Arziyaan

Qubool Hai

"Home isn't where you're from, it's where you find light when all grows dark."
― Pierce Brown,

"I belong to my beloved, and my beloved is mine."
― Jamie McGuire, 

Murtasim looked at the girl lying unconscious in his bed, waiting for her to wake up. She fainted the minute he dragged her out of the only home she had ever known. He had placed her in his car and raced to the haveli. He had already called the family doctor on the way, so the doctor was waiting for them when they arrived. Meerab, in his arms, instinctively took her to his room even though ever since he came back to the Haveli, he had been sleeping in the guest room himself because the walls of his own bedroom suffocated him. Malnutrition and Stress were the diagnoses, and treatment was rest, food, and the IV attached to her arm.

The past three days have been eventful, to say the very least. Bakhtawar Chacha had been a constant in his life. He had somehow always been there in the family. He has shared meals and sorrow with the man. He was the go-to man for all the issues in the family. He had caught him drinking when Murtasim was a teenager and lectured him on proportional drinking. He had saved him from his parent's anger yet made him work in the fields for weeks with the rest of the labor to set his brain straight. Bakhtawar Chacha was the one who had driven him to the airport to go to Karachi seven years ago.

When he exited the car to enter the airport, Bakhatawar Chacha gave Murtasim the most critical advice that got him through the worst phase of his life, "Chote Khan, I understand that you want to set the world on fire right now. But remember, Agha Sahab, your Badi Amma, your niece, and your nephew are also part of the same world. You are their everything. So use the fire inside you to build, not destroy. Make yourself so strong that your enemies bend their knees before the fight starts. We will still be here waiting when you are ready to return home."

When he returned home after seven years, Bakhtawar Chacha took his last breath in Murtasim's arms. He had taken a bullet for Agha ji and was critical. The doctors were not hopeful. Bakhtawar Chacha gained consciousness on the second day and asked for Murtasim and Agha ji. Murtasim wheeled his grandfather next to Bakhtawar Chacha's bed and helped him sit up in the bed.

"I do not have much time left, Agha Sahab, so please take care of my Meerab." Bakhtawar Chacha had whispered through wheezing, "She is too naive for the vultures waiting for her. We have kept her very sheltered, Agha Sahab. So please promise me that she will be protected."

"I promise you, Bakhtawar, that she will be protected just like now." Agha Sahab reassured, "Our daughter will become a doctor, and as discussed, you and I will sit in her clinic filtering her patients."

"Nothing will happen to you, Bakhtu Chacha. I have already called the best team of doctors from Karachi," Murtasim reassured.

"Chote Khan, it's my time to go." Then Bakhtawar turned his attention back to NawazKhan, "Agha ji Waada?"

"Waada, Bakhtawar, Meerab is just like Murtasim to me. She will be protected like a Khan, just like now." So Nawaz Khan promised and watched the man who was like a son to him die in his grandson's arms, and Murtasim lost another pillar of his life. At that moment, Murtasim knew he was never returning to Karachi full-time.

Murtasim had decided to marry Meerab in an instant. When Agha ji turned to him, asking if he would honor his promise to Bhaktu Chacha, there was no way he would have refused. It was the only way to protect this girl who was very dear to his grandfather and Badi Amma. Badi Amma constantly hovered over Meerab until Murtasim finally convinced her that he would sit here and watch Meerab and that she should now rest. People around her were indeed vultures. When she pleaded to Agha ji, sitting on the floor, he had this urge to protect and kill, which he had not felt in years.