Mahrukh

15. Wedding preparations & Shyness

With the months passing by the temperature started to drop as well. This meant that shopping for weddings was easier as you could spend hours lost in the flood of clothes without breaking a sweat. In the chilly evenings of December, Mahrukh was out in the city with Aliya and Zain to get her walima dress. The breeze was gentle but chilly. It was a bit nippy to the fingertips. And lately Mahrukh's nose had been red like Rudolph's. The exposed parts of the skin were pricked by the icy nails of the winter winds. A rain last night had made everything more chilly and people were forced to take out their woolen sweaters as form of protection.

Everyone in the house was ecstatic with the wedding on head. It was the wedding of the eldest son. The family had gone all out on the bookings of events and decor of their home. Already, the neighbourhood was in shock of the lavishness the usually humble Butt's were showing. Akbar was especially happy considering his best friends were married. He would leave no stone unturned to annoy them.

This particular evening, that Zain and Aliya were accompanying Mahrukh, the sky was a dark shade of blue. So dark that it almost seemed black. The stars were twinkling in the clear sky while the crescent shape moon was just acting as the focal point of the roof of the world. It was an amazing weather. The cold was warded off by the shawls and sweaters they all wore. It clearly explains why Pakistani people love getting married in winters. It allows for them to dress up without having to sweat.

The small streets of the uneven bazaar (market) were dirty and heavily occupied. The vendors of all ages and sizes kept screaming in loud voices to encourage women to buy from them. Under the heavy lightning each of the shops had, the placed glimmered like a million diamonds. Aunties pushed each other in rude manners to get to their destination not having the decency to act mannered. As if being a second late could get the thing they so desired out of hand. Meanwhile, the young boys that sold tea and kehwa (a drink) ran around with trays on their heads, careful not to splash any of the customers. It was fascinating to Mahrukh that eventhough all the vendors spoke fluent urdu to their customers, amongst each other they preferred to talk in pashto (local language of the KPK province). This was just a tiny speck of the diverse cultures that lingered about in the capital city of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

Stack upon stack of loose cloth were put outside the shops ( this was a walking path but had been claimed as extra storage space by everyone) and as they passed by stores, Mahrukh like a fascinated child would run her hand over each of them feeling the fabric and patterns. The amount of shopping she had done in the past few days was overwhelming. Finally after what seemed like a million turns around twisted pathways, they were finally at their destination. A grand shop in the centre of the bazaar from where Mahrukh had gotten her Nikkah outfit from.

The among of designs and patterns that they had were immeasurable. The different colours from soft pastels to dark proud colours you name it they probably had it. Mahrukh had requested to wear an outfit that did not have a lot of heavy work on it. Carrying the weight of two heavy dresses she wanted the Walima to be a light hearted function full of memories. To which everyone had agreed. After looking through countless designs Mahrukh finally spotted on that was kept a bit behind the others a bit of eyesight. But it was stunning. No matter how much she turned her head, she would always come back to it.
"Mama what about that white one?"
She asked Aliya. Yes. She had begun to call Aliya mama on her insistence. Aliya ran her eyes to the article Mahrukh was pointing and she was not disappointed. Even Zain found it beautiful. And so it was a mutual decision to buy the cloth and give it to the tailor.

○~○

The next morning, Mahrukh was up early. She had spent last night talking to Zain and making plans of buying her wedding jewelry. Zain wanted to take her to the jewellers shop but instead his parents had already called him over. Lately this had been happening a lot. All day salesmen were in and out of the house. Which annoyed Zain to no end as it meant less time with Mahrukh.