Abdur-Rahman locked his pet store on a late Thursday afternoon in mid-August, noting how warm it was outside. This was his third attempt at fasting in the past two weeks, and compared to his first two, this one was going well. Ramadan would be in December, and although he had four months to prepare, he didn’t want a repeat of his first month of fasting as a Muslim.
His family had never been religious enough to take holidays like Lent seriously, so he had never fasted before he became Muslim three years ago. His family had believed in God and Jesus as their Lord and Savior, but their commitment to the church was more social than religious. Their duty was pretty much fulfilled by showing up to their quiet, suburban church every Sunday.
The closest Theodore had come to fasting was the four years he spent as a vegetarian. That was one thing he and Sam had in common, distaste for eating animal flesh. It just seemed unethical to take someone’s soul, even if it was an animal’s, and serve the cooked corpse on a dinner platter complete with salt, pepper, and thyme. It had made his stomach churn at the thought. But one day he woke up in the condo and had a strong craving for meat. He didn’t understand it and was ashamed to tell Sam, but it was as if his body was shutting down from deprivation of essential proteins that tofu apparently wasn’t providing. Eventually, he ate meat, but not until he came to peace with the whole food chain logic. Tonight, he planned to have lamb, having already told Theresa to have it ready by sunset.
Sunset. He smiled as he walked to his car. One hour after that he had a meeting with Aminah at her house. Ismael had said he didn’t tell his daughter who he was, only that there was a good brother who had proposed marriage whom they wanted her to meet. That worked for him.
That evening, Zahra sat on the couch of the living room in the home of her aunt and uncle, Zaid’s parents, who were having her family over for dinner. She and her cousins were having a conversation about school and the careers they planned to pursue while her parents and aunt and uncle sat together in the family room on the other side of the house. Zahra watched as Zaid relaxed and joked with her sister and his own brother and sisters, and Zahra could only smile every now and then, unable to concentrate on the conversation.
Ever since she talked to Zaid a month before and read Aminah’s e-mail that he had shown her, she had a lot on her mind. She realized as she sat half-participating in the discussion that it wouldn’t be long before she pulled Zaid aside that night. There was something she needed to say.
Guilt plagued Zahra as she saw how the family welcomed Zaid back (at least socially because he never really left) as he claimed he no longer wanted to marry Aminah, that it was a mistake to have even proposed. He recounted more than once his reflections on Aminah’s thinking that was evidenced in the e-mail, and it made Zahra feel uncomfortable. It was as if he were moving backward instead of forward, especially as he embarked upon a religiosity that he had not yet embraced completely.
Tonight was evidence that he had a lot of growing to do with respect to his Islamic commitment. No devoted Muslim brother would feel as relaxed as Zaid appeared in a gathering of men and women who were not related. Granted, they were all cousins, “family” technically. But that her mother and his mother were married to their own cousins, albeit distant, showed that even her culture recognized that cousins were not family. Zahra had even begun to feel uncomfortable with the idea of chatting freely with Zaid and his older brother. She wondered if part of it was Tamika’s and Aminah’s influence in her life. But the intermingling was not what Zahra wanted to talk to Zaid about.
Zahra’s primary concern was that she had played a hand in encouraging Zaid to do something that he should not have. She didn’t disagree with him not wanting to marry Aminah. She had long felt they were not right for each other. What Aminah had said in the e-mail was essentially what Zahra had been warning her cousin about all along. Besides, Aminah herself would not be content as part of their family. Tonight was proof of that. Aminah wouldn’t know what to do with herself amidst all the intermingling and Urdu gossip.
Zahra herself sometimes felt as if she didn’t belong, which was the main reason she had been unable to openly support Zaid marrying Aminah. She wanted to hold on to whatever family bonds she had socially and culturally because she knew as early as high school that she would always be different from her family psychologically and spiritually. She was Pakistani and Behari, not by volition, but simply because she was. And there was nothing she could, or would, do to change that. She loved that Allah had given her the strong culture and background that He had. Seeing Americans’ flimsily-tied families that they considered “close” made her only more grateful for what she had. Their crumbling and short-lived marriages made her thank Allah for what Americans would consider “arranged marriages.”
