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E l e v e n

Prayers should be the key in the morning and the lock at night.


Mashal

Life has been really good to me recently and I thank Allah for that. Everything is just falling back into place as if it never went wrong.

Ibrahim is probably the best sibling ever. (well at least compared to Minahil)
He let me join college again and didn't even force me to look for a job.

He works at a bank and somehow even manages the mosque at the same time, meaning I seldom see him.
He comes home late at night when he's too tired to do anything other than eat the dinner I make and compliment me on how 'amazing it is' even when it is burnt.

He drops me off and picks me up from college everyday without complaining about me always being late.

To sum it up, he is the perfect brother any girl would dream of.

With him time passed so quickly and happily that a month felt like a week.

But even when everything seemed to be perfect, I knew it wasn't.

Zeyara had stopped coming to college for some reason unknown to me. I ignored his absence for a few days thinking that it might be that 'secret job' of his that Marwa mentioned but then when a month passed without him showing up, I got a bit concerned.

No, not just a bit, actually I got really very concerned.
He was missing his assessments and lessons and this was not good for him at all. He was not an A grade student, he was an average student and missing so many classes for him meant that he could fail the finals.

He had done so much for me, he was the one who reunited me with my brother, my true family and it felt bad to me not to do anything for him.

So with the new courage I had gained by meeting Ibrahim, I went to Zeyara's personal tutor who was my tutor too, and casually inquired her about the reason of Zeyara's absence.

For a minute she seemed as if she was debating over whether she should tell me or not but finally she gave in with a deep sigh and said, "He's not absent. He just quit college to support his family."

"What? Why?!" I asked incredulously "Isn't this college free..... I mean it's funded by the government."

She shook her head and gave me a sad smile, "Its not about his college expenses, it's about his job. He had a full time job and he couldn't manage that with college."

"Oh. Okay thanks." I muttered getting up and quickly left her room before she could see my extremely worried expression.

That secret job again.
I need to know what that is.

A job should not be more important to him than his education. If his family is struggling, they should get the funding from the government like all people do......he shouldn't just start working full time.

I had completely forgotten about the zuhr salah when my phone started buzzing because of the azan alarm that I had put on.

Mentally slapping myself, I rushed to the reception to get the keys. As usual the receptionist handed me a file in which I had to sign with all my details to get the key.

I was doing that when the curious cat inside me, forced me to turn the page back to the time when Zeyara was still in college. He had roughly signed in his name and I wanted to laugh at his shaky writing.
Seriously, it seemed as if his letters had polio.

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