Falling Innocently

Prologue

Once they got their desired meals, both girls chose a wooden table underneath a huge leafy tree and sat. Waliya was barely comfortable when Asmaa demanded the details of Waliya's news. "Speak woman!" she all but screeched.

Waliya wanted to drag it out and be dramatic, but that wasn't her style and manner of things. That was more like Asmaa, dramatic. So instead of torturing her poor friend, she began speaking as she ate. "So, he like literally gaped at me. His jaw was hanging and I smiled secretly to myself. I had him with that one nail. I knew it and he knew it, but then I calmed down and told him that because I said I was ready for marriage, does not mean I want to get married right now, nor does it mean that I have a boy in mind. I told him that it simply meant that I want to get married."

Asmaa stared at her wide eyed. "Did he calm down?"

Waliya scoffed. "He said that he already has a boy in mind for me," she groaned and lowered her head onto the wooden table.

"WHAT?" Asmaa said a little too loudly.

"I said that he said that he already has a boy in mind for me," Waliya repeated.

Asmaa banged her hand on the table and Waliya jerked up. "I know what you said. But ya Allah, I just can't believe your dad changed directions so quickly!"

"You were not the only one taken aback by it. Zakia and Farah were also surprised by it. Not to mention that Raihan was upset. Raihan thinks I'm too small to even think of marriage!" Waliya was frustrated.

Asmaa just started laughing. "Too small for marriage? It's Sunnah to get married young!"

Groaning, Waliya answered her. "You don't have to remind me!"

"I think it's because you're the baby in the family. But what was Farah doing there in any case?" Asmaa asked as she sipped her ice tea.

Waliya rolled her eyes. "Farah brought her children with to see my parents. You know they take her as their daughter rather than their niece," Waliya said in a bored tone. "But anyway, I was talking to Anas and Mu'aaz. They dislike school even more than you did," she chuckled. "I was quite surprised. I thought they would have been more like Zakia and I who liked school to an extent."

"Never mind that, do you know how hilarious you were?" Asmaa said randomly cutting into the story.

"What?"

Annoyed with Waliya being dense, Asmaa decided to just be frank with her. "My word! You were blinded by his beauty, but you should have just said 'Subhanallah!' You were awestruck by him. You could barely get a word out!"

Waliya scoffed. "Never! I spoke to him first! Asmaa, you were the one who was gob smacked!" Waliya said outraged.

Asmaa laughed nervously and fixed her scarf up, trying to take the attention off her. Waliya just rolled her eyes instead. "Those eyes got Asmaa hypnotized!" Waliya said in a sing-song voice.

Asmaa blushed and Waliya waggled her eyebrows. "See? I knew you were affected by him!" she said suggestively.

"Of course I was affected by him! Allah made him spectacularly, Alhamdulilah for the rest of the world!" she laughed.

Despite the two of them nineteen year old Muslim girls, they were just like any other teenage girls on the planet. They had a love for fashion that wasn't quite Islamic, but that did not mean they indulged in those desires.

Waliya just rolled her eyes again. "I suppose so, Asmaa," Waliya said unconcerned as she picked up her phone to scroll through the news.

"Don't ignore me!" Asmaa said sounding annoyed, but Waliya was too immersed in her phone to be bothered by her offhand comments.

"Waliya!" her mother shouted. Waliya arrived home less than an hour ago. Her day at campus had not being completely easy. Her lecturers had decided that even after three months of being at university, not enough essays were written, and thus she had more and more essays and projects to hand in.

"Jee mama?" she yelled back. It was wrong and disrespectful of her to do so, but she was tired and cranky and so many things were on her mind.

"Come here, your father wants to talk to you," her mother said.

Waliya cringed. There was probably just one reason her father wanted to talk her: their talk they had the night before. With a strength she didn't know she possessed, she slowly made her way downstairs, each foot trembling slowly, slowly as it touched the ground. Then, before she knew it, she was facing her father.

Sitting against the single chair, made just for him to give off an intimidating air, Farhaan Ebrahim sat with his strictest face. Waliya was slightly terrified and a little sad that her brother Raihan wasn't here to protect her against their father's wrath. "Nafeesa!" he yelled.

Her mother scurried in, with a small smile on her face and immediately sat on the sofa the furthest away from Waliya, which then forced her to sit opposite her father. She was shaking in her seat and for that reason; her father had to suppress a smile at her nervousness.

"Waliya," he said in a stern voice, one that showed he was not playing around. "You said you wanted to get married, so your mother and I spoke about it at length last night."

"You will marry a man that we have chosen for you. In fact, I will be speaking to him and his family next week," her father said sternly.