Islamic Stories,Rays of Sunshine

love Allah

Rehana looked up from her cup of tea, and shook her head disapprovingly.

“How do I look, Azhar?” Tasneem, her 20-year-old daughter was asking her brother, as she made her way to the breakfast table.

“Fat,” giggled 14-year-old Azhar, returning to his plate of sausages and eggs.

“Fat is exactly what you are going to be, if you keep stuffing your face like that,” Tasneem retorted, admiring herself in the Defy oven.

Clad in her tightest pair of fitted blue jeans, beige clogs, and a transparent white cropped top, which barely covered her chest, let alone her tummy, Rehana thought her daughter looked…

“Disgusting.” She bit back her anger and tried to sound calm.

Tasneem shot her mother a furious look. “Who asked YOU? Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

“Tasneem, you make it seem as if I’m picking on you. But I’m not. At the end of the day my advice is only for your own -”

“Yes, yes, for my own good – save the speech for someone else Mummy. As you might have noticed, it was lost on me yesterday and the day before and the day before, so just put a lid on it now will you?”

Rehana shook her head again, at a loss for words. She looked in her husband’s direction, pleadingly. But he sat at the table, cup of coffee in one hand, newspaper in the other, engrossed in the sports pages. Perhaps he’s pretending, she thought. Like me he’s probably fed up with the endless arguments.

“I’ll be late, have evening lectures, so don’t ring me twenty thousand times, nagging me.”

Her daughter’s angry voice interrupted her thoughts. “Oh, so you aren’t going to eat now?”

Rehana suddenly noticed that Tasneem was slinging her campus bag over her shoulder, and making her way to the door. She motioned at her to sit down.

“No thanks – I’ve lost my appetite.”

“Gooood Fatty’s lost her appetite, she’ll get thinner now, and there’ll be more food for me…” Azhar sang, as he grabbed Tasneem’s plate.

“Shut up you little brat.”

“Tasneem.” Thankfully, this time, Iqbal did intervene. “Don’t be rude to your brother, he’s just joking. And listen to your mother and sit down. Unless of course you want your car to be taken away from you for a while.”

“Okay, okay, I hear you.” Tasneem grudgingly put her bag down, and pulled a chair opposite her mother.

Rehana smiled at her daughter. “I don’t mean to push you into doing anything you don’t want to do Tasneem. I’m not asking you to cover your face or anything like that. In fact, lately I haven’t even asked you to cover your hair. With the way you’ve been dressing lately, I’d be happy if you just wore longer tops and looser trousers.”

Tasneem sighed. “Look Mummy, we only live once. You had your fun – I’m not stupid. The whole family knows you and Daddy met at campus – and don’t tell me you were covering your hair then. So after having your fun, it’s very easy for you to sit back and preach to me.”