January 1990 — The Field
Hyderpur
He sat alone.
Not in the courtyard, not on the porch, not anywhere the village could see him. He had walked—small legs, small steps, small body moving through tall grass—until the houses were distant shapes and the sounds of people were just noise carried on wind. Until it was just him and the field.
His field.
Twenty thousand rupees. Dry soil. Dead well. Three years until the canal.
He sat cross-legged on the cracked earth, knees barely bending, the too-large kameez pooling around him like a tent. The sun was warm on his face. A breeze moved through the wheat in the next field, making sounds like whispers. Somewhere behind him, a hen clucked. A child laughed. The world, indifferent and ordinary, continued its slow rotation.
He closed his eyes.
And for the first time since waking in Uch Sharif—since the cold, since the fire, since the screams—he let himself feel the weight of what had happened.
Not the fire. Not the deaths. Those were arithmetic. Those were solved.
The other thing. The impossible thing.
I died.
The thought sat in his mind like a stone in still water. Ripples spreading outward, touching everything.
I died in 2025. On a road. From heat and hunger and the accumulated weight of forty years of being told I wasn't worth saving. I felt my heart stop. I felt the darkness take me. I felt—
Nothing. That was the thing. He had felt nothing. Not peace, not terror, not the embrace of a divine presence. Just cessation. Like a candle snuffed.
And then.
Then I woke up. Here. In this body. In this time. With every memory intact. Every scar. Every book I ever read. Every face of every person who hurt me.
He opened his eyes and looked at his hands. Small. Unmarked. The skin smooth in a way that still felt wrong.
Why?
The question had no answer. He had asked it of God on that first night, and God had answered with silence. The same silence that answered now.
But silence, he was learning, was not emptiness. Silence was space. And space was where you built things.
---
He thought about infinity.
The concept had haunted him in the first life. Not in the way it haunted philosophers or mathematicians—those abstractions were luxuries he couldn't afford. He had thought about infinity the way a starving man thinks about bread: as something other people had. Infinite food. Infinite safety. Infinite chances.
He had never had a chance. Not one. From the moment he was born in that house of snakes, his life had been a sequence of doors closing. Every path blocked. Every hand raised against him. Every prayer unanswered.
Until one prayer was answered. Just not the way he'd meant it.
I asked to die. And instead, I got this.
He looked out at the field. At the cracks in the soil. At the way the light fell on it, indifferent and beautiful.
Infinity, he thought again. What does it mean?
In the books he had read—the ones salvaged from garbage heaps, borrowed from kindly strangers, stolen when no one was looking—infinity was always described as something vast. Unreachable. The number of numbers. The edge of the universe. The eternal nature of God.
But sitting here, in this dry field, in this small body, he understood something else.
Infinity wasn't vast. Infinity was here.
Every choice he made from this moment forward would ripple outward, touching things he couldn't see, couldn't predict, couldn't control. One decision could change everything. One wrong move could erase the future he remembered. One right move could build something that outlasted him.
That's infinity, he thought. Not the number of choices. The weight of them.
He thought about the books. All those books. He had read them in the first life not because he was curious, but because they were there. Because reading was cheaper than eating. Because for a few hours, he could disappear into someone else's thoughts and forget his own.
But the books had done more than distract him. They had shaped him. They had given him tools he didn't know he had.
Poverty & Power. That book had taught him that poverty wasn't an accident. It was a system. A machine built to produce certain outcomes. The uncles who beat him, the parents who gambled away his food, the moneylenders who owned them—they weren't monsters. They were cogs. The machine used them the same way it used him.
Rule by Fear. That book had taught him that the state's permanent emergency was not a bug but a feature. That chaos was manufactured to keep people desperate, divided, easy to control. The same chaos that had left him invisible in Uch Sharif was the chaos he could now exploit.
Kicking Away the Ladder. That book had taught him that the rich didn't get rich by playing fair. They got rich by changing the rules after they'd already won. By kicking away the ladder so no one could follow.
