Arranger Marriage

Note: Nothing is fiction here. Its all 100% real as well as I can remember it. The dialogue between some characters has been translated to English. Please don't forget to vote and give your feedback. Thanks!

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My name is Rehan Khan and I am a Pakistani Canadian. I was born in the Pakistani city of Karachi and came to Canada when I was five. Thus I remember very little of my place of birth. I have some memory of the house in which I lived. It was a double story house in a congested Karachi neighborhood where I lived with my parents, one uncle and two aunts, a few cousins and grandmother. It was a joint family set up so a lot of people lived together in a large house.

Life was fun! I was the youngest in the family and therefore the most pampered. Every evening I would be on the roof flying a kite with my cousin Amer. From the roof we could see a road below where kids played cricket on the street. They would often get yelled at by passing motorists, as they would be playing right in the middle of the road. I always wanted to go out and play with them but my mother told me only bad kids play cricket on the road. I was a good kid and therefore not permitted to do that.

Other than that, I remember our maid servent Razia. She had a huge tummy and my grandmother was always yelling at her not to exert so much. I once asked my grandma why Razia has such a big tummy and she told me Razia will soon have a baby. I did not understand what that had to do with her inflated stomach because I believed babies were delivered at your door by an angel. Anyway, that is all I remembered of Pakistan.

Canada was my home now! When my father died in Karachi my mother moved to Canada and this was where I grew up. I never went to Pakistan and thus had no sentimental attachment to that place (other than the few vague memories I already mentioned.) There was nothing Pakistani in me. I spoke very little Urdu and could not understand the sport of cricket at all. It seemed similar to baseball but I just didn't get why they had to bounce the ball on the floor? The scoring system in cricket never made any sense to me either. I also did not understand why Pakistanis would get so excited over cricket especially when it was Pakistan against India. To me, people from both countries looked "brown" so it was one team of brown guys against another team of brown guys.

Ice hockey on the other hand was my life. I was a fan of Toronto Maple Leafs and when they played against Montreal Canadians, I would watch the game holding my breath. The fact that it was a bunch of white guys against another bunch of white guys did not matter because I was programmed to see these as two groups of people with distinct culture, language and political views rather than flat lifeless representations of a "race". Thus French Canadians against English Canadians seemed a more excitable opposition India against Pakistan, two distant nations in some isolated part of the world.

Though I could understand Urdu, I rarely spoke it. Our neighborhood was a white neighborhood so I never had the chance to speak my language. I could understand it very clearly though and could communicate if I had to. English I spoke as well as a Canadian and had no accent. My best friend was Shawn, a shaven headed Canadian who was built like a body builder. He had a weight lifting bench and a few dumbbells in his garage so every evening I would be down at his place working out with him.

When I was in my early twenties I stood over six feet and had the body of an underwear model. I was not an overly muscled up freak like Shawn but even with the shirt, you could see that I had lifted weights. Women loved me!!! I had long hair and the body, plus my bronze complexion made me look naturally "tanned" so I think that's what gave me the sex appeal I had. I never had a steady girl friend. I was more committed to "spreading my seed" instead. By the time I was in my early twenties I had spread a lot of seed.

Pakistanis hated me, especially the women. I don't know why but I think it was because I had evolved to be an exact anti-thesis of what an ideal man in Pakistani culture would be. I never went to the mosque because I thought I did not believe in organized religion. I would get drunk on weekends and party like an animal and above all I was "spreading my seed," fucking innocent white girls (most of whom were not so innocent mind you). All this made me a walking talking example of bad upbringing. I did not have problems with that because I never considered traditional Pakistani upbringing as an ideal anyway.

When I was twenty five, my mother all of a sudden decided that I was to go back to Pakistan to have an arranged marriage!!! I was like WHAAAAAAAT??????? Me and arranged marriage? You gotta be kidding me!!! I was like "There is no way thats going to happen!!!" I am in my mid twenties and I still have to spread my seed for another ten years. Once I am tired of fucking and fucking and fucking then I am going to settle down with some nice Canadian woman (non-Pakistani of course) who will accept me for all the bad behavior I have shown and all the chicks I have fucked.

