Chapter 3
A few days had passed since the desert.
Since the camels, the campfire, and the quiet moment where everything had felt, for a breath, like it might fall into place.
But of course, it hadn’t.
I'd quit my job. I’d made peace with that. The pressure was gone—but only for now. It was the kind of pressure that always came back. I had responsibilities. I knew I couldn’t float like this forever. But I’d also made a promise, and promises—especially ones made across oceans—have a way of rearranging your priorities.
My friend in Pakistan was dying. And I’d said I’d come.
Not because I had the money. Not because I had the time. But because I’d said it. Because sometimes, a man’s word is all he has.
And so, over the past few days, I’d fallen into a rhythm—a strange, uneven blend of reflection and restlessness. I'd been applying for jobs half-heartedly, casting my net into the digital abyss. Nothing serious. Nothing, I believed, that would come back. Mostly just trying to pretend I was still being useful.
But I’d also taken up an old habit again.
Walking.
It started as a way to manage my mood. A way to not be in the apartment all day, staring at the ceiling or the ceiling of the internet. But soon it became more than that. I started walking long distances, sometimes for hours. I was losing weight. Sweating out the fog. And more than anything else, I was seeing Doha.
Qatar has a lot of money. That’s not news. But what people don’t realise is that some of that money finds its way into sacred spaces - Mosques.
When wealthy men in Qatar want to honour God—or perhaps just be remembered while pretending to—they don’t always pray more - they build.
They build mosques the way old kings built palaces. Inlaid tilework, hand-carved minbars, domes that sang when the muezzin called the adthaan. Cavernous prayer halls designed to make you feel small and elevated at the same time.
And whether or not the builders designed and built with sincerity, I’ll say this: the mosques work.
I visited dozens in those few days. Small neighborhood ones where you could hear a pin drop. Massive state-sponsored ones with minarets taller than ambition. Some so beautiful, I couldn’t help but take photos—sending them to friends, family, and people I hadn’t messaged in years. Just to share that brief moment of stunned reverence.
But behind all that wandering, behind all those prayer rugs and gold leaf mihrabs, something else was building.
Urgency.
I’d been applying for a visa to Pakistan, knowing full well that I needed to act fast. You can get a visa on arrival, technically—but stories about airport corruption, especially for foreigners, had made me cautious. I’d decided to apply online, just in case an interview was needed at the consulate in Doha.
But time was slipping.
There’d been a terrorist attack in Indian-administered Kashmir—Muslim militants, allegedly, shouting “Allahu Akbar” while killing Hindu tourists.
It sounded... off. Too well-timed. Too neat.
There were whispers—Indian state assets, false flag operations, a spark for nationalist outrage. The kind of incident designed to enrage, to justify crackdowns, to seal borders.
And if borders started closing—if Pakistan and India slid back into open hostility—I might not make it in time. My friend might die before I could reach him.
So here I was.
Sunburnt from aimless walking, spiritually recharged but logistically behind, worshipping God in gold-trimmed silence while dragging my feet on a promise that mattered.
Taking my time when I should have been hurrying.
Twenty-four hours after applying for the visa, I got a message summoning me to the Pakistani Embassy in Doha. Why an interview was needed, God only knows. I’ve applied for a U.S. visa before—interviews make sense there. But to go to Pakistan? This was bureaucracy for the sake of theatre. It’s not like I was going to slip into Karachi and steal someone’s job.
But rules are rules, especially when no one actually understands them. So I went.
At the gate, a Qatari policeman gave me a thorough inspection of the “what business do you have here?” variety. After a few grunts and sideways looks, I was waved through the front door. Inside, I passed through multiple scanners—each one giving off the theatrical impression of importance—until I found myself inside the consulate waiting area.
I took a ticket and sat down.
And waited.
And waited some more.
And that’s when I learned something important about Pakistani consulates—there are two lines. The line for those with a ticket. And the line for those with a ticket and a bit of cash.
Of course, you have to know that the second line exists in the first place. I didn’t.
After about thirty minutes of watching absolutely nothing move, I approached a consular staff member—the type who looked like he'd been standing there doing nothing for decades, possibly while having a long-standing argument about his salary.
I asked what was happening.
“System is very slow today,” he said with a shrug. “Would you like me to help you?”
“Sure,” I said, already knowing what this meant.
He just stood there. Saying nothing.
I messaged Osama—yes, that Osama, from my old office.
“He asked if I wanted help. I said yes. He’s just standing there staring into space.”
Osama responded instantly.
“You have to slip him something. But not cash. Not here. Use Ooredoo Money.”
Ah, yes. Corruption had now gone digital.
Ooreedo Money was a mobile money transfer system, used for sending small amounts from your phone like a debit card. No envelopes, no awkward handshakes. Just neat, trackable bribery with a QR code and a smile.
So I went back to the man.
“I’m really sorry,” I said. “What are your account details for transfer?”
He gave me his details. I transferred the amount Osama had suggested.
He nodded.
“Please sit. I will call you soon.”
And true to his word, five minutes later, he called me through a side door and into an office.
