Rayed light. Laying in bed, at 11 AM, Fawad held Noushin's hand.
She traced, veins on his arm, like the lanes of Lahore.
A neighbour left, closing his gate urgently. But they laid on. Fawad and Noushin had spent a year apart, and last night, when he arrived, he came to see Noushin. And this morning, he laid in her bed, listening to imaginary qawwali playing in his head.
They had spent a year texting, and Fawad having made the journey back to Pakistan, solely for privacy, knew to book a guesthouse near her house, excusing himself from the clutches of Uncle Nazhim and his hospitality.
He was here to vlog. Travel vlog. And fuck Noushin.
Uncle Nazhim conveniently became - just an emergency. And last night, when dropped off at his capitalist room, explaining to his family friend, his concierge, his local contact, his protector - that he needed it, and would be okay, he later walked to Noushin's house, and she was wearing a dress.
She opened, they acquainted. And they fucked in bed. There was, only briefly, a Can I Fuck moment. And they fell asleep, together, wasting a night's fare.
"What's the itinerary?" asked Noushin.
They both smelled like morning. Bright light shaded in through cotton curtains, and it began to warm the dewey oil on their bodies. They laid, like lovers, and as individuals, thinking something deeply, each.
"Swat. Hunza. The Pashtun border."
"Real tourist."
Fawad watched Noushin get out of bed, and dress. A floral morning dress slipped over her. Domestic. He followed her out, to the kitchen. She put a pot on the stove, and fetched rusks from a cupboard.
"I don't know," she said. "What will people think?"
"We'll pretend to be married."
Fawad sat at the kitchen table, reading morning news. The American, or British, side of things often made diaspora people feel civil. He read football news, feeling like a fashionable expat.
"And if your mom finds out?"
"I'm old." Fawad said.
Noushin considered the younger one's proposition.
"Will they believe we're married?"
II - Departing
Fawad watched Noushin pack hurriedly, for a trip.
Traditional dress, western ones. Long blouses, and hoodies.
The cab arrived, and Fawad and Noushin were off, to Swat.
Fawad vlogged, or recorded the footage, to later talk over. Noushin felt very young, sitting in a car, to the mountains. In Islamabad, they stopped, for Karahi and water. Banging tunes from his village, the driver bobbled on.
Bottles of water, and changing terrain. The driver didn't ask much. They passed trees of a new kind, water of a new colour. The last minute toothpaste from a grocery shop in Lahore, mingled with a stream near Ambar. Strangers. The air took testimony, of their marriage.
And they arrived by dusk, at the Airbnb.
Swat. The host, unassuming. Fawad and Noushin were, by all obvious accounts, a married couple. To a bare room. And after Noushin bathed, they fucked like rabbits, and slept cold.
They had breakfast, it was a cold morning.
Before the peach tree patch, Fawad got a footjob through his fleece, casually.
They were on their way again, a day later. And taxi turned into bus. They bid farewell to the driver, boarding a bus of tourists and youngsters, heading for the near end of Pakistan. Water turned an icier blue. Turquoise.
And they arrived in Hunza a day late, hunkering into their village as news of a storm arrived with them, closing the roads back.
They were at the summit, of free air. Near the Himalayas.
It was rocky, and cold. On the first night after dinner, Noushin felt, insecure rather than cold, of a group of youngsters that travelled carefree, alongside them. The girls were slightly younger, fair, peachier faced, and spirited - and had more of life ahead of them.
"They have their whole lives ahead." that much had articulated.
Fawad and Noushin sat in the canteen area, among.
"And you do, too. You insisted, to pay your way here, to the edge of the world." Fawad took a taste of the catering, reassuring. "That's really an endpoint, to some."
"I don't feel accomplished."
"Is it marriage?"
The hotel's cafeteen lights flickered. As if to say maybe.
Suddenly, Fawad felt insecure, of an elder, wealthier, darker bearded man in Pringle, sitting across the room, eating alone. Came, on the bus. He was appropriate aged, for Noushin.
Fawad felt jealous. Young, and not enough.
He thought of Noushin in an established house. Running it, like a married woman. Wife to an elder husband. A house with due respect, formality and the status of madam.
Fawad felt it, in a bad way.
But he was too old to be jealous in any cute way, at thirty. He noticed her mood early at dinner, and ran a hot bath for her, afterwards. Seeking to make it up.
