It began with the sound of soft wind through mango trees. A silence not of absence, but abundance. The kind of quiet only achieved by empires too large to be questioned.
Outside Bahawalpur, past the thickets of old railway lines and the bone-dry canal paths, lay the first gardens Arslan had ordered planted in 1995. Rows upon rows of kikkar and amaltas now stretched tall and defiant, canopies golden and green, roots deep enough to drink drought. These were not for shade. They were monuments. Proof. The trees bore fruit now—guava, mango, jamun, ber. Between every fertile acre, along the borders of vast farmland, Arslan had ordered the planting of income-yielding trees: dates, grapes, pomegranates. Not enough to disrupt crop flow. Just enough to multiply output. Each tree was a sentence in a language of silent ownership.
Hundreds of such plots were scattered across Punjab, Sindh, and southern Balochistan. Each one wrapped in myth, their landowners long since bought out or quietly absorbed. The locals called them "Allah waalay bagh," unaware they were engineered down to the seed by a boy who hadn't even finished puberty.
Every major city now bore the thumbprint of Al-Riyaz. Lahore, Multan, Peshawar, Hyderabad, Sukkur, Sialkot, Quetta, even the edges of Karachi, where land had once been too expensive, too lawless. Now they had Al-Riyaz warehouses. Some shaped like ordinary godowns, others disguised as empty schools, mosques under renovation, or charity kitchens. But inside was control: food stocks, soap crates, printed books, children's toys, soapstone boxes of incense, imported dyes, surplus toothpaste, candy, fabric, and fertilizer.
The entire country ran on Al-Riyaz without knowing it.
Inside each madrasa, there was more than Quran and calligraphy. Since 1997, every new building had been designed as a composite. One room held the desks. One held beds. One held blackboards for mathematics and Urdu grammar. Another held a tuck shop with branded snacks and soda, now including the new "Barq Cola" and "Zamzam Mango Rush." There were wedding halls in larger ones. Steel structures, collapsible walls, tile flooring, tandoors outside.
On paper, each madrasa was a religious site. In practice, it was a remittance center, a credit office, a school, a clinic, a postal point, a warehouse, a canteen, a dry-fruit shop, and now, a phone recharge station. No one knew who funded them. Everyone knew who benefited.
Every Friday, district managers arrived in Toyota pickups—gifts from a government contract secured through soft bribery and soft power. Each had a folder, a stamped file, and a small envelope of cash for the head molvi. Every transaction sealed with a prayer.
And then there were the shops.
Hundreds of thousands of them.
They sold fruit, vegetables, samosas, pakoras, fried chicken sandwiches with ketchup and lettuce. Street corners in Vehari had stalls branded with Al-Riyaz logos in fluorescent green and red. In Muzaffargarh, fruit carts gave loyalty cards—buy five bananas, get one soap free. In Pindi, corner shops sold pencils shaped like mosque minarets, lollipops named after Islamic phrases, and matchboxes that quoted Hadith on the inside flap.
Each of those shops was privately owned—but stocked, branded, and trained by Al-Riyaz.
Training came from itinerant field agents—young boys in clean white shalwar kameez, with files and tape measures, going stall to stall, calculating eye level, checking inventory, correcting prayer timings on posters. They called them "Ruqbah"—the watchers. No one knew they answered to Arslan directly.
The jobs created were uncountable.
25,000 permanent staff. 500 direct assistants. 50 managers with sealed authority. 12 old-school munshi trained in handwritten ledgers, some from the pre-Partition days. 5 retired army men overseeing logistics, safety, regional diplomacy. 70 departments now: agriculture, warehousing, education, product design, fragrance, transport, textile, remittance, publishing, cartoon design, and—quietly—internal security.
At last count, 40,000 field workers in daily rotation. 60,000 on contract. Unknown numbers on call.
The factory network was the lungs of the system.