The man waiting inside wore a suit and tie that looked like it had been fighting him for years—and losing. The collar of his light blue shirt was dark with sweat and wear, the top of his tie stained where his double chin pressed against it. His suit looked like it had once been decent, but that was probably two belly sizes ago. His hair was thinning, his jawlines were multiplying, and his entire posture radiated discomfort.
On his desk was a printed version of my application. So much for digitisation.
He stared at it like it was a philosophical riddle.
Eventually, without looking up, he said,
“So, Mr. Daniel. You wish to visit Pakistan?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And what is the purpose of your visit?”
“I’m going to visit an old friend. We met in London. Early 2000s. He helped me through my early days in Islam.”
He looked up suddenly.
“You are Muslim?”
“Yes, sir. Alhamdulillah.”
“You are still Muslim?”
I hated that question. Second only to “Did you marry a Muslim?” As if faith in God only makes sense if you're chasing someone.
I wanted to say, "I look more Muslim than you do, my clean-shaven friend, but instead I said politely: “Yes. Still Muslim. Alhamdulillah.”
“Hmm.” He nodded.
“And what do you intend to do in Pakistan?”
“As I said, I wish to visit my friend - he is ill. He’s dying. I want to see him one last time.”
He looked up at the staff member I had greased earlier. Then back at me. The silence was long, opaque, loaded.
Not sure what the next move was, I leaned forward slightly and said:
“As-salaamu alaykum, brother. What’s your name?”
“Abdullah.”
“Abdullah, forgive me. I’m not used to these situations. Am I supposed to give you something, too?”
He leaned in.
“I know you are not used to this. That is why I am allowing you to ask questions like this.”
There was something almost kind in the way he said it. Almost.
“We are not doing very well here at the Embassy.”
I resisted the urge to tell him that perhaps prioritising hygiene over hustling might help. But I sat there, straight-faced.
“Fine,” I said. “Just tell me what you need and let’s get on with it.”
He nodded slowly.
“It’s just you going, is it?”
That caught me off guard.
“Yes… just me, for now.”
“It would look better, if your wife was going too. You are married… aren’t you?” he said, rhetorically.
“Yes. But… why would that make a difference?”
“These visas… sometimes, even when we approve them here, things happen at the other end. Lahore immigration. If you go alone, they might question you.”
I thought fast.
“Fine. I’ll take my wife.”
“But this application doesn’t include her, Mr. Daniel. That is a problem. But it’s a problem I know how to solve.”
He smiled thinly and opened a drawer.
“Here. Fill this form. I will give you both the visa. You may fly as early as tomorrow.”
I filled in the form.
The fee was ten times what I’d paid outside.
But still not that much.
And I was learning the rules.
The events at the Pakistani Embassy had resolved one problem:
I now had the visa.
But they'd created another.
Now I needed to bring my wife to Doha, and then to Pakistan.
And my wife—for all her faults, and for all her admirable traits—did not like surprises.
She wasn’t a seat-of-your-pants sort of woman. She was a planner. A packer. A processor.
Not because she was difficult.
But because she was the primary carer of our three children, and her life required structure to function.
As soon as I stepped out of the consulate building, I dialled her number.
And immediately regretted it.
I knew it would start ringing instantly.
And I knew she would wake up.
She’s a light sleeper, always has been. The slightest vibration from a phone and she’s sitting bolt upright.
It was 9:00 a.m. in Doha. That made it 6:00 a.m. in the UK.
She would not be pleased.
But to her credit, she answered. And she did her best to sound calm.
“Yes, Jaan…” she said, her voice heavy with sleep.
"As-salāmu ʿalaykum... What’s up?”
“Wa ʿalaykum as-salām, Jaan. I’m really sorry to be calling so early, but something’s come up…”
Silence.
That kind of silence.
“We’re going on a holiday.”
Pause.
“We’re going to Malaysia. But first... we need to go to Pakistan.”
That woke her up properly.
“Pakistan?”
“Yes. We need to go see Bilal. You remember Bilal—the one with MS?”
“Yes, I remember him. But what’s happened?”
“He’s not well. It looks like… it looks like he doesn’t have long left. He’s asked me to come and see him. And I’ve just been down to the Pakistani consulate to get the visa sorted. But I need you to come to Doha by tomorrow so we can fly to Lahore together.”
There was a long inhale. That kind of breathing that doesn’t need words.
“Why do I need to go?” she asked carefully. “Why can’t you just go by yourself?”
I was ready for that.
“Because we’re going to Malaysia as well, after. You’ve always wanted to go to Malaysia.”
“Yes, I do want to go to Malaysia. But you're not giving me any time to think about this.”
“Why do you need time? I’ve decided. I’m free now. You can take a break too. The kids are old enough to be on their own for a few days. And your brother can check in on them—pop round every now and then. They'll be fine.”
She didn’t respond right away.
And I knew, in that moment, that I'd just thrown a grenade into her day.
Into her week.
Into her sense of stability.
In truth, after that early morning phone call, it wasn’t difficult to convince her to come to Doha—and then to Pakistan.