He smiled. A small thing. Not warm.
I'm going to build my own ladder. And I'm going to make sure no one even knows it exists.
---
The breeze shifted. Carried sounds from the village. A donkey braying. A woman calling to her child. The distant thump of a mortar grinding spices.
He listened to them differently now. Not as noises to be ignored, but as data. As information about the world he was going to shape.
The future, he thought. I know the future.
He knew that in 1998, Pakistan would test nuclear weapons, and sanctions would follow, and the rupee would crash. He knew that in 1999, a general would seize power, and the army's economic empire would expand, and men like Riyaz would become more valuable than they already were. He knew that in 2001, planes would fly into buildings, and the world would change, and Pakistan would become a frontline state in a war that would last decades.
He knew about the earthquake in 2005. The floods in 2010 and 2022. The heatwaves, the droughts, the slow collapse of institutions that were already crumbling.
He knew about the internet. About mobile phones. About social media and cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence. He knew about Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg—names that meant nothing in 1990, names that would one day mean everything.
I could take it, he thought. All of it. I could invest in Apple before anyone knows what Apple is. I could buy Bitcoin for pennies and sell it for millions. I could build a fortune so vast that—
He stopped himself.
No.
That was the first life thinking. The desperate, hungry thinking. The thinking of someone who had never had anything and wanted everything.
This was different. This was not about having. This was about building.
Money was just a tool. A means to an end. The end was something else. Something he couldn't quite name yet.
Control, he thought. Not over people. Over the shape of my own life. Over the forces that crushed me the first time.
He looked at the field again. At the dry soil. At the dead well.
This is the first piece. In three years, this field will be worth a fortune. I'll sell it, or I'll borrow against it, or I'll use it to buy something else. And then another piece. And another.
By the time anyone notices, I'll own more land than they can imagine. By the time anyone asks questions, I'll have answers they can't challenge.
He thought about Riyaz. About the old man's hand on his head. About the words: I will protect you. From anyone. From anything.
He means it, Arslan thought. He actually means it.
That was strange. In the first life, no one had meant anything. Every kindness was a trap. Every offer of help came with strings attached. Every hand reached out was a hand that could close into a fist.
But Riyaz was different. Riyaz asked questions and waited for answers. Riyaz watched and listened and saw. Riyaz had taken a strange, silent child into his home and called him family.
Family.
The word still felt foreign. Like a language he'd once known but hadn't spoken in years.
He tested it again. Let it sit in his mind.
Family. Grandfather. Home.
None of them fit quite right. But they fit better than they had a month ago.
---
The sun moved across the sky. The shadows lengthened. He didn't move.
He thought about the butterfly effect. About all the ways his knowledge could fail him. About the terror of changing something and watching the future unravel.
What if I buy this field and the canal doesn't come? What if the government changes the route? What if some official takes a bribe from someone else and the whole project shifts?
He had considered this. The canal extension was not a secret. It had been planned for years, debated in newspapers, discussed in jirgas. The only reason the land was cheap was that no one believed it would actually happen. They had heard promises before. They had watched canals get approved and then delayed, approved and then canceled.
But Arslan knew. He knew because in the first life, the canal had been built. In 1993, after years of delays, the government had finally approved the funding. The water had come. The land had tripled in value.
That future is fixed, he told himself. Unless I change it.
But would buying this field change it? Probably not. One small purchase, made quietly, through a trust. No one would notice. No one would care. The canal would still come. The water would still flow.
Probably.
The uncertainty gnawed at him. But he pushed it aside. There was no way to be certain. There was only the weight of choices and the hope that they were the right ones.
---
He thought about the people who would come after him. The billionaires, the innovators, the builders of the future. Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Altman. In 1990, they were children or teenagers or not yet born. They had no idea what they would become.
But I do.
