Dancing to his tunes

26|Marriage

As Bia scrolled through further, all of a sudden the screen went blank and the scandals disappeared, it was as if they weren’t there to begin with. Aaron watched in shock as all the clips and articles vanished in thin air. He took his phone from Bia’s hands and looked through all the sites and there was no video or image of Rahim. There was no talk about it, not even a single sentence about the scandal. It bewildered Aaron that even the videos and images stored in his gallery had disappeared, there were no traces of it left anywhere. It was like it never existed to begin with. As Aaron was looking through his phone in utter shock, Bia quietly left the event and made her way to her hotel room.

*****

“Do you, Anabia Zehravi, take Rahim Yazdani, son of Mir Yazdani, with a haq mehar of 25% shares of Mahrang hotel, as your lawful husband?”

“I do,” Bia uttered after a while as the images from the video flashed before her eyes.

“Do you, Rahim Yazdani, take Anabia Zehravi, daughter of Hassan Zehravi, with a haq mehar of 25% shares of Mahrang hotel, as your lawful wife?

“I do!” Rahim answered.

There was a small prayer right after the Nikkah was performed and everyone from both the sides of the family celebrated while the bride and groom both faked smiles.

Bia was on autopilot mode. The entire time she was so absentminded that she didn’t care how she looked or what the decor looked like. She didn’t know how she felt at that moment. Rahim looked at her furtively because he was scared to face the questions that swirled in her eyes. The guilt he felt was unparalleled.

After the wedding was wrapped up, both Bia and Rahim went to the house that Rahim’s father had gifted him in Wausau so that the married couple could go to their house instead of a hotel on their wedding night. Throughout the ride there was pregnant silence that none of them broke. After they reached the house, Rahim opened Bia’s side of the door and helped her out of the door into the house with a thrumming heart.

“Umm. You can go change first, I’ll do it later or in another room if you want,” Rahim told her awkwardly.

“Ok.”

Bia didn’t realise that she had entered the washroom without taking her clothes from the luggage so Rahim laid them out and locked the room door in case she came out to change; while he walked to the other room to change out of his wedding dress. He couldn’t describe the guilt he felt. Despite being a man, he was scared to face Bia, he didn’t know how to talk to her, the awkwardness was so palpable that it could be cut with a knife and he didn’t know what to do about it. He didn’t know if Bia even wanted to talk to him or see him. There was barely any reaction from her side and he couldn’t help but feel helpless in this situation.

Though he had informed Bia about how his drinks were spiked and how he got raped while he was kidnapped by his father’s rival, he couldn’t rid the guilt away. Despite his father’s dismay and orders to keep it a secret, he had forwarded the scandalous video to Bia because he didn’t want to start their marriage with lies and secrets. The video was shot to make it look like Rahim was the culprit when in reality he was the victim and he was scared to death to send the video to Bia because he was scared that she wouldn’t believe him. Whenever a man and woman are involved esp. one of a similar age group, it’s always gonna be the man who will be the rapist never the other way around. He knew that even if his video goes viral, it will be taken down easily and his father would be able to save his grace. However scandalous this situation is, his father’s team will be able to do damage control easily. Moreover, if a man does any of these things it will brushed under the rug with the explanation that “Mard to hota hi aisa hai” but  if it is a woman, she would have been killed in the name of honour.