Home. Where is home? I thought of this and only then was I faced with the inevitable.

“We’re going to move by the end of the year.” My father’s sudden words temporarily silenced me. I paused for a moment, unsure of what to say or how to feel.

“Do I have a choice?” I asked, afraid of what I knew he was going to say.

“No,” he said quietly. He sensed my pain. He’s seen this look on my face before. But he too, had no choice.

I tried to comfort myself, but the recurring thought of moving over 1,400 miles away from my closest friends and family wasn’t helping. I reminisced on the last time I moved, which was four long years ago. How did I handle that? Not well. My eyes began to water as I recollected thoughts of suicide, hopelessness, and fear. Four years ago, I was hardly a practicing Muslim; I was a naïve thirteen-year-old completely and utterly lost in this world. I wasn’t too keen on staying with my previous circle of friends, but it was the abrupt change and fear of the unknown future that frightened me. I was afraid of leaving what I assumed to be my home.

“Where is home?” I remember asking myself.

“Home is Riyadh, Saudi Arabia,” I answered without a second thought. Internally, I was dissatisfied with that answer, and I sought further reasoning.

“Why?”

“Because it’s where I spent my childhood.” 

I left it at that. But I knew I didn’t belong there. Spiritually, I was still searching for the answer.

So I ask myself, now, four years later: “Where is home?”

Before I can answer “Home is Springfield, Virginia”, a part of me takes a step back – a step back from the present moment, from this temporary, petty term of our existence. I had to think about this in terms of my deen, in terms of the totality of my life. There is a place I seek, something I long for. No, Some One. I long for the closeness to my Lord. I long for spiritual peace from the only Source of Peace. It was then that I realize that the only comfort is with the Source of Comfort Himself.

I was reminded of a few ahadith I heard recently in a lecture:

The Prophet Muhammad (may Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him) said, ”By Him in Whose Hands my life is, everybody will recognize his dwelling in Paradise better than he recognizes his dwelling in this world” [Bukhari]. He (may Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him) also said, “Live in this world as (if you are) a wayfarer or a stranger” [Bukhari, Tirmidhi].

I sighed, relieved. I had an answer. We are all just on our journey home. This life is just one thing: a journey. I could live in Saudi Arabia, I could live in Virginia, but none of those were the right places. There is only one objective: to please Allah. There is only one destination: a home, promised to those who sincerely struggle to please their Lord. A home that is light years further than 1,400 miles.

“O mankind, indeed you are laboring toward your Lord with [great] exertion and will meet it” (Surah Al-Inshiqāq 84:6).

As the well-known saying goes, ‘Home is where the heart is’. I know now that my heart solely belongs to Allah. My home is in His Grace, and my home is in Jannah, Insha’Allah.

May Allah accept our efforts and make us among those whose true home awaits them in Jannah. Ameen.

Become one with the earth.
Lay upon the dirt from which you came.
Sinking, melting,
Streaming down the crevices
Cracks, slipping further.
We return to the earth, don’t we?
Go, return to your Lord.
Creator.
Guardian.

Let the sun wash over your skin.
Bask in the beams of mercy,
A gift from your Lord
Calling to you
Pray
Beg
Bathe in the sheets of noor
Filling every pore, hole, void,
With longing
To glide along the bridges threading from sky to earth.

Crystal droplets, dancing
Sloshing, swishing
Flowing down the banks
Bubbling, gurgling
Rushing foam
A gift to your parched throat.
Sliding down the tunnel
Moistening your cracked lips.

Rustling blades of grass
Crushed against your body
Crumpled, springy
Dewdrops, beads resting atop these towers,
Creased, crunched
Rustling
Waving in the breeze.

Timeless silence.
Can you paint with the colors of the wind?
Wavering
Swaying
Gliding
Persuasive gusts of incessant beauty.

Endless blue
Stretching across the heavens
Flexing to match the mold of the sky
Soft to the touch, clouds
Scattered, peppered,
Dotting the skies of great depth.

A crack, a hiss
The sound of a shattered soul
Pain, loss,
Spreading, filling every gap.
Bursting at the seams of gentle skins.

Covering
Smothering
Begging to escape
To leave your crushed body
Impossible, inescapable,
Leaking from the ducts that corner the gateways to your soul
Streaming down your face
Dripping into the ground
Soaking the earth.
Every drop
Hungry, ravenous
To leech away the pain.

Become one with the earth
Lay upon the dirt from which you came
Sinking, melting,
Streaming down the crevices
Cracks, slipping further
Little by little, bit at a time
Slowly
Go, return to your Lord.

There are times in life which every human being capable of emotion is able to relate to. A moment where you feel the power of utter vulnerability, when the spiderwebs of familiarity you have woven around you over the course of years – even decades – are ripped away, when you feel like one of the hollow sea shells drifting along the foamy seas…

There are times when every morsel of your body yearns to melt into the earth, to vanish completely. When you want to run away so nobody can ever find you again.

Allah (Glorified and Exalted be He) says that man was created weak, that we need to have a Lord to return to in these times of plight.

Every human is subject to these moments of hopelessness. The solution then, is to return to Allah, to yearn and ask for His Mercy.

Because of course, ‘in the remembrance of Allah do the hearts find rest’ (Surah Ar-Ra’d 13:28).