He could invest in their companies before anyone knew their names. He could buy stock in Apple when it was trading for pennies. He could fund Google before it was Google. He could be the silent partner behind half the tech industry, and no one would ever know.
But that's not enough, he thought. That's just money. That's just sitting back and watching other people build.
He wanted to build something himself. Something that would last. Something that would matter.
Al-Riyaz, he thought. The name had come to him in the first life, years ago, when he'd imagined what he would do if he ever had the chance. A foundation. A trust. A network of schools and businesses and clinics that would spread across Pakistan like roots underground.
Not charity, he thought. Control. Not control over people—control over the systems that control them.
He thought about the books again. What We Get Wrong About Education. That book had taught him that schooling was not about learning. It was about obedience. About shaping children into workers who would not question, citizens who would not rebel.
I can use that, he thought. I can build schools that teach children to memorize, not to think. And then I can own them. Not their bodies—their minds. Their loyalty.
He thought about How Money Became Dangerous. About the way currency could be a weapon. About gold as a hedge against collapse. About debt as a tool of control.
I'll buy gold, he thought. Quietly. Slowly. In small amounts that no one notices. And when the rupee crashes, I'll be ready.
He thought about The Age of Unreason. About the need for organizations that were flexible, decentralized, impossible to pin down.
Al-Riyaz will have no headquarters, he thought. No single leader. No logo anyone recognizes. Just a network of trusts and foundations and shell companies, all connected invisibly.
By the time anyone realizes what I've built, it will be too late. I'll be part of the landscape. As permanent as the canals.
---
The sun was setting now. The sky turning orange, then purple, then black. Stars appearing one by one.
He didn't move.
He thought about the first life. About the banana cart. About the heat. About the child's hands reaching for fruit he couldn't protect. About the moment of death—the cessation, the silence, the nothing.
And then about waking. About the cold. About the realization that he was alive again.
Why?
The question returned. Still no answer.
But sitting here, in this field, in this silence, he began to think that maybe why was the wrong question. Maybe the right question was what now.
What now?
He had money. He had land. He had knowledge. He had time.
And he had a grandfather who had promised to protect him.
What now?
He looked at the field. At the cracks in the soil. At the dead well.
Now I wait, he thought. I wait for the water. I wait for the value to grow. I wait for the right moments to act.
And while I wait, I watch. I learn. I build the myth.
He thought about the dreams. About the lottery win. About the way Riyaz had looked at him afterward—not with suspicion, but with wonder.
The myth is already starting, he thought. The blessed child. The orphan who speaks with God. By the time I'm ten, people will whisper my name. By the time I'm twenty, they'll travel miles to see me.
And I'll be invisible behind it all. Just a boy. Just a vessel. Just a—
He stopped.
Just a what?
The question hung in the air. Unanswered.
He didn't know what he was anymore. He had been Arslan the victim. Arslan the survivor. Arslan the avenger. Now he was something else. Something still forming.
I'm the one who came back, he thought. I'm the one who remembers. I'm the one who knows.
That was enough for now.
---
He stood slowly. His legs were stiff from sitting so long. His small body protested the movement.
He looked at the field one last time. At the stars reflected in the dry soil. At the darkness settling over the land.
Three years, he thought. Three years until the water comes. Three years until this dirt becomes gold.
And then?
He didn't know. But for the first time in forty years, not knowing didn't feel like terror.
It felt like possibility.
He turned and walked back toward the village. The lights of Hyderpur glowed in the distance. Somewhere, a dog barked. A woman's voice called out. The sounds of ordinary life, continuing as they always had.
He walked toward them. Small legs, small steps, small body moving through the dark.
Behind him, the field waited. Silent. Patient. Full of potential.
Ahead of him, the future waited. Unwritten. Unknowable. Infinite.
He kept walking.
---
When he reached the house, Riyaz was on the porch. Sitting in the dark, cup of tea in hand, watching the stars.
"You were gone a long time," Riyaz said.
