The Diary Of Iqbal Syed-A Raazi Fanfiction

The Reception

Sunday,

14th March

11:56 P.M.

The reception started and ended much the same way I had expected it to—somewhat tiring, yes, but fun. Well, most of it anyway. My aunts and sisters-in-law are quite taken by Sehmat—everyone is, once they start talking to her. She's well spoken, something she tells me she gets mostly through having studied literature, and she knows how to get people to open up to her. This, however, does not stop them from voicing the one question that they were eager to get answered. Abba, bhaijaan, bhabhi and I have all heard this question at least fifty times each in the course of 24 hours—"Why an Indian, though?" It irritates me to no end, maybe because neither of us have an answer. We were more looking at the fact that they were friends of the family, Abba's old friends which live on the other side, than the fact that they were Indian. And anyhow, no one was thinking about marriage before the proposal came.

For her part, Sehmat seems rather unconcerned about this as a whole. She looks at the offender with this innocent look and a not-as-innocent gleam in her eyes. I somehow get a feeling she has a retort on the tip of her tongue which she is biting so that it doesn't come spilling out. It's quite amusing, really.

My cousins have, for most part, avoided indulging in their favourite pastime—annoying me—when any of the other guests are around. This saves me much effort that I would have required to school my face into an impassive mask around them and biting my tongue instead of countering their inanity with sarcasm of my own.

It has been a nice 'break', if you'd call it that, but now I'm getting a feeling that things are going to get more serious in the foreseeable future. The Eastern populace has resorted to widespread violence to show its displeasure and the peacekeepers are retaliating in kind. Lt. General Beig did hint that we would have to start assembling troops and deporting them towards East quite soon. I only hope that this doesn't take a turn for the absolute worst.

Iqbal S.