She was dragged mercilessly to the balcony, clutching her black plastic trash bag close to her side as if her life depended on it. The dusty, mosquito-infested balcony was perhaps two feet wide, five feet long. She stared aimlessly into the crowded and polluted city of Dhaka, Bangladesh, a woman in her early twenties. The balcony door was slammed shut and locked. Tears rolled down her face as she tightened her scarf insecurely, her hands shaking. The little ones banged the balcony door, taunting and jeering.

***

Earlier that day, she was expecting to depart to her home village, from where she was hired a few months before. As she was escorted to a rickety rickshaw, my aunt noticed her bag was unusually heavy, things inside of it clanking together. Frankly, servant girls barely have enough clothes to last them two or three days, so based on that suspicion, my aunt demanded to check her plastic trash bag. After much resistance from the poor woman’s end, it was discovered that she had stolen a number of household items. The loot consisted of a few plastic toys, red onions, cilantros, and a few other items. Upon estimation, it amounted to perhaps two or three American dollars.

News spread throughout the entire building that a servant had committed thievery. For a country so corrupted, the reaction to petty theft was rather ironic. Everyone began to give their input on the punishment. The girl was cornered in the servants’ headquarters, an unfurnished, barren rock-floored room. Finally, my aunt arrived with a pair of scissors. The girl gasped, her tears and sweat fusing down her face. I was utterly confused, unsure as to what could be done with those scissors.

The servant dropped to her knees, pleading and begging for her dear life. Her scarf was loosened as her long hair tumbled towards the ground. They were intending to cut her hair. I still could not follow along with this foreign form of punishment.

It was then explained to me that her hair was a means of beauty. For a servant girl, that was the only ticket to marriage as she had no wealth or lineage. Observing her tear-stricken face, her thin and weak knees shaking, I squirmed and looked away. I heard my mother whisper a plea on behalf of the girl. Perhaps my aunt did not want to create a scene in front of us, visitors from halfway across the world. Perhaps the girl had learned her lesson. Whatever the reason, my aunt eventually dropped the scissors and called the girl’s family to immediately pick her up.

Suddenly, all of my challenges and tribulations seemed minuscule in comparison. It was a reality check; a reminder to not only be grateful for all of my materialistic possessions, but for the intangible traits of honor and dignity as well; a reason to express modesty and humbleness at all times. Who is it to say that I could not have been in her shoes? It was only through necessity and desperation that she had committed this misdeed, if her actions can even be called that.

It was sad for me to witness this incident, especially since I have always only heard of the people of Bangladesh being associated with their impeccable hospitality and fish curry. I then realized that much of this behavior was in fact reflective of a larger global phenomenon of our perpetually developing world, where there has arisen an inevitable imbalance on the scale of social structure both domestically and internationally. This disparity has caused various forms of racism and discrimination to emerge and erupt on many fronts, including class, skin color, culture, and tradition. This dissonance has trickled down to the local and everyday level in many places, including Bangladesh, and has unfortunately led many people to fall sway to blatant racism and discrimination.

The Prophet Muhammad (may Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him) once said, “A white (person) has no superiority over a black (person) nor a black (person) has any superiority over a white (person) except by piety and good action” (Tirmidhi). Perhaps it’s time for all of us, especially for those of us who have been deafened and blinded by our own egotistical lifestyles for too long, to actively speak out and work against acts of discrimination everywhere, blatant or otherwise.

***

Upon returning home, the stacks of school books and endless work documents were just as I had left them, untouched. However, with this fresh perspective in mind, the tasks appeared smaller. I pushed in my chair, opened the first task at hand, and said, “Alhamdulillah.”

What went through her mind as she was then marched to the balcony, what became of her thereafter, I still cannot help but wonder. Nonetheless, I pray that she has found solace and honor wherever she may reside.

As a young girl, I developed an overzealous fascination with outer space. The balance of the blazing stars astounded me – especially as they contrasted against the composed and appeasing moon. When I was ten years old, my mother gifted me with a miniature telescope which I treasured whole-heartedly. I loved everything about it: its fluorescent yellow coloring and accented lines of charcoal grey, its accompanying encyclopedia containing pages and pages decorated with the images of constellations that I one day hoped to locate, but most of all that each time I would peer through the narrowed eyepiece I would see the startling chasm of earth and sky.

I recall the copious amount of time I spent sitting by my windowsill contriving a planetarium within the confinements of my own mind, marveling at the thought of distant places as I tethered together the images of planets, stars, moons, and asteroids far far away. It was confounding to think that I, one girl, was but a single being in the cluster of not only people but both the world of the animate and inanimate. I existed as a one, yet connected to so many. I was lost in space and peculiarly enough, that’s just the way I liked it.

But, today is different. You see, through the years I’ve struggled to find my footing in a world blasting with the loud murmur of assent for egocentrism. A world where we are force-fed the idea that self-indulgence should be our primary intent for any and all actions. A place riddled with the belief that the world ceases to exits past our fingertips – which my ten-year-old self would emphatically disagree with. Pride takes refuge in our hearts as we strive to acclimate our souls in a place, a world, which was not meant to last forever. The arenas of our minds and hearts have become pervaded with the conviction that looking out for our wants and needs is the sure path to untarnished success.

Questions heave in my chest and I’m flustered. Why have we forgotten about our hungry neighbors and those who suffer from ailments and diseases residing in hospitals? How could we forget those who are lying on streets or under bridges with nothing more than makeshift cardboard beds? When did we become so pretentious that self-assurance itself has become merely a contention for further competition? Why have we forgotten that a vast and yielding world exists outside our doors? And have we forgotten our origin story, our humble beginnings?

