Has anyone read Peer-e-Kaamil? I read it when I was very young and thought it was great but when I tried to read it recently? Oh boy! The amount of bigotry and stereotyping of religious minority I noticed in that novel was astonishing! And the infuriating amount of self righteousness the author has is praise worthy! Like ma'am pls, stop preaching for two minutes I beg you😭

Anyways this is another chapter from my draft. Sorry if it's not that good but this is all I have. Hope you enjoy!

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Now Murtasim wouldn't claim himself to be an expert in colour theory or anything but he was pretty sure him, Khan Murtasim Khan in his all black attire, sitting in Meerab's pink childhood bedroom made an odd picture. As the day rolled and they sorted everything out for Saad's case, a tired Meerab had gone to take a shower leaving him to his own device.

Everything about this room gave him PTSD from Maryam's teenage obsession with pink. It was a horrible phase of his life. His sister had him running around the mall looking for baby pink lampshades!

Before that, Murtasim didn't even know there was a difference between Megenta and Fuschia!

What the hell? Pink is pink!

Why were girls so unnecessarily complicated?!

Sighing, he gave up on focusing on the files in front of him. It was futile anyway. He was too anxious to do anything.

Murtasim tried to distract himself by looking around Meerab's childhood bedroom. Maybe through this, he could get to know the heart she guarded so diligently.

It was probably the third or fourth time Murtasim has been to Meerab's room and for the first time, without any prompting from his mother.

All the other times before had been due to some absurd requests from his mother. Murtasim had always thought it was weird how keen his mother was for him to come and visit Waqas uncle's house in the recent years.

It was odd how despite having drivers, his mother would always insist on him to be one to drive Meerab from Karachi to Hyderabad; how it will always be him who went to pick up Meerab if she stayed out late at a friend's house; how for some reason his mother would send him personally to deliver Meerab's birthday gifts.

Now he understood exactly what she was trying to do. His mother, in her infinite wisdom, had been trying to set Murtasim up with Meerab even before marriage!

Of course, her attempts were far from successful because all the two of them did was antagonise each other at every turn. The more his mother tried to orcastrate meetings between them, the more fight they had.

Murtasim cannot believe the audacity his mother had to actually think Murtasim would somehow magically start liking Meerab if she sends him up to her room to bring her Eid Jewellery!

The whole thing did strike as suspicious to him at one point but he chalked it off as his mother just seeing Meerab as his cousin to whom he had some duties to and nothing else.

How wrong was he!

He also remembers how his mother would constantly fawn over Meerab's beauty in front of her, which Murtasim never bothered to respond to.

As he sat on Meerab's old bed inside her sparkly room, Murtasim looked around, eyes focused on the numerous pictures on the wall. Teenage Meerab, child Meerab, Collage Meerab, Adult Meerab- all of them looked down at him through the mirrors of stilled memories.

Murtasim was always vaguely aware that Meerab was lovely in terms of looks. It was kind of hard not to notice when everybody around him only talked about cute she was as a child.

Okay, fine, Murtasim admits it that Meerab was rather adorable with her adorablely big eyes and chubby cheeks, wearing those polka dotted pink frocks she seemed love so much. But he was always partial to Maryam; according to him, his sister was much cuter.

The praises only got louder as Meerab grew up. But he honestly couldn't see it. She looked like a normal teenager to him with her constantly inflamed face due to horrible acne and long braided hair. And not to forget that horrible bratty attitude.

And he had enough of teenage girls. Haya and Maryam with their constant fawning and giggling over any and every male celebrity gave him nightmares. For the life of him, he did not want to see another hidden poster of a half naked Fawad Khan.

In the back of his head, he knew that Meerab would eventually grow up into a beautiful woman. Because that's how it worked. People, through the ups and down of puberty, just grow into their features.

But even in his wildest dreams, he hadn't expected her look how she looked that day, in a snow white anarkali, her adored with red roses.

She looked like a fairy, descended down on earth to bask in the mediocrity of mere mortals. It wasn't just her looks, it was the way she laughed- a sound that came from the very depth of her heart, the way her doe eyes sparkled at the smallest of things, the way the light jingles of her anklets followed her lile a loyal companion. Her puffy white dress twirled around everytime she ran from here to there.

Murtasim's daze or a momentary fascination, as his wife put it, broke quickly when he had realized exactly what he had been doing. Like a creep, he was staring at his Uncle's daughter; it was disgraceful of him and he had left before Meerab could get a wind of it.

For a long time, that incident was a cause of Murtasim's shame; he couldn't believe, even for a moment, he was attracted to someone outside of marriage. And to make things worse, it was Meerab, his most annoying cousin hands down.

Murtasim wondered what would've happened if he just went against his family's teachings and gave into the  "Crush" that day, instead of feeling disgraced and challenged by it, what if he had accepted it and let it grow.

If he had loved her without the binds of marriage, will she have reciprocated his feelings?

Or is he destined for heartbreak no matter the circumstances?

Was Meerab only his love but not his destiny? Or was he, perhaps, just not hers?

"Deep in thoughts?" Meerab's hair was wet from shower, water drops glistening down her neck. "About Saad?"

Murtasim still couldn't believe that Meerab had actually started to initiate conversations. His heart soared everytime she volunteered any information about herself, anytime she wanted to know about him. But then it also pummelled to the ground when he sees her reminiscing her past, a past where she was far more happier than she was in their present.

He was stuck in a purgatory of hope and defeat. One moment, he saw her eyes spark with jealousy over him and in the next, she looked past him into her memories.

No one had ever made him feel so vulnerable, no one had ever made him so desperate.

"Murtasim?" Oh, how he loved it when she said him name. "Is everything alright?"

