eyes. A few of her old street friends swarmed in and out in an attempt to to greet and congratulate her and she could only sigh at how she had to fake happiness and energy. Fisting the beaded dress, she took a hold of herself to do what was better. The one who stared back from the mirror had her face lest it was not her. Falling in love might have been something out of proportion but having the same fate as her mother or worse was not. While every girl from her school wished to be someone like their mother, she didn't because her mother was frail, broken and inconsolable. She was determined to not marry and delay it for as long as she could.

But the happenings were like the slap on her face- to tell her that fate was out of one's control and had already been written and that nobody could do anything to overwrite it. Maheen had been through hell, trying to stuff everything within twenty four hours per day so that when she would walk out of it, she could have success rolling in her fists and hold a graceful power in her eyes. As she grew up, her daji taught Daniyal that power was the beauty of man and that stuck to her even though she was a woman. As a child and as a teenager, Maheen had tried every possible thing to wriggle free of the crippling agony, to walk away from the nights her mother would spend wailing, to hide somewhere to muffle her mother's throaty cries. It was hard as it was and it got harder as she grew up.

But when she got a grip of her surroundings, it wasn't only her reflection that stared back at her- it was of a man's, his. Standing near the door frame, Zaviyar Ali Dawar's entire attention was on her as he drank her details as a bride from far. She wasn't his to walk closer and pull her in to his arms. She wasn't his to tuck a strand of stray hair behind her ear. She wasn't his to take care of her. At a distance she sat as a bride but not his. Never his.

Drinking her tears back, Maheen pulled him into the room and locked it right away to save herself from any drama but left broken hearted when he jerked his hands off hers as if her touch disgusted him. He chased himself away from her as if her presence burned him. Taking a close look at her room, he sat on the chair she had previously occupied and focused his gaze on the woman who stood behind him- in a stupid daze, curling at the hands of emotions.

"I've always pictured you as a bride, you know- looking ethereal and surreal. I just didn't know I would get to see it this sooner." Although he managed to keep his tone normal, the heavy pain that underlay in his voice wasn't to be missed. He could be an idiot that fooled himself and others around him but she wasn't one- at least not in the terms of understanding him. His gaze wavered as though he was finding the sight in front of him hard to look at.

"Aap ko aaj yahan nahi aana chahiye tha." She mumbled, lost in herself. The words he had said just a moment ago were enough to crumble a mountain of sorrow on her head. The look he bore when he said those words was enough to squeeze her heart. And his presence- shaking but balanced shook her ground. He wasn't supposed be there. He wasn't supposed to be there when she was signed away to some other man. It wasn't a sight meant for him to witness. However, he hid something under his agony.

But then he stood up, his gaze lifting and the accusation in them breaking the courage she had gathered in the last two weeks. The tip of his nose reddened telling her how he had been holding back. He took a step and another until he strode towards her and stopped only when there was a handful of inches between them, "You can come to my engagement and I can't come to your nikah?"

He was seeing it all. He saw how she had been trembling under his watch. He saw how she had been withholding her tears. He saw how she had been stopping herself from breaking down and falling part. But then there was where it all laid for a man, a sick need to watch the woman, who betrayed him, crumble down to pieces and not letting her know of the storm that wrecked the most of his world.