Fatima’s POV

Just in the manner of two weeks life had changed drastically. I was back at home, working remotely due to the new strain of COVID outbreak. The entire household was getting increasingly crowded with people and the hustle-bustle of preparations.

To my shock, not just my younger brother but even my younger sister were hitched. They found siblings in the same family to marry. And my parents got both engaged at the same time.

  It was a strange thing to adjust to. Just a year ago, my parents had barely begun the process of finding suitors for me. We weren’t able to land any success at all. It really made me wonder what was the cause that both my siblings were able to find success in this matter so quickly.

  ‘You know these are just matters of fate,’ I learnt to rehearse this sentence every time any relative asked me why I hadn’t got married yet. It was just one of those cliché sentences that they didn’t have much of a response to.

   However, it only made them stop talking in front of me. For I knew that they continued to gossip and badmouth me and my parents behind our backs. This was unavoidable for I was the eldest daughter and not marrying the elder sibling first was considered a shady practice in our land.

   Gujranwala was a relatively smaller city and word travelled first. Soon, neighbors and family friends were also visiting with congratulatory baskets of sweets and fruits. It was all making me feel increasingly uncomfortable. But I still tried to bury my feelings of discomfort to be happy for both of my siblings. It wasn’t their fault that society was the way it was. It wasn’t their fault that I had tough luck when it came to matters of love and marriage as well.

   ‘How is work going, beta?’

   I nodded.

  ‘It’s going well, papa.’

   My father was a man of few words. He had called me to bring tea to the balcony and the morning newspaper after one Fajar prayer and I knew if he specifically called me, he must have some serious thing to talk about.

  ‘How long is your contract?’ he asked while taking a sip of the hot tea I’d brought him.

  My father was reaching his sixties nearly but he did not look a day above forty. He had a neat small beard and moustache that gave him a very kindredly look. But he often had a very strained expression on his face.

I knew he was always very stressed about his children and household.

   For parents from middle class families in our land, it mattered more than anything that the children were raised right and they were married off at a respectful age. So, I knew my father worried about me more than anything in the world. The guilt of being a major cause of his worry weighed me down. But I also had no remedy for it.

  ‘I was hired for a new project,’ I responded, ‘There is no set duration for how long it would go but I am guessing the next six months I would be involved in it.’

   He furrowed his eyebrows but did not respond.

   He was a simple-minded professor who barely understood the new job market. I knew he had a great generation gap with my siblings and I. But I was the eldest now and I felt responsible towards him more than anything. Both my younger siblings were still university students and although my brother made a small living through freelancing it was not nearly enough to support the family. That was why I was even more compelled to work. This idea compensated for the thought of a delayed marriage in my head. What mattered more was the ability to support my family.

   ‘Do you need any help with finances, papa?’ I asked hesitantly.

   Despite me making a good sum in the last couple of months, my parents had not once asked me to contribute anything to the marriage or any other expenses. I could understand that they felt a bit embarrassed asking a daughter for help, especially my father who had very traditional ideas about gender roles.

   My question caught him off guard and after he recovered from it, he gave me a solemn look.

   ‘Fatima,’ he began gently, ‘We are proud of you. You have always been the top-scorer. You won so many accolades all through your university years. But you know, we don’t need or want any money from you. All we want is for you to get married like Ayesha and Fahad. And it breaks my heart when you have to answer to all those people. You know there’s nothing wrong with you, right? Insha’Allah you will find a good, God-honoring husband too when the time is right.’

   For some reason, instead of comforting me as he intended to, my father’s words cut right through me.

Perhaps because they were coming from a pained place. I could tell that he was hurting for me. And perhaps because being pitied was the last thing I wanted. I wanted to hear only the fact that he was proud of me.

   But my success was irrelevant in the eyes of society. And ultimately what everyone said mattered most to my parents. It was something I accepted long ago. Societal validation was important for them as much or even more so than their own or their children’s happiness.

