It took me a minute.

"Wait, next week in Islamabad?" I asked, still shocked. On Thursday while I would be at Attiya's wedding with my friends, Saleem bhai would be getting engaged. In the same city.

"Yes, isn't it exciting! You'll be in Islamabad as well! I Was thinking that wouldn't it be nice if you drop by for a while? It's in the afternoon so you won't even miss the wedding! The rest of the family would absolutely love to see you after so long. You have grown into quite an individual, and quite a mystery since those parents of yours refuse to interact with the rest of the family! I always said that it would cause more problems, tsk!" Dadi said animatedly, her excitement turning into disappointment.

"I'm sorry Dadi, but I won't attend an event I or my parents and siblings weren't invited to," I said shocked at what she was suggesting, because for that to happen I would have to lie to my parents and not tell them, only for them to find out later. I didn't want to disappoint them.

"Gaitiara you know you shouldn't make rash decisions! Think about it, alright? Either way, you could always drop by their house and meet everyone there. The girl Saleem is getting engaged to is such a good girl. She comes from a good, respectable and well-known family, and to top it off, they're religious too! Your Sara Phuppo told me that the girl's entire family fasts all thirty days of Ramadan, and they send a daig of chicken korma to their local mosque every Friday after prayers! When Saleem met her the first time when he went with Sara and Masood to ask for her hand, Sara said he couldn't stop smiling! That's the way it should be I tell you, good old arranged marriages. None of that boyfriend girlfriend nonsense! She also told me that she went to an all-girls school, and has not a single male friend! That's what a young girl of marriageable age from a respectable family looks like, I tell you!"

"You can't always know if the other person is who they say they are Dadi jee, they could always lie, and I'm sure many people do. Why be so hasty? I think its best to get to know someone well before you make any decisions.", I replied. I had nothing against arranged marriages, as long as I wasn't forced into one. I couldn't wrap my head around the concept of marrying someone, and living with them without actually getting to know them – the real version of them. All the people that did take their time to get to know the other person, their strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes were bound to not find themselves stuck in the middle of something they didn't expect - and expectations? They were another thing entirely.

"You kids and your modern ways! They will be the death of our culture, I'll tell you!", she huffed.

"You'll see Dadi, you'll realise I'm right. Anyways, what's her name?"

"Who's name?"

"Saleem Bhais fiancé, Dadi jee"

"Strange, I must've mentioned it. It's Maryam."

A few days later on Saturday morning, the five of us were sitting in our car listening to Chris Rea's gravel voice pour out of the speakers. We were on our way to Khala's house, and for that I was glad. I had spent the past two days listening to Dadi trying to convince me to attend the engagement. The day after I found out, I had a conversation with my parents who reconfirmed everything and they had said Dadi might try to convince me to go, and I didn't tell them that she had already tried to. I didn't want them to worry. Out of all My siblings and I, the only person slightly upset by the situation was me. The other two didn't know Saleem Bhai well, and Nur barely knew him at all. He only ever met him when he dropped by to meet Dadi Jee, and even then, he wouldn't stay for too long.

I sat there listening to Chris Rea sing his feelings about this hometown and how it was changing as I stared out the window, looking at the trees rush past as we drove down the Canal. There were little boys bathing in the murky brown water, splashing water on each other, and at the older boys a few feet away. I always asked Baba if the water was clean or actually as dirty as it looked. His answer would be different each time. Sometimes he would say that it was clean, and that it looked brown because of the dirt plastered on the base of the canal, or he would say that it was partially clean, that it just needed to be taken care of. Other times he would say that it was what it was, a victim of human neglect. That unlike the oceans, it couldn't take care of itself. If only they planted water lilies in it, he would say. If only they cared, he would say.

If only they cared, I thought. But people didn't care. Not about flowers, or the stars. They didn't care about the clouds that looked like they were hiding a floating city inside them, about sparkling oceans or cities that they had never seen, or about feelings. They didn't care if they hurt you, or what they said about you or to you. They didn't care about storms inside your head. Or about soft rains. ­or about flowers that needed those rains to bloom, like the ones that grew in patches by the side of the canal, alongside and inside its arteries and veins.

I sometimes used to think that flowers grew in my arteries and veins, that they would one day break through muscle and skin, freckling my body with tiny blooms, fragrant and delicate - that they were responsible for the warm fuzzy content that at times spread throughout me and till the tips of my fingers. During those days however, it felt like those flowers had frozen over, like they had shied away and hidden within themselves, refusing to bloom.