I keep having this reoccurring vision of battling against my very self as I’m being swallowed into the abyss of my ego. For whenever I find myself weak and forgetful of who I am, I write recklessly in my journal. I always pen the same paragraph, over and over again.

I’d like to skip the pleasantries and lay it all on the line. I would like to declare that I am a speck. I am a single speck. I am a single servant whose entire existence has been molded from a clot of blood. My feet cling to Earth unrelentingly and the air I breathe statically charges me. The blood flowing through my veins warms me and the fire of faith fuels my sprit. I have Him (subhana wa ta’ala) to thank and I solely worship and obey Him (subhana wa ta’la).

We should be asking ourselves, what have we contributed to the betterment of the world? Scratch that. We should be asking ourselves, what we have contributed towards the betterment of the world, sincerely for the sake of Allah? As Muslims we are naturally fitted to be a social activists. We have a role to fulfill and a responsibility to shoulder. With all of the resources at our disposal and means at our fingertips, no excuse is justifiable.

Half the battle is simply bursting the bubble of our intrinsically driven lives and reminding ourselves that we have gifts to share with the world, especially those who desperately need them. Not to inch too close to a cliché, but it’s a great big world out there and you don’t need to peer into a telescope to realize that. Thus, I lay my fluttering eyelashes to rest, send myself to that planetarium buried deep in my mind and recall the words of Edward Everett Hale. “I am only one; but still I am one. I cannot do everything; but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do”.

I had just dropped my sisters off at madrassah – the mosque school – and was heading home. The sun was finally calling it a day, decorating the sky with a glorious mix of orange and pink. It was raining lightly, my windscreen wipers wiping tiny specks of water away as I drove on. I watched as young children walked towards the madrassah, dressed in small abayas and thobes, carrying their bags and clutching Qur’ans tightly to their chests.

For them it was another evening to understand God’s message.

Another evening of embracing this beautiful gift of Islam.

It made me smile.

My phone vibrated on the passenger seat next to me, announcing a text message. With one hand on the steering wheel, I reached for it and instantly heard my mother’s voice echo in my head. “Be careful when you’re driving. Both hands on the wheel, okay? Accidents happen in seconds, remember?” I left my phone untouched and placed both hands on the wheel. “Okay, mum! Happy now?” I said to the silence in my car, slightly annoyed at the fact that even though she wasn’t there, her words were.

I slowed down as a speed hump appeared in the middle of a road and then I noticed an old woman with a shopper trolley standing at the side waiting to cross. I waved her past. Very slowly, she gripped her shopper and stepped onto the road. She was short and weak, her shiny white hair covered with a red knitted hat. Just before she reached the other side, she stopped, lifted a hand and waved at me, smiling. My headlights shone in her face highlighting the piercing blue of her eyes and the deep set of wrinkles around them. I waved back. She lifted her other hand, steadying her shopper with the first and mouthed a thank you.

And then her smile vanished.

Her head fell back as her waving hand shot towards her chest. Her shopper clattered to the floor. Her eyes widened with shock. She was clutching her chest with both hands. I blinked, lifted up the hand break and rushed out of the car. I ran towards her as she fell to the ground. Her eyes were rolling back, something was dribbling out of her mouth. Her chest rose. I waited for it to fall, but it never did. And then, she went still.

Very still.

I felt my insides freeze as I remembered where I’d seen this before. Blood rapidly rushed to my head. I heard loud pounding in my ears as people crowded around us. I knelt down by the old lady. What was I supposed to do? I knew absolutely nothing about her. Who was she? Someone shouted something about an ambulance. A woman screamed. I felt strong hands gripping me, pulling me up. Someone yanked me forward. I heard horns, the screech of brakes and then I felt the world tilt as the sound of shrieking sirens invaded the air.

“Sister? Sister, are you okay?” I looked up.

It was a brother, his face etched with concern, his eyes running back to the ambulance that had just arrived. Something within me rose as my throat tightened. I managed a nod.

“She’s gone. I saw her. I saw her walking across the road and she was waving. They’re taking her in.” His disorganised words tumbled out of him; I didn’t know what to say. I watched as the stretcher was lifted, as paramedics rushed around, and as the crowd of people began to thin as everyone went on their own way. I wondered about the phone that would shortly ring in an unknown household, breaking the peaceful silence and announcing the presence of death. How many lives would it affect and shatter?

“Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi rajioon.” I heard myself whisper.

To God we belong and to Him we shall return.

On the way home, my thoughts circled around what had happened to that poor woman. One second she was waving at me and the next second she was holding her chest like it was a lifeline. It was less than a second. An instance. And then death had claimed her. That was all it took. An instance. What had passed through her in that moment? Had she known the angels of death had arrived?

The loud sound of my phone ringing broke into my thoughts. It was my mum.

“Hurry home, where are you?” she asked, her voice heavy with excitement. “Your uncle just phoned that your aunt has given birth to a baby girl. Oh, gosh! He was so close to tears. Hurry up, we’re on our way to the hospital,” she said and quickly hung up. I realized I had forgotten all about my aunt and the new baby.

I was hurrying home to the arrival of a birth after witnessing a death. The very same hospital, that would consume that old woman’s body and become a grieving ground for her family, would be a beacon of light and hope as we celebrated the warm welcome of an innocent baby girl. The reality of it shocked me – when it shouldn’t have. We all know we’ll be leaving one day, don’t we? Yet it still grips us on the insides and claws its way around. We know nothing here is everlasting, yet we grip on tightly, fists bent tight, knuckles turning white. In one second it would all come crashing down, yet it’s a forgotten reality.