But, there was a girl in Karachi called Anisa (daughter of some family friends) and I was being taken back to meet her. I kept telling my mother that there is no way I was going to marry an ultra-conservative religious fanatic. I mean I would have had serious objection if the girl was a Canadian born Pakistani but this was even beyond that! She had never been to the West EVER! Coming from Pakistan and that also an arranged marriage! OH MY GOD WHAT A FUCKING NIGHTMARE!

My mother continued to explain to me that arranged marriages are not so brutal as they sound. Families only arrange a meeting between the boy and the girl and then it was up to the two of them to decide if they wanted to go forward. I kept rejecting the idea. Somehow at the back of my mind I also had this feeling that even if the girl agrees to marry me, it would be because of my Canadian citizenship. The moment she gets her landing papers she would want to end the marriage. She will accuse me of being a bad husband and a womanizer and then no one in my community or even family will listen to my side of the story because a womanizer I truly was and it was well known!

Yuck! I did not want that.

My mother did not give up. After a lot of bitter arguments she said that all I had to do was to go back to Pakistan and meet my family. I could meet the Anisa too in a casual setting and then come back to Canada. Since it was presented as a free return ticket and a fully paid vacation, I agreed, though I was reluctant about it to the last minute.

Thus on the eve of August 1999 I found myself on an over crowded flight to Pakistan. It was a bad time to go to that region. India had conducted its first nuclear tests amidst all international pressure and there were rumors that Pakistan was about to test its own bomb soon. Political tensions were really high and When I got on the plane everyone on board PIA flight was talking about whether Pakistan will detonate its own bomb or not.

It was a long flight which was meant to be 24 hours but got delayed in Manchester for quite sometime. By the time the flight landed at Karachi airport and I got down the plane Pakistan had already tested its own nuclear bomb and former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was making his speech which was being televised on all TV stations across the airport. He said that it was India that forced Pakistan to build nukes and forced Pakistan to test nukes and if a missile is launched in our direction we will fire at Indian cities.

I felt like kicking myself for being there at that time. Just one day ago I was sitting comfortably in my room in Toronto watching "Friends" and listening to my CDs and here I was in a region about to blow itself apart with nuclear bombs.

When I got out at the Jinnah terminal my cousin was there to receive me. He was the same fellow with whom I lived with when I was in Pakistan and we flew kites on the roof together but I could barely recognize him now. He had a beard and looked like a Talibaan militant. He on the other hand had no problem recognizing me and came forward and gave me a big hug. He then took my stuff and loaded it in the back of his car. I looked around and realized that the city of Karachi was not as primitive as I thought it would be. The airport was far superior to the Canadian airport in Toronto and did not give the impression of a third world country at all. There was Mc Donald's restaurant, which I totally did not expect and, as we drove away I saw sign boards advertising mobile phones and other electronic gizmos. Then there were these huge buildings on both sides of the road that were never part of my early memories. Yet it was a place where religion and modernity were wrestling with each other, for right besides these buildings, there were tall minarets and domes of mosques which dominated the landscape as powerfully as logos of Nike and Pepsi. On one hand there would be a Sprite motto "OBEY YOUR THIRST" and on the other there would be religious messages like "GOD LOVES THOSE WHO CONTROL THEIR URGES." Two conflicting messages each powerful in their own context were displayed on signboards and waged war for peoples minds.

We continued talking about the political situation and I found out that my cousin Arif, who looked like a bearded terrorist was in fact studying to be a doctor. He wanted to specialize in surgery, as that was his passion. The guy was no idiot for he spoke English as good as he could speak Urdu and when I found myself stuck with Urdu he would very easily start conversing in English. I asked him about the nuclear tests.

"You don't need to worry about politics. You are here to meet Anisa so keep your mind focused on her." He said.

