Still, I Wait

Setting: A modern middle-class Muslim neighborhood in Lahore, Pakistan — where tradition leans heavy but doesn’t fully choke modern minds.

Story:

Rafiq had always been the quiet one at the table — not for lack of words, but because Zainab always seemed to speak the ones he hadn’t found yet.

He loved her with a steadiness that frightened her. That was the problem.

Zainab had loved before. Not once, but three times. And not lightly, either. She had trusted, opened herself up, planned futures in secret notebooks and prayers — only to be left each time holding a version of herself she no longer recognized.

One man had lied. Another had taken, endlessly, and never given. The third simply vanished when commitment became real.

She had looked in the mirror after the last one and whispered: Maybe the problem is me too.

So when Rafiq — kind, stable, always listening — said, “Marry me,” after two years of quiet companionship and growing closeness, she flinched.

“I like you,” she said, voice barely above a breath, “and I feel… something real. But I don’t think I know how to love someone properly. Or talk when I should. Or trust what I feel without overthinking it to death. I think I need to work on that first.”

He was silent, listening.

“I don’t want to destroy something that could be good,” she added. “Like I’ve done before.”

Rafiq didn’t argue. But a man’s patience, like a candle, has limits.

After half a year of silence and waiting, he agreed to marry a girl his aunt recommended — Hiba, soft-spoken, sincere, religious, and unknown. He went through with it like one signs a lease — polite, agreeable, detached.

Zainab saw the wedding photo on Instagram. A clean sherwani, a reserved smile. His eyes looked like someone had dimmed them slightly.

She told herself she had done the right thing — but it didn’t help her sleep any better.

A year passed.

Then, fate circled back. Outside the bookstore they used to frequent, they ran into each other. It was the same street, but they were different people now.

“You look older,” she said, half-smiling.

“You look stronger,” he replied.

There was a long pause.

“I was scared,” she admitted. “But also… I didn’t trust myself to be a good partner. I shut down. I disappear when I should speak. And I never told you how much I actually… cared.”

He studied her face, cautiously.

“I wanted to hear it then,” he said.

“I know. I wasn’t ready to say it.”

She looked down at his hand. There was a wedding band.

“Are you happy?” she asked.

“I’m functioning,” he replied. “She’s kind. Good to me. But I’m not who I was.”

Zainab nodded. “Neither am I.”

Then he asked — almost like a man offering a hand to someone still on a ledge.

“Would you be my second wife?”

Her heart didn’t race. It ached.

“You still want me?” she asked.

“I never stopped.”

“I’m still working on myself,” she whispered.

“Then let me be part of that work.”

Zainab didn’t answer.

But for the first time in a very long while, she didn’t run either