The Fallen Widow

Chapter 26: The Grand Wedding

Author's Note: The day has arrived my loyal and wonderful readers. This was the vision I had from the start and writing this was hard, I needed it to be majestic. 

Enjoy. 

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The day had come; the day the haveli had both dreaded and longed for. The wedding of Choudhary Shah Nawaz Qureshi, their king, to the woman he had chosen. Not a daughter of the clan. Not a sheltered heiress. A widow from the village, older than him, educated, from the mountains. A choice that broke every custom that had once governed these lands.

The haveli wore its defiance in finery. Strings of lights coiled around carved balconies, ready to blaze like stars once dusk fell. Roses and marigolds draped over archways, their perfume thick in the late heat, mingling with the sharp tang of incense. The stones of the courtyard glowed under the sun, warm enough to sting bare feet.

Inside, the air pulsed with nervous energy. Servants darted through narrow passages, shouting orders, carrying trays of sweets that left trails of cardamom and sugar in their wake. Women laughed too loudly, as if to drown out their own doubts, their silver bangles chiming like warning bells. In the distance, the mournful stretch of the shehnai curled through the haveli, braiding with the pounding of dhols that made the very floor tremble.

Outside in the fields, the stage was set. A broad wooden platform risen overnight, and upon it sat a qawwali group, their fat energetic hands clapping, voices rising and falling in melodic waves. The tabla rattled and boomed, clapping hands drove the rhythm forward, and the crowd joined in, swept by the music's fever. The smell of hot food drifted over them — rice steaming in cauldrons, meat crackling on spits, the sharp smoke of charcoals biting the back of the throat.

Villagers gathered in throngs, their clothes sticking to their skin under the pitiless sun. The VIP had chairs waiting beneath shaded canopies, but the common folk pressed together on the bare earth, sweat and dust clinging to them. They endured the heat because the air itself was charged with expectation. The ground quivered when the dhols struck, each beat like a warning from the earth.

The bride would not step into this field. Tradition forbade it. She remained cloistered with the women, hidden behind carved screens and whispers, her face carried only in rumour. It was their tongues that would later paint her into the ears of their men.

So all of Jahanpur waited, restless, sweating, murmuring, for midday. For the moment when their king would appear.

And when he did, the world would shift.

The room was packed tight. From make up artists, to dress makers, maids filled the room with Fiza and Malaikah directing the women as they prepared the bride; the future queen of Jahanpur. Bangles jangled, earrings clung and swung, and four women bore the heavy, golden-embroidered veil between them. The air was thick with perfume and low, urgent whispers. Hoorayn wasn't there. She was present in body, but she had travelled back to that day the first time she had seen Shah Nawaz in the bazaar, a hard man cutting through a crowd of villagers. She remembered how her gaze had locked on him and burned with loathing. The dressmaker dressed Hoorayn with her heavy gold necklace around her neck and a colder image slid in when she was imprisoned in the damp basement , his hand like an iron band at her neck, the scent of old stone and fear. How, she wondered, had she crossed from that cell to this silk-lined room, to the brink of becoming queen of Jahanpur?

When they pressed the tikka into place on her forehead she saw, for a second as clear as sunlight, the pistol pressed on her forehead at the cliff edge. She could still feel the vertigo from that moment, the sick drop of almost-falling into the river. Her pulse hit the hollow of her throat; the perfume seemed to clog the air until she could hardly breathe.