Before long we had reached Khalas' house. The had recently shifted to a new house, and it was the third time we were visiting this red-brick house. We parked our car outside the gate while my cousin Zain opened it to let us in. The façade of the redbrick house was covered with a grapevine that climbed the wall and reached the roof, and the floors were cut white marble tiles, like the ones in my room and walking barefoot on those floors was a bliss in its own. There was a narrow path leading around the house on three sides that made it feel like a secret shared between loved ones and it was lined with hanging vines and tree branches reaching inside, laden with cranberries and lemons and jamuns.

Jamuns, that had been plucked, washed and shaken in a container with some salt were put out in a bowl on the centre table when we went inside, and after greeting my Nano and Khala I popped a jamun in my mouth and went to greet Ammo Jee in her room to the left.

After that I came back and sat with my cousin.

"The jamuns are so sweet!", I said as I took another one, the salty violet water dripping down my fingers pool in my palm, "Where's Talha? I can't see him around."

"Yeah, I just ate an entire plate of them, and I even sprinkled extra salt on them," said Zain, showing me the blueish-purple stains on is fingertips, "Oh he's gone with his friends to the gaming zone a few streets down. He wanted to take some notes about something to go with the graphics of one of the games there, you know for the game he's working on." Talha was Zain's younger brother, and where Zain was interested in cars and mechanics, Talha adored programming and game development. He had recently announced that he planned to develop a video game to rival the popular ones, one that he planned to develop and sell to a company in America, withholding some of the rights for himself if possible.

"Oh, I can't wait to see what the finished game will look like, the sketches he showed us last time for some of the characters were beautiful, and those for the scenery? They were breathtaking!", I said as Neea and Nur came to sit with us, Nur taking the plate of jamuns and placing it in his lap as he sat on the carpet in front of us with his back towards the table, something he always did whenever we visited. He would sit there and listen to us talk, as if were hidden behind an invisible fourth wall that trapped us inside a film.

"Are you talking about Talha's game? I think it'll take him a lot of time to finish it.", Neea said.

"Yeah, it'll definitely take a while. He just started out a month ago.", I replied.

"I personally think that the character designs could be improved.", said Zain while looking at the screen of his phone, his brow furrowed.

"No, I really don't think so Saad Bhai," interjected Nur as he wiped his hands on his faded blue jeans, "they're just what they need to be."

Before either of us could say anything, Khala called Zain over, and he returned with the car keys dangling from him hands, motioning me over.

"Come, let's go get some Naan. Mama said that the meal is almost ready, and I asked Zuna Khala if it's alright for you to come with me.", He said.

"Alright let me go tell Baba Jee.", I said, "I'll meet you outside, you start the car."

With that said, I went Ammo Jee's room to tell Amma, who was sitting there with Ammo Jee and Nano, that we'll be back in a bit. Then I went outside, over hearing Neea and Nur going back and forth sharing guesses about Talha's game and what it was going to be about. Outside, I went down the narrow path to the right and reached the small garden lined with rosebushes and bird of paradise flowers.

"Assalamaikum Khaloo!", I greeted, "How are you? How's your knee?"

"Salam Gaitiara, I'm good thanks to God's grace. How are you?", he said as he tapped his cigarette into a cut crystal ashtray that was refracting the sunlight hitting it into tiny little rainbows that were scattered over his white shalwar kameez and Baba Jee's baby blue button down shirt. Between both their chairs lounged a fat black Labrador, who was called Scooby, and when I had walked up, the only way one could tell that he was excited to see me was by this wagging tail that swished over the grass.

"I'm alright. Baba Jee, I wanted to tell you that I'm going with Zain to get Naan, do you need anything?", I asked.

"Yes, please bring me my cigarettes, I've almost finished this box. Get me Benson Double O's."

"Alright, bye!", I called out as I walked off and out the gate.

I told Zain about the cigarettes as I put on my seat belt and he drove off. He had turned the stereo on and Somebody else by The 1975 was playing. He was quiet for a minute, lost in thought, so I asked him what was on his mind, since I could tell something was troubling him. He turned to look at me with a sigh, and turned his eyes back onto the road. The roads were packed with traffic, since it was close to prayer time and there was a mosque around the corner.