However, none of this stopped her from seeing right through Zaid, as Aminah had. Zahra was disappointed in him. There was no other way to describe her feelings about the affair. It was one thing for her parents, aunts, and uncles, who grew up in Pakistan and traveled to America in adulthood, to see life the way they did, but it was another entirely for someone like Zaid, who grew up in America, to profess the same views. It wasn’t that Zahra viewed the elders in her family as lacking knowledge, or that she considered herself and her cousins more experienced and open-minded to life. It was simply that their realities had been different, therefore their outlook would be, too. The outlook of family elders was based on experience and harsh realities they had witnessed in their country, hardship that inspired in them a determination to overcome the odds, regardless of the obstructions placed in their paths. When Zahra had visited Pakistan years ago, she could not comprehend the strength it must have taken for her parents and aunts and uncles to survive there, let alone leave and start over in America.
The elders built a comfortable life for the youth and laid the bricks for their children to reach higher than they had. Each generation was built on the previous one, and there was no progress unless the children benefited from the parents and applied what they taught, taking the knowledge farther than the parents had been able to. The Muslims as a community would not achieve this, this was already written, as the pinnacle of success had been realized by the first generation of Muslims, those who lived with the Prophet. But that didn’t mean it couldn’t be true for individuals and their families.
Before talking to Zaid and reading the e-mail, a part of Zahra respected Zaid. But after hearing his thoughts on Aminah’s comments, she realized she had given him more credit than was due, and she found herself grateful that he wasn’t able to marry someone as unique as Aminah. Yet, there was a part of Zahra that didn’t believe this new Zaid that emerged, suddenly understanding where his parents were coming from. It just didn’t add up. And it didn’t seem to help him advance as a Muslim.
It troubled Zahra that Zaid saw a correlation between Aminah’s e-mail and extreme black power movements, which in reality did not exist on the campus of the college he had attended. Even Zahra knew the Black Power movement was a thing of the past, and that, contrary to what Zaid had implied, it had not been an extreme, backwards political uprising comprised of criminals who patrolled the streets in Afros threatening to shoot any White person they saw. She also knew that an African-American donning a “Black is beautiful” T-shirt neither had mental instability nor any necessary affiliation with the movement. There were people who simply saw Black as beautiful. What was wrong with that?
Zahra could not relate to, or approve of, Americans’ preoccupation with issues of race, color, and beauty, or their constant finger-pointing at others they deemed guilty of some transgression in these areas. But she also did not see the issues as completely irrelevant to her own culture. This definitely was not something she would discuss with the elders in her family because, really, there was no point. The issue of color and racial awareness, Zahra believed, was an issue of her generation, the Pakistani youth. Her parents and aunts and uncles simply did not have the background or American experience to even comprehend where Zahra and other youth were coming from, and as such, it was not upon the elders to carry this load. Allah would not fault them if they didn’t see black or the many shades of brown on human skin as beautiful or as preferable as white or “fair.” The elders’ load had been one carried in Pakistan, then from Pakistan to America, and still rested on their shoulders in the new land. What they passed on to their children of the struggle, wisdom, and experience of their and their ancestors’ lives in Pakistan, Kashmir, and India was far more critical to the knowledge and upbringing of Pakistani youth than to warrant an undermining evidenced in youth seeking to teach the elders America’s multiculturalism and seeing all colors as beautiful.
It was such a minute point in light of what the elders had to offer them, yet it was a heavy load on the shoulders of the youth, who would accept the torch passed to them by their parents. Bearing the torch, Zahra’s generation would teach their children the inspirational stories of their parents and grandparents, as well as open their eyes to the multicultural beauty of others around them, a concept that was in reality more Islamic than American. This bearing of the torch was especially important given Pakistani-American youth like Zaid, who sought to practice Islam as it should be practiced, free of opinions and cultural influences that contradicted the pure Islam that had united the hearts of enemies at the time of the Prophet.
High school was especially memorable to Zahra because it was when she realized that beauty was not limited to her cultural definition. At home Zahra’s pale peach complexion was considered “fair,” and Rabia’s caramel brown tone “dark.” Yet at school Zahra was ignored, practically invisible, in the world of beauty, except to be used as the punch line of a joke, when a friend would tease another and say Zahra would be his date. Rabia’s circumstance was different. Her smooth caramel skin and dark, full eye lashes and hair earned her the admiration of others, and for her, a friend would tease another and say it was too bad they could never get a date with her because her “culture didn’t allow it.” People would even ask Zahra, a look of shock on their faces, “That’s your sister?” The implications were clear. How on earth could two people on opposite ends of the beauty spectrum actually come from the same mother and father? Yet at home, amongst family, Zahra took center stage.