Arslan sat down beside him. Not close enough to touch. Close enough to be present.
"I was thinking," he said.
"About what?"
Arslan looked at the sky. At the millions of stars, each one a sun, each one a possibility.
"About water," he said. "And dirt. And what happens when they meet."
Riyaz was silent for a moment. Then he nodded slowly.
"That's good," he said. "That's what old men think about. Not children."
Arslan didn't answer.
They sat together in the dark, the old man and the boy, watching the stars.
And somewhere, in the back of Arslan's mind, a clock ticked forward.
Three years until the canal.
Three years until the water came.
Three years until the dirt became gold.
He looked at his small hands. The hands that had poured alcohol on a roof. The hands that had struck matches in the dark. The hands that now held the deed to a worthless field.
Let's see what grows, he thought.
And for once, the silence didn't feel like waiting.
----
February 10, 1990 — Hyderpur
Malik Riyaz's Estate
The afternoon light came through the wooden slats of the veranda in long, dusty stripes. Arslan sat in his usual spot near the threshold, the Qur'an open in his lap, though his eyes weren't moving across the page. They were watching. Always watching.
Riyaz was in the courtyard with a man Arslan didn't recognize—someone from the city, judging by his clothes. A lawyer, maybe. Or a land officer. They spoke in low tones, papers changing hands, nods exchanged. The man left with an envelope thick enough to bend his pocket.
Riyaz watched him go, then walked over to Arslan. He lowered himself onto the charpai beside the boy with the careful grace of someone whose joints remembered every battle they'd carried him through.
"That was the last of it," Riyaz said. Not explaining—just stating. A fact offered to the air.
Arslan looked up. "The last of what, Nana?"
Riyaz was silent for a moment. Then he reached into his kameez and pulled out a folded paper. Deed. Official stamp. The kind of thing that cost more than most people saw in a lifetime.
"Your grandmother's land," he said. "Lal's. Three hundred acres, mostly around the eastern edge of the village. Her sons sold it years ago, piece by piece, to pay for things that didn't matter. I bought back what I could."
Arslan took the deed. Held it in his small hands. The paper was thick, official, heavier than it looked.
"It's yours now," Riyaz said. "Along with everything else."
Arslan looked at him. "Everything else?"
Riyaz gestured vaguely at the world beyond the courtyard walls. "The patches you pointed at. On our walks. The ones where you wanted trees and goats."
Arslan remembered. He had done it deliberately—pointing at random plots, chattering like any child who didn't understand the value of land. Buy this one, Nana. And that one. We can put cows there. And goats. And maybe a pond.
Riyaz had bought every single one.
"How many?" Arslan asked.
"Enough." Riyaz's mouth twitched—almost a smile. "About five hundred thousand rupees worth, all told. Spread out. Some near Uch Sharif, some here, some in places you've never seen. I'll show you when you're older."
Arslan said nothing. But inside, something shifted.
Five hundred thousand. In less than a month. Land that would be worth ten times that in a decade. Twenty times in two decades.
And it was his.
Not through dreams. Not through divine intervention. Through the simple fact that a five-year-old had pointed at dirt and his grandfather had bought it.
He's doing it for me, Arslan thought. All of it. The land. The servants. The guards. He's building something. For me.
The thought was strange. Heavy. In the first life, no one had ever built anything for him. No one had ever saved anything for him. He had been an afterthought, a burden, a thing to be tolerated until it could be discarded.
But Riyaz was different. Riyaz was investing.
---
That evening, they sat on the porch as the sun bled into the horizon. The light was orange, then purple, then gone. Kerosene lamps flickered to life in the village below, small stars scattered across the dark.
Riyaz was quiet. He had been quiet all day, since the lawyer left. Not the silence of a man who had nothing to say—the silence of a man who was thinking, weighing, deciding.
Finally, he spoke.