"Who is Anisa" I asked.

"She is related to us by marriage." He explained. "I think she is hot."

We never talked about her.

When the car stopped in front of the house it just brought my old memories back. It was the same double story house in which I was born. The gate was the same and we were standing in the same street where kids played cricket many years ago. That aspect had not changed for they were still playing cricket though I am sure that it was a different generation altogether. I always wanted to play cricket on the street but my mother never allowed me so I went to one of the kids and asked him if I could take a shot. He gave me his bat. The other kid pitched the ball and I swung at it like a baseball club and missed. These kids were good and it helped me understand why these guys bounce the ball on the floor. It just makes it so difficult to hit because you don't know how it will bounce up. There is no linear motion so u just don't know where the ball will come. After that I developed respect for cricket, the sport I had ignored all my life.

The inside of the house also brought old memories. When I was a little kid, the place looked huge to me but now that I was over six feet tall, it seemed so tiny. The living room in which everyone would sit and watched TV seemed so big back then that I could run from the TV set into my grandmother's lap at full speed. Now I could cover the same distance in a single stride.

Some of the furniture was also the same and on one wall I even saw the Spiderman stickers that I used to paste. I had forgotten about them but when I looked at them it just made me recall how desperately I waited for these stickers which came out of detergent boxes. Each detergent box had a superhero sticker inside so in one box it would be Spiderman and in the other it would be Batman or Hulk. It was such a suspense for me to open the box and get the stickers out. If it turned out to be a sticker I already had then I would exchange it with my cousins or other kids in the neighborhood but stickers were a major source of pleasure in my life back then. After I left for Canada no one removed those stickers and after twenty years they were still there.

Everyone was so excited about seeing me. Two of my aunts had gotten married and moved out so now this whole house was my uncle's family and my grandma. My grandmother had gotten so old that she rarely moved about. Instead she had this one chair in the corner where she would sit and do her stuff like watch TV or read. She only moved when she had to and that also by holding walls or furniture for support. After I was introduced to the family we had a nice dinner where we talked about old times.

My next couple of days were spent in the house and mostly in bed because the jet lag had made me lethargic. Then on the third day I set out to explore Karachi city. It was a huge metropolis, which was the fourth or the fifth most populated city in the world. The streets were mostly congested and bursting with people. The traffic was noisy as everyone wanted to go every where at the same time. It seemed like people had no other past-time except playing cricket on the streets in the midst of traffic. When the mosques called for prayer, the game was stopped and after prayer it would resume again. Police would often come and chase the cricketers but they would return again or start playing on some other street. Thus street cricket never stopped. Then there was snooker on street corners, which was a recent and growing attraction.

Though overall Karachi was not a bad place, it was definitely not a party animal's paradise. There were no dance clubs or pubs so if you were a weekend alcoholic or a "seed spreader" (like me) then you would not be very happy. I did not mind not having my beer but I needed sex! As time went by I grew hornier and hornier with no source of sexual relief in sight.

Finally the day came where I was to meet Anisa. Anisa's father had his own company, which supplied chemicals to local industries. He had invited us to tea at their place and that was meant to be our first meeting. I had no interest in her whatsoever. I still believed that she would be an immigration seeker who will marry me for my Canadian citizenship and then very happily ditch me once she had her papers. Either that, or she would be one of those ultra conservative religious fundos who would refuse me on face value. Since both possibilities had a potentially negative ending, I just thought I should meet her, get this formality out of the way and then head back to Canada so that I could return to my normal life.

Finally one Saturday evening my Uncle, his wife and I left the house for Anisa's place in our car. She lived by the seaside in Defence, which was believed to be an expensive area in Karachi. It was the home of the elite!

