Hana & Hanaan | ✓

Chapter 20

Memories, my foot.

"You didn't say." Dadi watches them with admiration in her eyes. After all, they're the Taha and Yahya looking into her granddaughters' case. "What exactly you were after in this information heist of yours."

Taha scratches the back of his neck. Yahya plays with his sleeves. Nashwa opens my box of brownies and draws in a deep breath, falling back into her chair, eyes hypnotic.

"Doctor Amima," she murmurs.

"Doctor Amanuallah, you mean?" Taha glares at her.

She shakes her head, chomping halfway through the crust and fudge in a single bite. "Doctor Amima Fareed and her marital status although checking her age first would have saved you a lot of heartache."

Taha rolls his eyes. "FYI, our Prophet married Hazrat Khadija when he was twenty five and she was forty. How old could Doctor Amima be?"

"Thirty one." Dadi takes the box from Nashwa looking through for the moistest piece. She passes the box to Yahya who hesitantly takes half a piece before passing it on to Taha. He keeps it to himself, not meeting my eye. I wasn't going to ask for the box anyway. "She won't marry you."

"I will court her."

"She will stomp all over you with her high heels if she's outside the hospital. Otherwise, with her running shoes. She does not like being chased, she prefers to chase."

My eyes aren't the only ones staring at Dadi wide-eyed. She licks the chocolate off the corner of her mouth.

Taha grins. "That just makes her all the more thrilling."

Is he for real?

"Not everything is an adventure, mister." Dadi covers her mouth to hold back a burp as she draws away her diet Sprite can. "She'll tell you that herself and when she does so, it will be from her experience. If you had met her ten years ago, you would have seen her sauntering through this hospital in the same shoes as she does today but in off shoulders tops and tight jeans and low necklines and if you dared look too long she would have slapped you tight across the cheek even if you were there to get a broken jaw mended. But time changes us all and Amima has changed in some way if not most. I shall not expose her sins for it is a sin to do so."

Nashwa meets my eye. Is there more to expose?

"How do you know her so well, Ma'am?" Yahya sips on his coffee.

"Amima is a family friend." Dadi let's go of her can, drawing air now that it is empty. She turns to me and Nashwa. "You remember Zayaan? She's his paternal aunt."

"Hana's Zayaan?!"

Trust Nashwa to have no filter.

A slow smile slips over Yahya's mouth as his eyes glide to Taha who wiggles his eyebrows at me, eyes a little too bright. I sip on my own diet Coke can, looking at him squarely in the eye. All those times he called me out, reminding me Yahya's engaged, well this is a comeback for that!

Dadi hums. "Hana's Zayaan. He finishes his medical degree soon, he'll start his house job then. Perhaps when Fareed calls again for the hundredth time to unite Amima and Ahmad as one, I will ask his grandson's hand for Hana."

Nashwa chokes on her chai with no sugar and Taha on his Pepsi can. Dadi takes this opportunity to pull away the box of brownies from Taha. She takes another piece and offers the box to me but I shake my head ever so slowly. Through it all, Yahya is smiling gently.

Nashwa is still choking, entire face red, clutching the golden chain at her throat. I mirror her perplexity.

"Ahmad worked on her divorce case nine years back, still glum on his grief and fresh at his career," Dadi continues. "Messy it was, too many bought judges, blood spills, innocent coffins and extra marital relationships. Ahmad didn't flinch, he was deranged, didn't accept defeat in those days. Amima also lost her mother to a stroke during a panic attack."