He opened his eyes not to light, but to cold. The soil beneath his body was damp with December's indifference. The rags clinging to his skin had no memory of warmth, no fibers of kindness. There was no sound only a distant echo of wind slithering through the narrow gaps in crumbling mud walls. No angels. No devils. Just dirt. Just cold. Just…. again.
He blinked once. Twice.. The world was large...
His arms. small. His fingers. tiny, weak, unfamiliar. He touched his chest and it didn't ache from starvation. He touched his face and there were no bruises. His breath was shallow, but alive. Alive.
That's when it hit him. Like a whisper shouted through a void:
"I was dead."
And now, he wasn't.
He didn't panic. Not yet. First came the staring at his own bare feet, at the broken muddy courtyard walls, at the winter moon hiding behind fog like it was ashamed to witness this revival. Then his fragile body began to react tremors in the legs, heat in the chest, tears before the sadness. The absurdity broke through him not as emotion, but as nausea. Because this - this was not redemption. This was not reward. This was not reincarnation.
This was God showing him the punchline.
A kind of irony only a timeless Devine being would understand. And take pleasure in.
He closed his eyes and muttered, "You poor, broken existence." His lips barely moved, but the pity in his voice was sincere. Not theatrical. Not philosophical. Sincere. He pitied God.
"You must be exhausted. Making man in your image. Watching him become you. Watching him hurt and pretend it's holy."
He sat up slowly, arms trembling, not because of the cold now, but because of how much he remembered. Every slap, every verse screamed at him. Every bruise explained by theology. Every blow justified by love. The prayers recited before beatings. The Quranic chapters whispered by sociopaths while dragging him by the neck.
He remembered it all. Every detail. Every absurd contradiction. Every scar was a sermon.
He stared up at the sky again. "You created the Devil. Then warned us about him. You created man. Then gave him free will. Then punished him for using it. And now you've sent me back… to what? Try again? Why?"
Silence answered. As always.
So he spoke for both of them.
"I won't worship. I won't obey. Not the way you asked. I will do exactly what was done to me. In your name. Isn't that fair? Isn't that the world you built?"
And then he started laughing not the innocent kind. The kind you hear from people who've finally broken through madness into clarity. Because there was no peace. No reward. Just another chance to suffer.
But this time, with memory.
He stood on tiny legs and walked slowly across the courtyard. Every brick, every crack, every stench was familiar. The house hadn't changed. And neither had its inhabitants.
Inside those rooms Rehan, Irfan, Rizwan, Imran. His "uncles." The zoo of human deformity. Sleeping. Snoring. Oblivious. Holy in public. Monsters in private.
They had taught him well.
They taught him God was a weapon. So now, he would carry it.
They taught him verses could excuse anything. So now, he would memorize them all.
They taught him silence was survival. So now, he would whisper his plans only to the dirt.
He knelt down, touched the earth again, and smiled not out of joy. Out of certainty.
There would be no savior. No miraculous change of heart. No sudden apology. The future was already written. The only variable now…. was him.
And he? He was not Arslan the obedient. Not Arslan the boy who asked permission to breathe. Not the servant of pain, the child of disgrace.
Arslan didn't move with vengeance. Vengeance implies passion, fire of its own kind. This wasn't that. This was arithmetic. Justice, not the kind that cries in the night for sympathy, but the kind that simply balances the equation.
The bottles were exactly where they had always been. Rehan's secret stash, hiding in plain sight behind the bushes near the outhouse. Four bottles. One half-full, one nearly empty, two still sealed. The men of God needed spirits to silence the spirits. They needed liquor to survive the morality they choked others with. And by morning, they would be righteous again wrapped in white, screaming God's name louder than yesterday's sins.
Arslan picked up the bottles one by one. He didn't tremble. Five-year-old hands, guided by a thirty-nine-year-old soul, did not shake. He climbed the stairs slowly. The wood creaked, but only the dirt noticed. There were no streetlights. There were no lights, period. Pakistan, 1990. Midnight in Uch Sharif was darker than the grave. But Arslan could see clearly. Not with eyes. Eyes were for fools. He saw with certainty. With faith. With memory. With a divine sense of conclusion.
Inside, the house was silent not asleep, but unconscious. Rehan was sprawled like a fallen god, stinking of filth and fermented lies. Imran snored like a machine made of rust and violence. Irfan lay curled, perhaps dreaming of the screams he silenced in daylight. Rizwan... Arslan didn't look at him. He didn't need to. Monsters look the same whether you face them or not.
