Alnihayya

||F l o w e r s||

I chuckled lowly "The feeling is mutual."

We stumbled out of the bed towards the cupboard. Minahil grabbed her uniform and ran over to the bathroom. She stuck her tongue out at me before closing the bathroom door, leaving me to change in the room.

I sighed and got changed nonetheless. Once we were done Saddia turned back to face us. "Alright then let's move."

I glanced at my mirror image one last time taking in my weird look of wearing a face veil on the Alnihayya uniform. It was a strange feeling to be dressed like that, but wearing an abaya into battle would be plain idiotic.

Minahil on the other hand, wasn't even wearing a hijab. I was probably the only girl with a face veil there and Minahil was the only one with her hair flowing freely on her shoulders.

A transport cart was waiting for us outside the room. Following Saddia's cue, we boarded the cart and Humna began guiding us out of row 'E' and into the glass elevator. After moving two floors up, when the elevator door finally opened, I realised why the dining room was called 'the cavern.'

Alnihayya headquarters was under a mountain range, yes I was aware of that. All the other rooms and airports I had been to, had been polished with tiled floors and painted walls to mask away the fact that we were in a mountain.

Here in the cavern though, there was no polishing, no painting, it was literally a cave. With stony walls and rocky uneven floor, it was huge but well lit and full of people. Alnihayya men and women all dressed the same.

I walked beside Minahil following Saddia. Both of us gazing around, taking in our environment. There were rows and rows of round tables sprawled on the left for the men and the right for the women with a path between them. The Alnihayya logo in the middle of each table. Young men and women sitting, chatting, laughing shouting.

As Saddia motioned us towards an empty table on the right at the women's side, quite a lot of women hi fived her on the way, a few exchanged salaams with her making me realise how popular she actually was.

"You can sit here." She said, stopping by an empty table. "The leaders are going to address us since all the members from around the world have gathered today." She pointed at a raised stage at the far end of the cavern with a long high table on it with chairs for ten.
Although the chairs were still empty, but those were the chairs the leaders would come and sit on.

Leaders including Zeyara.

I sat down along with Minahil imagining Zeyara's reaction when he sees me. He would probably lose it and come running up to me.

I smiled at that thought as Saddia bid us farewell and walked up to some other table of women who seemed to be her friends.

"Okay I know I've been dreaming all this time so please pinch me and wake me up." Minahil declared, extending her arm towards me.

I sighed and instead of pinching her arm, I slapped her face. "Now you know it's definitely not a dream."

"Ouch!" She squirmed in her chair, "flipping horror."

"Attention please. We are going to be joined by our senior leaders now." Humna's voice hollored in the cavern, blasting from speakers in every corner.

Everyone began table clapping-- slamming their hands and fists on the table. A few boys wolf whistled and whooted. Me and Minahil were the only ones not clapping with our eyes glued on the stage.

"Ali Ghedi from Somalia." Humna continued as a young man, about Zeyara's age, appeared from the back of the stage and smiled at the crowd before taking his seat at the edge of the stage.