NOVEL: Sikandar & his Khala Shabana: Their Roots Entwined, Paths Divided Chapter One: That Summer Map

Chapter One: That Summer Map

I was fresh out of second grade and gearing up for third.

I liked calling it 22nd grade, like I was leveling up in some video game only I understood. My family didn’t ask questions about that. They knew I was wired a little differently. It was summer, the season we all waited for—not because of school holidays, but because summer meant the village.

Every year, my Ammi and her siblings would return to their childhood home like clockwork. A dusty village in the belly of India. It wasn’t fancy, but to us kids it was everything—a world away from rules, routines, and exams. It had open fields, rivers, secret paths, mango trees, and stories waiting to be written. And of course, cousins.

My Ammi, Noor, was the oldest of seven. She and my Khala, Ismat, were the only ones married at the time, each with their own little armies of children. My Ammi had three of us: Ruksana, my older sister; myself, Sikandar; and my younger brother, Shadab.

Ismat Khala had three kids, like a staircase:

Aamir, two years older than me.

Parvaiz, my exact age.

Shaahid, Shadab’s age.

We were spaced neatly—every two years like some kind of genetic rhythm had been followed religiously. It made our hierarchy almost automatic: Ruksana at the top in seventh grade, Shadab in first grade. The grown-ups—our parents and their siblings—were a mix of chaos and affection. After my Ammi and Ismat came Aurangazeb Mamu and Raheem Mamu. Then Damu Khala, followed by Shabana Khala—my favorite—and the youngest, Dayanand Mamu.

Shabana was only ten years older than me. Just six years ahead of my sister. She moved like us, laughed like us, and didn’t carry the heaviness that seemed to weigh down the older adults. She could climb trees faster than most boys, knew all the ghost stories, and wasn’t above stealing mangoes from the neighbor’s orchard. She was, in every way, a bridge between the world of children and adults. My sister worshipped her. So did I, though in a quieter, more secret way.

The kids naturally split into groups.

My sister and Shabana formed the older girls’ league.

Parvaiz and I were the middle pair, always exploring, always daring.

Shadab and Shaahid were the younger brothers' team—mostly following us around, trying to matter.

Then there was Aamir bhaiya. Older than me, but not quite part of the grown-ups. He carried himself like a leader, sometimes a dictator. He had a sharp tongue, a sharper mind, and a strange heaviness in his eyes. He wasn’t just a cousin—he was a mystery. A magnet. Sometimes a menace. 

Aamir didn’t just play games. He made the rules. And sometimes, he bent them until they broke. It was that summer when I first crossed over. When childhood, with all its innocent scaffolding, began to crack around the edges. I didn’t know it then, but a doorway was opening. Not one of discovery or wonder, but one darker. Quiet. Heavy. The kind that never fully closes behind you. But before that, there were mangoes and mischief. Hide and seek till sundown. Running barefoot until your heels split. The screech of handpumps. The scent of dust and cow dung and boiling rice. And stories. So many stories.

We were a village within a village, and every summer was another chapter.

This was mine.