"I wasn't always like this," he said. "Before the military, before everything—I was like other men. I wanted things. Money. Land. A name that would outlast me."
Arslan waited.
"Then I joined the army. Saw things. Did things. Came back and realized that wanting wasn't the same as having. That most of what I'd wanted was just... noise."
He looked at Arslan. The kerosene lamp on the porch cast long shadows across his face.
"Your mother," he said. "My daughter. She married that man—your father—and I let her go. I told myself she was grown, she could make her own choices. But I knew. I knew what he was. What his family was. And I did nothing."
Arslan kept his face still. But his mind was racing.
He's telling me this for a reason. He's laying groundwork. For what?
"I told myself it was her life," Riyaz continued. "Her mistake to make. But mistakes don't just hurt the people who make them. They spread. Like fire."
The word hung in the air. Fire.
Arslan said nothing.
"Now she's gone," Riyaz said. "And you're here. And I look at you and I think: this is the only thing left. The only thing that matters."
He reached out and placed his hand on Arslan's head. The same gesture. The same warmth.
"I'm not going to let anything happen to you," Riyaz said. "Not while I'm alive. And after—" He gestured at the darkness, at the land beyond. "All of this will be yours. Enough to last three generations. Maybe more."
Arslan looked at the stars. At the kerosene lights in the village. At the vast, dark shape of the land stretching away in every direction.
Three generations, he thought. He's planning for three generations. And I'm planning for thirty-five years. Maybe we're both fools.
But he didn't say that. He said, "Thank you, Nana."
Riyaz nodded. They sat in silence as the night deepened.
---
Later, in his room, Arslan lay awake.
The kerosene lamp beside his bed cast a small, flickering circle of light. Outside, the village was dark—no electricity, no streetlights, nothing but the occasional glow of another lamp in another window. In 1990, in rural Pakistan, night was still night. Not the diluted darkness of cities, but the real thing. The kind that swallowed you whole.
He thought about the land. Two thousand acres, more or less. Centered around Hyderpur, with patches scattered elsewhere. Some through military grants, some inherited, some bought. And now, thanks to Lal's share and his own pointed finger, it was all his.
Two thousand acres, he thought. In a country where most people don't own the dirt they sleep on.
He thought about the books. Poverty & Power. The chapter on land distribution—how the British had created a class of absentee landlords, how independence had done nothing to change it, how the same families had owned the same land for generations while the people who worked it owned nothing.
I'm one of them now, he thought. One of the landlords. One of the people the books talk about.
But he wasn't. Not really. He was something else. Something the books didn't cover.
I'm the one who knows what's coming.
---
The next morning, he woke before Fajr.
He performed his ablutions in the dark, the water cold against his skin. Then he sat on his cot, cross-legged, and thought.
The lottery, he thought. The first win was 720,000 after Jamil's cut. Riyaz spent 500,000 on land. That leaves 220,000. Enough for more land, maybe. Or gold. Or something else.
But the first win was already becoming legend. People in the village whispered about it—the blessed child, the dream, the numbers. Some said it was a miracle. Some said it was luck. Some said nothing, but their eyes followed Arslan when he walked past.
The myth is growing, he thought. But myths need feeding.
He needed another dream. Soon. Before the first one faded from memory.
But it had to be careful. Vague. Wordless. Nothing that could come back to haunt him—no sentences from the dead, no specific instructions that could be quoted later. Just... a number. Floating in the dark. Given by no one.
The 1990 lottery numbers, he thought. I remember most of them. My father used to recite them, years later, when he was drunk and nostalgic. He'd talk about the ones he missed, the ones he could have won, the ones that would have changed everything.
He remembered one in particular. A number so strange it had stuck in his memory: 7722446. Not the kind of number you saw on lottery draws—too many repeating digits, too symmetrical. But it had won. In February 1990. A million rupees, maybe more.
That's the one, he thought. That's the next dream.