She liked holidays as much as anyone. And, if I’m being honest, I hadn’t exactly provided her with much of a life worth romanticising over the last fifteen years.
It had been a marriage of early compromises, shared poverty, too little sleep, and far too much time spent just getting through it.
Add children to the mix—four of them—and what little ease we might have had disappeared beneath nappies, night feeds, and never enough hours in the day.
So when I called her, and dropped that grenade, what followed was less of a fight and more of a... reckoning. A realisation between us that maybe a little bit of spontaneity, a little bit of pause, might just be the thing we both needed.
—
24 hours later, she was here.
I wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near the terminal, of course. No one is. But somehow—through charm, or wasta, or some security guard being too sleepy to say no—I found myself watching from a distance as her flight came to a stop somewhere beyond the glass.
At Hamad International, the planes don’t always pull up to gates. Despite its constant stream of international awards—Best Airport in the World, year after year—there are never enough berths. So the plane was parked out on the tarmac, and a staircase had been wheeled over to the side.
She stepped out onto the platform.
And for a moment, time slowed.
It was like watching a scene out of a movie. Not a Hollywood film—a Bollywood one, rich with sentiment and dramatic wind.
The golden sun lit her from behind. And for the briefest moment, I forgot every argument, every logistical squabble, every morning alarm.
She looked...
like poetry.
She doesn’t wear makeup. Never has.
And yet, there’s something ethereal about her. A timeless beauty—the kind that sneaks up on people. One of our elderly neighbours, years ago, had once asked her over tea,
“How long does it take you to do your makeup every morning?”
To which she replied, quite simply,
“I don’t wear any.”
And that’s who she is.
No lipstick—yet her lips always seem tinged with crimson.
No eyeshadow—just the natural darkness under her eyes, made richer by endless sleepless nights.
Her eyebrows are full, unbothered, elegant. Her cheekbones high. Her eyes—those big brown eyes—carrying both the fatigue and fire of a woman who’s kept a house, a husband, and children afloat for over a decade.
She’s slender, but not slight.
Elegant, but never adorned.
She wore casual, chic, modest clothing—nothing designed to accentuate, everything designed to be practical and respectful.
No jewellery. Just the gold studs in her ears that she'd worn since childhood, and she wore a hijab which accentuated her modesty. She was a classic, timeless, beauty.
And as she stood there, pausing at the top of the steps, the sunlight caught one of those studs—just for a second.
And I smiled.
She was here.
And I didn’t say it out loud. I wouldn’t have dared.
But deep down, somewhere beneath all the dust of our years, I thought to myself:
You still take my breath away.
—
Asma had grown up in Mombasa, Kenya, and had always been brilliant. She was the sort of girl who got A's and stars in every subject she touched.
An aspiring diplomat, she studied International Relations at the American University in Nairobi, already dreaming of embassies, speeches, and security clearances before most people knew what the UN was.
She was this close to securing a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford or Cambridge. Just a hair's breadth away. But, as life would have it, it wasn’t meant to be.
Still, she wasn’t done.
She set her sights on law, convinced her family to fund a UK degree—no easy feat for them—and enrolled at the University of Leeds, determined to make something of it. She arrived in the UK with the crisp determination of someone who knew what it cost to get here.
And I?
I was there because of an entirely different plan.
I’d studied chemistry—a master’s degree from King’s College London—and thought I was destined for lab coats and pipettes. But I couldn’t see myself locked away in a lab for the rest of my life. The idea of becoming a patent attorney felt like a clever middle ground: still technical, but with a suit.
So I signed up for a law conversion course at Leeds, thinking it was the smart next step.
Of course, I found out later I didn’t need to study law to become a patent attorney.
But that’s the thing about life—it never asks what your plan is - it just hands you what’s next.
And what came next was Asma.
Had it not been for Leeds, for the misstep, the misdirection, the hundreds of tiny chance decisions…
We would have never met.
And here we were now—fifteen years later.
Still married.
Still navigating the unexpected.
Still finding each other, somehow, through the haze of life.
And she was walking down the stairs of a Qatar Airways flight, sunlit perfection, and I was watching like it was the first time all over again.
I always tell the children—and I tell her, when she’ll let me—that it was love at first sight.
It was for me.
Asma, on the other hand, was far more world-weary. More practical. She'd grown up with a mother’s warnings and a father’s silences. Far too many talks that began with,
“Don’t look at boys.”
“Don’t believe their lies.”
“They’ll say anything to get close to you.”
The kinds of talks I now give my own daughter, with all the hypocritical gravity of a man who once was one of those boys.
We met properly in the library.
It was shortly after the usual induction rituals: getting our timetables, being shown where the student office was, which professors to avoid, where to go if you were lost or hungry or panicking. I’d wandered into the library early, thinking I’d get ahead with some revision before lectures started. It was part nerves, part routine. I just didn’t want to go home yet.
That’s when I saw her.
She looked up from whatever she was reading and smiled.
And that was it.
Her smile—God—I still remember it. Bright, full of warmth, entirely unforced. It told me everything. Not that she was in love. Nothing that dramatic.
