It’s a strange thing, watching a man fall in love. Stranger still, when the man you’re watching is the one you’ve known since he was a boy—your Khan. And even stranger when that love, like an unseen storm, rolls in quietly but sweeps up everything in its path. It bends the unbendable and breaks the unbreakable. That’s how it was with Murtasim Khan. I saw it before he even knew what was happening to him. And I remember each moment with the sharp clarity of a knife’s edge, because for someone like me, someone who had been by his side since he was a child, this was no ordinary thing. It was the moment my Khan was about to change forever.
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Part One: The Boy Who Would Be Khan
I have served this family for as long as I can remember. My own father had served his Grandfather, Khan Ahmed Khan, and it was expected that I, too, would follow in his footsteps. But Murtasim Khan... from the moment I laid eyes on him as a child, I knew there was something different about him.
He wasn’t like other boys, wild and unruly. He had always been composed, his eyes dark pools of intensity even at a young age. There was a seriousness about him, even as a child—a sense of purpose, as if he understood the weight of the responsibility he would one day inherit.
I remember the day Murtasim’s mother sent me to fetch him from the orchard, where he would often go after his lessons. He couldn’t have been more than ten years old, but he had a way of sitting under that large neem tree, staring at the horizon as if trying to make sense of the world.
“Khan Murtasim,” I said, walking up to him as he sat on a low stone wall. “Your mother is calling for you.”
He looked at me with those sharp eyes, eyes that didn’t seem to belong to a child. “I’ll come in a moment, Bakhtu,” he said, and I remember feeling a strange sense of pride that he spoke to me like an equal, even then. He wasn’t like the other children in the haveli who treated the servants as invisible or insignificant. Murtasim Khan saw everyone, understood everyone, even if he didn’t say much.
He was the kind of boy who understood the weight of a crown long before it was placed on his head.
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Part Two: The Khan Grows
Years passed, and I watched Murtasim Khan grow from that serious boy into a formidable man. He took his place as the head of the family with the same quiet determination he had always shown. He was ruthless when he needed to be, but there was always a softness, a decency beneath the surface that only those who truly knew him could see. He was a leader, but he was also just a man. A man who, I thought, would never find anyone strong enough to match him.
Until she came.
Meerab bibi.
From the moment she stepped into Khan Haveli, everything changed.
I remember the day well. She arrived like a storm—unpredictable, wild, and utterly unlike anyone Murtasim had ever encountered before. She wasn’t intimidated by him, didn’t cower in front of him like so many others did. Instead, she challenged him at every turn, and I saw something in his eyes that I had never seen before.
Confusion.
He didn’t know what to make of her at first, and neither did I. How could anyone be so bold, so fiery in the face of a man like Murtasim Khan? But Meerab bibi... she wasn’t like anyone else. She didn’t follow the rules of our world. She was a force of nature, and Murtasim was drawn to her like a moth to a flame, even if he didn’t realize it at the time.
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Part Three: Love, Unseen and Unspoken
It wasn’t long before I noticed the changes in my Khan. They were subtle at first. The way his eyes lingered on Meerab bibi a little longer than necessary. The way his voice softened, just a fraction, when he spoke to her, even when they were arguing. The way he would stand a little too close, as if drawn to her by some invisible force.