Soap and detergent in Faisalabad. Shoes in Sialkot. Toys and stationery in Gujranwala. Processed foods in Hyderabad and Nawabshah. Clothing near Sukkur. Matches and candles in Lodhran. Fast food prep centers in Khanewal. A mobile recharge card printing center in Rahim Yar Khan. And in the outskirts of Multan, a discreet unit printing Qurans, textbooks, branded notebooks, and comic books where Arslan's cartoon mascots taught moral values through slapstick and sugar-coated parables.
No factory operated for profit. Everything was reinvested. No outsider ever bought a share.
The employees were not just workers. They were believers.
Every pay slip had a verse. Every worker was invited to Eid gatherings. Their daughters' weddings were held in Al-Riyaz gardens, subsidized or free. Orphans received full medical and school coverage. Widows had a guaranteed monthly income. The system even ran its own pension scheme. There was no need for a union. There was no dissent.
And then came the internal gardens.
Each major site had a "Rest Garden." Mango, citrus, neem, gulmohar. They were aesthetic, yes. But functional. They masked entrances, cooled air, gave the illusion of charity. Local families brought their children to play under the trees. Behind the foliage, trucks loaded and unloaded under cover.
The fruit was collected every Thursday. Some was sold. Some given to employees. Some dried and turned into trail mix for pilgrims. Nothing was wasted.
The new fast-food stalls were a recent invention. Imported sunflower oil from Malaysia. Chicken grown in Al-Riyaz farms. Bread from its own flour mills. Ketchup from its own tomato surplus. Even the salt came from Khewra mines, branded with green crescent stars.
They sold shawarma with Arabic names. Chicken tikka burgers named after battlefields. Biryani boxes labeled with Hadith. Children came for the food. Left with stickers. Returned for toys.
No one ever asked where the money came from.
Because the buildings were beautiful. Because the gardens were public. Because the snacks were cheap. Because weddings were easier now. Because the loans were fair. Because the sermons sounded sweeter when the mosque had an air cooler. Because the molvi had new shoes. Because the child had a new cartoon book every month.
Because it worked.
The web was soft. Like prayer. Like hunger. Like home.
And Arslan?
He watched from a distance. Always two steps behind the curtain. Always two decades ahead of the country.
The sun over Islamabad felt curated—neither cruel nor kind. Just present, like everything else that morning.
The mosque stood on a slight rise near the Jinnah Avenue loop, encircled by bougainvillea walls and canopied parking. It was a new construction. A marvel. A monument. Built with beige sandstone imported from Chiniot, turrets shaped like minarets but hollow for ventilation, latticed windows imported from artisans in Bahawalpur, calligraphy handcrafted by a forgotten master molvi from Multan. It was called the Islamabad Al-Riyaz Centre—but everyone just called it the mosque. Because no one had the language for what it really was.
A madrasa. A community hall. A full K-10 school. A fully air-cooled wedding garden in its courtyard. Three remittance counters. Four rooms dedicated to female vocational training. A branch of Al-Riyaz publishing on the back side. Two legal consultancy desks. One tax advisory. A full-sized tuck shop. A barber for boys. A dispensary for families. And now, a phone distribution office.
By eleven a.m., 3,000 men were already seated. On charpais. Plastic chairs. Folded carpets. Some crouched. Some leaned. The sound system was imported from Dubai—Al-Riyaz had donated it themselves. Water coolers hissed softly. Uniformed employees of Al-Riyaz handed out snacks—dates, juice boxes, one biscuit each, wrapped in white and gold foil, printed with a boy's silhouette holding a prayer bead.
Arslan's silhouette.
He arrived at exactly eleven thirty. Dressed plainly. White cotton shalwar. Off-white kurta. Sandals. Not a wrinkle in sight. He looked like a high-performing madrasa student. Not rich. Not royal. His hair was combed flat, parted slightly to the left. He kept his gaze down as he entered through the side door, flanked by only two men—Riyaz and an old molvi from Attock who had once tried to stop Al-Riyaz expansion, and now worked as head of educational curriculum for 187 institutions.
Arslan did not speak for the first hour. He let the sermon wash over the crowd. Standard fare—praise for the Prophet, warning about worldly distractions, encouragement to donate to the right hands.
Then Riyaz stood up and began the "announcement."