"I'm worried about Azaan. He came back from last week, and every day he calls me before twelve and then we go to meet up with the rest of the boys, but he hasn't called me today, and it's almost mid-afternoon. It's not like him." said Zain with a sigh. Azaan was his best friend who had moved to Karachi for studies last year, and had come back to Lahore for two weeks.

"Hey, don't worry too much, he's probably gotten caught up with family. Didn't you tell me that was why he was visiting?" I asked, remembering Zain mentioning it to me last time we had a conversation, when he first told me that Azaan was going to visit.

"Yeah, you're probably right. I've just been worrying too much since the whole Jia thing, you know. She's told so many people so many lies about me, saying that I was the one who cheated on her, and that I was abusive and shit. I never thought she would or could ever do something like that.", he said as he pulled onto the road the tandoor was located on, just around the third left. He ran a hand over his face and pushed his hair out of his eyes. I could tell just by the sound of his voice how much it hurt hi, even though he tried to put on a brave face. Zain was never one to show weakness, as he like to put it. He rarely ever even smiled like he used to when we were kids with all of his teeth showing, lips stretched wide enough to make craters on both sides, and it made me think back to when we were children and he would race me to his cabinet where he kept his remote control car tucked away, safe from dust and little Talha. We would sit on the floor with our legs crossed, smiling and taking turns playing with it, passing the remote-control back and forth as our parents sat around us, talking and drinking warm tea out of ceramic mugs. I found myself missing that smile of his, and that remote control car.

"Wait She's still going around saying that?" I asked, beyond shocked, "Even after you called her out on it? I really don't understand what's wrong with her. Is she that bored, that now, three months after she cheated on you and you guys broke up, she's going around and saying all of that? I really wonder what will become of humanity. Everything is falling apart." I didn't realise that I went off in a tangent, nor did I notice Zain look at me, with a worried expression on his face. We had parked a little distance from the tandoor, and with another glance in my direction, He went to order the naan and asked me to lock the doors behind him, waiting outside until I had done so using the master control.

While he was gone, Amma Jee called. She asked how much more time it would take for us to get back, and I told her that we just reached the tandoor due to traffic. After giving her an approximate amount of time, I hung up as Zain walked up to the car, and waited for me to unlock it. He sat down and handed me Baba's cigarette box. The he took out two cigarettes from his pocket, lit one, and then handed the second to me. when I had taken my first drag, he said,

"What's wrong Geekay? What happened."

Zain was the only one in my family who called me Geekay and I found that oddly comforting. We had grown pretty close over the years, and he seized every opportunity to act like an overprotective older brother to my siblings and I. He had been there for me throughout the issue with Shahveer, and always found a way to help me out. One time last year, a boy I didn't know had gotten a hold of my phone number from somewhere, and had started calling me and texting me all day. Another time Izar and Farhan picked up the phone on loudspeaker mode to deal with him, and he had heard some disturbing sounds on the other side, which made them very angry – so angry that they let out a string of curses, swearing left and right. Another time, him and his friends even went as far as to use a number changer to pretend they were calling from my phone service company to try and get information out of me. When Zain go to know about all of it, he found out who the boy was and within the hour had it sorted. The boy, who had turned out to be from a local college, had even ended up sending a text message of apology. Zain really watched out for me, and my siblings on other occasions, and I adored him for it.

With a sigh, I took another drag and told him everything at had happened. By the time we turned onto their street, I had just finished telling him everything, and my cigarette had mostly been consumed by the air. As I spoke, I could see his knuckles tightening on the steering wheel, and his expression becoming more rigid, but before he could say something, his phone rang. It was Azaan, and for a minute, his expression relaxed. He picked up, and at first he looked surprised, and then confused, I slowly watched it morph into worry and shock. We were parked outside his house, and the phone was frozen to his hand. He looked like he had seen a ghost.

"Zain, what did he say?"

"it was his mother. She said he went out to get a haircut right after he woke up two hours ago and she just got a call– he – I don't know he was driving and roads were wet or what happened, but he's in the hospital Geekay!" his voice was hoarse, and I felt my heart squeeze in on itself as I looked at him. "I need to go to the hospital, Geekay, I'm so sorry. Can you please tell Mama Baba? I have to go."

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a slightly longer chapter this time! i'll update the footnote soon, and a reminder, feedback and questions are always welcome! hope you guys like this chapter, and sorry for all the cliffhangers - i cant help it. 

|dkk|