No Conditions, Whatsoever

Wedding

Reminder: Pray.

Author's PoV:

Ali read the name of the wedding hall and adjusted the collar of his grey shirt. He was attending a wedding after a decade, the last one had been when he was nine years old and had gone to his Urdu teacher’s Walima. 

“Oh, I'm sorry,” Ali apologised as he accidentally bumped into someone who seemed feminine and…small.

“Watch your steps, mister!” came a gruff reply. 

Ali wanted to argue but he saw the person- a young, plum-faced girl wearing a pistachio green gown with her hair braided, turning her face to him and giving him a death glare.

“Who are you?” Her eyes narrowed as they studied the tattoo on his neck: a black crescent with a dot at the centre of its curve. 

Judgemental much.

“A guest,” Ali answered as he walked past her but she followed him.

“Who invited you? Hey!” 

Ali, feeling annoyed, stopped and turned to her, making her halt as well. Bending his height to match hers which was pretty short, he spoke, “Feiha Hamdan, I believe she's the bride in today's Nikah ceremony. I'm her friend from University.” 

Ali then eyed the girl from top to bottom who was not glaring anymore but she still had a frown on her face. “And who are you to interrogate me like this, kid?” 

Her eyes went wide as she fumed in offence, “That’s none of your business, oldie.” She aggressively shoulder-bumped him, his forearm to be precise, and left. 

Ali scoffed at the retreating figure of the feisty girl. “Unbelievable,” he shook his head and made his way inside the hall. 

.

.

.

“Ab sahi hai?” (Is it okay now?) Ayan asked, fixing his sehra.

“Oh for the love of God,” Ashiya muttered in annoyance and received a light slap on her arm from her mother.

“Be patient with him, it's his big day,” Saba reasoned and faced Ayan to assure him, “you look perfect, my dear.” She had been asked by her best friend to sit with the groom as Mariam herself was quite busy.

Ayan nodded, making Ashiya laugh at the way the flowers moved with his head. 

“You're being mean,” he huffed from under the headdress, his head starting to ache thanks to the strong fragrance that was travelling up his nostrils. “How long before we leave?”

It was just after Maghrib that Ayan got dressed in his beige double-layered sherwani and matching safa, and was now sitting on his bed, waiting to move. The sehra, made of Jasmine, covered his face and reached till his abdomen. 

It was Mariam's idea to keep her son's face hidden until the Nikah was done. “It's a ritual that we have been following since my great-grandfather’s generation,” she had said when Ayan tried to talk her out of it.

Just then the adhan was called and Ashiya got up, the helm of her blush pink saree touching the ground as she draped the loose end of it over her brown hijab. “After we’re done with our Isha prayers.”

Ashiya and Saba’s exits from Ayan's room were followed by the entry of the brothers, both of them dressed in peach jackets with ivory kurtas beneath, their hair pushed back. They had coordinated the colour of their outfits with their wives’ as Zaara too was dressed in a baby pink floor-length gown and was out somewhere handling the something.