Chosen Twice

Chosen Twice is a slow-burn marriage-of-duty love story set in Lahore. When Hamid Siddiqui lies dying, he asks his oldest friend to consider a match between…

I. The Promise

Two weeks before he died, Hamid Siddiqui asked his oldest friend for the one thing he had never asked of anyone. It was a gray January afternoon in Lahore, and the hospital room smelled of disinfectant and the cardamom tea that Rashid Qureshi had brought in a flask, against all medical advice. The two men had been friends for fifty years. They had flown kites together on rooftops in the Walled City, failed the same chemistry exam, and stood as witnesses at each other's weddings. Now one of them was dying, and the other was holding his hand. "My son," said Hamid, in a voice like paper, "is thirty-one years old and he talks to machines and dead poets. He has not looked up from that press since I fell ill. And your daughter spends her days trying to save old buildings that nobody else wants." A faint, tired smile. "I think they might understand each other, Rashid, if anyone gave them the chance. I will not live to see it. But I would go more easily." Rashid did not promise. He was too honest for that. He said only, "I will ask her. And I will ask him. Nobody will be forced." But nobody has ever been asked in a vacuum. Hamid Siddiqui died on the fourteenth of the month. Six weeks later, Rashid Qureshi, sixty-four years old and carrying his friend's grief like a stone in his chest, collapsed in his garden with a heart attack. He survived. The cardiologist told the family afterward, gently, that stress was the enemy now, and that the best medicine was peace of mind. Zainab Qureshi sat in the hospital corridor that night with her hands pressed between her knees and understood exactly what peace of mind would cost. She was twenty-seven. She was a conservation architect with a degree she had fought for, a job she loved, and a private conviction, unspoken to anyone, that if she was ever going to love someone, it would happen on her own terms, in her own time. She had politely refused three proposals in two years. She did not refuse the fourth. "I'll meet him," she told her father the next morning, and watched the color return to his face like a lamp being turned up. It was, she thought, the most reasonable decision she had ever made. It felt like signing a lease on a building she had never seen.

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Quick answers about Chosen Twice

What is Chosen Twice about?

Chosen Twice is a slow-burn marriage-of-duty love story set in Lahore. When Hamid Siddiqui lies dying, he asks his oldest friend to consider a match between…

Is Chosen Twice free to read?

Yes. Every story on RapidTale is free to read in the browser, with no sign-up and nothing to install.

How long does it take to read?

This story runs 9 chapters — most readers finish in one sitting, and you can stop and return to any chapter using the contents list.

Who wrote it?

Nimra Khan — original fiction published on RapidTale.