The mansion was hustling with workers all over the place; arranging the seating and decor for the big day tomorrow. The celebration had already begun and it was a riot of colours, smiles and laughter with relatives and friends pouring in from all over the world. Music filled the air, festive beats perfect sync to the hearts of all who felt alive and be silly like never before.
Riya's mind buzzed, her limbs so charged up that she walked with a bounce in her step. Every normal thought and worry were banished, there wasn't any room for all that excitement exploding in her mind. She chattered and giggled, joked and danced. Moutasim had ruined her performance the night before, but she had let it go. Astonishingly, she did.
The wedding blast that had been going on for weeks, those crazy nights which had turned into days with her mad cousins, simply lying around; doing nothing and being a complete potato, everything was coming to an end. She remembered when Aleesha and she were kids, they'd play dolls and house together. They'd dress up and play wedding; they'd always make Ammar the groom and Aleesha the bride, Riya the bride's loud mother who'd cry like a baby when her daughter was gone and Shahraz, the sober old father. While all the other guys were made to be waiters! She recalled how Moutasim wailed and made a fuss about not wanting to be a servant, he wanted to be a bride, always! She tugged at her earlobe and smiled to herself.
The next day, her cousin was getting married for real! Back in childhood, the future and the obsession to be grown-ups was all they wished, now she would give anything to go back and be little again, where the only problems were lost crayons and broken toys.
She took a deep breath. I'll miss all this so badly.
As she was excitedly hurrying down to the orchard where the huge breakfast table was laid, she paused when her father called her.
She shook her head and eyed those perfect rolled up Spanish omelettes waiting on a platter and a rounded tower of fluffy pancakes with Nutella dripping over it on another. She reluctantly strode in one of the guest rooms where he waited for her.
Zar Wali was restlessly pacing across the room, apprehension evident on his face when Riya entered.
He held up a file and pen, "Riya, sign these papers, quick!"
"What kind of papers, Baba?" Her eyebrows snapped together in bewilderment.
"Just do it, I don't have time to explain."
He looked at the wall behind her so that he couldn't meet her sceptical, pinning look and handed her some stapled sheets. She tried scanning the written text, but he snatched it out of her grip, placed it on the table and kept the pen beside it, tapping on the space where the signature was required.
Still finding her confused and rooted to the spot, he said, "You trust your father, don't you?"
Riya gave him an embarrassed smile, she was doubting something which was unquestionable. For a second there, by the looks of him, she thought he was getting her into something he shouldn't. So, what, even if he was? As if she was a millionaire for people to trick her on things and steal from under her nose! Besides, there weren't some people, it was her father.
Without answering, she picked up the pen and inked her name down, not shooting further questions or giving him any doubtful glares. He flipped the page over and gestured her to sign once more and then again, for the third and last time.
She didn't know that she had scribbled her fate away with a few strokes of a pen.
"Listen to me very carefully Riya-"
"What's going on, Baba?" She interrupted him, her expression dulled.
"I know, this is going to shock you beyond words but..."
"Baba, you're making me nervous, now."
"Will you let me speak?!"
She did. Her heart thudded violently in her chest, a constant trigger in her mind hinting that something wasn't right; a lot of things probably.
"I know some things in life come in and pull the ground from under your feet, but still, you can't do anything to stop them. Likewise, none of us can do anything when Agha Jaan has uttered his final decision about something. You know that, right?"
She nodded and chewed at her bottom lip with surging perplexity, her eyes fixed on her father's calm face. He looked satisfied to an extent which seemed like he had acquired the entire world and what it beheld.
Surprisingly, she also noticed how he wasn't in much hurry to go about his work like he always did. He stood there, had taken her signature on some bizarre legal papers without telling her anything about them and now, he was explaining some life philosophy to which she showed no ears.
"What has Agha Jaan done?" She asked, barely above a whisper.
"Your Nikah with Moutasim," he added to be more clear-cut, "Tomorrow."
She stared at him as if the muscles on her face had gone on a strike. It wasn't the name which had blown her mind away, rather it was the mention of the very next day that stood ahead and mocked her on how life had slapped her in the face. Tomorrow.
"And you didn't have anything to say to Agha Jaan, Baba?" She choked a sob, a few minutes later.
"I tried...," He lied plainly and turned away, "But now, we all agree with him and you better do as well." He had warned sternly with a finger pointed at her.
"Why hasn't anyone cared to ask me?" Tears ran down her cheeks slipping from her blood-shot eyes.
"Because that's how it's just going to be." He snapped at her, impatiently.
She stiffened. She had never seen the side her father was showing today. He was demanding her to obey him, something Riya had never done nor she thought she'd ever do.
"I won't." She growled, bitterness escaping through her clenched teeth.
"May I know- ah? Of course, how can I forget Zayn," he laughed sarcastically, swearing under his breath, "You actually thought he's going to be your forever and ever?" He sneered and laughed again.
Her eyes flashed with indignance and anger, fear crossed her face, "What are you saying?"
"Men like him aren't anybody's..." He trailed off and scowled, an evil smirk still lingering on his mouth.
Riya took some steps back and stopped when the wall hit her. Today, was the day for some cruel revelations, they were like a series of bombards, one of them would eventually take her life.
She wasn't sure which one would do that, yet.
"Zayn is married, Riya."
There was a thick, eerie silence that made her blood cold and she pressed a hand to her throat.
"He has a child too."
His rough voice crashed in her ears like a thunder-bolt, she slumped back when her knees grew weak and fell to the ground like a sack of wool. She felt emotionally bankrupt. There was nothing to feel, nothing to say, nothing left but the emptiness that buried her mind in swirling darkness.
In between her stifled sobs, she found herself still breathing, it took her a few short hitched gasps to ask her father, "How do you know?"