Just that she was happy to see me.
And that made me happy to see her.
In that single glance, in that little expression exchanged over a pile of unread textbooks, I saw my whole future.
This is the woman I’m going to marry.
This is the woman I’ll have my children with.
She wouldn’t have agreed with that at the time, of course. She probably would have laughed—or worse, rolled her eyes—but it didn’t matter.
Because I knew.
—
She stepped down the aircraft stairs like a First Lady, each movement measured, unhurried—her feet light against the metal steps, the hot Doha wind catching her hair just enough to frame her like a still from a film.
It felt like I was watching her in slow motion.
I was waiting on the airport coach, the one that ferries passengers from plane to terminal when the gates are full—and in Doha, despite all its five-star reviews and glittering awards, they’re always full.
She carried only a small shoulder bag, just like I’d told her to.
“Keep the rest,” I’d said. “You won’t need much. We’ll buy what we need along the way.”
She’d listened. Like the good girl she is—disciplined, practical, always thinking ahead.
She stepped onto the coach. And then she saw me.
That smile.
The same smile that I saw in the library fifteen years ago.
The one that burned itself into my memory with white teeth and quiet gladness.
She smiled like she was truly, honestly happy to see me.
And she moved—quick, eager steps across the coach, weaving past the handful of passengers, arms flung forward before she even reached me.
“Oh, Daniel... I’ve missed you.”
And then she was in my arms.
We embraced—deeply, fully, passionately.
Right there in the heat of a Gulf afternoon, in the stale air of a bus, under the gaze of tired passengers and half-curious airline staff.
It was one of the warmest feelings I’ve ever had, and that’s saying something in a city where it’s 40 degrees before breakfast. But she melted into me.
Completely surrendered herself to me.
We made love with our faces—her hands in my hair, my hands around her back, our foreheads touching, our lips searching, rediscovering. It had been months since we’d last held each other, and although we spoke every day, saw each other’s faces on video calls, it was nothing compared to this.
Now, we were together.
In each other’s company.
In each other’s arms.
And God had made this woman for me. And He had made me for her.
It was divinely written, and in that moment, we both knew it.
We loved each other. Deeply. Fiercely. With no one else in the world but us.
The coach doors closed.
The driver gave us a moment—he and the other passengers pretended not to see us, half-bewildered as to how I’d gotten onto the coach in the first place. But we didn’t care. We stood there, holding each other, until the coach lurched forward.
We nearly lost our balance and laughed, adjusting our footing, her arms still around my neck, mine still around her waist.
By the time we got to immigration, we were steady. Efficient. Eyes only for each other.
We passed through customs quickly, and stepped out into the Doha night.
The car I’d booked was waiting, just outside the terminal.
I had booked us into a hotel nearby, close to the part of town I was staying in, but far enough from the rough flat I’d been renting with a dozen other men.
There was no way I was going to have her stay there. She wouldn’t have been comfortable.
And besides—she deserved more. Always had.
Back in the hotel, I brought her bag up from the car and placed it gently beside mine
Asma disappeared into the shower while I stepped out onto the small balcony to take in the street below. Bin Omran was alive as always—Al Jazeera Street glowing with its 24-hour rhythm. A chorus of neon signs in Arabic and English buzzed above restaurants offering everything from Thai and Syrian food to South Asian curries, Turkish grills, and Italian pastas. You could taste the world in this part of Doha. Everything, that is, except English fish and chips. I smiled at that.
I opened a cold bottle of water from the mini-fridge and sat with it in my hand, listening to the gentle hum of the city. Beneath me, delivery drivers zoomed past on scooters. Families strolled in the warm night air. The city had its own kind of music. One that never really stopped playing.
After fifteen quiet minutes, the bathroom door clicked open behind me.
I turned.
She stood in the doorway, wrapped in a white towel knotted above her chest. Her hair was still wet, water droplets tracing their way across her shoulders. A soft steam followed her from the bathroom like a halo.
“Where’s the hairdryer?” she asked.
“There isn’t one,” I said, half-smiling.
She looked at me as though I’d just told her the power had been shut off.
“How do women dry their hair, then?”
I shrugged, playful.
“I assumed you’d air-dry. You’re in Doha. It’s forty degrees outside.”
She rolled her eyes but didn’t push it. Her feet left a faint trail of damp footprints across the floor as she stepped back into the room, still wrapped in her towel.
She was stunning.
She always had been.
Even after all these years, even after everything we’d been through—the stress, the sacrifices, the distance—she still took my breath away.
I stood up and moved toward her, tentative, warm. She raised a hand as if to push me away.
“I just showered. You’re sweaty. You’ve been outside.”
But her protest was more habit than resistance.
Her body leaned into mine before her words could pull away. I held her carefully—arms around her back, lips brushing her shoulder—and felt her melt into me.
We kissed, slowly at first, rediscovering the contours of each other’s presence. Not hungry, not hurried, just close. Reconnected. Present. Alive.
The towel loosened and eventually slipped to the floor, unnoticed.
We tumbled back onto the bed, still wrapped in each other.