Even when Zahra entered college, she was receiving all the marriage proposals while her parents were working hard to find someone for Rabia. It was difficult for Rabia because amongst Pakistanis, “fair” and “attractive” were synonyms as were “dark” and “unattractive.” A woman’s attractiveness depended on the fairness of her skin, and her unattractiveness depended on its darkness. Any other aspect of beauty paled in comparison. If fair skin was not mentioned as a trait of a marriageable woman, it was understood that the silence was because she was “dark.”
By college, Zahra had come to realize that there were different standards of beauty. However difficult it was for her to accept it, she also realized that the one at school was closer to reality than the one at home. At school, the popular girls were a variety of shades, from honey brown to milk white. Even Zahra realized that the students were actually attractive, and not because of their skin color. Theirs was a holistic beauty that had more to do with features and physique than pale skin.
Little did Zaid know, Aminah was right. He could benefit from researching the Hindu and British colonial influence, even in his strides to practicing true Islam. If he didn’t realize this, he had essentially dropped the torch that his parents had handed him, stagnating a spiritual maturity that had begun to take root when he took his first steps to practicing Islam.
Zahra had to talk to him, she realized just then, sooner rather than later. Zaid had made too much progress in spiritual and personal growth, to lose it in an attempt to save face. This wasn’t about Aminah being right, or even Zahra. This was about the future of their family, and Islam.
Aminah checked her appearance in the full-length mirror secured to the door of her room. She was too nervous to go downstairs. She had no idea whom she would be meeting. Her father had told her the brother was a thirty-year-old entrepreneur who had good character and was strongly devoted to Islam although he had been Muslim for only three years. Aminah was uncomfortable with the idea of marrying someone who had not grown up Muslim. Perhaps she was overreacting, but she imagined that waiting for her in the living room was an ex-thug who had charmed her family into believing he had cleaned up his life and was now ready to live according to the Sunnah. The little Tamika shared of what she had learned about Sister Nusaybah’s second husband scared Aminah into thinking her family too could be fooled by appearances. Her father was so open-minded about her marrying a good brother that she sometimes cringed when he mentioned that someone had asked about her.
Tonight’s financially independent brother with a six-figure income didn’t sound like someone who didn’t take life seriously. In fact, her father shared that the brother’s father and mother were also Muslim, and this made Aminah relax a little. The brother also wanted to go overseas and study Arabic, something she wanted to do herself. He at least sounded like he was well grounded in the religion. And given his successful business, he most likely had not spent his youth patrolling the streets and selling drugs.
Sarah had chosen the abiya and khimaar Aminah now wore. It was more decorative than Aminah’s normal tastes would have allowed, but she was just being a bit strait-laced, her mother had said, especially given Islam’s exceptions in these circumstances. Still, Aminah was too shy to go downstairs. Her khimaar was a long rectangular sea green silk that she had wrapped around her head and beneath her chin, secured with a crystal-designed scarf pin at the side of her head. Her abiya was a tan georgette fabric with green thread strokes to match her head cover. Her mother had even applied some kohl to Aminah’s eyes and convinced her to wear lip-gloss.
“If he’s supposed to see how I normally look,” Aminah had asked, “why do I look like this?”
“I should hope that on a normal day,” her mother had replied, “you will look like this.”
Aminah imagined her parents must have been really impressed with the brother to put this much effort into preparing her for the meeting. It was unfortunate though that her mother would not be there, having left shortly after the brother arrived. She had told Aminah she thought it was better if it was just father and daughter this time. Also, Ismael had decided to sit in the dining room where he could see them and they could see him instead of in the living room where he and Sarah could participate directly in the meeting. “What fun is that?” her mother had said. Sarah had already given Ismael her approval of the brother, and besides, she had an important appointment tonight that she couldn’t afford to miss.
There was a knock on the door, and knowing it was her father, Aminah sighed and opened it.
“I was thinking to go ahead and start the meeting without you,” her father joked, “but the brother didn’t like the idea.”
