Could he stop this nikah? Would he be willing to save her from the endless pit she was pushing herself into? Would he come rushing to her to save her like he had always claimed? Would he fulfil the promises he made to her in her early ages as a doting father?
And a hundred more questions skimmed through her mind before her father could even respond to her salam. He hardly called her to check on her because she knew he had his ways to keep an eye on his daughter. Manha never kicked Kamran out of their daughter's life because well he could never stop being a father to Maheen like he stopped being a husband to her and it was unfair to keep them away from each other.
"Walaikum salam, beta." In her father's elderly and warm voice, she found herself seeking comfort although she didn't know why he was calling her out of the blue. It's not as if he never did, he did check on her at times through texts. "How are you doing?"
"Allah malik hai." She pursed her lips to stop herself from oversharing. She stopped herself so she wouldn't go around and tell almost everything about her life to a man who was mostly absent from her life. She looked down at her feet, chewing on the insides of her left cheek and praying that her father wouldn't ask any more about her life. Of all things he could ask her, she wanted her life matters to be the last thing they discussed about.
"I talked to Abul Kashem earlier today," A sharp pain almost tore the flesh of her cheek when she bit hard in shock. Her mamu jaan was the only man after her mother who resented her father to no end and he called Kamran and so she knew they weren't just talking. Her father continued when she hummed, "He told me you're getting married." Her eyes clamped shut. Nobody seemed to be getting enough of her marriage and she had had enough remainders already. She had had about a hundred remainders that she pushed away the love of her life only to be with a man- a lesser man who her mother chose for her.
"And as your father, I am invited."
So?
As insensitive as she sounded to herself, Maheen bit her words and swallowed them only to listen more from him. She was sure her mother would toss the house and everything in it if she got a glimpse of her father in her sanctuary. No resentment was greater than the one that was born from betrayal and Manha carried that in her heart- the resentment and the aftermath of betrayal. But Maheen was in no place to stop him from attending her marriage, he was her father- a fact that no one could deny.
"I would love to have your presence on my wedding."
Lies.
Lies.
Lies.
A voice in the back of her head taunted but then that was what she had become in recent days. A lie in herself. A shell of who she was and the ghost of who she wanted to be. Life, for her, had come to a place where everything she loved was being taken away. It started from him and then her writing. Layah Kamran hadn't been able to write a single word after the night she broke his heart or maybe that was the curse that was bestowed upon her. To be deprived of all that meant the world to her.
"Can we meet for lunch tomorrow? I want to see my daughter." Her throat constricted with reluctance. She had been a prey to so many things and she feared she would become one if she agreed to the lunch. Meanwhile, she couldn't use permission as an ultimatum, for her father and she knew that her mother would never stop her from meeting him no matter how far he had been pushed away from Manha's life.
"Okay, you can send me the address. We will meet somewhere near my office in the lunch hour, if it's okay with you?"
"Anything is okay with me." She could hear smile in his voice as if he was elated to meet her. The father who had barely made plans to meet his daughter, was calling out of the blue.
She was just going to hang up after sharing greetings when she heard him call her, "Maheen beta." In that desperate call, the smile in his voice was dropped and he turned dead serious like she wasn't his daughter but some colleague.
"Jee?"
"I might have heard something from Abul Kashem. Are you really happy with the arrangement your mother has made for you or do you want me to talk to your mamu?"
Someone finally said it. Someone, in the end, did stand for her. And the irresistible urge to run behind someone and tell them to stop whatever was happening with her life came back at her. This could be her chance to walk out from this arrangement. Everyone in the Ahmed house was concerned about her mother and her opinions but Kamran wasn't one of them. Her father didn't have to abide by her mother and sacrifice his daughter to man who was nothing less than a brooding monster, or at least one in the making.
The urge to run to him, hide in his fatherly embrace and cry in his shoulder seemed more appealing than relying on anyone from inside the house. Her father wouldn't turn back on her and he would do all that he could do to keep his daughter's sanity and heart in place. He might be absent in her life for the most of it but he loved her and he was remorseful that his family and him had been unfair to the mother and daughter. And as a guilty father, he would run, push and chase to win his daughter back. It was late but no time was late to make things alright for the daughter he almost abandoned.