"I've always known."
It finally killed her.
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"Just let Agha Jaan know that you've been seeing Zayn for years," suggested Aleesha looking at Riya's dead-pan face, unaware of anything else, "Also, tell him what a pile of crap Moutasim has become."
"I don't care, Aleesha."
Both the brides-to-be sat in the centre of a crowd who were having a blow-out over Hufaiz's guitar jamming while she just sat there, her face pale and her eyes downcast; moving slower and droopily skimming the floor, hardly raising them to eye level. It was in her voice too, reticent, with a meekness that wasn't a part of her speech babble. She was unhappy in a way Aleesha hadn't seen before, like a small slice of death.
"Riya?"
She looked up at her and then dropped her gaze down at her hands, not speaking at all. Yesterday, she had escaped when everyone else was frantically obsessing over mehndi; she deeply detested it, but today, they all were after the "emergency" bride she had become. Despite her constant quarrelling, some bossy Aunty had insistingly made plain circles in the middle of her palms and filled her fingertips; excluding the nails. The back of her hands was designed with a delicate floral to keep it simple and to give in with her bullheadedness.
What her father had revealed to her in the morning, it was extremely unbelievable and her system wasn't registering what she had heard. Her mind was sent reeling, unable to comprehend the thoughts about her marriage to Moutasim. That was the least of the things she worried about, then. The thought was completely forgotten, such was the offshoot of the shock she had gone through; she had lost the scruples to be able to stop it, whatever was happening, she let it happen, because it wasn't about what she wanted and what she didn't, not anymore.
The love of her life had turned out to be someone like she didn't know even existed, let alone accepting that her very own Zayn had done that. This time ought, all the reasons she had usually found to keep clinging to him had diminished at last. She hadn't questioned Zar Wali about how he knew or why he chose to keep quiet about it, all this while. She didn't have the stamina to untie all those knots as well, the utmost grief was enough to crush her being to nothingness.
For the first time in her life, sitting among hundreds of people singing and drumming, she found herself alone. A tear trickled down the corner of her eye, she quickly brushed it away and walked off towards the sliding door which opened in the patio.
There was no wind but there was a certain tension quivering in the air. The sweet sounds of giggles and claps and the brightly lit up mansion faded behind her. Her eye travelled to the edge of the woodland, far beyond the walls and the road that lay stretched in between; they had become a silhouette against a blanket of black.
There was silence to her soul, she felt the chill in her blood, coldness bringing the epitome of her brain to a standstill. Part of it was an extreme pain which she couldn't bear to live on, yet part was one she could endure, one she could sleep through night after night without taking the drug of false hope. There was hope before, sadly, though, it had misled her to this state. It was the only thing which had kept her upright, normal to some degree, until now.
She felt empty. Like a glass half-empty, but she was entirely empty. The emptiness seemed never-ending which was consuming her everything, leaving her to feel nothing. All those days and nights she had spent fretting and missing him, this had to be the last of it. Although, somewhere she had known that there would be an end, but such an earthquake of the swindle? She had never imagined.
She heard heavy footsteps approaching her way, clip-clopping down the rock pathway. The noise had stopped and faintly, she felt someone standing close behind her.
Grabbing her by the hand, he shuffled her all the way to the pool area and yanked her aside, slightly glancing at his own hand. Some mehndi was smudged on his fingers.
His fatal stare felt painful, boring right into her motionless eyes, which were looking somewhere behind him. There was no trace of tears, not in her eyes or her blanched cheeks. At that moment, he knew she was far away.
"What do you think you're doing?" Moutasim seethed in an icy low voice, a vein popped in his neck.
Why wasn't she yelling or criticising him? Or throwing plates and glasses to show that she was enraged? Why hadn't she slapped him, yet, or screamed at the top of her lungs from a rooftop that she hated him? Nor had she blamed him for even the tiniest thing that digressed with herself from the morning up till now! How come, all these hours and there was still no reaction to Agha Jaan's announcement?
Moutasim didn't want this marriage and he knew that the one he was intended to get married with, didn't want it with way more greater force than him. He didn't understand, nor he wanted to, but her silence burned him and the fact that she was surrendering to their grand father's absurd desire, out of absolutely nowhere was eating right into his flesh. The mehndi in her hand had just added to his growing frustration.
He took her palm, looked at the dark green round closely and with a rough flick, wiped it out. She didn't move or utter a word, instead just stood there with her mouth pursed and her eyes still.
He dropped her hand and looked above at the midnight sky, the deep blue stretching seamlessly across the acreage of his vision. When the sun would rise tomorrow, it would bring with it a tangled destiny.
In that ticking second, he lurched forward and pushed her in the swimming pool, watching calmly as she flew off to get swallowed up by the rectangular body of water. He continued to watch as she made noisy splashes and kicked vigorously at the sudden blow, bobbing her head up to catch some breath. She knew how to swim well, so drowning wasn't a chance.
When she finally came up, she pushed her slick hair back and gawked at him with her nostrils flared.
He sat on his toes on the tiled edge, "Get rid of that sh*t on your hands," he pointed at the now completely washed off mehndi and snapped his fingers to bring her attention, "You're not going to accept when they ask you tomorrow. Do you hear? Say, no!" He chided and stood up to leave.
"Or else?"
She had finally spoken up in a long time, he paused in his tracks and without having to face her, said, "Or else, let's hurt you for a change?"
He was out of her sight in a flash and she was still floating in the deep water, at two in the morning, with the sky being the only ceiling over her. A chill ran down her spine as a soft breeze blew and made her shiver.
She felt lonelier than she had been a while ago. For all the hatred that she'd been giving, Moutasim had finally slapped her back with a stunning backfire.
She heard something break. Though delusional, her heart had broken into a thousand, million tiny pieces.