Aminah tried to smile, but she pursed her lips instead.
Her father winked. “Don’t be nervous. This isn’t a wedding. At least not yet.”
“I don’t want to go down,” she whined, a smile stealing its way on her face.
“If you like, you can wear a niqaab,” he suggested, “and take it off at the end.”
She shook her head. “I’ll just go down like this.” She imagined wearing a face veil would make it that much more awkward to show herself when the brother wanted to see her face.
Ismael took his daughter’s hand, and Aminah groaned as she dragged her feet as he pulled her along.
“He doesn’t bite, Aminah,” Ismael said after they reached the foyer and stood next to the entrance to the living room, Aminah hidden behind the wall, her father visible as he tugged her hand. Her father grinned as she met his eyes, and Aminah sensed there was something more going on than he or her mother had mentioned. “But then again,” he said, pulling her into full view, “he told you that when you first met.”
Aminah creased her forehead a second before she slowly turned to where the brother now stood, having come to his feet as she entered. It took a second for Aminah to place a name with the face, because he was wearing a dark gray suit jacket over a crisp white shirt and suit pants to match the jacket, instead of the faded blue jeans and golf shirt he normally wore. A hand came to her mouth as her jaw dropped, and her eyes widened as she recognized Abdur-Rahman smiling hesitantly at her. Abdur-Rahman was in her living room. Without the birds or hamster.
Blood rushed to her cheeks, and she wanted to hurry back up the stairs. But her father was standing next to her, and she knew that was not an option. Instead she turned to her father, begging him with her eyes. Please don’t make me sit in there. Pleeeeaaaase. In reply, he held her hand and guided her into the living room, and she dropped her gaze until she was sure all Abdur-Rahman could see of her was the green silk on top of her head.
“I don’t think she believed me when I told her you didn’t bite,” Ismael joked. She heard Abdur-Rahman’s nervous laughter.
“I thought leaving Freddie and Freda at home with Charlie would do the trick.”
Aminah felt herself being guided to sit down on the couch, which was next to the loveseat on which Abdur-Rahman sat. She knew that the brother was sitting near only because her lowered gaze allowed her to see the brother’s black dress socks on his feet that were crossed at the ankle. She was grateful when her father continued to hold her hand and sit next to her, and she squeezed his hand, letting him know that she would allow him to go nowhere that put more than two inches between them.
Aminah felt as if her cheeks were on fire, and she worried that she would faint. She should have been upset with her parents for setting her up like this, but she was too overwhelmed with shock to be offended. But she imagined her annoyance with them would be voiced soon enough. For now, she had to make it through the next hour, one second at a time.
“Why don’t we start with the greetings?” Ismael suggested. Aminah knew her father was smiling by the sound of his voice, but she refused to raise her head.
“As-salaamu’alaikum.” It was Abdur-Rahman’s voice, she knew, but it was as if she were hearing it for the first time. The feeling was similar to the one she had upon hearing Zaid’s through the phone. Abdur-Rahman’s voice was not only deeper than she remembered, but deeper than Zaid’s had sounded on the phone. If she didn’t know who was sitting across from her, she would have judged that his voice suggested he was a brother of good character and upbringing. He sounded like a respectable gentleman, a sharp contract to the eccentric tree hugger she imagined when she met him at his house. Perhaps, she could keep her head down the whole night, that way she didn’t have to remember he was only “Teddy”, whose best friends were birds.
She heard her father chuckle. “The usual response following such a greeting is ‘wa’alaiku mus-salaam, pumpkin.”
Aminah felt her cheeks grow warm, and she wanted to poke her father. He was not making this easy for her.
“Pumpkin?”
Inside, she groaned. Abi, why are you doing this to me? “Wa’alaiku mus-salaam,” she mumbled loud enough for it to at least count as a sound. She hoped that would satisfy them.
“I guess Aminah doesn’t have any questions at the moment,” Ismael said. “So I guess you can warm up by asking her some.”
She heard Abdur-Rahman’s nervous chuckle, and she knew he wasn’t prepared to ask her anything. He was the one who had made the proposal—had actually proposed!—and probably hadn’t prepared himself for anything other than her shock and interrogation.
“Well, I guess my first question is,” he said taking a deep breath, “will you forgive me?”