"Sab sahi hai, baba. Main khush hon." Pushing the weight of dejection down her throat, Maheen replied.
"Yakeen karlon?"
"Beshak."
~
As she straightened in her chair, a pain shot up through her spine from sitting in her chair and not getting up from it once since she sat down. The lunch hour had began and the employees started to pepper around but the man she was dying to have a glimpse was out of her sight from the morning. She tried to know his whereabouts from Maha who refused to fill her in with details, saying that he wasn't answerable to anyone within the company and that he hadn't taken her calls. Once she was done stretching out, Maheen stood up from the seat to discard the paper mugs she had staked in the desk.
It was a task to refuse her mother for lunch and although Manha would never stop her daughter from meeting her father, it wasn't in her to say it on her face and it was much easier to resort to lying. It would just be another lie she webbed for her mother. Taking one last glance at his empty office, she walked out of the company after telling the person in charge that she had plans with someone and wouldn't be returning before the end of lunch hour. Sceptical at first but having no other choice than accepting her excuse, the person had to let her go- partially because the employees in the floor sort of knew her equation with the boss.
The afternoon heat was a blow in the gut and even though it felt refreshing to have breathed fresh air, it was a little suffocating given that her clothes began to stick to her skin. The restaurant that she had chosen to meet her father was half a block away from the company and so she had to walk up there, have food and come back and the time she had in her hands was less.
"Hello ma'am." Startled, Maheen found herself standing in the doorway with an attendant on her side. She passed him a polite smile as she walked into the restaurant only to have that attendant tail her.
"I'm so sorry but the restaurant has no vacant tables as of now." She looked at him to find something sincere in his tone- something akin to remorse or regret but what was she expecting? Not everybody did heinous things to others to feel remorseful.
"Oh? I will just leave then." Planning to call her father to pick a restaurant himself, Maheen was about to leave from the place when the attendant stopped her.
"The couple from table four seem to be leaving. Are you willing to take up the place?"
"Sure." She said and the attendant left to take orders from others. She tapped her toe impatiently against the floor as the time in her hands was slipping away.
But what she saw on the table cut her heart in pieces. Could this be a scenario that she wished or even imagined to face? No. Not when she had been sitting in the office foolishly waiting for a man who was busy spending time with another woman. She stared at him in disbelief as her heart bled all of what she felt for him. The said couple might not look intimate from where she stood but they did seem like they knew each other for only a few days- the awkwardness that stayed afloat between him and her was very much present in between him and the new woman and surprisingly they didn't look like business acquaintances or colleagues, rather the woman, who was preparing to leave with him, looked like she belonged to a family similar to the one that Maheen came from. The look in her eyes, despite the dim darkness, told her the tales of lost love.
Just when they got up to leave and before they could leave the table, Maheen scurried through the tables to reach his one in time. To say Zaviyar was flabbergasted was an understatement, he looked like someone who was caught red handed while cheating. She watched his face- she studied it as it portrayed nothing to morphing into a look of concern but the one that she wanted to see on it wasn't there. The look of love, the softened eyes, the lifted corners of his mouth and the glowing red on the tip of his ears. She wanted to see them in that moment. She wanted him to display any sign of love for her but was only disappointed and a little more broken when came nothing to her. He stood there passive and unmoving like she wasn't someone he claimed to have fallen for.
"Anabiya, aap bahir wait karein main aata hon." He said to the girl with his eyes still on the woman he had indeed fallen for.
And when the girl nodded and walked out of the restaurant, his hot fingers wrapped around her wrist and they tugged her to a corner. Standing between him and the wall, she was reminded of the time when he cornered her in his living room. Standing between him and the wall, the world disappeared in a whiff. Standing between him and the world, he was only at a hand's reach to place her head on his chest and love him.
"What are you doing here?" He asked and unlike the times his voice used to be gentle and feathery, it was hoarse, heavy and dark as if she was a trespasser attempting to walk into his boundaries.
