Hina rolled her eyes and slipped into a seat opposite Ray. “Yeah, yeah, I get it; I hardly ever let you in here,” she said....
COVER STORY
“To what do I owe the pleasure of being invited to your room?” Ray walked into Hina’s room and looked around.
“Sit down and I’ll tell you,” Hina said, pointing at a chair. Ray sat down, leaned back and surveyed the room.
“The windows with the frilly curtains, the bedspread with lace pattern on it, and this flower thing here on the nightstand,” Ray said, waving his hand in the general direction of Hina’s bed. “It’s been too long since I’ve gotten to lay eyes on these.”
Hina rolled her eyes and slipped into a seat opposite Ray. “Yeah, yeah, I get it; I hardly ever let you in here,” she said.
Ray reached out and picked up a decoration piece from the side table. “This is new,” he said, turning it around in his hands.
“Rayyan!” Hina snapped her fingers. “Put that back at once!” Ray just looked through the glass piece in his hand at her, then peeked above it to look at her directly. “At once, Ammi,” he said, placing it back with a look.
“Don’t ‘Ammi’ me,” Hina said irritably.
“Well then, don’t baby me,” Ray said with a smirk.
Hina sighed, clasped her hands together and sat still for a few seconds, closing her eyes. When she opened them, she saw Ray copying her pose from his seat. She slid forward and slammed her foot into Ray’s feet, knocking his slippers off.
“Don’t interrupt my moment of silence with your violence,” Ray said without opening his eyes.
“If you stopped being annoying for one second, I wouldn’t need a moment of silence,” Hina said.
“Just say it,” Ray said. “What you called me here for.” He opened his eyes.
Hina sat up straighter. “I want to find out about Sameer,” she said.
Ray grinned. “I’m afraid to tell you that you already found out about him when I decided to tell you earlier even though Ammi and Abbu thought you shouldn’t know about your own engagement,” he said.
“That’s not what I mean,” Hina said. “What I mean is, I want to find out what kind of person he is.”
“Oh, so you’re warming up to the idea of getting engaged to this person, so you want to know more?” Ray asked, digging in his pockets.
“I need to know anything about him, anything at all, before I can make any sort of impression about him,” Hina said. “You need to slow down in your assumptions.”
Ray pulled out his phone, unlocked it and started tapping and swiping his way through its contents. “I know I have it in here somewhere,” he said.
“You already showed me his photo,” Hina said, tapping her foot.
“Not his photo,” Ray said. He tapped rapidly through several pages of apps before pulling up a text messaging app conversation and turning the phone screen in Hina’s direction. “His profile.”
Hina stared at him. “I take it you mean by profile, a collection of his photos?”
Ray waved the phone in her face. “Just look.”
Hina took the phone and started scrolling down the screen. She scrolled to the end of the message and stopped for a few seconds, then abruptly swiped back upwards to the top of the message and looked at it more carefully. “These are...details,” she said.
“Isn’t that what you were asking for?” Ray asked.
Hina frowned. “Well, yes I want to know this,” she said. “I’m going to have to look at this a little bit longer so I won’t forget it.”
Ray’s eyebrows shot up. “What do you want to remember?” he asked, gripping the phone from the top and tilting it towards himself so he could see what part of the message she was looking at. “Are you afraid you’ll forget his age?”
Hina sighed and kept the phone firmly between her fingers. “Do you know how embarrassing it would be if I didn’t remember the age difference between me and this guy? What would Gohar and Amani say?”
“That depends on what you tell them,” Ray said, relaxing his hold on the phone so Hina could scroll to the next part. He twisted it back towards himself again. “How tall he is? What family and location he comes from? Does it matter what you tell your friends?”
“Whatever I tell them, it has to be accurate.” Hina pursed her lips. “You obviously have no idea what it’s like to have to match your heeled shoe options with someone’s height. Amani wasted so many pairs of heels because they didn’t work out with her fiancé.”
