Dhaagey: The Ties that Bind Us

53. wedding preparations

Author's Note: Hellllooo! I had a lot planned for this chapter, then I started writing and kept writing fluff and cuteness, so, you get 26 pages of cuteness. See you on the other side! 

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Life, in the weeks that followed, had slipped into a rhythm she had not expected – busy, yes, but busy in that way that felt like living. It surprised her how quickly the days began to fold into each other, a steady pattern of work and preparations, of mornings that started with soft conversation over chai and evenings that ended with her falling asleep, exhausted, against Murtasim's chest.

She had finally joined Khwaish.

The decision had come with its own weight, not of doubt, but of quiet purpose. Mondays became hers in a way nothing else was; they belonged to her work, her voice. She spent the day at the NGO as their legal counsel, reading through cases, drafting responses, sitting across tables with women whose eyes held both anger and fear. She had not yet taken on much yet, the team was patient with her, understanding that wedding preparations had claimed much of her time, that she was still finding her footing. But even in those quiet first steps, sorting paperwork, advising on the nuances of custody cases, writing letters to the courts, there was something grounding about it.

And then, there was everything else.

Every moment that wasn't spent at Khwaish was swallowed whole by wedding preparations.

The Khan haveli had turned into a living, breathing festival. Bolts of silks in impossible shades of crimson and gold draped across furniture; invites being prepared for distant relatives; the sound of bangles clinking as Maryam and Rumi spent hours debating what colour combinations suited the haldi. It was lavish, unashamedly, impossibly lavish, and at the centre of it all was Maa Begum.

Meerab suspected, quietly, that for Maa Begum this wasn't just about a wedding. It was... something else. Perhaps an attempt to erase, or at least soften, the memories of all that had happened before – the violence, the worry, the hospital vigils, the quiet tension that had settled over the house in those dark weeks. Perhaps this was her way of fixing what could not be undone. But mostly, Meerab thought, it was because it was their wedding. Hers and Murtasim's. Maa Begum had raised them both and there was something deeply emotional and maternal in the way she threw herself into every decision.

It had spiralled, somehow.

They were getting married out of Lahore now.

She couldn't even pinpoint the moment the decision had shifted; it had been so gradual, so inevitable. It had started innocently enough, with Shabana Mami, Armaan and Hamza's mother, showing up one morning with tears in her eyes, lamenting the "rushed nikaah" Meerab had endured months ago.

Arsalan, apparently, could only keep his mouth shut for so long.

Before she had been able to argue, Razia Mami had joined in, hand clasped firmly around hers, declaring that Meerab deserved better, that she deserved everything. And then there was Arsalan's father, her Mamu, adding his quiet, unyielding voice to theirs, saying Nazia, her mother, would have wanted nothing less than a wedding that honoured her daughter properly.

And how could she argue with that?

The idea had taken root quickly. The ancestral Shah Haveli in Lahore, the house her mother had grown up in, the one filled with memories she could barely touch, suddenly seemed like the right choice.

Meerab had only visited the Shah Haveli twice in her life. Twice, and even then, never in the way a daughter should.

The Shah Haveli, though steeped in history, was no longer the heart of the family. It hadn't been for years. After her mother's marriage to her father, the Shahs had gradually shifted their lives to a grand mansion within the city, a sprawling, modern home filled with polished marble, long glass windows, and the kind of luxury that announced their name to the world. It was there that the family gathered now, there that the laughter and noise of cousins filled the summers.