I am back with another chapter. Hope you enjoy reading this one! And don't forget to vote and comment!

I am really sorry for the delay guys, time is scarce these days. But no worries, I have an update right here and hopefully more will come.

P.S: this chapter is unedited, so just ignore the errors if any.

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RUKSAR

There are instances in life that are turning points , your life gives you a choice, a chance to change it, to walk on a new road, or continue the same way of life.

I got mine long after I was an eighteen year old teenager, breathing in a small village in Kashmir, rather Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. We had been among those very few people trapped between diplomatic relations of two countries. We stood at a crossroad to choose our country and live as a refugee or stay in our homeland and become Pakistani citizen.

We weren't keen on leaving our house, the green meadow ahead of it, the sight of clouds on ground to live in refugee camps. So we stayed where we had been. After all humans were the same on either side, a border couldn't change them overnight.

 As a Kashmiri girl, I was born with a pink toned skin, long lashes and big round hazel eyes. I had three brothers, Shiv, Kumar and Kishan. Me being the youngest of them all had been the most cherished both by my parents and my brothers.

They called me 'Chauber' a term used to refer to a Kashmiri beauty. I thought it was overrated but secretly was proud of it. When I reached my puberty, suitors started filling in, but my parents always turned them down with a laddoo and a sharbat always saying, "Humari beti abhi bohot badi banegi."

I used to look at the mirror for hours, admiring myself at a stretch. My brothers teased and laughed at how gullible I was but loved me nonetheless. Every month, the last Sunday, our house would fill up with intoxicating smell of ghee, cinnamon, cardamom and saffron making our stomachs grumble for the familiar taste of Modur Pulav. Bab would come home everyday with the prasad he got from his pujas in the few remaining temples around us.

Everything was bright and beautiful in my life until the day Rehjak Mulla came into our area. he started propagating about how all Hindus living in POK would ultimately lead to POK falling back to India. He claimed we were spies working for the Indian government secretly planning the demise of every Muslim living around us.

His hate speech was considered the words of Allah and massive riot broke out. First our temples were broken down to pieces, as they were the hub of all evil kaafirs. They chopped my father's body into pieces right in front of me, decapicitated my brothers. The usually golden yellow Pulav had turned red with my brother's blood.  

I was too beautiful to be killed, so they decided I would serve well as a wife. They kidnapped me, converted me and married me off to a man, I didn't even know. That day as they chanted something in Arabic, I cursed my beauty, I hoped I was ugly so I would died with my father and my three brothers.

No, we didn't fall in love, he wasn't my saviour. I got to know his name the day my fate gave me a chance to turn it into something else. I will come to that later.

 I don't remember uttering the words, 'Qubool Hai' but I was married anyway and was expected to perform the wifely duties. They kept my mother alive, like a dangling threat, a mishap on my part would kill her. Honestly there wasn't much life left in her after seeing her husband and three sons killed right in front of her eyes, her daughter now married to man of a different religion.

 My fear turned me into a dutiful wife who would lay down every night for the carnal pleasures of her husband and by the days she was a devoted homemaker, cleaning, cooking looking after the elderly in the household. 

I stole a few moments here and there, just to cry, just to keep the human in me alive. At times, I felt nothing, no pain, no shame or sorrow as an unknown man who called himself my husband used me like a sex doll and discarded me like a used condom.

My mother hated me, she had gone half-crazy. She would tell me, "Leave us to die, what is the use of living anyway? There's nothing else to live for. Our three sons died and our daughter sleeps with a man who brings us disgrace every day."

 I wanted to cry and yell at her, had she an inkling of the daily torture I went through just so I knew I had a family, someone to call my own? I was selfish, but didn't I matter to her at all? They were dead but I was dying everyday. All I wanted was a warm hug from my mother telling me, 'It's meant to hurt, we will get through it one day.'

I think those mantras I told myself on sleepless nights kept my sanity alive, kept a part of me alive although secluded.