Life and death. They were so close, yet so far apart. So similar in their ways of changing lives and teaching lessons, of triggering emotions and clearing the specks of dust from our eyes, enabling us to see clearly.

Tonight, a few miles away someone would be grieving over an absence, whilst under our roof we would be celebrating a presence.

I know a woman who sells perfume,
and keeps me apprized of the richest scents in bloom.
Whenever I find my fragrances nearly finished,
I peer into her shop window before the store hours diminish.
Ever ready is she with scents that enliven the air:
Freesia, Jasmine, Vanilla, and Pear.
Finally, when I manage to tear myself away,
the fragrances linger upon me, far from decay.

I then see a man parting from a blacksmith marked,
It seemed on his journey home he embarked,
In a state unfit, unclean and utterly marred,
By the remnants of the burnt metal, almost scarred.
Stumbled did he onto the sidewalk coughing,
Incited by the ash and soot he’d been inhaling.
Shaking hands with passersby,
Who wiped their hands clean on the sly.

When I got home, I realized that it saddened me to see,
That this man’s merchant does not do for him what mine does for me.

The Prophet Muhammad (may Allah’s peace and blessings upon him) said: “A good friend and a bad friend are like a perfume-seller and a blacksmith: The perfume-seller might give you some perfume as a gift, or you might buy some from him, or at least you might smell its fragrance. As for the blacksmith, he might singe your clothes, and at the very least you will breathe in the fumes of the furnace” (Sahih al-Bukhari and Muslim).

Sometimes we think that just because there is light everything is clear. We fail to see the shades. We are blind to the shadows of their stories.

On one of your semi-solitary strolls along the river of cement, you encounter a palace whose only openings are windows.

You reach for a broad bright window and swing it open. There, you see a very respectable-looking man. Driven by curiosity, you observe him with his friends, his boss and his co-workers.

Light seems to be radiating from all around him. So courteous, so lively, so ready to help everyone with prompt generosity, you need not even ask and he will deliver. He smiles at every poor or humble stranger he meets; every word of his resounds as a lesson in wisdom. He’s the one to trust even if you commit a grave mistake. He’d never hold grudges; he would always ready be ready to forgive.

What a noble man! What a great example to follow! Let’s not disturb him further. You gently close the bright window and move to another one in search for an entrance to this spellbinding palace.

While searching, you come across a desperately small little window shrouded by dust and a strange black, dense liquid. Your hands hesitantly reach to pry it open, but every effort, every attempt results in a series of vain efforts. Defeated, you resort to simply look through the obscure opening.

Visibility and darkness blink at you at the rhythm of the hearts of three young brothers playing together. Their soft laughter lights up the house, wiping away your thoughts of the dirty window. What a warm atmosphere – a happy family for sure.

The clock strikes ten.

The faces of the kids turn pale and the games freeze. They glance at each other expectantly; you can see their nervousness through the nail biting, the restless finger tapping and the general sense of alertness which wasn’t there just few minutes before. Someone knocks at the door. The eyes of every one turn to that direction, almost holding their breaths.

Then one of the children runs to open the door and a man strikes the child’s face as he enters.

“Why didn’t you open sooner, you little heathen? What were you doing? One of these days I’ll find out about your evil affairs and I’ll have you pay for them!”

The kid didn’t even think of answering. Instead, he set his gaze on the ground, silently sobbing. Another son came handing him the home shoes.”Good evening, dad”, he dares, wishing him with a broken smile. The parent looked odiously at him. “Good evening, Dad”, he mocks, “You think yourself so smart, huh? Who do you think you are? What’s good in this evening or in anything at all when I have the misfortune of having three retarded kids? You, go bring me a glass of water! Now! Fast!”

The third kid ran coming back with the glass, but in his hurry, tripped over and spilled some water over the father’s clothes.

Everything remained still.

Time was frozen. The sons were petrified. Each one of them knew exactly what was going to happen.

The window was blinded by darkness but you could still hear the sound of the belt, of lacerated skin, of hopeless tears and crushed hearts…

You are horrified. There are other windows, but you have had enough; you don’t want to see anything else. You run, letting row upon row, story upon story of windows pass you by. You push the wind away, ride on time’s shoulders, and try to move away – but from their stories, you cannot escape.

Every window, every floor screams out a story. From the corner of your eye, you make out the figure of a young man behind a window composed of broken shards. You see his misery, the ever-so-slight bend of his back, the snowy powder descending from his shaky hands onto his faded jeans, and the company of empty bottles all around him.

Each window blends chaotically into the next like a train zooming past a train station on tracks that go on forever. Tired, exhausted of this palace of horror, you clutch your head in your hands, shaking away what you have seen. The young man, the little boys, the life behind those windows.

You walk away, trying to close the shutters of your mind.

But alas, you realize that won’t be possible. After seeing this palace’s many stories, you now have a story of your own to tell, a story that others should peek into. A short story that unfortunately describes the life of too many families.

It’s no longer an exception to find parents who behave impeccably among their favorite companions yet turn merciless at home. It’s no longer unheard of to hear of abuse at home, the parents not realizing that their violence – whether physical, emotional or psychological – has a profound impact on the children and leaves deep scars in their memories.