I fought back the incoming flood of tears and quietly decided to leave. It was no use to fight back how he felt. It took years and years of upbringing and social conditioning for them to prioritize marriage above everything else.

      Arjun’s POV

I had almost never seen Fatima wearing any makeup. So when she showed up on the screen with a light pink tint on her cheeks and lips and a beautiful kajol in her eyes, I was a little lost for words.

One of the things I liked the most about her was how naturally beautiful she appeared despite putting no effort into adorning herself with makeup. She had a plump round face with large, bright eyes and wavy hair that became about her face. She was almost always bare faced but today a light make up transformed her completely. I was a little dumb-founded.

‘H-hey,’ I stuttered over my words when I noticed the bright pink shawl she had wrapped around her shoulders.

It was all such a beautiful spectacle that I completely forgot the point of the meeting.

   ‘You look quite different today,’ I blurted before I could stop myself.

   Fatima smiled shyly. Her smile seemed nothing short of an actress gracing her fan to me.

   It was only after a couple of minutes when her vision settled in that I noticed that she seemed quite dampened.

   I could mostly tell if there was something up with her because despite having a general pleasantness about her features, her eyes would instantly get dimmer and lose their natural spark when she was sad.

   At this point, I’d learnt everything there was to know about her features. I could tell her one mood from another for I intently watched her on each video call.

   ‘I just found some time to call you. We are having a small gathering at home,’ she responded, ‘I didn’t want to keep delaying work and honestly I needed an excuse to get away from everyone. Like I told you, more than the happiness of the union itself, people are more concerned about why the eldest daughter is not getting married first. They are adamant to find the fault in me which won’t be that hard since I am not so exceptional.’

   An instant rage filled inside me as I heard those words. I wanted nothing more than to take her away from an environment that only discouraged and dampened her spirits this way. They had made her feel so less than that a generally positive girl like Fatima had begun to talk negatively about her looks, her personality and even questioning her likeability.

   ‘It is absurd to me that anyone who ever lays their eyes on you or talks to you will not eventually end up liking you,’ I blurted before I could stop myself.

   Despite having made a pact with myself to strictly maintain a platonic friendship and a work relationship, ever since I found Fatima questioning her desirability I could not help but jump up to defend her and spout heartfelt compliments about her beauty and personality, only to later hope that she wasn’t weirded out.

For the most part, she would be shy around those compliments and I was happy to see that she had finally begun to take them seriously instead of trying to brush them off. But I wondered if she was able to guess what my honest feelings about her were.

Today, however, my compliments did not instantly make her shy or uplift her mood.

‘You just say these things to be nice to me,’ she said, while looking down, ‘The truth of the matter is I do not hold up in any way so none of the women actively seeking spouses for their sons have any interest in me. In the end, it is not their interest that matters. It’s because men do not find me pretty. Mahroosh was always approached by boys in university, she’s told me countless stories. My sister had numerous admirers. But I had no one. They all looked at me at one glance and then looked away.’

   ‘They must have been blind then,’ I cut her off, being unable to hear her talking badly about herself, ‘I am looking at you right now Fatima. And I’d rather look at you than any other woman in the world.’

   Fatima’s mouth fell open upon hearing my declaration. I did not even intend to say any of it but now that it finally came out, I didn’t want to back off either.

  ‘I have travelled and seen the world, Fatima,’ I said, my voice softening for this was finally the moment when I was opening up about how I had felt since perhaps the very first moment, ‘And yet, I can not say I found any woman who made my heart beat so wildly as it is for you right now, Fatima. I don’t know what kind of blind men you have around that can not appreciate a gem when they see one. But what can I say, I am glad no one has snatched you away. For it still gives me hope. I—’

Fatima was watching me with rapt attention, hearing every single word I said and her eyes only growing wider with each sentence but before she or I could say any further, our call got interrupted.

  ‘Fatima, your father is calling you,’ some woman’s voice interrupted us and Fatima looked ahead. She gave me one last look in a panic and abruptly ended the call.

  Leaving the screen blank and my racing heart with a thousand questions left unanswered.