But timing mattered. Too soon and it would look suspicious. Too late and the moment would pass. He needed to wait until the first win was old news, but not forgotten. Until people were ready to believe again.
A week, he thought. Maybe two. Let Riyaz finish his land buying. Let the gossip settle. Then—
He heard movement in the kitchen. Riyaz, awake before dawn as always.
Arslan rose and walked out.
---
Riyaz was sitting on his stool, cup of tea in hand, staring out at the darkness. He looked up as Arslan entered.
"You're awake early."
"I couldn't sleep."
Riyaz gestured to the stool beside him. Arslan sat.
They watched the darkness together. Somewhere, a rooster crowed—too early, confused by the absence of light.
"Your grandmother," Riyaz said. "Lal. She used to say that the best time to think was before dawn. Before the world woke up and started demanding things."
Arslan nodded.
"She was right," Riyaz continued. "Most of what the world demands isn't worth giving. But you don't learn that until you've given too much."
He fell silent. Arslan waited.
After a long moment, Riyaz said, "I've been thinking about your dreams."
Arslan's heart didn't skip—he controlled it—but his attention sharpened.
"The first one," Riyaz said. "The lottery. It came true."
"Yes, Nana."
"The second one. The field. I bought it."
"Yes."
Riyaz was quiet for a moment. Then: "Do you remember how they came? The dreams? What you saw?"
Arslan considered his answer carefully. This was the moment. The foundation of everything.
"Not really," he said. His voice was soft, uncertain. "Just... numbers. Or pictures. They're there when I wake up, but I don't remember dreaming them. It's like—" He frowned, as if searching for words. "Like someone put them in my head while I was sleeping."
Riyaz nodded slowly. "Not voices?"
"No, Nana. Just... knowing."
"Your father? Anyone speaking?"
Arslan shook his head. "Just the numbers. Or the field. I saw it, but no one said anything."
Riyaz absorbed this. Then he nodded again, more firmly this time.
"Good," he said. "That's better."
Arslan didn't ask why. He didn't need to. He understood: words could be questioned, analyzed, picked apart. But a number, a vision—those came from somewhere deeper. Somewhere beyond argument.
---
Three days later, Arslan had the dream.
He woke before dawn, sat up in his cot, and waited. The number was there, clear in his mind: 7722446. He repeated it silently, fixing it in place.
Then he went to the kitchen.
Riyaz was there, as always. He looked up as Arslan entered, and something in his face shifted—a recognition, a readiness.
"You had another dream," Riyaz said. Not a question.
Arslan nodded. He sat on the stool, legs dangling, and recited the number. Slowly. Carefully. As if still half-asleep.
Riyaz wrote it down on a scrap of paper. Didn't ask questions. Didn't demand explanations. Just wrote.
Then he stood. "Stay here."
He walked out into the darkness.
Arslan sat alone in the kitchen, listening to the sounds of the village waking. A donkey brayed. A rooster crowed—the real one this time. Somewhere, a child cried.
He thought about the number. 7722446. A million rupees, maybe more. Enough to buy more land. Enough to start thinking about gold. Enough to—
He stopped himself.
Enough, he thought. For now. But not forever.
The clock was still ticking. Thirty-five years. And the dreams would only work for so long.
---
At dawn, Riyaz went to the tea stall.
Jamil was already there, setting up his pots, arranging his cups. He looked up when Riyaz approached, and something in his face shifted. Not quite fear. Not quite respect. The look of a man who had seen something he couldn't explain and wasn't sure he wanted to see it again.
"Malik Sahib."
Riyaz leaned in. Spoke quietly. "The same arrangement. Different numbers."
He handed over a scrap of paper. Jamil looked at it. Seven digits, strange and meaningless.
"Sir, the lottery is tomorrow. If I place this today—"
"Then place it today."
Jamil nodded. Swallowed. "As you say, Malik Sahib."
Riyaz turned and walked away. Behind him, the tea stall erupted in whispers.