Asma had clearly been paying attention to her physique whilst we've been separated for all these months. I knew she'd been hitting the gym hard and it showed.
Her waist was as trim as it had been when we had first married, when she had striven hard to make sure that the man she was marrying saw that as perfect a body that he could possibly want to see when they first got married. And now it was back to that. Her breasts were larger than when they got married - The results of three children - making them not only bigger, but juicier and more delicious (Asma knew that Daniel liked to have her breasts in his mouth, and sucking them was his favourite foreplay).
He could tell she knew that he would be probing her body because her skin was as smooth as silk all over - the sort of great lengths a woman would go to to make a man happy, and knowing what makes a man happy, she had spent a lot of time making sure *all* of her body was smooth save the brows above her eyes, and the hair on her head.
Daniel's hands ran the length of her body, causing her to shudder whenever his hands moved over soft, sensitive areas, and he drew out the slow, intense pleasures that he knew his wife would feel as she yearned for him to embrace the passion deeper into her body.
He played it slowly, making sure she savored every brushed fingertip, and every gentle caress with his lips. Eventually she could take no more of this beautiful agony, and she pushed him over onto his back. Daniel was kind of startled by this intense physical backlash that she displayed. It wasn't part of her usual repertoire, perhaps due to the delay in sexual satisfaction that she had been missing.
Daniel was happy to play a part of being dominated, because it's not something that was very common for them to do.
She held him down with her slight weight and I could feel the warmth from between her legs. The moisture from her body was now all evaporated, but for the sweat that was starting to show on her body and the moistness from between her legs. Her natural scent was beginning to come through over the smell of the soaps and shampoos that she had been using in the shower only minutes earlier.
Her labia were on top of his massively engorged manhood now and the slight movement of their bodies allowed for the labia to wrap around the shaft and allow the two organs, that had not seen or spoken to each other for months now, to greet and exchange juices again.
Asma leaned down towards my face and whispered into my ear that she was now going to make me suffer for making her suffer - and knowing that it had been months since we had last been together, it would be hard for me not to feel the pain.
She proceeded to kiss me gently on my lips, on my face, and on my neck. The heat from her mouth was like that which I could not remember - who was this woman. Usually quite timid in the bedroom, she was now taking control, leading the way and saying stuff that would normally make her blush. And I was loving it.
As her mouth made its way around my head, neck and shoulders, her breasts were innocently caressing my chest. I loved her breasts. I could easily play with them, as most men could, all night long, but she had other plans in mind for her breasts and my body.
I could barely stand the constant attention and my body was asking for more, and more, so I tried to position the middle of my body so that the shaft of my manhood would start to enter the juicy opening between her legs. She immediately sensed what I was trying to do and immediately pushed her bottom down towards my legs, not allowing me to do what I wanted, and she bit me on the neck. “Ah, ah, ahh… wait for it, jaan,” she said.
I couldn’t wait. It had been months and this was torture!
She made her way down, continuing to kiss and caress my body until her beautiful breasts were now level with my now throbbing cock. And she began to move back and forth, back and forth. I could feel the ecstasy beginning to build. “Jaan, I don't know how long I can take this…” Her breathing was becoming more pronounced as she too was becoming excited. My hand now had become to the same level as her the parting between her legs and I felt for her clitoris. She was so wet - like I had never known before. Of course some of that was my precum, from when she had been grinding me, when she had taken over this session of lust, but most of this was her own juices. She was wet for me and so I started pleasuring her in the only way I knew with my hand could and started playing with her clitoris. Thankfully the move to concentrate on giving her pleasure had allowed me to stop thinking about the relentless and mind bending tit-wank she was giving me and brought me back away from climax. But as I worked on her clitoris, and I started to bring my fingers into her vagina and put pressure onto her g spot, she too started to come close to climax. I was getting jealous that she was getting so much pleasure now. But there was nothing as satisfying to a man as seeing the woman you love getting the pleasure that you so want in her - and you were giving her that pleasure without any direction from her, and she was loving it.
Soon, she was going to climax and being the selfless woman that she was she came back up north to my mouth with hers so that her body was now inline with hers. She placed her body firmly on top of mine and allowed the head of my penis to enter her pleasure enthralled body. She brought herself down slowly onto the rest of the shaft and let out a long quiet whimper as she filled out her recently “re-virgined” body from lack of use. She moved back and forth, slowly at first, moving our bodies in sync, my body in her, and with hers, moving as one, and yet independently, like we knew what to do and how to do it - the sort of romantic and passionate love that two lovers learn and know instinctively how to do. Soon she stopped kissing me because she needed air to breathe and to climax. She tensed out and up, needing the room to allow her spine to feel the waves of pleasure spread up her body. She cried out in a beautiful sort of agony. She looked so happy, and yet also almost on the edge of crying due to the intensity of the feelings of pleasure, intense joy and happiness that emanated from her… and then she went soft, like she had been all this time, and she looked me in the eye and said in the most dedicated of wifely suggestions: “and now your turn my jaan” and she went into a renewed effort of passion. She began to thrust hard onto my manhood with the skill and expertise of a woman that had thrown herself at the gym - pushing herself hard to increase her stamina, and to make sure the muscles knew what to do to make her man happy.
