Superman Elseworlds: 'In the Name of...'

Chapter 1: Arrival

The problem was that the children who had been born just before his arrival or since it…they resented him. The older children competed with him gladly and, yes, some were upset when he bested them in knowledge, but the younger ones…they apparently felt that there was no way that they could attain his standard. I think Ishmail realised this and that's why he pulled away, although he has never admitted it to us.

Then Lubna arrived.

***

Asiyah

Lubna…I still remember the day when Ishmail first saw her. She was Nadia and Imran's little girl, born the same year as Ishmail. They were three years old when they first met, just before the accident. Ishmail was the kind of child who was inquisitive, would always be looking around but when he saw her, he looked at nothing else. She was sitting with Nadia in their parents' home; they had just come to the village that day. She was sitting there in a pink dress with little pink shoes on and she was yawning. Ishmail was with us when we visited them and we didn't realise that he just stood at the door, his mouth agape.

I used to tease him about that – I'm his mother, I can do that – that when he was a little older, especially after she had come back. The problem was that although she thought he was nice, he "weirded her out", Nadia told me several years later.

She came back when they were both 9 years old and she stayed here for a year. This was after Ishmail's…change. It was a week before she saw him, even though she came round every day. Nadia had told her to give him a gift she had chosen and Lubna was adamant that only she would give it to him. Seeing her pace up and down the room cursing him, I was glad we didn't get very good reception for our little television.

Ishmail came home a little before Maghrib and found Lubna napping in his room. He went off to perform his ablutions and, as he returned, I saw Lubna try to kick him.

***

Lubna

It was just a joke. Come on, he had avoided me for a week, so a kick up the rear was called for. I didn't think he would move out of the way, so I was the one who ended up with a sore behind. When he smiled at me, my first thought was 'how are his teeth so straight', and my next thought was how to stop the tears. My bum really hurt! And then, when I saw him holding the present, that he had somehow caught it, then I was angry. And do you know what the cheeky git did? He apologised and handed it back to me!

I'm pretty sure I swore at him.

…

We sorted things out – I shouted at him and he listened – and finally we opened the present. I didn't know what my Mum had sent; all I knew was that it was heavy. Ishy was curious, too, but he let me open it.

It was a laptop and, according to the letter my Mum sent with it, it had a satellite uplink to compensate for the lack of internet in the village. Mum was a bit of a tech-geek back then, but I think she had a friend of hers get everything set up. Anyway, it had a lot of educational material on there – some really advanced stuff and, with the uplink, Ishy could get more when he was ready for it.

Then I saw why he was grinning. There was a line in the letter – 'maybe you and Lubna can study together'.

Uhh!

***

Yusuf

Ishmail loved that laptop and the worlds it introduced him to. It was impossible for any of us to teach him anything, he had been making references to things we had no idea about, but with the laptop…well, I saw the change, the reassurance he received from it. He could see and hear things none of us could, and one of the reasons why he was withdrawing was because he felt so different…because he couldn't share. The laptop changed all that, Alhumdulillah, and my son was smiling again.