Forgive him? She creased her forehead and inadvertently lifted her head to glance at her father, who was staring at her with a smile on his face, as if he thought the question was the most sensible one in the world. Ismael gave his daughter a slight nod, as if to tell her it was okay to answer.
“Excuse me?” Her voice was soft and hesitant, although more audible this time. But she continued to look at her father, as if she were speaking to him. And perhaps she was. Aminah wanted her father to repeat it for her.
“I want to know if you’ll forgive me.” Abdur-Rahman’s voice rose, and Aminah was suddenly reminded that she had to talk to him.
She held her confused expression and glanced in Abdur-Rahman’s direction then at her hands, an improvement from staring at the front of her abiya. “Forgive you?”
“Yes.”
“For what?”
“Not knowing proper etiquette when I introduced myself to you and your mother at my house.”
Oh. Aminah said nothing.
“And for not announcing myself before coming into my house when your family visited.”
At the reminder, she wanted to sink into the cushions of the sofa. She had been hoping for the miracle of erased memory of that night. Inside she cringed as she remembered how comfortable she had felt talking to his birds. His birds! O Allah.
“And I want to thank you.”
When Aminah didn’t answer, her father tugged gently at her hand. Aminah sighed silently, but she had already spoken, so she didn’t feel the same discomfort she had in the beginning.
“Thank me for what?” Her voice sounded emotionless, if not sarcastic, and she immediately regretted her chant-like tone. It was rude.
“For taking care of Freddie and Freda that day.”
Aminah swallowed. He had no idea how she felt like an idiot listening to him. She imagined that seeing her talking to his pet had made him believe he could marry her, solidified their shared attachment to creatures with wings. She imagined herself standing next to him at their wedding as he carried the cages on either side of him. In her mind, she saw Abdur-Rahman lift the cage of birds and pull it close to his face so he can wag his head playfully and ask, “What do you think, Freda? I do?” Aminah grinned and brought a hand to her mouth to stifle laughter as she reminded herself where she was.
She heard Abdur-Rahman’s nervous laughter. “I know it sounds crazy,” he said, and immediately Aminah felt bad. He had misunderstood her laughter. He thought she was laughing at him. Well, technically she was, but not at him really. “But they mean a lot to me.”
Aminah knew she should say something but couldn’t think of anything, and the image in her head switched to one in which Freda was wearing a wedding dress instead of her. She smiled. “I know,” she said, surprising herself that she actually sounded like the Aminah who had teased Sulayman growing up.
“Do you think it’s weird?”
The question surprised her, and she had no idea how to answer. She gathered her eyebrows and again turned to her father, who held the same smile that egged her on. She smiled back at Ismael, gathering confidence from him, and thinking, Why not? “Yes,” she said simply, still smiling and holding her father’s gaze.
Abdur-Rahman stammered. “You do?”
“Yes,” Aminah said again, gathering confidence from her father’s grin, which gave her the security she would feel if it were Sulayman sitting opposite her.
“But why?”
She shrugged, this time glancing at her hands that smoothed the fabric of her abiya as she gathered her thoughts. “I don’t know. It just is.”
“Does that bother you though?” She caught a trace of nervousness in his voice, and for a moment she felt bad for him. She was actually making him nervous. And she liked it. Yes, she thought, I like this. Payback for how he startled me when he walked into the house. Aminah couldn’t help feeling flattered, and in control. This meeting wasn’t going half bad. At this rate, she could go for hours. One quick glance at her father and seeing the twinkle in his eye made her grin, as if they were sharing a private joke.
“Very much,” she said, knowing right then that she liked him. Yes, she liked the tree hugger, and together they just might have some good laughs. It was the sincerity in his voice, evidenced in the way he couldn’t hide his hurt feelings, that convinced her he was a good person. He didn’t know how to wear a mask, how to try to play it cool and impress her. And she liked that. That he was emotionally affected by what she thought of him and his birds made her realize he would listen to her and care what she thought.
There was a long silence, and Aminah couldn’t resist looking toward Abdur-Rahman to witness the nervousness herself. He was fiddling with his hands and biting his lower lip as his gaze rested in his lap. She then looked at her father, and he winked at her.
“Do you have any questions for him?” Ismael asked loud enough to let Aminah know it was her turn to put him on the spot.
