By Sahar Habib

Aazi’s father’s blatant favouritism for Kathy is getting annoying. During a shopping trip, Kathy keeps asking his opinion on clothes and jewelry like he’s the ultimate authority on women’s fashion and everyone at home is quite surprised at his interest in the matter. Later, Abba makes a stop at the mosque to pray, but news of a bomb blast in the mosque leaves everyone at home terrified that he may have been killed. Aazi’s brother-in-law and then Aazi himself, turn against Kathy, blaming the bombing on ‘the Americans’. “Hum musalmaano ka kaam nahin hai aik doosre ko marna,” says Aazi, reflecting a common view that all our problems are caused by America. However, Abba jee soon walks in, unharmed. He recounts what happened at the mosque and how he saw a young boy get hit and die in front of him. Afterwards, Kathy forgives Aazi for what he had said; saying that it showed his love for his father but her distress over the mosque incident causes her to postpone the wedding. It’s interesting to see that it barely affects everybody else in the house as they have become desensitised to incidents of terrorism. Kathy, however, experienced this kind of proximity to terror for the first time. Aazi insists these things happen all the time, bombings, protests, etc, so how long can they keep postponing the wedding? Kathy then confesses to Aazi that people in the West don’t care about others and are very self-absorbed, and she came to Pakistan to escape the loneliness that comes with that.