6 Nasrin

6

Nasrin

Waking up to the empty bed was a bad feeling when I had the best sex of my life. That too, by a handsome stranger. But waking up to an empty bed and a dozen calls from your father and your brothers was worse. 

“Did someone die?” I said as a greeting when Imran, my younger brother, picked up the call. 

“Hello to you, too,” he replied enthusiastically, which meant no one had died. How unfortunate. “No one has died. Yet. But you need to cut your visit short and come back home.”

I resisted the urge to scoff at the palace he called home. The last time it had ever felt like home was the last night I spent with my mom on her deathbed. If I close my eyes and think hard enough, I can feel her hand gently stroking my hair, her soft voice before she closed her eyes and passed away early in the morning. 

“Is it serious?” I asked, swallowing the lump in my throat and sitting up. The soreness between my legs was evident as I tried to stifle my gasp, shuffling and sitting up in a comfortable position to relax the tensed muscles in my body. 

“The Sheikh announced that you, well, more like Maahnoor, have to either accept or reject his proposal in two days.” I could hear the guilt in his heavy voice. My hands clenching into a fist when he continued, “If we fail to answer him, his city will stop the export of vegetables and fruits to our country.”

“What? That’s bullshit. He can’t do that. He is a sheikh of a city. Sadiq is the sultan of a country. Does that fool not know the difference between the two?”

“Nasrin,” he said. “You don’t understand the influence he has. He is old. Older than father, so people are ready to take his side over ours. We have barely done anything for our country since mother… you know. People haven’t forgotten that.”

I squeezed my eyes shut to block out the memories. I blurted, “I… I will be there as soon as I can.”

I ended the call before we could exchange goodbyes. If I sat on the bed and kept waiting for a miracle to help me through this, nothing would happen. I knew because I had waited for my mom’s cancer to go away, but it never did. I had to go to Maahnoor and see for myself if there was a way out of it. 

I had to try. 

***

There was a small smile on my face since I left the hotel suite in Azmia and closed the door to my room in the palace of Maahnoor. Night had fallen, yet the smile remained. 

My lovely wife. Adorable drooling face. Handsome husband.

Fool. I was a complete fool to keep grinning wildly and clutching the handwritten note to my chest like a teenage girl. We had promised it was a one-night thing. Then why did he have to write the note? I wanted to know what he was thinking when he wrote it, that too with his email. 

He was a tease. Leaving it up to me to reach out to him if I wanted to. 

Of course, I wouldn’t send him an email. That seemed utterly ridiculous. I had more serious matters to worry about, like the marriage proposal of a sheikh who could put a wedge between the city and the people of Maahnoor. I didn’t have the time to think about the subject of the email or what to write or if I should tell him my identity, that I am a princess—

“No, you can’t,” I talked to myself, shaking my head at my reflection in the mirror. 

There was already animosity between the two countries and I didn’t know if he was from Azmia, Maahnoor or another country. I couldn’t risk telling him my identity. That too, over an email. 

I needed the night off to process and think of a plan to reject the marriage proposal and keep the unity of the people of Maahnoor at the same time. 

Opening the drawer of my old vanity dresser, I opened the ruby box where I kept my mother’s maang tikka. The only sentimental piece that belonged to my mother passed down to me. Promising me to marry the person I wanted to. Without thinking too much about the politics or religion or other’s commands. 

I pried open the lid, my eyes widening at the empty content of the box. Then I remembered sliding it in my bag before I left for Azmia. But I had kept it in the bedroom’s dresser in a hotel suite, and I hadn’t checked every drawer because I was in a hurry to pack up and leave.

I gaped at myself. I did not just lose my mother’s most precious sentimental piece of jewelry.