His mother and father lay tangled in their habitual exhaustion. Gambling slips still clutched in fists, mouths still half-formed around unfinished curses. The aunts were silent. For once, they weren't arguing about food. Maybe they'd run out of words. Or maybe Arslan had simply stopped listening.
He took the first bottle and poured it carefully onto the wooden beams above their heads. The roof drank like a beggar dry, hungry. These sticks were the kind that splintered when you touched them. Soft, old, never meant to last. He went back down, got the second bottle, and did the same. Methodical. Thorough. No haste. There was no need for haste.
He wasn't scared of being caught. No one would wake up. Not now. Not them. These people didn't rise for Fajr. They didn't rise for cries. They rose only for money, or for violence, and both were out of reach tonight. He was their servant once. He knew their routines better than they did. He had memorized their cruelty in reverse so perfectly that he now knew exactly when they would be incapable of movement. That hour was now.
When the roof was saturated, he moved to the windows. Heavy wooden crates blocked most of them meant to keep the cold out, to keep the child in. They made his job easier. He poured the rest of the alcohol down the cracks. The wood inside would drink it, as eagerly as the roof had.
Then he locked the doors with the metal latches. Quietly. Deliberately. Not as punishment. Not as hate. As closure.
He struck a match. The roof caught quickly. Alcohol has no patience. Fire needs no explanation.
Then, with the same slowness, he descended the steps and lit the windows. One, two, three. Flames whispered first. Then hummed. Then screamed.
But he was already walking away.
He didn't run. He didn't look back. He didn't listen for cries or crashes or curses.
He walked to the dirt patch where he had woken up where cold had greeted him and pity for God had first touched his lips. He lay down in the same rags. The fire was behind him. The screams, if they ever came, would not be his problem.
And for the first time in his life, Arslan slept. Not as a servant. Not as a possession. Not as a sinner born into the house of saints.
He slept without fear. Without prayer. Without asking permission from God.
Because tonight, he had done God's job for Him. And the payment had been collected in advance.
---
By sunrise, the flames had done what centuries of sermons couldn't. They had silenced the pious. Charred beams leaned like drunks over their dead masters. Smoke curled from the mudbrick skeletons, drifting upward like unanswered prayers. And Arslan sat cross-legged in the same dirt pile, watching the morning stretch its neck across the town.
In Pakistan, everyone is either half-asleep or fully in denial. But when the molvies walked to the mosque for Fajr and saw smoke, they didn't question it. Fire was warmth, and warmth was mercy in winter. They thought it was someone heating water, perhaps a restless man stoking embers for tea. The sight of flames didn't inspire suspicion. It inspired nostalgia.
Only after prayers, when the cold refused to lift and the smoke refused to thin, did the neighborhood grow curious. Men wrapped in shawls shuffled closer. They weren't in a hurry. Death isn't shocking when God is always on speed dial. And anyway, fire had its own explanations. God's punishment. God's test. God's timing. God's will. Never man's doing.
The house was half-gone by the time they arrived. The roof had collapsed inward. The windows were black holes where fire had licked through wood and faith alike. The doors remained latched. Burnt but intact. No one opened them. They stepped around them like trash.
No one mentioned Arslan. No one thought of him. A barefoot five-year-old in rags sitting in the ash? Must've been sleeping outside. Poor thing. Nothing strange about that. Children in this country sleep where they fall. On dirt, on roofs, in courtyards, in graves. No one suspects a child. Least of all one who doesn't cry.
Arslan didn't cry. His eyes were dry. His gaze empty. He watched them with a serenity that could only belong to someone who had seen death from the inside. These people had watched his torture for years. Heard the slaps. Heard the screams. Heard nothing at all, really, because they never listened. Their heads were full of Quran, but their hands were full of stone.
Now, the religious men stood among the smoldering ruin, debating its cause. One old man said, "It was probably God's wrath. Too much sin in one house."
Another chimed in, "Or negligence. They slept with fire in the room. It happens pretty often."
"It was written, as such" a molvi concluded, stroking his beard as if that made it true.
But when someone muttered about jewelry, the mood shifted. Men became blurry. Hands started touching the warm ash.
Suddenly, the God-fearing grew helpful. Buckets were found. Ashes were stirred. Planks lifted. Not for the dead. For the loot. Gold, rupees, anything that glimmered in the name of piety. Hypocrisy, now baptized in smoke, was called helping. They dragged the remaining trunks, pried open doors like saints in a morality play, all under God's name.