Things and thoughts came at her when the moment of weakness melted away from her body, "So I guess you have found your new muse." She said- gathering everything in her to not sound bitter, "I had been a fool to fall for your words, hadn't I? Does Noorul Ain know?"
His empty gaze darkened just immediately, "Knows what?"
"That you're roaming around the city with another girl fifteen days prior to your nikah." She was saying things and words that might cost her own peace later on. She was throwing words so nasty at him that she doubted her ability to hate. It wasn't jealousy. It was just the raw pain of seeing him with some other woman even though Anabiya wasn't the one he would marry in a matter of two weeks.
"What I do is none of your business." He sneered, breaking away from her as though her closeness burned every tentacles in his body.
"Of course it is. From the way it looks, you fooled me into believing you." She could feel her heart slowly jump out of its cage because of the forced proximity, however, she was able to only focus on the pain that tore her veins.
He was fooling her. He had always been fooling her and it took so long for her to understand it? How could a fallen star shine when it was chased away from its orbit and how could Zaviyar ever love when he hadn't felt any of it? And how did she fall for it after having a living example of it at home?
He hated to lie or so he said, but he had been lying to her all this while. They said people from high society mastered acting and she had discarded the truth from her life. What would a rich president want from a girl that hailed from a mundane world where not only the men but also the women had to work to earn enough money for a month. The pain of being lied to and the disgust of submitting herself to such a man spurt in her blood.
"Don't spew words, Mahi. You will regret it later." She could hear the tick in his jaw and the grinding of his teeth but she could only care less. The man standing in front of her made her want to carry disgust for her father too, for he had also left her mother for another woman. The man standing before her made her want to carry resentment and question her father about the choices he made.
"Regret? After seeing you with a new girl, I don't think I will." He took steps after steps closer to her until he caged her between the wall and him like that night at his house but this time, the back of her head was robbed off of the comfort of his palm and hit the wall. He closed the distance between her so much that she could hear his even breathing.
His cologne took over her senses that it intimidated her,"Are you, by chance, jealous of Anabiya?" The words died in her throat and so she didn't answer. She refused to acknowledge or accept that she was jealous when she knew she wasn't. She looked down at her feet only to feel them tremble before she looked back at him to meet his darkened gaze. There was no warmth or coldness. His eyes were empty. His eyes told no tales of love
"What did you promise her? That you would break my heart for her?"
The calmness that she found on his face scared her. In such moments, she expected him to display something other than the blankness that he pulled to show either that he didn't care or he wasn't going to let go of it and both possibilities were not in her favor, "You broke my heart, Mahi. Not the other way so don't try to be victimised when your own guilt is swallowing you. Again, are you jealous of Anabiya, Mrs to be Rayyan Baig?"
Nonetheless, he didn't wait for an answer like he always would, "Tumhara kuch reh gaya hai mere paas-" He paused to take a look at her face only to find it contorted in agony, "Kal office hours ke baad aa kar le jaana."
"Phenk dein."
"Jis tarah tum dilon ko phenkti ho, nahi?" Mockery. Taunt. That was what being made out of her situation. Maheen winced when his grip on her wrist tightened and suddenly physical pain felt much bearable than her inner turmoil.
"Toh rakh lein."
"Tumhari koi bhi cheez apne paas nahi rakhna mujhe. Na tumhari mohabbat, na tumhari yaadein aur na hi tumhe." His tone, balanced and words, calculated. And if her heart wasn't already dead and in pieces, it sure was now. Listening it from a man who she gave her heart to and found with another girl, it made her look and feel like a fool.
"As if your love was any true."
"Look me in the eyes and say it again." His face only inches away from hers and if he dipped any deeper, there would absolutely be no distance and that thought shuddered her like nothing else. He was the last man she wanted to be so close to. He was the last man she wanted to hand her heart over and he was certainly the last man she wanted to deal with.
"Say it again, Maheen." He insisted so she shot on her chance to escape him even if it meant by breaking or tearing him apart.
"How can a child, who grew up without parents' love, know how to love? You are not taught to love so obviously you just wanted to prove to yourself that you are capable of loving someone."
•••
Maheen did him dirty. How would you have reacted to her if you were Zaviyar?