*(Karachi, 1893 – The Tragic Death of Emibai Jinnah)*
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### **The Monsoon Fever**
The first rains of July brought not relief but disaster. Fatima, now seven, woke to the sound of retching from the adjacent bedroom. She found Emibai curled on the floor, her wedding bangles clattering against the water basin as she vomited bile.
"Don't just stand there!" Mithibai snapped, pressing a cold compress to Emibai's forehead. "Fetch the hakim!"
Fatima ran through torrential rain to the apothecary's stall. The old man took one look at Emibai's sunken eyes and blue-tinged nails.
"Cholera morbus," he pronounced gravely. "Prepare the neem paste and boiled water."
Jinnah, away in Bombay for his apprenticeship, had left strict instructions: *Send for Dr. Cowasjee if anyone falls ill.* Fatima tugged Mithibai's sleeve.
"Amma, Bhai said—"
"The English doctor won't come to a Muslim mohalla," Mithibai interrupted, stirring the bitter green paste. "And we don't need his heathen medicines."
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### **The Deterioration**
By nightfall, Emibai's condition worsened. Her once-vibrant hennaed hands now resembled bird claws, clutching at the sweat-soaked sheets. The stench of diarrhea mixed with burning sandalwood as the women took turns reciting Ayat-ul-Kursi.
Maryam cornered Fatima in the courtyard. "We must telegraph Jinnah."
Mithibai intercepted them at the door. "And what will that accomplish? Let the boy focus on his studies."
Fatima watched the argument unfold with growing horror. At dawn, she slipped out with her saved annas and ran to the telegraph office herself.
*"Emibai dying. Come home. Fatima."*
The clerk frowned at the damp, crumpled rupee in her palm. "This only covers twelve words, child."
She glared. "Then remove 'home.'"
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### **The Race Against Time**
In Bombay, Jinnah received the telegram during Sir Frederick Pollock's lecture on torts. He left mid-sentence, catching the first steamer to Karachi.
Aboard the *SS Punjab*, he bribed the engineer to stoke the boilers harder. "My wife is dying," he explained—the first time he'd called Emibai such in public.
Meanwhile in Karachi, Emibai's fever reached 105 degrees. The hakim applied leeches to her wrists while Mithibai force-fed her yogurt mixed with opium.
"Where is Bhai?" Emibai whispered during a lucid moment.
Fatima squeezed her burning hand. "Coming."
The lie tasted like guilt.
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### **The Arrival**
Jinnah's carriage arrived at midnight. He took the stairs three at a time, his starched collar wilted from travel. The scene that greeted him would haunt his legal arguments forever:
Emibai, now skeletal, her braids matted with vomit. The stench of camphor and bodily fluids. And Fatima—small, defiant—holding a basin of melted ice against Emibai's neck.
Mithibai blocked his path. "You shouldn't see her like—"
Jinnah shoved past.
The moment he touched Emibai's cheek, her eyes fluttered open. "You...came."
His voice broke. "Hush, little wife. I'm here now."
Emibai's cracked lips curved. "Not...so little anymore."
Then the convulsions began.
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### **The Last Moments**
What followed was a grotesque parody of their wedding night. Instead of laughter, screams. Instead of sindoor, blood-flecked spittle.
Jinnah cradled Emibai through the seizures, whispering legal statutes like prayers—as if logic could defeat death. When she voided her bowels, he didn't flinch, merely called for clean linens.
At 3:17 AM, Emibai gripped his wrist with surprising strength. "The girl...look after..."
Her gaze flickered to Fatima before the light left her eyes.
The silence that followed was punctuated only by Mithibai's wails and the sound of Jinnah's gold cufflinks hitting the floor as he tore them off to wash her corpse.
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### **The Aftermath**
The funeral was a blur of white shrouds and Quranic recitations. Jinnah stood like a marble statue throughout, refusing the customary wailing or chest-beating. Only Fatima saw his nails digging crescent moons into his palms.
That night, she found him burning Emibai's belongings in the courtyard—not just the infected linens, but her poetry books, her unfinished embroidery, even the ghazal records they'd danced to.
"You promised her!" Fatima grabbed at the flaming pages.
Jinnah held her back effortlessly. "Promised what?"
"To look after me!"
The firelight revealed tears cutting through the soot on his face. "And how exactly does one keep such promises?"
He threw the last item into the flames—their wedding portrait. The glass cracked with a sound like a soul breaking.
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### **The Unspoken Truth**
In the following weeks, Jinnah became a ghost of himself. He ate mechanically, spoke only in monosyllables, and worked eighteen-hour days to avoid sleep.
Fatima took to following him like a shadow. One evening at the docks, she finally snapped:
"Stop pretending you're the only one who loved her!"
Jinnah turned, his eyes frighteningly alive for the first time in months. "You hated her."
Fatima's chest heaved. "I was six! And she...she still let me hide in her closet during storms!"
A ship's horn drowned Jinnah's response. When the noise faded, he was kneeling before her, his hands trembling. "Tell me everything you remember."
And so she did—how Emibai secretly saved sweets for her, how she'd defended Fatima's reading habits to Mithibai, how she'd once stayed up stitching a doll when Fatima had measles.
With each revelation, Jinnah's mask cracked further. When Fatima described finding Emibai weeping over his letters from London, he made a sound like a wounded animal.
They sat on the pier until sunrise, two orphans of the same storm.
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### **The Legacy**
Before returning to Bombay, Jinnah gifted Fatima Emibai's only surviving possession—a silver hairpin shaped like a sparrow.
"Keep it hidden," he advised. "Amma will say it's bad luck."
Fatima pinned it inside her sleeve where it pricked her wrist during prayers—a tiny, persistent reminder. On the carriage ride to the station, Jinnah did something unprecedented: he held her hand the entire way.
As the train pulled out, Fatima realized with startling clarity that Emibai's death had given her what life never could—her brother's undivided attention. The guilt of that revelation would shape her forever.
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**Historical Anchors:**
1. **Emibai's Death** - Actually died of cholera months after Jinnah left for London
2. **Medical Practices** - Accurate 1893 treatments for cholera
3. **Cultural Details** - Muslim funeral rites and mourning customs
**Key Themes:**
- **Grief as Transformation** - How loss reshapes relationships
- **Childhood Guilt** - Fatima's complex emotions
- **Silent Love** - The words never spoken between spouses
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