Not a great chapter, but I had to start from somewhere
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Meerab Waqas Ahmed and Meerab Murtasim Khan were two different women. Murtasim had hated the former. She was haughty, stubborn, and arrogant. At least, that's what he knew about her. He met her so many times as a kid, as a teen, then finally as an adult. They never got along. Every encounter was a disaster. The two of them had similar anger, and they would burst out and take the house by storm. She never cowered in front of him, Meerab wasn't scared of him, he realised, whenever he took a step closer to scare her into silence, she would push him back. She had a life. She had her own world, in which Murtasim waltzed in and changed its momentum. Now her existence was limited to him, her ideas, her beliefs forcefully merged with his, like her name was.
A contract, it was just a document, not a legal one. A child's play both knew it had no significance, but this paper contract gave her a better sense of safety, a contract doesn't lie, it doesn't start changing its words like her father did. It doesn't abandon a person. A contract remains the same. It could protect her from the man who was supposed to be her protector. Meerab's world was full of irony.
Her heart had broken not once but twice, the first time when she realised her parents weren't hers. And the second time when she realised Murtasim Khan wasn't hers. The latter hurt more because she had finally piece by piece put back the shattered parts of her only to realise that the glue holding her together was weak. The bond she had with Murtasim was one sided, the love and trust she had for him was all for a piece of land, a scheme, a manipulation. No wonder Maa Begum never revealed about her actual paternity. She wanted her son, her janasheen, to be the ultimate owner. She was a woman who could be forced aside.
It hurt. It hurt a lot.
And now she was pregnant. She wanted to be selfish for once. But how could she return? Where could she return? She had no home, no place to call hers. The man who provided her with shelter, with his name, with love, was busy embracing Haya. Let's not forget Haya, the woman who hated her to an extent where she was ready to kill her unborn child.
How could she return to a home where her voice had no value? A home where her baby was in danger? Every time Haya got away... Murtasim took Haya's side over his own wife's.
He was looking for her, he almost reached her, but she hid. She couldn't return to the haveli. There was a chaos in her mind. She would have let her emotional heart make a decision if Murtasim had trusted her all this time. He claimed to love her but always believed Haya's words over her. She couldn't forget how he had made her prove her innocence by asking her to jump off the terrace. She was so tired that...
She actually wanted to jump...
A person who helped her heal broke her all over again. A person who made her fall in love made her fall out of love. A person who was supposed to protect her shattered her trust.
"Bas tum aur koi nahi"
That was a big fat lie. There was Haya. Murtasim hid things from her. He trusted Haya over her. And of course he would, he had hated her the most, she was his enemy.
But she couldn't hate him anymore. Her heart refused to hate this man, and when tried to, it hurt.
It hurt so much. It was hard to breathe. Her heart was aching, bleeding. Her eyes were tearing up as she finally grasped the phone with all her strength, dialling her father's number.
The phone rang for a while and then she heard his voice, the pain in her heart disappeared and a calm took over, it was her father. A man who had given her twenty years of freedom, given her identity and a goal.