They never realize that this violence leads the children to later become miserable and dangerous members of the society. The abuse chain only continues, with these same children now treating their own families in the same way that they have been treated in childhood…

You now see that these stories must be learned from, to end this vicious cycle. After peeking into these windows, you emerge with a better realization that no healthy society can prosper from this behavior…

We must all see that every window sparkles and shines when the sun is out, but its real beauty is revealed when the darkness sets in and there is only light from within.

The Prophet (may Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him) said: “The best of you is the best one towards his family”.

May Allah (glorified and exalted be He) make us among them.

The whole day had simply been concocting the ingredients for a famous dish, fiasco.

I’d woken up for Fajr dreading getting dressed, because today’s dress code was to wear jeans and a t-shirt. How I could wear that modestly mystified me. I sighed and finally pulled on a long formal dress shirt that went just past my knees first, and then put the giant casual gray T-shirt on top.

When they had asked me for a size, I’d gotten the biggest shirt they had. The other girls, debating whether to get a size small or medium, had stopped arguing to gape when they heard my request. I knew it looked ridiculous; the shirt underneath was formal and the T-shirt was just so wrong. But there was nothing else to be done. I wasn’t going to ditch the eventful day just because I looked funny, so I braced myself with the thought that my mom liked what I was wearing, even if my other hijabi friends, the program coordinators, the important youth leaders and the famous people we were going to meet didn’t. I firmly lied to myself that what I wore could not matter less.

I should have known better.

……..

“So you think I’m immodest?”

Her voice screeched to a higher pitch as she stopped to a halt, facing me. Everyone stared. I felt my cheeks bloom like a sunset in Arizona.

How had such a nice conversation suddenly turned into a confrontation?

I murmured some vague response, the image of the girl’s hurt, incredulous stare etched into my memory. She combed her fingers through her tumbling brown curls and strode through the door. The darkness of the room she entered emphasized her attractive silhouette, the shorts and the bright pink shirt fading into the outline.

I felt as if I had been branded with a red G – for guilty. What was an A compared to that, I wondered? This sin was surely equal to murder. Had I just pushed someone away from the truth? The other girls walked purposefully away, their T-shirts and jeans perfectly normal, their clothes only accentuated by the colorful hijabs they wore. I stood foolishly, and deservingly, alone.

But who was ever alone? Oh Allah, what should I have said? Was I being egotistical, or was I telling the truth? Oh Allah, forgive me!

Surely it was simply my wording. Despite my pity for those who dressed like she did, I certainly did not consider it permissible to belittle or offend them. In fact, I tried to show them the logic that glinted at every prism of the crystal clear law of God. Besides, we were getting along so well.

I had been making friends with a fellow smiley girl whom I met at a leadership program. Our group was jogging along the cracked sidewalk in the gloomy, gray rain towards the impersonal zigzag of buildings downtown. I was not the only girl wearing hijab: three other scarf-donning girls accompanied me, but I certainly felt alone trying to represent Islam. My primary objective for interacting with so many diverse student leaders was, of course, da’wah, and my least goal was to leave these people with a good memory of Muslims and a brief understanding of Islam.

Therefore, making new friends was a priority for me.

I fell into step with the tall girl walking alone and looked around hastily so that I could think of something to say to start the conversation. A huge beer ad leered down at both of us behind the fast paced river of colorful cars. Disgusted, I rolled my eyes and remarked on the senselessness of legalizing alcohol ads on the same roads it was forbidden to drink them on. As a conversation starter it worked impeccably, as she intensely agreed and further shared a story of a friend killed in a drunk-driving accident. I told her I felt strongly about alcohol because it was prohibited in Islam, and she said she abstained from alcohol as a Mormon. We soon discovered that we shared several strong moral opinions and enjoyed talking while we turned as sopping wet as the sidewalk we traversed.

Everything was going well until when we finally stopped for a break. I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to see my three hijabi companions smiling. “Want to come fix your hijab in the bathroom? We’re all soaked!”

“Sure, wanna come?” I offered to my new friend. Anne, her name was. We all headed towards the bathroom. The inevitable question came, and I was pleased, because I loved answering questions.

“So, why do you dress like that?” Anne asked.

“Well, in Islam women must dress modestly… it helps protect them and-”

“Yeah, I know that! Mormons dress modestly too. But how come they’re not wearing extra clothes like you?” Anne pointed at my friends’ jeans and blouses.

My friend turned her head to look at me with two pins in her mouth and her pretty print scarf rolled around her hand, waiting to see what I would say. “Well…some people interpret the command of modesty differently.” Anne raised her eyebrows.

I redirected the conversation by explaining.

“We actually have a few basic guidelines. Muslim women must, at the very least, make sure their clothes aren’t see-through or tight, for example. And just like you see with all of us, we absolutely must cover every part of the skin but the hands and face.”

Anne blinked, thinking it over in her mind.

Phew, alhamdulillah, at least there was one thing we had in common.

Her soft face suddenly contorted. Then she asked a question that left me momentarily stunned.

“So you think I’m immodest?!”

My mind didn’t go blank- it went wildly colorful. Should I say yes or no? Should I bring up Mary, the blessed mother of Jesus, peace be upon him? Should I talk about historic ideas of modesty in America? Should I mention it had never crossed my mind that women who wore shorts in public also considered themselves models of modesty?

All my responses were discarded in the recycle bin of my brain, one by one, until she walked too far away for me to garble a proper response. I still stood wondering – yes or no? This question haunted me.

Later on, when I was older, I understood. The very phrasing of her question stemmed from a different worldview than my own. “So you think…”

Did it matter what I thought?

