3 As.
3 As.
‘Mashallah, Ali, you did it!’ Dad’s smile had been huge, his eyes bright with tears. ‘Your mother would be so proud of you, son, so proud.’ And he’d hugged me, holding me to him for a long time. ‘The world is your oyster now, inshallah.’
And I just felt amazing, absolutely amazing.
To think that, through all the upheaval and heartbreak, I had managed to step up at exam time and get my predicted grades! Mum would have been over the moon.
The drive home from Hertfordshire was like a warm, fuzzy dream. We talked about Mum and other trips we had taken as a family. We sang songs Mum had taught us for long car journeys. We remembered Mum together, openly, without reservation, for the very first time. And it was wonderful.
‘Fancy a meal out, boys?’ yawned Dad as he unlocked the door. ‘Or should we order something?’
‘I think it’s going to be instant noodles and bed, Dad,’ I replied. ‘I’m exhausted!’
‘Yes, it was quite draining, wasn’t it,’ said Dad ruefully. Then he grinned. ‘Still, all’s well that ends well. Oh, and you were right to insist that we go to see Umar. I feel so much better after seeing him, alhamdulillah.’
‘You see,’ I chided. ‘You should listen to me more often.’
‘Yes,’ mused Dad, ‘maybe I don’t give you enough credit, eh?’ He stood in front of the freezer, poked around inside, then turned to me. ‘I feel bad, Ali. We should be celebrating tonight, shouldn’t we?’ His eyes went misty. ‘Your mum was always the one to organise our family celebration dinners, wasn’t she? I just turned up and waited to be told what we were celebrating!’
I smiled and opened my mouth to add my memories of our celebration dinners when the doorbell rang. Dad’s eyebrows shot up. He still wasn’t used to living so close to people. The constantly ringing doorbell set his nerves on edge.
‘I’ll get it, Dad,’ I said, scooting to the front door. I didn’t want anything spoiling his mood, not after the day we’d had.
I opened the door without looking through the little spyhole. I was sure it was Usamah – he was the only person who would turn up unannounced.
But it wasn’t Usamah.
‘Al… Ali?’
It was Amy.
Just the sight of her was difficult.
Of course I hadn’t forgotten her, not a single inch of her, no matter how hard I’d tried. But now, here she was, in the flesh, at my front door, looking straight at me with those big blue eyes. The light above us was bright. It bounced off her hair and, for a moment, I was dazzled. I felt my senses betray me – the smell of her perfume, the memory of her skin, those eyes. Lowering my gaze was proving to be hard work.
A’udhu billahi min ash-Shaytan ir-Rajeem, I said to myself. Only Allah could protect me from myself, I knew that.
Dad’s voice came from inside the kitchen, ‘Who is it, Ali? It’s late…’ And then there he was behind me, staring at this golden-haired girl standing on his front doorstep.
‘Amy?’ He must have remembered her from a school show or something. ‘Amy McIntyre? What are you doing here? Is something wrong?’
‘No, Mr Jordan, I just came to speak to Ali.’
Dad gave me a look, then scanned the dark outside the house, the neighbour’s house opposite. ‘Well, you’d better come in, Amy. We can’t have you standing there like that.’ And he opened the living room door and then wedged it so that it stayed like that: open. I was grateful for that. I really didn’t trust myself around her.
We didn’t say anything for a few minutes.
Then, ‘How are you doing, Ali?’
I remembered her voice so well – like liquid honey. It brought back so many memories of feelings, times and places I had tried hard to forget that, for a moment, I couldn’t speak. I didn’t know what to say, where to look, how to act.
‘Amy…’ My voice came out all croaky and I cleared my throat. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I was talking to Pablo and he… he told me that you were in South London. He got me the address. And I came to see you…’ She was looking right at me and I knew that I didn’t have to ask her why she had come to see me. Her face, her voice, her body language all spoke louder than words. But she could see that she had rattled me. She looked down, embarrassed.
‘Look, Ali, sorry for just turning up like this but I didn’t know how else to reach you. Your old number isn’t working anymore, you closed your Facebook page, you didn’t leave me an address. None of the guys knew how to contact you – it’s like you disappeared once school was over!’