Before long I was nearing climax. To be honest she didn't need to put that much effort into the thrusts, but the effort paid off too. As soon as she looked me in the eye after only a little while my whole body began to feel waves of pleasure ripple through my body and my penis erupted into her body with gushes of semen. At that point I forgot what my name was, and I didn't know where I was. At that moment my body was melting into hers and she was looking into my eyes as it was happening.
I loved her, and she knew it. The way she was riding me now - I knew she loved me, and she knew I knew it. We collapsed into each other, the physical exertion we had just displayed, especially her, meaning we fell asleep in each other's arms, and still in each other's bodies.
—
In the quiet stillness of the early morning, we woke before dawn.
The call to prayer hadn’t yet sounded, but both of us stirred at the same time, as though our bodies and hearts remembered what time it was.
Fajr.
We made ghusl and wudhu silently, side by side, the cool water against our skin both refreshing and grounding. Then we laid our prayer mats out—mine by the window, hers beside me—and for the first time in months, we prayed Fajr together.
There’s something indescribable about praying next to the person you love. About bowing your head beside theirs. About standing shoulder to shoulder in the dark, whispering your shared gratitude into the silence. We weren’t just closer to God—we were closer to each other. And being closer to Him always brings his subjects closer together.
After the prayer, we sat quietly, knowing our time was short.
“We have to leave soon,” I said.
The flight to Pakistan was in less than four hours.
We got ready quickly. She dressed with her usual graceful ease. I packed what little I had—most of it was already in the one shared rucksack we'd planned to take on board.
By the time we stepped out onto Al Jazeera Street, the city was already alive. The street, like always, was buzzing. Bin Omran never really sleeps. Markets were opening, workers were hailing cabs, the scent of fresh bread mixed with petrol fumes. It was Doha, at its most honest.
We hailed a cab and made our way to Hamad International Airport, bags in hand, hearts light.
At the check-in desk, we were holding each other closely, our hands entwined, her head occasionally resting on my shoulder. We must have looked like newlyweds.
The lady behind the desk smiled at us.
“Have you just gotten married?”
We laughed.
“No,” Asma said with a grin.
“But we’re still very much in love,” I added.
The woman looked at her screen.
“Well,” she said, “we’ve got two spare seats in first class that need to be assigned. Would you like them?”
We blinked at each other.
“Of course we would.”
She upgraded our seats, handed us the new boarding passes, and offered one last knowing smile.
We drifted through security, hand in hand, like the world belonged to us.
Past duty-free, I caught a glimpse of a perfume stand and paused.
“Wait here.”
I doubled back and returned with a small, elegant bottle.
“You already smell amazing,” I told her, placing it in her hand, “but now you'll leave a trail everywhere you go.”
She smiled—soft, pleased, and just a little shy.
We shared a coffee in one of the airport cafés, watching the day unfold through the massive glass windows. Qatar Airways planes came and went like silver birds in quiet procession.
When our gate was announced, we made our way there slowly, savoring the final quiet moments before takeoff.
The flight itself was uneventful, but luxurious. Spacious seats. Good food. Hot towels. A feeling of ease we hadn't felt in years. It was only a three-hour flight to Lahore, but the quiet luxury of it all made it feel like a gift. A small, unexpected blessing.
We looked at each other mid-flight—no words exchanged—just a shared look of “we're really doing this”. And we were.
But the moment the aircraft began to descend over the city of Lahore, something in the air shifted.
Not just the literal air — the smog and smoke that gave Lahore its reddish morning glow — but the feeling. The passengers subtly straightened up in their seats, voices dropped in tone, eyes became more alert. It was as if everyone on board had reset their expectations, silently preparing themselves for what often greeted them at ground level. I could feel Asma’s hand grip mine a little tighter as the wheels touched tarmac.
We disembarked smoothly and followed the crowd through to immigration. To Pakistan’s credit, that part went relatively well — for once, the immigration staff didn’t ask too many suspicious questions or make awkward comments about my wife’s skin tone, her accent, or our mixed-nationality marriage. The officer stamped our passports without fuss, barely glancing up from his screen, and we were waved through the frosted glass gates toward baggage reclaim.
But it was at customs that the problems began.
As we approached the final checkpoint, we were stopped by a uniformed man with sleepy eyes and a moustache that looked too large for his face. He was holding a walkie-talkie that wasn’t turned on and a clipboard that didn’t seem to be attached to anything official.
“Sir, open your bag,” he said in Urdu.
I responded in polite Urdu, as I always try to do, showing some familiarity with the language of the land.
“Of course. Is there a problem?”
He flicked his eyes toward Asma, then back to me.
“It’s just a routine inspection.”
Of course it was.
I knew this game.
He opened our suitcase slowly, poking through our clothing and toiletry bags with theatrical indifference, occasionally lifting something up as though it might contain contraband or something vaguely valuable. He picked up the bottle of perfume I had bought for Asma at Doha Duty Free and turned it in his hand.