And Arslan watched. He didn't smile. That would imply satisfaction. He didn't scowl either. That would mean he cared. He merely existed. The way fog does. Present, persistent, indifferent.
Not once did they ask who he was. No one touched him. No one questioned how he got there, why he sat so close, why he smelled faintly of soot but had no burns. He was five. That was explanation enough. In Pakistan, the only qualification needed to be invisible is to be small and silent.
The dead were dragged out by noon. Wrapped in charred bedsheets. The town imam prayed over the blackened bodies. "They were God's servants," he said. "Taken too soon. May Allah forgive them."
Arslan wanted to laugh. But laughing required breath, and he wasn't sure he had any left.
By afternoon, rumors had replaced reason. Some said it was jinn. Some said it was envy from neighbors. Some blamed the wind. But all agreed it was tragic. And all agreed it was no one's fault.
And still, no one saw Arslan.
As they stripped the ruin for parts, wood still warm from the kill, he sat beside a collapsed wall, watching the looters in religious robes argue over who deserved more reward for "saving what remained."
They had come too late to save the lives. But perfectly on time to steal what they'd left behind.
That evening, the sky turned gold not with fire, but with a sunset so calm it mocked the day. Arslan stood, dusted the ash from his rags, and walked toward the courtyard gate. No one stopped him.
But before he could step through, a voice stopped him.
"Arslan."
Not a question. A statement. As if the speaker had known his name long before this moment.
He turned.
The man stood apart from the crowd, near the twisted remains of the gate. Old. Not frail nothing about him was frail. Tall, with the kind of posture that belonged to men who had spent decades being obeyed. A grey beard, trimmed close. Eyes the color of faded steel. He wore a simple shalwar kameez, but his shoes were polished. Military leather, maintained long after retirement.
In his hand, a cane. Not because he needed it. Because it was part of him.
Arslan knew him. Not from memory the first life had never included this man. But from the way the crowd parted. From the way the looters suddenly found other things to look at. From the silence that settled around him like a second skin.
This was Malik Riyaz.
His grandfather.
Arslan said nothing. He simply stood there, barefoot in the ash, and waited.
Riyaz walked toward him. Slowly. Deliberately. Each step measured, as if counting the distance between them.
When he stopped, he looked down at Arslan for a long moment. Then he did something unexpected. He knelt.
Not all the way. Just enough to bring his eyes level with the boy's.
"You're alive," he said.
"Yes."
"The others aren't."
"No."
Riyaz's gaze didn't waver. It moved over Arslan's face, his clothes, his hands, as if searching for something. Burns, maybe. Or grief. Or guilt.
"You were outside when it happened?"
"I sleep in the courtyard sometimes. It was warm last night."
A lie. Simple. Clean. The first of many.
Riyaz nodded slowly. "And when you woke up? When you saw the fire?"
Arslan considered the question. In the first life, he'd learned that adults asked questions not to understand, but to judge. They already knew what they believed. They just wanted you to confirm it.
But this man was different. This man was actually watching. Actually listening.
"I tried to go inside," Arslan said. "The doors were locked. The latches were down. I couldn't open them."
He let his voice catch. Just slightly. Just enough.
"I heard them screaming. I couldn't—"
"Enough.! That's enough child"
Riyaz's hand came up. Gentle. Final.
"You're five years old. You couldn't have done anything. They burned in their own negligence"
Arslan looked down. Nodded. He couldn't agree more.
Exactly. Negligence.
Riyaz stood. For a moment, he seemed to be deciding something. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief clean, white, folded with military precision.
He knelt again and wiped a smudge of ash from Arslan's cheek.
"You'll come with me," he said. Not a question.
Arslan looked up. "To where?"
"Hyderpur. My village. You'll be safe there."
Arslan said nothing. But inside, something shifted. Not gratitude he didn't trust gratitude. Not hopehope was a trap. But recognition. This man was useful. This man had land, connections, a reputation. This man could open doors.
And he was offering.
"Okay," Arslan said.
Riyaz extended his hand. Arslan took it. The grip was firm but not painful. The grip of someone who had held many things and learned exactly how much pressure each one could bear.
They walked toward the gate together. Past the looters, who suddenly found their voices again, calling out condolences and blessings. Past the imam, who reached for Riyaz's hand and pressed it to his forehead. Past the children, who stared at Arslan with the wide eyes reserved for miracles.