There were whispers that today's Friday prayer would bring a surprise. But no one expected what came next.
"Every household present here today," Riyaz said into the mic, his voice aged and royal, "shall receive one Al-Riyaz 3000. A gift. A tool. A light. From the child whose dreams build this empire. From the one who asks for nothing and gives everything. My grandson, Arslan."
The room erupted.
Not in noise. In awe. Some murmurs. Some gasps. A few soft sobs. But mostly silence—the kind that grips a man when he realizes he is no longer invisible.
Arslan took the mic.
Only for two minutes.
"I ask nothing," he said, eyes never lifting. "I only request that if someone calls you, pick up with peace in your voice. May your mothers not cry waiting for news. May your fathers not borrow money to hear your voice. May you speak to each other without sorrow."
Then he sat down.
And that was enough.
Outside, the phones were being handed out. The Al-Riyaz 3000.
Box-packed. Candy-colored plastic. Green, orange, sky-blue, banana-yellow. Battery life: four days. Standby: eleven. No camera. No FM radio. No Snake game. Just calls. SMS. Torch. Alarm. One button to redial. And the name Al-Riyaz in raised white letters under the screen. The charger was small. The earphones cheap but sufficient. A small paper came with each box: a dua, a phone number for help, and a line that read:
"Every tool is sacred when used in the service of love."
By maghrib, over 3,400 phones were distributed. Some families got more than one. No one asked questions. They just wept, shook hands, offered duas.
But this wasn't charity.
It was placement.
Al-Riyaz 3000 would now be in homes from Karachi to Kohat. In pockets of electricians, tea boys, widows' sons, madrasa students. Every call made was a thread tied. Every text sent was a new node. Every charger plugged into a wall was a quiet claim to the national socket.
The phones were just one detail in a web now too large for any one mind to hold. But Arslan had never relied on just one mind.
He had departments.
Seventy-two and counting.
Food. Fabric. Fruit. Vocational training. Religious education. Books. Toy candy manufacturing. Spice blends. Itar distilleries. Paper mills. Tuck shops. Footwear. Textiles. Dyes. Lenses. Cosmetic-grade powders. Grains. Sugar. Flour. Lentils. Every product wrapped in verses or prayers or old village stories rewritten by Arslan himself under the pen name "Peer Sayeen."
Al-Riyaz Remittance operated now in all 504 of their madrasa-schools. Fax lines open 24/7. Gold loan desks in 93 cities. Warehouses in 118 districts. Thousands of shops with their own employee family trees. Hundreds of thousands of people quietly eating, wearing, washing, and reading Al-Riyaz.
And now, calling with Al-Riyaz.
The railway stations were fully painted in Al-Riyaz slogans—done slowly over time through paid contracts, disguised as "beautification." Every prayer room at every railway stop had a Quran gifted by Al-Riyaz. Every tea stall near the tracks sold Al-Riyaz packaged biscuits. A small production facility beside every third station. And a petrol station not far behind.
In Multan, a special sugar processing center had begun mixing jaggery with synthetic powder to invent a new chew-candy line. In Karachi, a special shipping hub had been secured through bribed tenders. In Sukkur, an underground warehouse stocked with dried fruits, plastic molds for toys, and enough cardboard to supply every rickshaw advertisement till 2007.
Everywhere Arslan went, he left no footprints.
Only systems.
The garden trees planted in 1995 now bore fruit. Their bark darkened. Their shade deepened. Beneath them, local women sold hand-knotted rags and glass bangles, under the banner "Al-Riyaz Women's Cooperative."
It wasn't just a network. It was a civilization.
Invisible. Flexible. Omnipresent. Modular. Devout.
And in the middle of it all, a boy who had never raised his voice, never claimed credit, never given an interview. A ghost in his own kingdom. A whisper behind the face of a saint.
Only Malik Riyaz knew the truth. And even he only suspected the whole of it.
They say empires fall from hubris. But this empire was built on shame. Arslan's shame. Of his rebirth. Of what he'd done. Of what he knew. And what he would one day forget.
But not yet.
For now, he remembered everything. And he intended to leave nothing unbuilt.