Curious_Always_60660
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The wedding was a good month away, and yet preparations had begun for it already. Why Amirah, the eldest daughter of a business elite wanted to marry in a bungalow situated in muggy Pakistan when she had glamorous London at the tip of her fingers, was beyond Zara.
She did not understand Amirah. She was so ahead of Pakistan, so far away from it, and yet she chose it as the place for possibly the biggest day of her life. Zara herself dreamed of places far and beyond the borders of Karachi, Pakistan. The world far and beyond the sweeping bungalow, which seemed to get smaller and smaller the more she knew of it with each passing day. The bungalow was a beautiful place to live in; it had a majestic entrance consisting of a tall, wrought iron gate. A towering wall enveloped the building, with thick green vines clinging to its creamy exterior. Upon entering, the foyer led to a towering staircase, twisting up to the second floor, each bedroom roomier than the next. Zara loved the way the stuffy, humid afternoon slowly turned into a cool, breezy evening, with a single giant palm tree swaying in front of the bungalow’s wide terrace. She loved the way the Shamsi family gathered on the lawn as the sun slowly set behind them, while they sat back in roomy lawn chairs enjoying tea, the smaller members of the family giggling and running over the grass enjoying a game of kabbadi. The way Danya, the bungalow’s head cook moved feverishly throughout the kitchen from morning to night, her plastic flip flops slapping against the shiny tiled floor.
But none of this was hers.
Though Zara spent most her days and nights inside the bungalow, she had no business of calling it home. Her home was a small, dingy shed she shared with her parents and her younger sister, Zoya. Unlike the glittering, three-layered chandelier dangling inside the bungalow, a single, faded out light bulb dangled on a short piece of wire inside her home.
But beside all this, Zara’s father was happy with what he and his family had, “Allah has given us much to be thankful for, mashAllah” He’d say often, “He gave us the Shamsi’s,”
Zara’s father was a simple man clearly leading a simple life. He would sleep on the shed’s floor on a pillow stuffed with leaves that left marks on his wrinkled cheeks, “That is the way the Prophet Muhammad slept,” He’d beam. Besides his servitude to God, he held servitude to Abdul Shamsi, the owner of the bungalow.
“Our family has served the Shamsi’s for as long as I can remember,” When he was a young boy, he would go to the Shamsi’s bungalow and tend to the garden, do chores, and had been nothing more than a servant, until Abdul Shamsi himself had found him a wife and given him a place to call home, even if it had been just a dingy shed.
“I never wanted to work for the Shamsi’s,” Zara’s mother, Farida, would scowl to her. “I wanted to do something on my own, all my life and I knew I was capable of it. If I hadn’t been forced by my father to marry him, I wouldn’t be here today,” Every time this came up, she would knead the dough a little harder, she’d toss the rice in the air a bit more forcefully, spilling some around.
She did not understand Amirah. She was so ahead of Pakistan, so far away from it, and yet she chose it as the place for possibly the biggest day of her life. Zara herself dreamed of places far and beyond the borders of Karachi, Pakistan. The world far and beyond the sweeping bungalow, which seemed to get smaller and smaller the more she knew of it with each passing day. The bungalow was a beautiful place to live in; it had a majestic entrance consisting of a tall, wrought iron gate. A towering wall enveloped the building, with thick green vines clinging to its creamy exterior. Upon entering, the foyer led to a towering staircase, twisting up to the second floor, each bedroom roomier than the next. Zara loved the way the stuffy, humid afternoon slowly turned into a cool, breezy evening, with a single giant palm tree swaying in front of the bungalow’s wide terrace. She loved the way the Shamsi family gathered on the lawn as the sun slowly set behind them, while they sat back in roomy lawn chairs enjoying tea, the smaller members of the family giggling and running over the grass enjoying a game of kabbadi. The way Danya, the bungalow’s head cook moved feverishly throughout the kitchen from morning to night, her plastic flip flops slapping against the shiny tiled floor.
But none of this was hers.
Though Zara spent most her days and nights inside the bungalow, she had no business of calling it home. Her home was a small, dingy shed she shared with her parents and her younger sister, Zoya. Unlike the glittering, three-layered chandelier dangling inside the bungalow, a single, faded out light bulb dangled on a short piece of wire inside her home.
But beside all this, Zara’s father was happy with what he and his family had, “Allah has given us much to be thankful for, mashAllah” He’d say often, “He gave us the Shamsi’s,”
Zara’s father was a simple man clearly leading a simple life. He would sleep on the shed’s floor on a pillow stuffed with leaves that left marks on his wrinkled cheeks, “That is the way the Prophet Muhammad slept,” He’d beam. Besides his servitude to God, he held servitude to Abdul Shamsi, the owner of the bungalow.
“Our family has served the Shamsi’s for as long as I can remember,” When he was a young boy, he would go to the Shamsi’s bungalow and tend to the garden, do chores, and had been nothing more than a servant, until Abdul Shamsi himself had found him a wife and given him a place to call home, even if it had been just a dingy shed.
“I never wanted to work for the Shamsi’s,” Zara’s mother, Farida, would scowl to her. “I wanted to do something on my own, all my life and I knew I was capable of it. If I hadn’t been forced by my father to marry him, I wouldn’t be here today,” Every time this came up, she would knead the dough a little harder, she’d toss the rice in the air a bit more forcefully, spilling some around.