At the edge of the village, a carriage waited. Old, painted a faded olive. Riyaz opened the passenger door.
"Get in."
Arslan climbed in. The seat was stiff, the upholstery worn. It smelled of dust and something else—something that might or might not have been memory.
Riyaz got in on the other side.
They drove.
Behind them, Uch Sharif shrank in the distance. The smoke from the fire rose like a pillar, visible for miles, a signal to anyone who cared to look.
Arslan watched it until it disappeared.
Then he turned forward and didn't look back.
---
The ride took three hours. Riyaz didn't speak. Arslan didn't either.
But in the silence, Arslan's mind was already working.
1990. January 5 . Thirty-five years until his knowledge ran out. A country full of opportunities. A grandfather with military connections, land, and if the way he'd looked at Arslan was any indication a willingness to believe in something beyond the ordinary.
He catalogued what he knew about Malik Riyaz. Not much from the first life the man had died before Arslan was old enough to know him. But the name had come up in whispers. A major in the army. Land disputes settled without courts. Men who owed him favors scattered across three districts.
Useful.
The jeep bumped along dirt roads, past fields of winter wheat, past villages that looked exactly like the one they'd left behind. Same mud bricks. Same dust. Same people bent over the same work.
Arslan watched them with the detachment of someone who had already lived their lives and knew how they would end.
---
Hyderpur was smaller than Uch Sharif. Quieter. The kind of place where everyone knew everyone and nothing much ever happened.
Riyaz's house was at the edge of the village—a low, sprawling structure with thick walls and a courtyard full of plants. A servant appeared as they drove up, a young man in simple clothes who took one look at Arslan and immediately began preparing a room.
"Bath first," Riyaz said. "Then food. Then sleep."
Arslan nodded. Let himself be led.
The bath was warm. The food was simple—daal, roti, a small piece of meat. The bed was softer than anything he'd ever slept on.
He lay in the darkness, listening to the sounds of an unfamiliar house, an unfamiliar village, an unfamiliar life.
This is real.
He touched his chest. His ribs. His arms. All smooth. All unmarked. Mostly.
This is really real.
For a long time, he just lay there, breathing.
Then, very quietly, he spoke into the darkness.
"I'm sorry."
He wasn't sure who he was apologizing to. God? Himself? The eleven people whose screams he'd listened to without turning around?
Maybe all of them. Maybe none.
"I'm sorry that it had to be that way. But I'm not sorry it's over."
Silence.
"I'm not sorry I'm free."
More silence.
"And if You're listening if You're really there I don't expect You to understand. I don't expect You to forgive me. I don't expect anything from You at all."
He closed his eyes.
"But thank You. For this. For the chance. For whatever comes next."
He didn't know if he meant it. Maybe he did. Maybe he was just tired.
Either way, sleep came quickly.
---
The next morning, Arslan woke to the sound of the azaan.
Fajr. The call to prayer. The same words he'd heard tens of thousands of times in his life, in both lives, always with the same mixture of comfort and dread.
He lay still, listening.
Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar.
God is great.
Is He?
He pushed the thought aside. Got up. Found the clothes someone had left for him clean, simple, slightly too large.
He dressed and walked out into the courtyard.
Riyaz was already there, sitting on a low stool, sipping tea. He looked up as Arslan approached.
"Sleep well?"
Arslan considered the question. It was simple. Ordinary. The kind of question normal people asked normal children on normal mornings.
"Yes, Nana Abu."
Riyaz nodded. Poured another cup of tea. Pushed it toward Arslan.
"Sit."
Arslan sat.
They drank tea in silence as the sun rose over Hyderpur. Somewhere, a rooster crowed. A woman's voice called out to a child. The world, indifferent and ordinary, continued its slow rotation.
After a while, Riyaz spoke.
"There will be a funeral today. In Uch Sharif. They'll bury them this afternoon."
Arslan said nothing.
"You don't have to go. You're a child. No one expects it."
"I want to go."
The words came out before Arslan could stop them. He wasn't sure why he'd said them. He didn't want to see the bodies. Didn't want to hear the prayers. Didn't want to watch the hypocrites perform grief.
But something in him some remnant of the boy he'd been, the boy who still believed in rules and rituals insisted.
Riyaz studied him for a long moment. Then he nodded.
"We'll go together."
---
The funeral was exactly what Arslan expected.