---
That afternoon, Arslan sat in the courtyard with the Qur'an open in his lap. He wasn't reading it. He was thinking.
Two hundred twenty thousand rupees left. Plus whatever they won tomorrow. If the number hit—and he was certain it would—they would have over a million. Maybe more, depending on how many other people picked the same combination.
A million rupees.
In 1990, a million rupees was a fortune. You could buy a house in the city. You could buy a fleet of cars. You could buy enough land to make a man a king.
But Arslan didn't want a house. He didn't want cars. He wanted roots. He wanted land that would grow in value while he slept. Land that would be there in ten years, twenty years, fifty years. Land that his children—if he ever had children—would inherit.
Children.
The thought was strange. He had never imagined children in the first life. Had never imagined a future at all. The concept of legacy was as foreign as the concept of family.
But sitting here, in this courtyard, with the Qur'an open in his lap and the sun warm on his face, he let himself imagine it. Just for a moment.
A line of descendants stretching into the future. People who would never know his name but would live on land he had bought. Who would drink water from canals he had anticipated. Who would exist because he had existed first.
That's infinity, he thought. Not living forever. Building something that does.
---
On February 11, the news came.
Jamil appeared at the gate at midday, breathless, his eyes wide as saucers. He clutched a newspaper in one hand and a bag in the other—a bigger bag this time, heavy with currency.
"Malik Sahib—Malik Sahib, it happened again. The numbers. They won."
Riyaz took the newspaper. Read the results. Looked at Jamil. Looked at the bag.
"How much?"
Jamil's voice cracked. "One million two hundred thousand, Malik Sahib. After my cut, still—still over a million."
Riyaz absorbed this. Then he looked at Arslan.
Arslan sat in his usual spot, the Qur'an open in his lap. He didn't look up. Didn't move. Just turned a page, slowly, deliberately.
Riyaz walked over and sat beside him. He set the bag on the ground between them. It landed with a thump that seemed to shake the earth.
"The dream," Riyaz said quietly. "The numbers."
Arslan looked up. Met his grandfather's eyes.
"Yes, Nana."
The silence stretched. Riyaz's gaze moved over Arslan's face—the same too-still expression, the same eyes that watched instead of wandered. But there was no suspicion now. No calculation. Only wonder.
"You're not like other children," Riyaz said. It wasn't a question.
"No, Nana."
"I don't know what you are. But I know what you're becoming."
Arslan waited.
Riyaz reached out and took his hand. The same gesture. The same warmth.
"You're becoming something this world has never seen. And I'm going to help you. With everything I have."
Arslan looked at their hands. The old and the young. The scarred and the smooth.
"Thank you, Nana."
Riyaz released his hand. Stood.
"We'll talk more tomorrow."
He walked inside.
---
Arslan sat alone in the courtyard.
The bag of money sat beside him. Over a million rupees. More money than he had ever imagined in the first life. More money than most people in Pakistan would see in a lifetime.
He didn't touch it. He just looked at it.
This is real, he thought. This is actually happening.
In the first life, he had died with nothing. No money, no family, no future. Just a banana cart and a body too broken to push it.
Now he had a million rupees. Two thousand acres of land. A grandfather who believed in him. And thirty-five years of knowledge waiting to be used.
The future is mine, he thought. Not theirs. Not the billionaires, not the politicians, not the generals. Mine.
He looked up at the sky. The same sky that had answered him with silence on the night he woke in Uch Sharif.
Thank you, he whispered. Not to anyone in particular. Just... thank you.
The silence answered. But it felt different now. Less like rejection. More like listening.
---
That evening, Riyaz sat with him on the porch.
The sun was setting, painting the sky in shades of orange and purple. The land stretched before them—fields and fields of it, some green with winter wheat, some brown and waiting. Riyaz's land. Arslan's land. Theirs.
"We need to talk about the money," Riyaz said.
Arslan nodded.
