Light Upon Light

#49 The Shiqra Wedding Special

Assalamualaikum beautiful people!

Yes I'm back with an update. And yes, it's the much awaited sailing of our beloved Shiqra. Frankly speaking I feel like this is rushed and not well written and that I have not done justice to the wedding. But, I wanted to get this out.

Enjoy!

#49 The Shiqra Wedding Special

All too soon it was time for Shoaib Bhai's wedding. It may seem like a negative statement when I speak so, but how time did fly. We were hardly out of the hangover of Di's wedding and we got right back into the whole setup for Bhai. I was both extremely happy and indescribably sad. To think it had been seven months since I shifted to Salimabad and all the events that happened in such a short while. I feel like I've lived for two years here instead of seven months.

The fabulous thing about a wedding is that it brings family together again. Di was staying for a whopping two weeks which is like twelve days more than the time she came to stay right after her wedding. And so much more than her meagre visits. I mean I can't really complain because she's hardly been married for a month. Abrar Jiju is a darling though. He brings her to visit every time she feels like coming and he has taken us cousins for a day out many times in the past few weeks. I love visiting Khushnuma with Samar as well. Alia is awesome and Wazim is such a funny guy.

Samar and Zaid don't find him as hilarious as I do. Zaid had once tagged along with us for a day out in the park. Except for the time he and Samar beat Wazim and Shoaib Bhai in a match of badminton, he was being a grouch. I was fascinated by the sight. I mean I've never seen the guy sulk.

But Wazim is funny. He finds my jokes funny, that's proof enough for his humour sense.

So Ashiana is all decked up again, the house is fuller than ever. Bhai's wedding doesn't have that tint of sadness that came with Di's however. It was a full on happy event. But somehow I felt a foreboding sense of sadness take over my soul. I never knew why. At least not until the end of Bhai's wedding.

Murshida Bi was called in again to design Iqra Di's wedding dress. Chachi chose a cherry red colour velvet fabric for the blouse and a chiffon for the skirt. On it she had Murshida Bi work in little roses in golden zari interspersed with tiny pearls. It was an exquisite affair. The dupatta had a pearl fringe and golden sequences scattered about. Chachi bought a matching ruby and pearl set for Iqra Di. She was so excited about her bahu, her daughter-in-law, finally coming home.

We didn't do a dress code like the last time, but Di and I got our clothes stitched in the same pattern. It was a floor length gown with box pleats in the skirt and floral embroidery in the bodice. Hers was a nice shade of lavender while mine was in purple.

Since the house was already polished, primed and perfected before Di's wedding, none of that drama was there. However the adults were almost always out. It was mostly Dadi and us cousins in the house.

Samar and I had Sports and Annual days at school. As promised Jade won the overall house cup. Samar sulked for a couple of days of course. On Annual Day, I was a spectator. I chose not to perform anything. Samar and his classmates including Zaid had put on a short skit hearing about Marwa. It was funny, even Rahma ma'am was laughing despite being satirised. There was a Qur'an recital by Zaid at the start of the function and it was my favourite out of the whole program. This time I recorded his rendition of the last two verses of Surah-al-Baqarah. His pronunciation of Arabic had fascinated me from the start, and his recitation had won my heart on the cultural festival itself. I was in love with it.

I did not listen to it every night before going to sleep. That's just so creepy. Junaina Javed Ali doesn't do creepy.

So Samar and I were quite occupied till about a week before Bhai's wedding. And just when we thought we would be free, model exams were announced for both of us, soon after Bhai's wedding. So we were sitting in the living hall downstairs where the heating was best and groaning in despair together.