Of course not. What I thought was irrelevant. What Allah thought – that was what mattered!

Human beings are merely one of the millions of creation of Allah. Our opinions, like the opinions of a star, a stone, an ant – are entirely irrelevant where the law of the Divine is concerned. It is the Law of God that stands towering, beautifully unconcerned about my opinion, her opinion, or anyone’s opinion. In fact, this is how our self-esteem as individuals, as Muslims, is also beautifully preserved, because we see things differently. Our self-worth is not measured by another creation’s assessment of our value. Allah judges me and you according to His omnipotent understanding of our struggle, our capability to obey Him out of our gratefulness and our love for Him.

My event with Anne brought a larger question to light.

The real question is, “Does Allah think I’m immodest?”

Continued from ‘A Friend to Remember: Part I‘

Kalia got upset at the worst of things. I walked over to my mother’s car after school, stepping over the cracks in the sidewalk in front of the school. Being called a terrorist was just something I ignored, something stupid that media sensationalized and used against us. What Jamie had said to Kalia was a failure of an argument, and it was senseless to play along with those who tried to anger her. ­I opened the car door and threw my things in the back, running the seatbelt over my jacket.

“How are you feeling, Aya?” My mother began, attempting conversation. Her eyes stared tiredly down the gray street.

“Good, I guess. Alhamdulilah.” We rode in silence down the streets, past smiling children on their bikes. I saw big trees, Victorian houses, dogs playing in front yards; this was easily a suburban utopia. The hospital came into view, its large lawn and water fountain in the middle of a scenic view. It was such a superficial place, with smiling nurses and happy-looking people who held terrible things inside, a hospital that held disease and cancer and death within its walls.

My mother pulled up to the front curb, where I would walk out and face another round of chemotherapy, another day of uncertainty. My heels clicked on the concrete as I walked to the automatic doors. My mother always told me this was a test from Allah, a test that was so unfair but so necessary for myself.

It started to rain. Wiping my eyes with the back of my sleeve, I waited for what would come next.

***

Dropping my backpack near a lamppost at the park after school, I walked on the midline of the grass and sidewalk. A green sedan ran by and splashed yesterday’s rain near my feet – oh, may Allah forgive that driver, as he floored the pedal and swerved down the street, obviously trying to get away from me. I slowed down my pace and walked with no purpose, shuffling my gray sneakers against the gravelly concrete.

I walked into the community playground, ducking under the monkey bars to reach the swings. I sat in one of them, kicking my legs forward and backward, gaining momentum towards the heavens above. I heard a voice behind me.

“Hey, Kalia?” Aya swept into the swing next to mine, pulling herself into the swing and sitting quietly.

“Hey,” I said, my feet scraping the mulch below to slow my swinging. I hadn’t seen her follow me. She had walked off the bus and come to the playground, so I guess it was important. Her lips were pursed together, the bags under her eyes very defined. She pulled at her shirt, her hijab, her hands were everywhere. She sat down on the swing, shaking. Something was wrong.

“So, how’ve you been?” Aya began swinging at a snail’s pace. Her hijab floated in the wind, synchronizing with mine.

“I’ve been good, alhamdulilah, just trying to balance the work from school and home,” I said, with a grimace that made her laugh weakly.

“How’s your foster mother going? Don’t worry, you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to,” Aya replied. It was common knowledge about the life I had, so it wasn’t something I really cared about when others asked.

“No, it’s all good. I guess she’s doing alright. I mean, I can’t stop her from drinking, but I’m good if I don’t do it, right?” We both laughed.

A few minutes passed as Aya talked about her mom. Her mom was a machine, she described, a woman who defined herself by making sure the bills were paid and there was food on the table.

“We don’t talk much,” Aya said. “After my father died, we had a house, money and time on our hands for the rest of our lives. She spends her time alone and I spend mine alone, and after I got sick it just got worse.”

There, she’d said it, she’d confirmed what I had thought. Aya had always seemed perfect to me – in person, in health, but her telling me that she was indeed sick, for however long and with whatever it was she had, was a secret one could only tell a friend. I realized at that moment that Aya and I, despite our significant differences – social, economic, or materialistic – had actually grown to be, well, friends.

I paused, then told her about my parents, the accident that ripped my life apart a year before. Aya gave a small, sympathetic smile, brushing her hijab out of her face as the wind blew across the playground. We continued to swing, quiet.

“Shouldn’t you be with your other friends? All those guys that admire you?” Aya stopped swinging and stared at me, her blue shoes unconsciously kicking the mulch underneath her feet.

“What friends? I’m guessing you’ve noticed I don’t have too many. And as for guys – no, I’m not really into that stuff.” Her voice was bitter, vulnerable, and I noticed her looking down at the ground. The smartest, prettiest, most wealthy girl in the school, that I knew of, had no friend but me – so she implied. She was too reserved, too shy to even acknowledge the fact of who she seemed to be. I ignored it.

We sat in silence for the next few minutes, wind slowly pushing our swings forward and back. Aya attempted conversation about school, and it was like she lit a fire – once she began to speak, and I began to respond, it didn’t end. The next few hours went by quickly as we sat and talked on those two swings, ignoring all calls from our parents and the rain that fell in torrents down our faces. We laughed, we cried, we became sisters.

Aya laughed in the wind and rain as she leaned back in her swing, staring above, shielding her eyes from the rain. I had always considered her to be conceited, snobby, but here sat one of the few girls I knew, one of the few people in this world that I now trusted.