"A million rupees is too much to keep in a house. Too much to keep anywhere, really. We need to do something with it."
"What does Nana think we should do?"
Riyaz was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "More land. It's the only thing that lasts. The only thing no one can take from you."
Arslan nodded again. Inside, he was smiling.
Perfect.
"But not just here," Riyaz continued. "Other places. Multan. Bahawalpur. Maybe even Balochistan, if the price is right."
Arslan kept his face empty. But his mind was racing.
Balochistan. 1998. Nuclear tests. Sanctions. Land values cratering, then soaring. If we buy now, before anyone knows—
"That sounds good, Nana."
Riyaz looked at him. "You don't have an opinion?"
Arslan considered the question. He could stay silent. Could defer. Could play the child.
But something in Riyaz's eyes told him that wasn't what the old man wanted.
"I think," Arslan said slowly, "that land is good. But maybe not just any land. Maybe land near water. Or near roads. Or near cities that will grow."
Riyaz's eyebrow twitched. "That's... specific."
"My father used to say that." The lie came easily now. "Before. When he was... not drunk."
Riyaz was silent for a moment. Then he nodded slowly.
"Your father was not a wise man. But he wasn't wrong about everything."
They sat in silence as the stars came out.
---
That night, Arslan lay awake long after the house had fallen silent.
The money was under his cot, wrapped in cloth. A million rupees. A fortune.
He thought about the future. About all the things he would do with this money. The land he would buy. The businesses he would start. The empire he would build.
But underneath those thoughts, another thought stirred. Smaller. Quieter.
I'm not alone anymore.
He had Riyaz now. A grandfather who protected him, believed in him, wanted to build something with him.
In the first life, he had never had that. Never had anyone who looked at him the way Riyaz looked at him—with wonder, with hope, with something that might have been love.
He didn't know what to do with that. Didn't know how to feel about it. Didn't know if he deserved it.
But lying there in the darkness, listening to the sounds of the house settling around him, he let himself imagine that maybe—just maybe—he could learn.
---
The next morning, Arslan woke before Fajr.
He performed his ablutions. Walked to the kitchen. Sat beside Riyaz on the low stool.
They watched the sun rise together.
After a while, Riyaz spoke.
"I've been thinking," he said. "About the land. About the dreams. About you."
Arslan waited.
"I don't know what you are," Riyaz said. "I don't know why these things happen to you. But I know they're real. I know you're real."
He reached out and placed his hand on Arslan's head.
"And I know that whatever you become, I'll be proud of you."
Arslan looked at the sky. At the sun rising over the fields. At the world stretching before him, infinite and waiting.
"Thank you, Nana."
They sat in silence as the day began.
And somewhere, in the back of Arslan's mind, a clock ticked forward.
1. 1. 1. The canal. The water. The land.
The future.
His future.
He smiled. Just a little. Just enough.
---
That afternoon, they went for a walk.
Riyaz wanted to show him something—a piece of land at the edge of the village, near the road that led to Multan. It was nothing special. Just dirt and rocks and a few stunted trees.
But Arslan saw something else.
He saw the road widening in 1995. Saw the truck stop that would appear in 1997. Saw the shops and houses that would spring up around it, year after year, until this worthless patch of dirt became prime commercial real estate.
"It's nice," he said.
Riyaz looked at him. "Just nice?"
Arslan shrugged. The gesture was pure child. Pure innocence.
"It feels important. Like the other ones."
Riyaz studied him for a long moment. Then he nodded.
"Then we'll buy it."
They walked back to the house in silence. But Arslan's mind was racing.
One more piece, he thought. One more piece of the puzzle.
And then another. And another.
Until I own it all.
He looked at his small hands. The hands that had poured alcohol on a roof. The hands that had struck matches in the dark. The hands that now held deeds to thousands of acres.
Let's build something, he thought.
And the future, infinite and waiting, said nothing.
But it listened.