They speak of promises as though they were objects to be kept in a chest neat, transferable, owned.
Rashid's voice in the front room had that particular firmness older men adopt when they believe they are protecting a family's future. He spoke of commitments as if they were iron wedding vows, handshakes, the kind of promises that, in his mind, stitch a blot into something respectable. "A promise is a promise," he said, and the sentence landed like a claim. For him the boys' commitments were not only their honor; they were assets to be preserved.
Others echoed him. "We must show certainty," one uncle said, tapping a page of names as if the list itself would anchor the world. They argued about contracts of promise with the same language they used for business deals who would give what, what dowry would be offered, which families would be invited so faces would be favorable. The language of commerce is comfortable to them; it flattens a life into an item to be traded.
Rehaan spoke as if promising were a way to close a wound. He insisted his son had made an assurance and that a public retraction would only make things worse for the family. "Let us keep the promise," he insisted, with an energy that sounded like fear dressed as principle. To admit that a promise had been made in bad faith was, to him, worse than forcing a life into a role. The house wanted certainty more than it wanted to examine what that certainty would cost.
They used phrases that assume compliance. "For the family," they said. "To keep the peace." The words pretended to be protective. Protection, in their mouths, often meant simpler things: quiet nights, fewer questions at the market, business as usual. It is easier for a household to absorb the cost of a calm than to risk the longer storm of asking who should change.
Farid listened to these insistences as if he weighed each syllable on his palm. I could see the old pride in him tighten and then loosen. He is the kind of man who measures dignity in small domestic currencies: a steady roof, neighbors who do not whisper, children who can walk without shame. The elders pressed those currencies as if they were absolutes. "A promise keeps a man's word," Rashid repeated. "We cannot allow promises to be torn away." For them, the preservation of promise felt like the preservation of order.
I sat with the notebook in my lap and watched the room convert a girl's life into entries and tallies. They discussed dates as if a calendar were a seal, gifts as if the exchange could translate into forgiveness, the choice of speakers as if the right voices would sanctify a thing that had no right to be sanctified. Men argued practicalities while treating the human consequence as a footnote.
It angered some of them when I did not lower my eyes or accept their arithmetic without question. "Is she not reasonable?" Rashid asked at one point, as if reason could be measured by compliance. The room waited for my acceptance the way a garden waits for rain. But rain cannot be ordered by earnest lips. I refused, not with drama but with the quiet insistence of someone who has already placed a record in ink.
There was a moment when an uncle one who had been soft with sweets in the past leaned forward and said, "If the promise stands, we can move forward. If it does not, there will be talk." Talk, here, is a kind of currency they wield with threats thinly veiled as social consequence. They imagine gossip as a punishment and assume women will prefer the neat end to the slow grind of rumor. They misread fear for consent.
Farid's jaw worked. I could see the calculus inside him: the desire to spare his family the noise, the same desire that had once moved him to vote with the elders before. He has always wanted to keep the home whole. Now he had to choose whether his idea of wholeness would be spun by others into the shape of my silence. The choice sits crooked inside him, and for the first time I glimpsed not only his protectiveness but his real uncertainty.
Ufaq moved quietly among them, asking small, precise questions that made men uncomfortably count consequences. "If the promise is kept," she asked softly, "what changes for the boys? What changes for the family? Who will watch for the cost?" Her questions are arithmetic, not sermon. They force people to translate a promise into a list of obligations. Obligation is heavier than a word; it is a sequence of days and duties. When you name the duties, promises become less neat.
Tooba and Toora stayed near the doorway. Tooba's hands folded a small bundle of cloth as if routine could be comforting; Toora's face was steady with the careful compassion of someone who mends. They have seen how promises can be polished into things that hide fractures. Neither woman spoke much, but their presence was a small resistance: proof that life's work does not vanish into a vow.
The men kept returning to the same phrase "promises must stand" as though repetition would harden it into truth. It did not for me. A promise made to conceal is not honor; it is a convenience. The difference matters. A life bent to smooth a roof's surface is not protection. It is subtraction.
I wrote down their answers as they came who promised what, which dates they proposed, which elders vouched and then I underlined a question: what does she want? The room trembled slightly at that question because it is not one they had practiced. It asks for personhood rather than accounting. For a moment, the arithmetic faltered.
Rashid looked at me then, and in his eyes was the same old mixture of sorrow and calculation. "She will accept what is best for the family," he said, as if he were speaking what I would think. The sentence felt like an attempt to speak for me. It was small and familiar: older men telling a younger life how to live so their nights remain quiet.
"No," I said simply. The sound was not a cry. It was a hinge closing. I did not bargain. I did not ask for theatrics. I made a small and steady refusal. It shifted the room in a way speeches had not. Some faces flushed with irritation; others with thin surprise. My no was not a refusal of reconciliation but a refusal of erasure.
They argued then over technicalities what the promise legally implied in the town's terms, who would sign what, whether an engagement could be made "temporary." Their language turned to logistics because logistics are soothing. If you can measure a thing, you imagine you can control it. But life refuses some controls.
As the meeting drew on, I felt the weight of those promises like a pressure against the chest: the town's need for tidy stitches pressing against my insistence that my life will not be one. The elders left with their plans still intact in their minds. They would press; they would ask; they would assume that a promise once made must be honored because their idea of honor depends on it.
I closed the notebook and wrote one more line, a small instruction to myself: prepare. The thought was practical what to pack if words do not change the house; what small proofs to carry, what faces to tell. It was not defeat. It was a readiness to preserve myself against the easy economy of promises traded like goods.
Promises are treated like property by men who fear their own reputation. I watched them convert my life into an item to be kept on a shelf. I will not be kept. If they insist, then they will see how expensive a "promise" can be when it collides with a refusal.