***

I called my mother from the playground at about 9 p.m., after Kalia and I had finished our talk. The car came within minutes, and my mother was extremely upset. I sat in silence, while she screamed about the effects of getting sick in the middle of chemotherapy. She wasn’t mad at me, she was scared for me.

She had gotten a call from the doctor earlier that day, stating that there was a mistake in their results – something was wrong in my body, something was metastasizing and I had to go in the next day to find out how the doctors would fix it. My hair had fallen out weeks ago, but the powers of hijab had fixed that issue. I had gotten thinner, but I didn’t care, because it didn’t matter anymore.

I sat in silence, my heart pounding with happiness. It didn’t matter what clothes she wore, how she was so reserved or detached or afraid of what her life would become. I had gotten through to Kalia; she had gotten through to me. I had found a voice, I had found a confidante, and I had found a friend.

***

A week went by from the talk with Aya. She had told me her life, her story – how she had started out with two parents, then one, then that one parent turned blank, someone who was so absorbed with money and bills and herself, that Aya had no one to ever talk to. She explained how different her life truly was from the one that was presumed.

Aya wasn’t at school for that week since I last talked to her. I was tense and a little nervous for her health – she never let on that something was wrong, but her weight and her appearance decayed slowly, and that was scary to see for someone so full of light, so full of honesty. It’s like she didn’t care that she was sick, she didn’t mind. She wanted only to live.

Standing at a lab table in chemistry that morning, holding a test tube, I anxiously stared at the slow clock above my head, wanting to go home. Time went by slowly when I was alone, I noticed, and doing these projects without a partner was getting more difficult by day. I had started my own little fire in the test tube I held. Other kids in the class laughed with each other, yelling across the room, until the classroom phone rang shrilly, silencing the class to manic whispers.

Mr. Brown picked up the phone and listened, nodding. He dropped it and walked softly to his desk, removing his lab glasses. He wiped his eyes on the back of his sleeve, took in a deep breath and signaled for the class to quiet down.

“Class,” he began, his eyes cast downward. “Aya Rashid died last night.”

I dropped the flaming test tube onto the ground, burning a little hole into the ground.

***

My permanent lab partner for the year, “no switching or crying,” left me to switch and cry as my mind went completely blank. I left school, I went home, I left everything behind as I walked to the swings at the playground at dusk to think.

She had leukemia, and she never told anybody that didn’t have to know. Aya hid her secret in an attempt to sway pity away from her. She hid her wealth and her status and her life because she thought she never deserved the praise, she felt she never deserved to be told that she was so extremely worthy of everything that came her way.

Hours passed in seconds. Night fell and the nearby lamppost shined its light. Aya was dead, but I was still here. Running down the gray, wet concrete, watching cars go by and moonlight appearing – I cried, I cried for the kindness she had given me and the time I had wasted, believing her to be everything she was not. Reaching my house, I stepped into the cluttered, smelly hallway, slamming the door behind me with all of my might, hearing Mary Long sputter and wake in the living room. I pounded up the stairs, made my way to my room. Pulling out my prayer rug, washing my hands and my face and my eyes, I prayed to Allah to forgive Aya, for any wrong she could ever have committed. I prayed for myself, for my foster mother, for anybody and everybody that crossed my mind, my mind was racing.

She was my only friend, and I was her only friend, but the way she was – it was the way I wanted to become.

Tears falling, I prepared for Aya’s funeral.

It was another year at beloved public school, another year at Valley Falls High – home of brand new desks and bats in the ceiling. Lockers slammed and kids laughed as I walked through the halls, bumping shoulders and finding pathways in the crowd. I sighed. Summer had flown by in a midst of summer reading and relaxing, but it was too late to run out of school now. Walking into chemistry, my first class on my first day of junior year, I noted the nonexistent “Welcome Back” vibe the halls were giving off. The empty, depressing room seemed to cloud my morale even further, and the lack of anyone familiar in the classroom only made it worse. My eyes anxiously searched for friends – any? Of course not, there weren’t ever any. Staring at the clean blackboard, I sat in the front row, my blue flats nervously tapping on the floor, my fingers twisting the tassels of my gray hijab. Students piled into the classroom as the bell screeched. It was going to be a long day.

***

Aya. How I despised her. I watched as she sat down, the room instantly brighter, her designer blue shoes obnoxiously clicking on the dusty tile floor. A year had gone by, and we were now juniors, but she hadn’t changed. Aya was little-Miss-Perfect, praises flying around her every move. Perfect grades, perfect style, perfect life. Her long, slouchy shirt complimented her fashioned gray hijab – I glanced down and yanked at my black shirt, covering the cheap quality beneath it. I didn’t care about clothes; I had other things to worry about. I could care less about Aya and her stuck up materialism. I straightened my black hijab, glaring at those who stared. Other students began pouring in as the new chemistry teacher cleared his throat. Mr. Brown, he said his name was. I was tired of school already.

***

My feet unconsciously tapping on the floor, I glanced around the room, searching for familiar faces – any familiar face, anyone with a flicker of recognition as my eyes met theirs, just anyone with a smile. None. I recognized Kalia from the masjid, but she sneered as I waved, her black hijab flying as she quickly turned her head. She hated me.

Mr. Brown, our chemistry teacher, began calling out names and I swiveled forward in my seat, tired. I had been getting very exhausted, too easily, dangerously quickly. The doctor worried.