Men in white, standing in rows. The imam's voice, rising and falling in the familiar cadences of grief. Women weeping behind walls, their cries muffled by dupattas and distance. The bodies, wrapped in white cloth, lowered into the earth one by one.
Arslan stood at the edge of the crowd, small enough to be invisible, and watched.
No one looked at him. No one approached him. He was the orphan, the survivor, the miracle. But miracles, in this country, were quickly forgotten. Tomorrow, someone else would need prayers. Someone else would die. Someone else would be mourned.
He turned away before the last grave was filled.
Riyaz found him sitting under a neem tree at the edge of the cemetery, watching the dust settle over fresh graves.
"You didn't pray."
Arslan looked up. "I prayed last night."
Riyaz's eyebrow twitched. Just slightly.
"Did you?"
"Yes."
A pause.
"What did you pray for?"
Arslan considered the question. He could lie. He could say something pious, something that would confirm the old man's suspicions about his holiness. But something in him the same something that had made him want to come to the funeral pushed for honesty.
" that it was over."
Riyaz was silent for a long time. Then he sat down on the ground beside Arslan. Not close enough to touch. Close enough to be present.
"It is," he said. "It's over."
Arslan looked at him.
Riyaz met his gaze. For a moment, something passed between them—not understanding, exactly, but recognition. The recognition of two people who had seen things they couldn't explain and survived things they couldn't forget.
"It is for now," Riyaz said. "The rest is up to you."
---
They drove back to Hyderpur in silence.
That evening, a man came to the house. Old, with a stained turban and eyes that moved too quickly. He sat in the hujra with Riyaz, drinking tea and talking in low tones.
Arslan sat in his usual corner, watching.
The man's name was Chaudhry Sahab. He owned land near Uch Sharif. He had come to offer his condolences and, more importantly, to make an offer.
"The house," he said. "The boy's house. It's worthless now, of course. Burnt to the ground. But the land the land still has value. I'm willing to take it off his hands. Save him the trouble."
Riyaz's face revealed nothing. "How much?"
"Thirty thousand."
Riyaz glanced at Arslan. Just a flicker. But Arslan caught it.
He understood immediately. The house was worthless. The land was not. And thirty thousand was an insult.
He stood up.
Both men looked at him.
The old man blinked, surprised to be addressed by a child. "beta. It's my duty. To help you"
Arslan nodded.
The lie landed gently. Chaudhry Sahab puffed up slightly, pleased.
Silence.
Riyaz's eyes narrowed. Just slightly.
Chaudhry Sahab's face flickered. "Of course . I only want to help."
"Then you will pay what the land is worth. Not what you think I'll accept."
Another silence. Longer this time.
Riyaz spoke. "Seventy thousand."
Chaudhry Sahab's mouth opened, then closed. "That's—that's more than—"
"That's what the land is worth," Riyaz said. "Unless you think differently."
The old man looked at Arslan. At Riyaz. Back at Arslan. For a moment, something like suspicion flickered in his eyes. But it was gone as quickly as it came.
"Seventy," he said finally. "I'll bring it tomorrow."
He left without finishing his tea.
When the door closed behind him, Riyaz turned to Arslan.
"
Riyaz studied him for a long moment.
"That's not something a five-year-old knows."
Arslan met his gaze.
The silence stretched between them. For a moment, Arslan wondered if he'd gone too far. If the mask had slipped too much. If Riyaz would see what was underneath and recoil.
But Riyaz only nodded slowly.
"Seventy thousand," he said. "What will you do with it?"
Arslan thought about the field he'd seen on the drive. The dry, cracked soil. The canal that would come in three years.
"I don't know yet," he said. "But I'll think of something."
Riyaz almost smiled.
"I'm sure you will."
---
That night, Arslan lay on his cot, staring at the ceiling.
Seventy thousand rupees. More money than he'd ever held in the first life. A fraction of what he would need, but a beginning.
He thought about the field. About the canal. About all the other pieces of land he remembered from the first life land that would be worthless now, valuable later. Land that would be swallowed by cities, crossed by highways, watered by new canals.
He had thirty-five years of knowledge. Thirty-five years of watching the world happen and remembering every detail.
And now he had money.
Not enough. Not yet. But enough to start.
He closed his eyes.
This is how it begins.
For once, he didn't dream of screams.
He dreamed of dirt. Dry, cracked, worthless dirt. And water, years from now, bringing it back to life.