‘Yeah, I know,’ I mumbled. ‘Sorry about that… It was hard, you know, coming to terms with everything…’
‘Yeah, I heard about your mum. I’m really sorry.’ She bit her lip. ‘But why didn’t you talk to me, Ali? Why didn’t you let me be there for you? I thought we had something special. I even thought…’
Don’t, I thought. Don’t say the words…
But she didn’t. She knew better than to do that. ‘I thought we had something special, you and I…’
I looked down. I couldn’t lie to her. I had never been able to lie to her, not in all the years we had known each other, the time we had been together. ‘We did, Amy, we did. It’s just that a lot of things changed for me when Mum died. Too many things. And I couldn’t make those changes without pulling away from my old life.’
‘Is that how you see me now, as part of your old life?’
The hurt in her voice seared my brain. Hadn’t I promised her always and forever? What useless promises.
‘No, Amy, it’s not like that. It’s just that Mum’s death made a lot of things clear to me. One of them was the fact that I had to learn about Islam. I had to start practising my religion, the one my mum taught me. It was too hard to do that with everything that was going on so I had to get away. And now… I’ve got a new life, different priorities.’ I shrugged. That was it in a nutshell: I had different priorities now.
‘I know, Ali,’ she said, looking down. ‘I know that you’ve rediscovered your faith and I’m really happy for you.’ She looked back up at me. ‘I just wanted to know whether there was any space in your new life for me.’
My heart stopped beating for a moment and I looked at her in confusion. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean I’m willing to do whatever it takes to get you back. I’m even ready to convert, if it means we can be together…’
I laughed out loud. I just couldn’t help it. This was Amy the beauty queen, Miss Popular herself, the fun-loving, outgoing envy of all my friends, offering to accept Islam, just to be with me? The whole idea was ludicrous.
Or was it?
‘You can’t convert just for me, Amy, I would never want you to do that. Islam isn’t like that – something you can use just to get what you want. It’s a genuine spiritual commitment, a way of life…’
She reached out and put her hand on my arm then, right where I had covered up my tattoo with my shirt. I flinched at her touch. ‘Don’t you want me, Ali?’ she asked, her voice husky. ‘Don’t you miss what we used to have?’
I couldn’t say anything. My only defence was to pull my arm away and look behind her – at my red Converse trainers standing by the door.
And, just then, the image of Amirah popped into my mind. In her hijab and abaya, her dark features and no-nonsense attitude, she was the complete opposite of Amy. And yet, there was something about her, something deep, something vulnerable under all that bravado, that made my heart soften when I thought of her.
No, Amy wasn’t the one I wanted. She was too perfect to suit me anymore. I had once been a wealthy student at a private school, poised to go to university to study Law, earn loads of money, buy houses and cars, have a glamorous wife on my arm, but all of that was nothing to me now. I knew what I wanted to do with my life now – it had been becoming clearer and clearer with every passing day – and I knew that this was a distraction.
I was damaged – but damaged in a way Amy would never be able to understand. Of course, she would sympathise, but it wasn’t sympathy that I needed. I needed healing. If once I had been that perfect golden boy, I was him no longer. I had sinned, I had erred, I had made tawbah and I had been through trials and come out of them with stronger iman and a clearer purpose. Somehow, I knew that Amirah had walked that same journey. She was my true partner, not Amy.
‘I’m sorry, Amy, but this isn’t going to work. We’re too different, you and I. You’ve got your great life in Hertfordshire, where you belong. I’m sorry…’
I opened the door to let her out and she paused on the threshold and looked up at me.
‘Are you sure this is what you want, Ali?’
I wasn’t looking at her when I answered. I was looking out onto the driveway at a figure with a beard and a white thobe, a figure that had stopped short, made eye contact with me, glanced at Amy and shaken his head, hurrying past without saying a word.
Later, when I was brushing my teeth, I looked into the mirror – and saw the shocked, accusing eyes of Zayd staring back at me.