The Prophet Said

My little dreams fell to pieces in Saqr’s hands, under the pretense that they were little. In seven years, Saqr stripped me of every personal trait, until I was no longer mine, until I was no longer me. The qualities that made me who I was, that mapped out my features and made me differ—as I pleased—from others. All were stolen, confiscated, became his property—though he cared nothing for them.

I wanted to study at the College of Arts. That would have been possible if my parents hadn’t died.

I spent months with insomnia, anxiety. I was searching for a way to convince him to agree. I cried during prayers; I vowed the vows. I said, O God, grant me this small thing, grant me a place at the College of Arts. I need one beautiful thing in my life, one thing that I want. O Giver of Life, give me life.

For weeks I looked for a way to bring it up with him. When should I talk to him? At the dinner table his mind would be on his stomach, but that didn’t mean it would be easier to get him to agree. He would simply say, Now is not the time. Maybe after he comes back from the mosque on Friday? He was usually happy. But what if he came back fired up on his obsession to control and push me to hate anything with life in it? Let alone study literature, a rich subject full of life. Should I wait? What was I waiting for? For him to lie back and prop his legs up while munching on salted pistachios? How could I convince someone who is completely convinced that he’s got the truth tucked into his back pocket? How can I get through to him and make him see things with my eyes, with my heart, with my wounds and tears?

I knew I would have to support my request with arguments based on the sharia, and I started to search for them. I made a long list of every Quranic verse and prophetic hadith I could find. I forgot that Saqr didn’t care about those verses and hadiths, but about what he called “the great sheikhs and scholars.” Literature is nonsense.

One evening while he was watching a tennis match, I brought the subject up. I said, “This is my last year of secondary school and I want to study something I like in college.”

“And what do you like, Mazmoizelle Fatima?”

“I like poetry.”

“God save me.” He spit out a shred of miswak that had gotten stuck between his teeth.

My heart retreated, my eyes blurred. I sensed where this discussion, which had ended before it began, was going.

He added, “‘And the Poets, It is those straying in Evil, who follow them.’”

“‘Not all of them are alike,’” I replied, quoting the Quran back at him. I got out my weapons, prepared to fight one authority with another. I added, “The Prophet said, In some eloquence there is magic, and in some poetry there is wisdom.”

“Our scholars classify that as a weak hadith, and do not accept its authenticity. Nice try.”

“Even if that’s the case, isn’t there truth in its meaning?”

“What do you know about what is true and what isn’t true?”

“I have a mind that thinks.”

“If you had any brains at all you would have studied something useful,” he said, and spit out the shreds of miswak he’d crushed between his teeth. He got ready to leave. I followed him, held onto the stair railing as he went up, shaking it between my hands with all my might. I waved the paper, the list of arguments, everything I could find to support my position. I held onto the bottom of his white pants, shouting, “Kaab bin Zuhayr! Umayya bin Abi al-Salt! Antar! Al-Khansa! Hassan ibn Thabit!”

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Poets! They’re all poets!”

“That’s enough. Conversation over.”

“The Prophet loves poetry and you don’t?”

“We’re done talking about it. There will be no College of Arts. Women in this family don’t go to mixed colleges. You have two solutions: study at the Girls’ College or the Sharia College. Or you can plant yourself at home and wait for the ape that agrees to take you.”

My heart clouded over, as I sank under the weight of the oppressive finality in his voice. I’d forgotten about the ‘mixed gender’ issue. I’d almost defeated him; I’d almost won a battle in the eternal war between the halal and the haram. I had almost scored a victory for poetry, for the image of the beautiful God who loves beauty. Tears flowed from my eyes as I sobbed.

“But, Hayat . . . Hayat . . .”

“What about Hayat?”

“Hayat is going to the College of Arts!”

“I don’t like you being friends with her anyway.”

“Hayat has been my friend since primary school.”

“We’re done talking about it. Or there will be no university. If you knew what’s good for you, you’d shut up.”

“But . . .”

He took two steps up, then turned to me and ended this weak, meaningless conversation, saying, “By the way, girls in this house don’t go to university without wearing an abaya. If that’s okay with you, good; if not, you can sit at home. And you don’t need the diploma. You’re a girl—someone else will take care of you.”