“You’re worried about shopping for heels?” Ray stopped twisting the screen in his own direction and fixed Hina with a serious look. Hina looked back and nodded. “Yes, Ray, I’m worried about shopping for heels. That’s about all I can plan for with this profile that you’ve shown me.” She turned the phone flat and tapped back and forth at several points on the screen. “Look at this profile. This is basically an identification card. I get to know his name, age, height, where he’s studied and where he works. I could file a police report with this profile very accurately, but I’m going to have some trouble knowing more about him from this.”
Ray threw his head back and laughed. “You know you’re not even going to get to plan the heels, right?” he said once he had finished laughing and caught his breath. “When you don’t get to be involved from start to finish, then why even start?”
“I don’t need to tell you where I start and where I finish with this whole engagement business,” Hina said. “I just don’t want to walk in on engagement day completely unaware. Now tell me, how did you get this marriage profile?” She held the phone in one hand and waved it around.
“How else? Ammi,” said Ray.
Hina paused and stopped waving the phone around. “Ammi what? Did you take it from her phone?”
Ray smiled. “Hina, Ammi sent it to me,” he said.
Hina stared at him. “Sent it to you? Ammi sent it to you? How does that work? Has she been sending you profiles like this? How long has this been going on?” Hina breathed fast and laid a hand on her heart.
“Hina.” Ray reached out for the phone and pried one of Hina’s fingers off it. “Ammi has probably been looking at profiles for a while. She only sent me this one as part of telling me she had finalized this proposal.”
“How do you know she’s been looking for a while?” Hina’s eyes narrowed as she clamped her thumb down over Ray’s finger that was trying to pry her grip loose from the phone.
“Well...” Ray fell silent. Hina felt his hand go limp under her thumb.
“Ray, there’s no point in holding back at this point.” Hina said.
“Stop crushing my hand, then,” Ray said. Hina shot him a glare. “Let go, Hina,” Ray said. Hina huffed and released the phone before Ray could catch it. It fell to the floor and skidded under the bed. Ray groaned and got to his hands and knees to get it back.
“Stop stalling instead of answering,” Hina said, tapping her foot. “You can dig around for your phone later.”
“I’d rather have it with me in one piece instead of shattered after what I’m going to tell you,” Ray said, reaching under the bed.
“What is it?” Hina dropped to Ray’s level at the foot of the bed, but Ray had already found his phone and slipped it securely into his pocket. “I knew she had been looking because she’d always get the best photos of you from my phone after every occasion,” Ray said.
“What?” Hina made to rise in anger but instead hit her head on the bed frame. “Ow!”
“Are you all right?” Ray asked, getting up and offering a hand to pull Hina to her feet. Hina, accepting his help and shooting to her feet, took a step back and looked at Ray closely. “How can I be all right when I know that Ammi has been sending out profiles of me for some time?” Ray remained still. “Where there’s photos there are profiles. That’s how it works, right?”
“I really don’t know how you think Ammi got you to this point when I first told you,” Ray said. “Did you think she got a flying pigeon messenger with a note attached to its foot that when unrolled declared an offer of marriage?”
“I don’t know what to think at this point,” Hina said, crossing her arms. “I can’t believe Ammi wrote about me without asking me. I’d have liked to include what I think is important.”
“So that Sameer can adjust his shoes?” Ray asked with a smirk. “I think Ammi must have written your profile the way you just saw Sameer’s profile.”
Hina glared back at him. “Nothing important, then,” she said.
“If it makes you feel better to thinkm,. of it that way, then yes, Hina, nothing important,” Ray said.
“This can’t be a dead end,” Hina said. “I called you to ask you if you knew anything important about him and I’m going to keep asking until I get something.”
Ray chuckled. He laid a hand on Hina’s shoulder and gestured towards the phone in his pocket. “I know someone to ask about this who knows more about this than I do.”
To be continued...