“Expensive?”
“Not particularly,” I replied, trying to keep the edge out of my voice.
He hummed through his nose, which in this part of the world is the sound of a man realising he has two options: let you go, or wait until you make his time worth it. He stood there for a moment, doing nothing. The bag was open, his hands idle, and he was just waiting — not for an explanation, not for instructions, but for an offer.
Asma shifted uncomfortably beside me. I could see it on her face — this again.
And there it was — the unspoken ritual of corruption, the kind of moment we had already encountered back at the consulate in Doha. But here it felt even more exposed. No subtlety. No envelope under the table. Just a man in a loose shirt, staring at my luggage, willing me to fill the silence.
It was at that moment that Asma snapped.
She stepped forward, hands clenched at her sides, and said — clear, cold, and unwavering, in Urdu:
“The only reason you’re doing this is because he’s white.”
The officer blinked, stunned.
And I, being a man — a tired man, a man who should have known better — turned to her and muttered,
“Asma, calm down.”
Of course, a man telling a woman to calm down is the universal recipe for the exact opposite outcome.
It was one of those things you say and regret instantly — like stepping on your own foot mid-stride and pretending you meant to.
Her nostrils flared. Her mouth stayed shut, but her stare grew colder.
And the customs officer, now fully insulted by both of us in different languages, stared at her like she was a schoolgirl mouthing off to the headmaster.
Then he looked at me.
As though I had lost control of my wife.
As though I had violated a silent rule of etiquette he had expected me, as the man, to enforce.
“You should keep her in check,” he said, still in Urdu, but now speaking low enough that only I could hear him.
“It’s not appropriate for a woman to speak out of turn. Not to someone in my position.”
I swallowed my reply, took a half step forward, and offered him a restrained smile.
“I understand, sir. I thank you for your service.” I made sure my tone was even. Not sarcastic. Not submissive.
“It’s just… perhaps after a journey — even a short one — you might consider being a little more accommodating. We’re not smugglers. We’re not criminals. We’re just travellers, trying to honour a promise. We came here because someone we care about is dying. That’s the only story behind this bag.”
He looked at me, then at Asma. Then back down at the half-spilled bag between us.
“Would you say you loved this country?” he asked.
“Yes,” I replied. “Despite everything happening right now… I really do. And I love the man I’ve come to see. He lives here. So if you could allow us to move on, and perhaps turn the other cheek—not to her words, but to the idea that you are the problem—I’d appreciate it.”
There was a pause. Just a few seconds.
But it was enough.
He exhaled sharply through his nose — the same annoyed sound he’d made before, but now it carried resignation more than pride.
He waved his hand.
“Go,” he muttered. “Welcome to Pakistan.”
Outside the airport, I was expecting to hail a taxi and quietly make my way to the hotel we’d booked. It wasn’t far — a few kilometres at most — but in Lahore, a few kilometres could stretch on indefinitely depending on the traffic, the smog, or the state of the roads.
The air was thick the moment we stepped out — heavy with dust, smoke, and exhaust. The kind of air that doesn’t just fill your lungs, but settles into your skin, your clothes, your memory. Lahore had grown into a metropolis over the decades — a vast, pulsating sprawl born out of displacement and necessity. When the Partition of India happened in 1947, millions of refugees poured into cities like this one. And those millions had since multiplied. People from the countryside came looking for work, for opportunity, for some taste of a life they saw on TV or heard about from cousins abroad. And the city expanded to swallow them.
Now, Lahore had districts within districts. Flyovers over flyovers. Dust over everything.
I didn’t want to be far from the airport, but I also didn’t want to be far from Bilal. He hadn’t told me exactly where he lived — he’d been cagey, as if it were irrelevant, or maybe he didn’t want me worrying. But I knew he was nearby. I’d chosen a hotel not for the views or amenities, but for its functional geography — close enough to both directions, in case I had to move quickly.
I scanned the street for a cab, expecting to barter with some man leaning out the window of a dusty Suzuki, or maybe a rickshaw with plastic windows flapping in the wind.
But then I saw it.
A sign. In English.
“Sheikh Daniel”
I exhaled through my nose, almost laughing.
That was the name they used for me. The one I couldn’t shake.
“Sheikh Daniel” — the pet name given by friends and brothers who’d long teased me for my constant Islamic stance on everything. Always quoting hadith. Always saying alhamdulillah even when things went wrong. Always reminding people about intention.
So I knew exactly who had sent this driver - Bilal.
Asma spotted the sign just behind me. She nudged my arm, grinning.
“Looks like you’ve been promoted since Doha.”
The man holding the Sheikh Daniel sign gave me a quick nod and offered to take the bag. We followed him to the car — a black Toyota Corolla that had seen better days but was clean, well-kept, and, most importantly, had air conditioning.
Asma and I climbed into the back seat. The driver, who introduced himself as Kashif, confirmed the hotel address with a brief glance in the rearview mirror, then pulled away from the kerb and out into the wide, messy arteries of Lahore.
