Saffa was now in Year 11 and doing her GCSEs. She had a Syrian boyfriend in the same year at school called Kareem. Kareem had given her a mobile phone so they could keep in touch outside school. Only I knew about her boyfriend and mobile phone.
Abdullah was in a government school on account of his excellent Arabic skills—Baba invested all his hopes in him being the perfect Arab son—and Ahmed, who was with Saffa at the same co-ed international high school I’d been at, was more of an English lad than an Arab one, which meant he couldn’t care less about what Saffa and I got up to.
“I’m really sorry about that time I snitched on you to Baba in Egypt about your ex Faisal,” Ahmed told me one day when it was just the two of us at home. We were sat on the living room sofa side by side, playing Call of Duty.
“It was a long time ago and you were young,” I replied, trying to reassure him.
Ahmed paused the game and turned to look at me. “Baba was alright with me back then. Then the day I got arrested everything changed. Things between me and him have never been the same. It’s like I lost his respect forever.”
“I feel exactly the same way.” I sighed. “Believe me, when Abdullah becomes a teenager and starts rebelling like all normal teenagers, Baba won’t adore him so much.”
We weren’t jealous of Abdullah. We’d all been Baba’s favourite at one point during our childhood.
“The truth is, I don’t think Baba knows how to handle teenagers,” Ahmed continued.
Ahmed had hit the nail on the head. That was exactly it—Baba confused normal teenage behaviour for disrespect and disobedience, which he thought was a personal attack on him.
“That’s the deepest thing you’ve said in ages,” I said, laughing, trying to keep things light-hearted. “Now let’s finish this game before the rest of the family come home and Abdullah asks me for his handset back.”
When we shared a room, I’d hear Saffa whispering on the phone to her boyfriend Kareem in the middle of the night. Now that she had her own room, it was easier for her to talk to him. It had been a wonder to me over the past year how Mum and Baba hadn’t walked past her bedroom and heard her, but I was happy that the stars were in her favour.
A few weeks after my forced make-out session (thankfully the love bites had finally faded), I came home to see a shouting match between Saffa and Abdullah in the living room. Mum was standing in between them trying to play referee. Ahmed was out with his friends, no doubt up to no good. Baba wasn’t at home either.
In Abdullah’s hand was Saffa’s mobile phone. “I’m telling Baba. I heard you speaking to a boy! I’m going to stay up and wait until he comes home, even if it’s past midnight,” Abdullah shouted, waving the phone just out of her reach.
“I was speaking to my friend Maryam and it’s her phone! Check the call log!” Saffa shrieked.
“Why do you even have a mobile phone? You know you’re not allowed one.”
“It’s none of your business,” Saffa said. “I needed a phone and I knew Baba wasn’t going to buy one for me, so Maryam gave me her old one. Now give it back. It doesn’t belong to me!”
“But I heard a boy’s voice coming from your phone,” Abdullah said, narrowing his eyes. “Who were you speaking to? Do you have a boyfriend?”
“It was Maryam,” Saffa said, lunging forward.
Abdullah, despite only being twelve was much taller, with gangly arms and legs, and he held the phone high above Saffa’s head.
“Stop it! That’s enough!” Mum yelled.
Saffa dug her long nails into his arm and he howled and dropped the phone on to the rug. Without a moment’s hesitation Saffa snatched the phone off the rug and ran upstairs to her bedroom.
“Abdullah, go to your room. I need to talk to Mum,” I said.
I expected him to answer me back, but he was teary-eyed, clutching his arm, which now had blood-infused grooves, and he quietly went upstairs without protest.
Mum sank into the living room sofa and began to cry. “I’m just so sick of the drama every day in this house. I stayed with your father all these years for all of you, so that you wouldn’t have a broken family, and you kids repay me by constantly fighting.”
I sat down and put my arm around her shoulder. “Don’t say that, Mum, they’re teenagers. It’s normal for siblings to fight.”
Mum looked up at me. “Do you think Saffa is talking to a boy?”
“I’m sure she wouldn’t be daft enough to make the same mistake I did. I’ll talk to her about returning her friend’s phone before she gets in trouble with Baba. What are we going to do about Abdullah though?”
“I’ll talk to him before I go to bed,” Mum said, wiping away her tears with a tissue. “God knows if he’ll listen to me though.”
Before I went to bed, I knocked on Saffa’s bedroom door.
“Who is it?” she snapped.
“It’s me,” I whispered.
“Oh, okay. Come in.”
I quietly opened the door to find her sitting in bed in the dark, staring down at the mobile phone, which lay cradled between her hands.
“Saffa, you need to give that phone back to Kareem tomorrow,” I said softly.
“I’ll hide it.”
“You know that’s a stupid idea. Baba will search high and low for it.”
“I have a place in the back yard that he won’t even think of.”
“He’ll find it, believe me. Save yourself a fight and give it to Kareem.”
“Fine, whatever. I’ll give it back to him.”
“Promise me, Saffa.”
“I promise, I promise,” she grumbled, and pulled her duvet over her head.
I found it hard to sleep that night. What would happen if Abdullah ignored Mum’s pleas not to snitch on Saffa to Baba? Would he send her to Egypt to live with Aunt Mona?