When our car stopped in front of their house I was a little awestruck. It was not a house but a mansion! There were uniformed security guards at the gate who opened the door for us. It was a huge double storied house with two cars and one four-wheel drive parked outside. To our right was a lawn in which I could see a volley ball net and a beautiful rockery. In the corner of this lawn there was a huge birdcage almost the size of a room, with multi colored birds (I remember them to be parrots). Right next to these I could see a young woman standing with a rabbit in her hands. She was wearing a traditional shalwar qameez and was walking bare footed on the grass. I thought if this was Anisa, the woman I had traveled the world to meet but my mind totally ruled out the possibility. She would not be out walking on the grass without shoes when she knows people are coming to meet her for marriage purposes. She would be inside getting all dressed up, I thought.

After looking at the house my initial impression of Anisa as an immigration seeker was blasted away! These people were quite well off and living a life that was far better than most Canadians. I lived in a small studio apartment in Toronto and these guys lived in a mansion. There was one car between me an my mother there and these people seemed to have three (one if which was a four wheel drive with tinted glasses). Then security guards, driver and servants were luxuries very few in Canada could dream of. Whoever Anisa was, I knew now that she was not an immigration seeker, for she would have absolutely nothing to gain by migrating from this life to what I would be offering.

As my Uncle and Aunt got down the car I thought I should go and look at this bird collection. Actually I wanted to check out the bare footed girl with the rabbit but I just pretended to be fascinated with the bird cage instead and made my way towards that side of the lawn.

The girl had seen the car pull over and was now looking at us. She was short, I estimated her to be 5.2 – 5.3 inches. With light olive skin and long black hair she was definitely very "exotic" looking. The most noticeable feature about her was her chest! This girl who was a bit small framed and petite, had breasts that proudly jutted out of her chest. They must have been a 36 DD but given her small frame, they seemed larger. I had been feeling horny since the time I landed here and watching her hold a rabbit to her heaving chest was having an effect on my prick. My cock began to move in my pants.

"Hello." I said to her.

"Hi." She responded as she checked me from my face all the way down to my shoes. She knew who I was and there was a slight smile on her face. It was not a friendly smile but a mean "I don't trust you smile.

"I am Rehan." I said looking at the rabbit. Actually I was looking at her boobs but I wanted her to think I was looking at the rabbit.

"I am Aneeqa, Anisa's younger sister." She said and started caressing the furry rabbit she held.

Her voice was very sensual. "Damn what a sexy sister in law!" I thought to myself. "You like birds?" I asked.

"Yes."

"How many do you have?"

"There are about forty in there." She said.

"Really?" I said and started examining them.

She came and stood next to me. "See that one?" She pointed towards a yellow parrot that was sitting in a corner. It was small and weak. While other birds flew around the huge cage this one just sat in the corner. "He is my favorite..." She said. "...but he is not feeling well."

"I see." I responded.

"Can you get inside the cage and bring me that one?" She asked.

I looked at her.

"Please?" She said in a pleading tone. "I need to give him his medication because I am really trying to keep him alive."

This was a huge bird-cage. It was the same size as my bedroom but it was dirty. The birds had shitted all over the floor and I had serious reservations going in. But this potential "future sister in law" of mine was insisting and I just thought that it would be rude to refuse her, as it was a matter of life and death for the bird.

"OK! I will get him for ya." I said and got on my knees to open the little door. Then slowly I crawled inside the cage through this little trapdoor, making sure that I did not place my knee or hand on anything dirty. The birds got agitated as I crawled in and they began to flap around me violently making all kinds of unwelcoming noises. Once inside I rose to my full height and brushed my clothes.

The girl was looking at me with the same "I don't trust you." smile on her face.

I thought this is insane! But I walked towards the sick bird, which was sitting on a wooden stick suspended from the ceiling. Just when I was about to reach out and grab it, this parrot, which was so drowsy and out of energy came to life and flew away. I was about to turn when I herd the little trap-door lock behind me.

I turned and looked and saw the girl stepping away from the cage with a naughty smile on her face. I looked at the little door and the lock was pressed. She had locked me inside this filthy birdcage! I was really not expecting a Pakistani girl to do that, especially when she knew I was no ordinary visitor. I was there to propose to her sister.