"Yes." He gathered his messy feelings, he always did. "I'm fine. Just worried about the case and Saad."

He was. He worried for his brother. He had promised his father to always care for Saad. It seemed like he was failing spectacularly!

"Don't worry too much. " Meerab dried her hair with a towel in front of the mirror. "You have to settle the case tomorrow. If you worry yourself into sickness, who will fight for Saad?"

"You." Meerab looked back at him, surprise evident in her eyes. "You did once before."

"You know why I did it." There it was, the faraway look she always seemed to have.

He did know.

But he still couldn't help the resentment he felt at the fact that Meerab expressed herself so vehemently for Saad but never even bothered to acknowledge him as her husband. How long had she known Saad for?

Her and Murtasim were in each other's vicinity since childhood! He wouldn't say they were close because they obviously weren't.

But they knew each other for almost their whole lives. So why was it so hard for her to see him as her husband?

"May I ask you something?" Murtasim's eyes followed her as she continued to rub products into her face and neck. Her eyes narrowed at his question.

"Go on."

"If you're marriage was fixed with Saad instead of me, would you have been happier?" It hurt somewhere deep inside his chest to say those words out loud.

He knew the answer to that question. And that's specifically why it hurt so much.

Meerab's hands paused, she turned her body fully towards him; her focus solely on him now. "No, I wouldn't have." Her words were clear and as sure as ever.

Her answer startled him; he hadn't expected it. "Why?! What's the issue?!" Murtasim was curious now.

"Because Murtasim-" She said as if she was chiding him, "- the issue is not you or Saad. The issue was never who the groom was!" Shaking her head she continued, "the problem was the fact that I was cornered into a marriage. The issue was that in response to my refusal, I was punished with homelessness!"

"The issue was that I was never allowed the option to say no!" She took a deep breath to compose herself. "I know you offered me a hand and gave me an option but how could I have trusted you? How could I have trusted anyone?! When all everyone did was lie and lie. And if that was not enough, my parents left me behind in your house. As if I'm nothing more than a discarded doll!"

She furiously wiped the tears from her eyes, her voice quivered with each sentence. "The issue was that these people took away my identity, my home, my dreams and my worth. I have nothing left for myself."

"You have me." Murtasim kneeled down in front of her; taking her hands in his, he caressed them with as much love as he could, trying to show the depths of his feelings though actions.

"Do I?" She sounded unsure.

"Yes, always!"

"Regarless of the fact that I have you or not-" Meerab looked down at their joined hands. " I don't have me, Murtasim." She pointed towards a framed picture, it had Meerab in her college uniform, smiling withouta care about the world."I lost her."

"You haven't lost her." Taking her hand, he pressed a kiss on her palm. "When people step into the future, it doesn't mean that the past vanishes. It stays with us. It just changes. It grows with each situation, each heartbreak, each knowledge. The past simply molds into the future. "

Murtasim pressed a kiss on her other palm as well. "The last time I had held a camera was the first time I had used my gun." He met her eyes, those beautiful orbs reflected his pain. His Meerab looked breathtaking as ever with pearly tears in her eyes and twitching red nose. It reminded him of that fateful day when her parents had abandoned her. "That Murtasim isn't lost, you know, he just had to grow up. He changed to become the leader of his people but he is still quick to open the camera app whenever he sees an interesting bird or his wife." She smacked his hands at the last word; but he spied a small smile spreading on her face.

"I thought you wanted to become an wildlife photographer." She rubbed the place where she had smacked him, gently circling her fingers around it. "Then why take pictures of me?"

"I know you're expecting me to say it's because you are beautiful but the real reason is that you are quite similar to a wild animal, always having your claws out, trying to bite my head off-" he couldn't finish his words as his wife ever so gracefully started to pull on his mustache.

"That hurts, Meerab!" It really did! Where did she get all this strength from?!

"Good!" She pulled even harder. "It's supposed to!"He yelped in pain and tried to free himself from her death grip. Satisfied at his misery, she pushed him away and walked towards her cupboard.

Checking his mustache for damage, he went back to sit on her bed and groaned in pain. "Do you even know how hard it is to grow a mustache?!"

"I most certainly do." Meerab was back to her sarcastic self, rolling her eyes and flipping her hair over her shoulder. "I do it all the time!"

"Why do you shave it off then? A mustache will suit you." Murtasim offered his two cents on the female beauty standards.

Meerab gave him a glare that could rival the fire of a thousand suns. "If I grow it, no one will appreciate yours."

"How kind of you to think about your husband's masculine pride."

Meerab gave him a fake smile in response and opened the cupboard door, only to quickly to close it on reflex.

But not before Murtasim could get a glimps of the content inside.

It was picture of Murtasim with tiny holes stuck to a dart board. The word "Manhoos" was written on top of it.

From the holes, he could clearly deduce someone had thrown darts at it, continuesly.

"I'm sure there is perfectly sane explanation for that." Murtasim now looked at his fidgeting wife for with interest, who looked at anywhere but him.

"Well-" she played with her wet hair, looking down at her feet in an awkward silence. "I was an emotionally troubled sixteen year old."

"I see." Murtasim was very hard to hold back the laughter that was threatening to break out. "And was throwing darts at my picture a therapist advised coping mechanism? Or was it just a teenage hobby?"

At loss of words, she looked down at her feet. Her cheeks were dusted red from embarrassment at her past childish actions, eyes downcast as she bit her lower lips. "Just go to sleep! We have to leave early in the morning!"

"About that?" Murtasim looked at the bed and then around the room. "This room doesn't have a sofa."

"Oh." Meerab's eyes widened as the realisation dawned to her. "What now?"