“Yes,” she said with a shyness that was more from what she was going to ask than the meeting itself. “Just one.”
“Are you ready?” Ismael teased the brother, who looked up suddenly and forced a smile. Aminah could pinch her father. He didn’t have to ask Abdur-Rahman that. The brother was already suffering enough as it was.
Abdur-Rahman cleared his throat. “Yes. I think I am.”
“What made you know you wanted to marry me and not anyone else?”
“I think it went pretty well, don’t you?” Ismael said, placing a hand on Abdur-Rahman’s shoulder as they stood opposite each other by the front door.
Abdur-Rahman felt as if he had been the butt of a joke, but he didn’t want to say that to Aminah’s father. He wondered if tonight hadn’t been Aminah’s way of making fun of him for even thinking to propose to someone like her. It made him grow sick at the thought. He didn’t want a repeat of his experience with Samantha.
He lifted a shoulder in a shrug and avoided Ismael’s gaze as he slipped his hands into the pockets of his suit pants. “I couldn’t tell.”
There was a long pause before he heard Ismael’s voice again.
“Brother, she likes you.”
Abdur-Rahman gathered his eyebrows and met Ismael’s gaze, feeling uncertain if this was another joke. He couldn’t shake the feeling that Ismael and his own father were somehow alike. “You really think so?”
“Yes, I do.”
“But she said she thought I was weird.”
Ismael laughed. “She was teasing you.”
A hesitant grin formed on Abdur-Rahman’s face and he creased his forehead in uncertainty. “What?”
“Yes, she was.” Abdur-Rahman saw Ismael’s sincere smile and couldn’t help smiling too. Maybe Aminah’s father was right.
“It sure didn’t sound like that.”
“Well, take it from me. You did well.”
He shook his head, too self-conscious and unsure of himself to believe something like that. “I made a fool of myself, you mean.”
Ismael shook his head and met Abdur-Rahman’s gaze. “Trust me, brother. I’m her father. If you had made a fool of yourself, I wouldn’t be talking to you. I would be showing you out the door, saying, ‘Don’t call us. We’ll call you.’”
Abdur-Rahman laughed. He really liked this family. It felt so much like his own. “Yeah, I suppose.”
There was an awkward silence as Abdur-Rahman stared intently at the floor, unsure how to ask what he wanted to.
“Brother,” he said, searching for a way to form his words. He met Ismael’s gaze. “Do you think she’ll think I’m, you know, a bit crazy for the answer I gave to her question?”
Ismael chuckled and shook his head with such confidence that Abdur-Rahman found himself feeling confident too. “Not at all.”
Abdur-Rahman nodded, looking at the floor again with his hands still in his pockets, unsure what else to say.
“Weird maybe,” Ismael conceded jokingly, “but not crazy.”
Abdur-Rahman grinned, still unable to completely believe that Aminah was teasing him when she said she thought that he was weird, and that bothered him. “But who wants to marry weird?”
Ismael smiled. “Everyone,” he said, “if you think of its synonyms unique and special.”
Faith narrowed her eyes from where she sat next to Sarah on the couch, trying to think of the best way to answer her friend’s question. Sarah had said she was coming to Faith as “friend and counselor,” and given both titles, it was difficult to find the right words to say to Sarah. If Sarah had come to Faith “the friend”, Faith could speak her mind with all the “What I would do” prefixes. If she had come to Faith “the psychologist”, Faith wouldn’t have to share personal opinions at all. In fact, it could be unethical and unprofessional. Faith would be able to hide behind her wise nods and wide desk and share nothing. She could appear as if she had mastered all the obstacles her patient was seeking to overcome. But as a friend, she couldn’t hide behind her PhD and wall plaques. She was forced to think of her own marriage, a union of thirty-two years to Ronald. That she would not do on the job. But she couldn’t help the vague sense of recognition whenever a patient’s story held a parallel to her own.