As she emerged, Fawad waited on the bed. There was nothing else quite to do, the first night up here, in a village near the Himalayan altitude.
Noushin, wet hair, stood in a robe. Fawad waited. She sat, and Fawad laid her down, and began to work, making her feel like a woman. She moaned, he licked and pressed. Her bent knees either side of him, like a throne's armrests. Eating her, fully, as if it were his earning. And then, he put a penis in her. Like a kingdom, and an offering. Trying to fill her complete, all of his phallus, trying from his bum.
Fawad fucked, for her. A thirty year old boy fucking a forty year old woman. Or near that. Heroically. Until she came.
And then he humped a little more, only just to come himself.
Later that night, they rendezvoused at the hotel's bar, drinking hot chocolate.
And the next morning, they trekked to an unknown place.
A plateau, where grassy flatlands turned shallow streams into a labyrinth of ways to walk, each person to make their own path, across the marsh. To a trinket shop, on the other end. Quiet, cold and grey. Empty.
"Do you think the people here, like living here?"
Noushin quipped. Fawad didn't know the answer.
On the way back, Fawad tried skipping across streams, to entertain. Noushin walked elegantly, as if maintaining decency in the streets of her hometown. They stepped carefully, but stepped in shallow waters, and arrived back with soggy socks.
Warm, damp boots left at the door as if to warn, Fawad humped Noushin at the base of the bed, on the floor. As they had steamy sex. Marsh water, still in their pores. Fawad pushed his abdomen into her, hot wet and smelling like algae. They fucked, in sweat, while the younger crowd sat downstairs in the canteen.
The middle aged couple, raw. The youth, at a supposedly lusty age, playing board games.
It was only a day and a half later, when Noushin and Fawad were tiptoeing behind the hotel wall in the afternoon, talking random, that they heard - a twenties couple hushing in pleasure, from an open window.
Noushin smiled at Fawad, and they left the unmarried boyfriend and girlfriend to air that wouldn't tell.
III - Arrival
It was their arrival in a Pashtun border town, that Fawad and Noushin realised.
A boring afternoon, Fawad bought Noushin shoes from a market, and they returned to their homestay, a circumstantial couple. Realistic.
It was near Maghrib, darkened. Fawad, having completed a Youtube profile picture design, turned it off and turned to Noushin. Noushin was sitting on the bed. Fawad stood up, moved onto the bed, and got before her legs. He pulled down her pants, slowly, leaned in, parting her... and put his penis in, entitled. He began to fuck, for himself. Fawad reached for her feet, and held it up to his mouth. Her soles rested on his bottom lip. And Fawad put it in, toes in his mouth. Beginning to suck. Fawad fucked her, for lost time, for his lusty youth. His chest, bare and wide, like a cobra. Noushin felt obliged, unshy. They truly were a couple.
Not a cosplaying one.
IV - Lahore
Back in Lahore, where azaan called familiar, and the dusky dusty skyline silhouette spelled recognisable words, home beckoned.
Fawad and Noushin returned home, and parted for a few hours while Fawad called home from the guesthouse, and Noushin took a bath.
Their relationship was stronger. Fawad reassured his mom, and Noushin did not have to explain a stranger's arrival with bags, to a possibly passing neighbour. Fawad had three weeks left, and skewed the North journey down to a few days, to give himself most time with Noushin.
With Noushin, at her house.
He dreamt of taking her to America, where he could buy her American things, and flaunt their relationship to the progressive thirsty youth. That apart from having just hot chocolate in empty mall parking lots at dusk, they had feet sex too. He imagined scarlet ways of boasting her, his fucking of an older girl, and his worship of her.
But as he walked to her house in the late evening, he thought.
Maybe it was Noushin's domesticity, her local clothes, her vernacular home, that raptured him like this.
Would it be the same, in America?
Fawad reached, and knocked.
Noushin, in a bath, got up and wore a towel to open the door. Fawad, greeted by wet hair and temporary towelling. Noushin turned back in, Fawad followed, and she returned to the bath. Dropped her towel, in front of him. Fawad stared. Her shimmery soapy body, still glistened. Fawad noticed her drooping waist, and round buttocks. She got back in. Fawad closed, and sat on the toilet seat.
They talked, and went out for the night.
