Things Nadir N̶e̶v̶e̶r̶ Said | [MUSLIM]

VI

VI

Nadir

I may not be very religious, but I still adored my religion and our great Prophet, and I can say I tried consistently to be like him.

Anger is one of the many the foes of peace, and I acknowledged this fact. I tried to implement the one of Islam's basic principles which warned us against producing, or even dwelling near the flames of fury. Because before spreading and harming our loved ones, it is our own selves it burns inside out.

But I was only human.

I was glad I had left quickly after the stupid little conflict with Zaeb. A walk wouldn't do any harm, I decided when I was a little farther from home, even though I had already regained my quiet within minutes of getting out of there.

I was pacing the neighbourhood with an empty head when a grumble in my belly reminded me that it was almost lunchtime. I needed to get back home soon.

On my way back home I bent over to pet a stray kitten which seemed to have no family or home but a cardboard box. Then a couple walked by me, who appeared to have been arguing over something.

As they drifted away, I stood back up and wondered for the first time about how odd a couple Zaeb and I were.

We nearly never argued.

I shook my head and begun to walk faster toward home.

This was the second strange thought to come to my mind today. The first was right after the paint-water incident, when I was convincing some vulnerable part of me that Zaeb probably considered my hobby to be rather idiotic, because now she was probably comparing it with Sami's adventures of travelling miles for leisure and collecting expensive souvenirs.

I was only a few blocks from home, and continuing my attempt to shake away these baseless thoughts, when I heard him.

I stopped, now realising that he had been following me all this while.

I turned and stared downward.

There he stood on all four, inches from my feet. Mewling weak cries with full might, demanding without talking that I pick him up.

And that I did, suddenly giggling at how impossibly little he was — he fit into the palm of my hand. I couldn't help shaking my head. To stand in the middle of the street holding a little kitten! But I did not put him down. I rubbed the kitten's tiny head a little so he would calm down, and grinned.

And grinned again.

The cries stopped when I began walking, but he seemed to start yelling each time I paused. And so I kept walking.

When I reached home, I smiled to myself. I placed the little guy carefully in one of my jacket's bigger pockets, and entered.

Another stranger was in my house. On the couch sat a small, timid-looking girl sitting between Mishal and Mustafa. The babysitter, I thought. She had a headscarf. Zaeb seemed to have given her a drink that was still steaming. 

When I looked at Zaeb, she looked away.

"Papa, this is A-reej, and she will take care of us now," Mustafa announced.

I had wondered what Brad had meant when he'd said the girl he was talking about preferred to babysit for Muslim families, but now that I knew she was Muslim, it made sense that she'd prefer it.

"Arij, and also your new friend," said the girl. "Right, Mustafa?"

Mustafa gave her a dubious look. "But Mamma says strangers are not our friends."

"Of course they aren't, but I'm not a stranger! I'm like your elder sister," she smiled. "And either way, your sister does think of me as her friend."

"Yes!" Mishal cried. "I love A-reej, she knows how to make Play-Doh bracelets. I love bracelets!"

In the midst of all this I had almost forgotten him completely when he decided my pocket wasn't comfortable enough.

"Meaaow."

It hung in the air for some seconds, and before anyone asked, I spoke.

"Since Mustafa doesn't think Arij is his friend, I'll sh-show him the little friend I've brought him." I pulled him out.

Mishal shrieked upon laying her eyes on it. Zaeb was just confused, and Arij smiled. 

And Mustafa was in a trance.

He seemed to be staring at it unblinkingly and unmovingly. And then he moved, only to shock us all.

He put a little finger close to the kitten's head, and it lifted a paw to touch it.

They had an immediate and apparent connection instantaneously. He stroked, petted and held him with such care that it baffled me. He meowed at the kitten, and it replied. For some reason I had expected Mishal to be the one who'd like this little friend more, but it was clear who liked him more.

In fact, a rather frantic Mishal was now running about the room in fear, but she, too, would succumb to its charm in future.

"I'll name him . . . Shawarma," Mustafa declared as I proceeded towards my bedroom. I heard the women laugh and approve it.

They played some more with their two new friends, and after a while Zaeb came to our bedroom with our lunches on a tray.

I was too hungry to wait, so I started eating. She, too, ate silently.

"I'm sorry," she said when we were done, her voice little more than a murmur.

I didn't know what to reply with.

I was looking about, wondering what to say, when my eyes fell on it.

I did a double-take in surprise. And then I looked at Zaeb again, and in that moment, as I took in her remorseful expression and the way she wasn't even able to look straight at me, I could swear there was nothing as precious in this world than the woman who stood here in front me, biting her lips.

On my nightstand sat a piece of cardboard which seemed to have been cut off the box of one of Mishal's dolls. And Zaeb had painted on it. Little colourful flowers were the background to the message scrawled in black:

Please forgive me,

I didn't mean what I said.

"I'm sorry," she repeated several times, and I couldn't resist my sudden urge to hold her.

"It's okay, Zaeb" I whispered against her collarbone. "It's okay."

She was saying sorry for something I wasn't even angry about anymore.

Of course, I was thinking, I forgive her. I forgave her because I loved her so much more now. Because her remorse was so sincere. Because she was proper crying now.

And because I knew better than anyone else what it was like to feel something, but have no words to say it out loud.

I smiled, my eyes drifting towards the newest and most haphazardly-painted piece of Zaeb's, an abrupt realisation making my grip around her waist a little tighter: Zaeb was more like me than I had ever known her to be.

And now the proof of it was going to sit on our nightstand, as a reminder, or as an allegory of our mutual love for art.