BEST OF BOTH WORLDS

CHAPTER 18: PINK FEELINGS

Has anyone read Peer-e-Kaamil? I read it when I was very young and thought it was great but when I tried to read it recently? Oh boy! The amount of bigotry and stereotyping of religious minority I noticed in that novel was astonishing! And the infuriating amount of self righteousness the author has is praise worthy! Like ma'am pls, stop preaching for two minutes I beg you😭

Anyways this is another chapter from my draft. Sorry if it's not that good but this is all I have. Hope you enjoy!

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Now Murtasim wouldn't claim himself to be an expert in colour theory or anything but he was pretty sure him, Khan Murtasim Khan in his all black attire, sitting in Meerab's pink childhood bedroom made an odd picture. As the day rolled and they sorted everything out for Saad's case, a tired Meerab had gone to take a shower leaving him to his own device.

Everything about this room gave him PTSD from Maryam's teenage obsession with pink. It was a horrible phase of his life. His sister had him running around the mall looking for baby pink lampshades!

Before that, Murtasim didn't even know there was a difference between Megenta and Fuschia!

What the hell? Pink is pink!

Why were girls so unnecessarily complicated?!

Sighing, he gave up on focusing on the files in front of him. It was futile anyway. He was too anxious to do anything.

Murtasim tried to distract himself by looking around Meerab's childhood bedroom. Maybe through this, he could get to know the heart she guarded so diligently.

It was probably the third or fourth time Murtasim has been to Meerab's room and for the first time, without any prompting from his mother.

All the other times before had been due to some absurd requests from his mother. Murtasim had always thought it was weird how keen his mother was for him to come and visit Waqas uncle's house in the recent years.

It was odd how despite having drivers, his mother would always insist on him to be one to drive Meerab from Karachi to Hyderabad; how it will always be him who went to pick up Meerab if she stayed out late at a friend's house; how for some reason his mother would send him personally to deliver Meerab's birthday gifts.

Now he understood exactly what she was trying to do. His mother, in her infinite wisdom, had been trying to set Murtasim up with Meerab even before marriage!

Of course, her attempts were far from successful because all the two of them did was antagonise each other at every turn. The more his mother tried to orcastrate meetings between them, the more fight they had.

Murtasim cannot believe the audacity his mother had to actually think Murtasim would somehow magically start liking Meerab if she sends him up to her room to bring her Eid Jewellery!

The whole thing did strike as suspicious to him at one point but he chalked it off as his mother just seeing Meerab as his cousin to whom he had some duties to and nothing else.

How wrong was he!

He also remembers how his mother would constantly fawn over Meerab's beauty in front of her, which Murtasim never bothered to respond to.

As he sat on Meerab's old bed inside her sparkly room, Murtasim looked around, eyes focused on the numerous pictures on the wall. Teenage Meerab, child Meerab, Collage Meerab, Adult Meerab- all of them looked down at him through the mirrors of stilled memories.