Healing

34.

The sound of voices get louder as I slowly near the bottom of the staircase. I don't think anything could have gotten me ready for the scene I was about to witness.

There were people holding boxes, others holding fabrics and bows, and even more with what looked like food samples. As if in a movie, every single head in the room turns towards me as I hit the landing.

A lady with slicked back hair, clear glasses, and a measurement tape around her neck is the first to come towards me.

"Lift your hands up, ma cherie," her accent is quite Parisian.

I listen to her and she takes the measurement tape and starts wrapping it around different parts of my body. She rapidly tells something in French, which I assume are my measurements, to the women standing next to her who was holding a notepad. She nods as she scribbles them down hastily and before I know it they leave.

My mom joins me from the middle of the mess and I whisper, "What is all of this?"

"Omar sent all of them over to plan for the wedding," she whispers back.

"This early?" I yawn. It was definitely a but to early to be doing all this work.

As if on cue, a petite girl comes up to greet us. "Assalamuwalaikum."

"Walaikum Assalam," we both reply.

"I am Fatimah. I will be your wedding planner so for the next few weeks we will be working together," she introduces herself. "Um, I know it's slightly early but I wanted to get started as early as possible so we can get all of the important stuff out of the way today and tomorrow. After that it'll be stress-free."

"Sounds great," I say cheerfully.

"We have breakfast for you so you can start off with some energy. Um...did you tell her," she looks at my mom.

My mom shakes her head from side to side. "No."

"Tell me what," I say tentatively.

"Breakfast.." my mom starts.

"What about breakfast?" I was starting to get slightly annoyed as she wasn't getting to the point right away, but I stopped myself from complaining or having a negative tone in my voice. I needed to have sabr. Definitely not one of my strong points, but I was trying.

"He made breakfast for all of us," my mom states.

My eyes dart from hers to the hallway that lead to the kitchen. The house did have a nice sweet tinge to it. Almost like a bakery.

Instinctively, I take the hijab I had put on my head and wrapped it around my face tightly so my neck wasn't showing.

"Why didn't you tell me earlier," I whine.

She laughs. "He's not here. Your dad would kill him if he was here right now. He dropped it off a few minutes ago." She leads me into the kitchen.

"He did all this?" I gasp. It was astonishing how much he had made. There was bakhor khani (basically a sweet naan), an assortment of curries, and. To the side there was a cup of faluda. I automatically grab the cup and notice there was a little note written on it in sharpie.

Your favorite, I hope you enjoy.

I was surprised he even remembered that this was my favorite drink as I had only mentioned it once in passing.

I have to pay more attention to what he says so I could pull stunts like this. It felt slightly bad on my part that I wasn't doing things like this.

After marriage I could do it freely, I remind myself.