As the car began to move, I found myself watching the city unfold — the crumbling pavements, the endless posters of politicians plastered over peeling walls, the chaotic ballet of pedestrians, motorbikes, donkey carts, and SUVs. And above all of it, the haze — a thick film of smog that dimmed the sun and blurred the edges of everything.
It was in that silence — that rolling windowed observation of a city that both breathes and suffocates — that my thoughts turned to the nature of power in Pakistan.
It’s often said there are three A’s that must be satisfied if you want to rule this country. And they are, in order of unshakable influence:
The Army. America. And Allah.
The army, of course, comes first. It always has. It’s the institution that survives every government and outlasts every scandal. No matter how tough the budget talks get, it is never the military that feels the pain. Their share of the pie is sacred. And with that financial power comes real estate — vast tracts of land across the country, handed over to military control. Much of it is divided and redistributed among retired and serving officers. And those plots, in turn, are transformed into upmarket housing colonies: gated, secure, manicured, insulated from the chaos that surrounds them.
If you wanted to live well in Lahore, you didn’t dream of the old aristocratic quarters.
You dreamed of Defence — the area known simply as DHA: Defence Housing Authority.
Then comes America. The state within the state. Or perhaps, the state watching the state. You don’t rise in Pakistan without Uncle Sam giving a polite, distant nod. For decades, the U.S. has supplied weapons, cash, and diplomatic cover in exchange for loyalty, intelligence, and access. It’s an arrangement built not on trust, but on mutual usefulness. And usefulness, in politics, always has a shelf life.
And finally, of course, there’s Allah.
Not the Allah that lives in the hearts of believers, but the Allah invoked by ministers and generals to justify their every move. The divine rubber stamp. No policy is complete without a verse. No speech lands without invoking God’s name. And if the army has its hand on the heart of the state, it also has its voice in the pulpit.
It’s not just strategy. It’s structure. It’s how the country is built.
So it made perfect sense that our hotel was near Defence. It had to be. You didn’t stay in the city centre unless you had to. If you had any connection — even a minor one — you stayed somewhere with clean streets, actual pavements, and guaranteed electricity.
And if Bilal was anywhere in Lahore, I was willing to bet he wasn’t far from the shadows of those three A’s either.
After some time weaving through the thickening traffic, the Royal Swiss Hotel came into view on our left. A modern, gleaming structure rising from the Lahore haze, it looked precisely as I remembered it from the photos — cool, corporate, clean. The kind of place where a weary traveller could collapse and forget for a while that the world outside was dust and diesel.
But to my surprise, Kashif didn’t slow down.
He didn’t turn on his indicator.
He didn’t even glance toward the entrance.
He just kept driving — straight past it, deeper into the outskirts of the city.
I leaned forward slightly, confused.
“Kashif bhai… I thought we were going to the hotel?”
He didn’t flinch.
“No, sir. I’ve been told to take you directly to Bilal.”
There was a beat of silence. Then he added, as if it were nothing,
“He’s waiting for you.”
Asma shifted beside me.
“How is Bilal?” she asked gently. “I mean, I spoke to him a few days ago. He didn’t sound well…”
Kashif said nothing.
He just kept driving.
The air in the car changed. Not in temperature — the AC was still humming steadily — but in tone. There was an unspoken urgency now, like we were late to something we hadn’t been told about. I asked another question, trying to press gently, but Kashif remained politely unresponsive. Not rude. Just sealed off.
So I stopped asking.
Instead, I turned my attention to the window, watching the world whirl past — streets giving way to boulevards, boulevards thinning into wider, emptier roads. The city began to recede. The green of private estates began to creep in. And then, finally, we turned down a quieter road lined with hedges trimmed too neatly to be ordinary.
A few minutes later, the car slowed.
We had pulled up outside an upmarket villa, flanked by a double-gated entry. The gate was tall and black, flanked by sandstone pillars. The kind of gate that said privacy first and money second. Kashif honked the horn once — not impatiently, but as if it were routine.
The gates opened immediately.
No hesitation. No security check.
We rolled through without stopping, the tyres gliding over pale gravel, and the car came to a soft stop in front of a large, colonial-style house with a stepped portico and sweeping arches.
Kashif climbed out wordlessly and opened the rear door for Asma.
At the same moment, another man appeared at my door and opened it for me.
I stepped out, brushing the travel dust from my sleeves, and Asma instinctively looped her arm into mine. We stood together at the foot of the steps for a moment, surveying the house.
As we reached the top of the stairs, the door opened before we could knock.
A man inside — a servant, well-dressed, polite — had clearly been waiting for us.
He greeted us with a nod, stepped aside, and held the door open as we entered.
I turned back briefly to thank Kashif for his driving.
He gave me a short, dignified nod, got back in the car, and pulled the door shut behind him. The engine remained on. He was waiting.
We stepped inside.
The air conditioning hit us like a blessing.
Cool, crisp, filtered. It smelled faintly of sandalwood and polished floors. A relief from the thick, polluted heat we’d just escaped.
The silence inside was total. No street noise. No echo of the city. Just a steady hush, and the faint tick of an unseen clock somewhere deeper inside.
It was time to meet Bilal.