Therein lay the dilemma. Really, she couldn’t play two roles at once. But she would have to. That was her only option, when she really thought about it. In the comfort of her home, Faith realized that psychologist and friend were one and the same. It was why she had the passion to help abused women. It was her heart, the friend in her. Although, she learned that it wasn’t always possible, or wise, to share your gut feeling, or even what the patient needed to hear. That was the most difficult part of the job. Since opening her now thriving private practice six years ago, her clientele expanded to include both women and men suffering from the more common, if not mundane, wearing down of marriage and life itself. But even as she was her own boss, managed her own office that she shared with two associates, she could never relax behind her desk. There were always legal and ethical guidelines that drew a line between her and her client, preventing her from truly sharing what was on her mind. So she should have been relieved that Sarah was not a patient. She could relax and be Faith the human being.
Even so, did she feel comfortable sharing with Sarah the private and painful lessons she had learned over the years? If not, she could not effectively play the role of friend. Or was Faith herself still struggling with issues of trust, preventing her from opening up? If she were, there was little she could do to help someone else. She would have to place her trust in Allah. Faith did not know how to be dishonest. She would simply tell the truth, even if her heart didn’t allow her to open up as much as she would like.
“Trust?” Faith said, with a shake of the head. “What does that word mean anyway?” She paused. “That I believe he’ll never cheat?” She met Sarah’s gaze. “Is that what you’re asking?”
Sarah’s gaze fell to her hands, where she toyed with her wedding band, twisting it then pulling it up and down her finger. She lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe. But maybe more than that. I mean, do you trust him? Whatever that means to you.”
Faith drew in a deep breath and exhaled. She understood that Sarah wasn’t so much interested in her personal life, but how Faith viewed it so that Sarah could compare it to her own. It was a human flaw to measure the normalcy of your life by looking outside your own. There was no such thing as normal, Faith learned, at least not in the specific sense. Yes, there were the basic tenets that we all learned in kindergarten. Don’t lie. Don’t steal. Don’t cheat. And don’t hurt anyone. But the irony was, each one had been violated by the time most people said, “I do.” And the one to whom they lied, from whom they stole, whom they cheated, and hurt most was the self.
Faith, like most people, had lied to herself. Who didn’t look back and see herself as a victim? That was the first lie she would tell. Who hadn’t taken what belonged to someone else? She had done that for over fifty years before she finally gave her soul back to its Owner. Who hadn’t cheated herself out of a second, an hour, a day, a year—a lifetime? In addition to her cheating prior to a year ago, she was cheating herself each time she walked through the doors of her office with her head uncovered, and when she missed prayers whenever she was afraid of her associates, or patients, discovering her Islam. And in the end, had she really imagined no one would get hurt? Did she have any idea that, in the end, she would hurt most?
Perhaps the best way to answer Sarah’s question was to ask, “Do you trust yourself?” Faith surely didn’t. She couldn’t imagine a sensible adult answering in the affirmative to that question.
And how could she trust herself? She had no idea what test lurked in the next breath. She had no idea how she would tackle it, let alone if she would pass. And if she could not answer that about herself, the person whose soul was inside her own flesh, how could she answer it for another person trapped inside a human body just like her own?
What had compelled Faith to finally accept Islam was that it forced her to look at no one but herself at the end of the day. How could she worry about what Ronald was doing when the angels were writing for her? No, she could not escape the inevitable devastation a wife would feel upon discovering what a woman in her youth would deem unthinkable. But she couldn’t help feeling more devastated in the quiet of the night wrapped in Islamic garb with her face on the ground in prayer, knowing that she was at risk of losing her soul to the world.
Whatever misfortune befalls you,
it is because of what your hands have earned.
And for much of it, He grants forgiveness.
It was a Qur’anic verse that so aptly described the reality of human experience. So there was but one way to answer Sarah’s question, and it could be neither yes nor no.
“I trust Allah,” she said finally, meeting Sarah’s gaze.
It was not the answer Sarah wanted, or expected. Faith could tell that by Sarah’s sigh and brief rolling of her eyes to the ceiling, as if saying This is not going well.
“We all do,” Sarah said, a suppressed frustration in her calm voice.
“But we all don’t,” Faith said as gently as she could. “It’s one of the hardest things to achieve.”
“And you’ve achieved it?” There was an edge of challenge in Sarah’s voice as she met Faith’s eyes, but Faith understood it as her friend crying out. She had seen it in dozens of patients, women and men, struggling in their marriage.
Faith reached and placed a hand on Sarah’s leg. “That’s not what I meant.”
Sarah shook her head, apparently trying to get a hold of herself. “I’m sorry, I just—”
“It’s okay, Sarah. You’re going through a lot right now.”