My society wouldn't accept me back and I couldn't run to India without a Visa now that I had been converted. 

So, I tried to adjust and as days tuned to months and months to years and I couldn't concieve they started considered me a curse. So they put me to a better use, someone to please my husband's boss, satiate his carnal desires. That was also a part of my wifely duties since I was unable to provide him with a child.

19th January, 2009, my husband took me to Iran with him on some business. Needles I knew why a man who hadn't once bothered a decent conversation with me, who's only words to me were to strip for him or for his boss, would take his wife on a vacation. It took us a few hours to land in a Shiraq airport in Iran before a six hour long car ride to a small village.

 At that time, I couldn't help wonder why he would come into a village. What was his work here? Who would I lay with this time? Would he be done in minutes or would he pummel his way until the remnants of the soul fled away from shame? Would it hurt ? Would he slap and use me like I were a toy devoid of emotions. 

As shameful questions plagued my mind, we reached the village and  soon the night descended upon us. My husband left me alone in my room and I knew what was to come. I don't know how long it was before a man stepped in, his hair greying slightly at the ages, veins popping out of his neck and arms. He was old but he was fit. I shuddered, this was going to be a long painful  night.

My prayers went up yet again, in hopes that the man or woman sitting up there would help me this time, would consider this the end of my test. That night my prayers were answered as a man in a black suit burst open the door and shot the man right in front of me, spilling some of his blood on my face. 

The blood reminded me of the day my brothers died, and their blood spilled right on my face. But this time, blood felt good, like it was everything I had ever wanted. I sat there still, in my lacy nightgown, unable to move, taken my the sheer pleasure of seeing the man of my nightmare on the ground, blood oozing out of his forehead.

The man was still considering whether to shoot me or not, pointing his gun in my direction. As if consciousness climbed in, I raised my hands showing him, I had nothing to hide and was completely harmless.

"I don't shoot prostitutes." He muttered as a bullet whizzed past me and stuck someone behind me. Was there someone else in the room as well? I realized late that there had been a man at the window.

The man left the room, soon after and I sat there dazed thinking about that word he said.

Prostitute. Prostitute? 

A married prostitute.

While I sat there dazed, shootings ensued around me, the sound of guns and bullets, nothing mattered to me then. While minutes became hours, the same man came back but this time with a shawl before asking me to follow him. All this while they had been asking me to take off my clothes and this man wrapped a shawl for me. My heart warmed like those days I had Modur Pulav, already forgotten he had just called me a prostitute.

I followed him nimble and quiet and when they questioned me, I said everything I had known since the day I had been born. I had nothing to hide, no shame left in me. From what it looked like local Iranian police officers filed in one after another, taking my statement more than thrice. Apparently the man I had been married to was a drug dealer and he was here to extend his network. His name was Sameer Khan and the man who came into my room had been his networking agent in Iran, pseudo named as Black Eagle.

The same man who had wrapped a shawl around me had given me the turning point in life. The very turning point that turned me from a docile home maker and a victim of fate to a intelligence agent. Since I had been in Pakistan for so many years, I knew the culture and could easily blend in. I was trained for five years before I was given my mission alongside Basheer, the biggest ever mission commissioned by the FBI.

Basheer had been the light at the end of my dark tunnel. When he had wrapped a shawl around me my foolish man had imagined what it would be to be loved by a man as him, a man who could wrap a shawl for a nobody like me.

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WHOOOP!!!!

Finally, guys I finished writing Ruksar's story. Just so you are wondering how Ruksar looks, checkout the 'CAST' chapter.

Ruksar's story is so engaging and yes she has faced quite the battles herself! Also, I don't mean to hurt anybody's sentiments nor is it written to spread hate. Hope you understand the underlying message through this is not to hate, and blindly believe anybody who provokes you. Hate seems like a temporary solution, never the ultimate one.