I shook my head, mentally changing subjects. Mr. Brown passed out little slips of paper as he explained that we would pick names out of a hat, and that person would be our permanent lab partner for the year. I pulled out a bright, blue pen from my purse, and wrote my name down in large, flowing letters. My fingers were shaky.

***

“Of course,” I thought, as I strode out of school after a long day. Of course my locker would have gum all over the lock, of course I would trip in the lunch line, and my hijab would get caught on some jock’s binder. But in chemistry, out of a class of thirty, out of all those useless laws of probability, of course I’d get stuck with Aya to be my “permanent lab partner for the year, no switching or crying,” as Mr. Brown put it.

Walking down the street, dodging falling leaves and still rainwater, I reached the front steps of my house. It seemed empty. Green moss grew over the windows and cracks in the sidewalk mirrored the bleak and gloom that surrounded my house. The screen door creaked open as I gently placed my backpack on the linoleum floor, tentatively stepping over broken toys and unfinished food.

Half-empty bottles of beer littered the counter, a liquid form of escape for the woes of a foster mother. I heard her yelling my name from within the living room, twenty feet away. Mary Long, her name was, and I was in her care until I turned 18. I had a year to go, a year going by too slowly. She was drunk, as she always was, and nothing but the checks issued to her ever mattered. I was out of the house for as long as I possibly could, and the other kids were too young to do much than sit around. I was only with her because the system had thrown me here.

Ignoring her yells for more drinks, I tiptoed down the hallway, towards the stairs. I thought about my parents. I missed my mother so badly, and my dad, who would’ve told me that everything would be alright, that everything happened for a reason. Everything did happen for a reason, but it was always the wrong reason for me. It was my belief that all good things, any good thing in my life, ceased.

I grabbed my backpack and ran up the stairs, two at a time. I was Kalia, I was strong, and I was an orphan – but hey, I was still a kid.

***

“Aya Rashid?” The nurse called out my name, loudly and incorrectly. It was expected. My mother held my hand as I grabbed my cardigan and walked across the yellow and green tile, my heart sinking with every step. Dr. Gordon, my doctor and confidante, greeted me at the door with a wheelchair and a box of tissues – “Ready?” he asked, his mouth smiling, but his eyes sad.

He knew I hated needles, he knew I hated uncertainty, he knew I hated my life. Everything about me was terribly fake. There was a façade in front of my face, a pretense that everyone thought I was perfect, that I had a perfect life. It was quite the contrary, if only others knew. I lived a life of solitary pain, but no soul would ever know.

I grimaced as I sat in the wheelchair, rolling up my sleeves. I fell back, my chin dropping to my chest, Dr. Gordon carefully piercing my skin with the needle. The chemicals began seeping into my body as I concentrated on the anesthesia. If everything went well, if nothing else failed, then this would be my last chemo for a long, long time.

Or, it would just be my last. I closed my eyes, tears silently rolling down, the world around me falling into darkness.

***

A couple weeks later, after an agonizingly long first month of school, I sat with Aya at a table attempting to finish our chemistry lab. We had gotten to be closer, although many things kept us apart – her money, my lack of it, her beauty, my lack of it. I told her about my parents, and she told me how her life wasn’t as great as it seemed. I didn’t believe her, but then again, she always seemed sad.

“Pop!” Our mixture of hydrochloric and sulfuric acid blew up as Aya dropped a test tube. A thin wisp of smoke arose from a small hole in the ground as people from our chemistry class gathered around to view the accident.

“I’m sorry,” Aya stuttered, her face calm and her gloved fingers quickly picking up shards of glass. Mr. Brown brought out his tub of sand and helped clean up the mess, and went to the back rooms to deposit the waste. I stood at the edge of our lab table, shuffling my feet as I reassured Aya that it was okay – we weren’t close friends, but if it was me, I would want anyone to make me feel better.

“Hey, it’s whatever, it’s not like he doesn’t have more,” I smirked, pointing to a rack overflowing with clean test tubes. Aya smiled, her face red, and looked at the rest of the class, who were still staring at the little hole on the floor.

“So they send their terrorists to school, too? Hey, Kalia, didn’t you used to say your dad’s name is Osama?” This came from a kid named Jamie, the ignorant Jamie, the one who purposefully made himself look like an idiot for attention. He laughed loudly and slapped high-fives with a few of his friends, placing the hood of his jacket around his head like a makeshift hijab.

I saw red.

“Well, then,” I said, rushing towards him. Aya grabbed me before I could carry out my punishment to him, two black eyes and a tooth to remember his words. I pulled her cashmere arm off mine in disgust and stared meanly into her widened eyes, my heart pounding. I could barely breathe, I was so angry.

Aya winced at where I had touched her arm, and I was a little startled – what a weakling, I barely touched her. I turned and walked to the corner of the room, and Aya stumbled after me, her heels clicking slightly on the linoleum. Her face flushed red as I stared at the wall, trying to calm down. It was a chemistry accident, that’s all it was. Terrorist? My dad?

Really?

“Kalia, don’t even listen to him. Honestly, just turn the other cheek, learn to ignore it and it won’t hurt. He doesn’t know about your parents, he doesn’t know anything…” Aya’s eyes were cool, bright, and unaffected – I couldn’t stand how she could let anyone, stupid or not, insult her so deeply.

Mr. Brown walked back into the classroom, oblivious to the events of the past two minutes. The class disseminated back to their respective lab tables as the bell rang for 2^nd period. I ran out the door.

…Will their friendship work out, or will there only be rising enmity between the two?
Find out in ‘A Friend to Remember: Part II!’