“I just don’t know what to do.”
“Maybe that’s it, Sarah. Perhaps you’re not supposed to do anything.”
Sarah’s gaze fell to her fingers again, where she began twisting and pulling the ring in silence for a few minutes. Faith kept her hand on Sarah’s leg, a show of comfort and support as she patiently waited for Sarah to gather her words, her thoughts.
There was slight suppression of laughter before Sarah spoke, her eyes still on her ring finger. “For years I didn’t wear this.” A wry smile formed on one side of her lips. “Ismael took his off before me. We’d already changed his to silver when we found out, you know. I used to argue with him about it before I finally took mine off too. I told him he should wear it to show he was already taken. But you know what?” She looked at Faith then, a trace of amusement on her tired face.
Faith let her eyes express interest in Sarah’s words. Sometimes speaking broke a patient’s rhythm, pulling them into the present and reminding them they were talking to a stranger.
“He told me female coworkers bothered him more with it on.” There was dry laughter.
“But for me,” Sarah said, “it was the opposite. So I put mine back on, and he didn’t.”
She creased her forehead and looked at Faith. “Isn’t it funny? How our lives are so different? Men and women, I mean.”
At that Faith couldn’t escape the veracity of Sarah’s words. She nodded, a wry smile now on her face. “Yes, it is. It certainly is.”
There was a long silence, and Sarah began twisting and pulling her ring again. After a few minutes, she halted the movement as her gaze grew distant.
“I’m not being hypothetical, Faith.”
Faith gathered her eyebrows. “What do you mean?”
“He’s already married to the sister.”
The news was so unbelievable and ridiculous that Faith laughed. As Sarah met Faith’s eyes, her expression quieted Faith’s doubt. Faith averted her gaze and removed her hand from Sarah’s lap, not wanting to believe what she was hearing. This wasn’t good. This wasn’t good at all.
“Do you know her?” Faith said a moment later.
Sarah laughed more audibly this time. “You do too.”
Faith turned to her friend, her forehead creased.
“It’s Alika.”
Thirty minutes after Sarah’s confession, Faith heard her son call from upstairs, and Sarah had hurriedly covered her hair and put on her abiya. After Faith saw her friend out the door, she entered the living room and met her son’s grin and sparkling eyes, indication that Abdur-Rahman had reason to at least remain hopeful that things had gone well. She knew he wanted to go upstairs to where he had allowed his animals to fly and roam free while he was gone, if not to check on them, then to share the good news with them, or at least optimistic news.
Faith grinned as her eyes asked him to tell all. But she couldn’t escape a sense of dread. She couldn’t will herself to be as excited as he was, not after the meeting with Sarah tonight. She had thought the Ali family to be like an extension of her own, but after Sarah’s confession, Faith was repulsed by the thought of their families being one. What example would Ismael set for her son, or worse, her husband, when this bit of information was announced during Ismael and Alika’s formal ceremony on Friday, the third of October after Jumu’ah prayer?
She simply could not support Teddy marrying their daughter under circumstances like this. But she had no idea how to tell her son that as she listened to his excited recap of the meeting and Ismael’s encouragement at the end.
Dear Diary,
I went home this past weekend, and I feel drained. Each time I go, I have no idea why I do, and even Kevin can’t understand why I put myself thru this. But I know somewhere deep inside I know it’s the right thing to do, even if I can’t stand going more than once or twice a month.
All my mom does is cry, asking me the same question over and over again. And all I can do is give the same answer I always do. ‘I don’t know.’ She thinks I’m being flip, but I’m not. I’m being honest.
The irony is, all I ever wanted was Jannah. And a distant second, to please my parents, especially my father, who says absolutely nothing to me on the subject.
The irony of the irony is that I enjoy what I do. It’s just that it’s not what I see myself doing in the distant future. In the end, I want a family, a Muslim family. And I want no connection to this life I’m living now, except for a few mementos in my scrapbook.
It doesn’t make sense, I know. And I’ve pretty much given up making sense of it. It’s just that I love what I do, and I can’t do it and pray and cover at the same time. It’s like it’s just ‘passive enjoyment.’ But the biggest irony is, I know too much about this fleeting life to even enjoy it as I pass thru it.