17| Maybe
"Hasan, if you don't get up within minutes I'm going by myself."
The sky was the prettiest purple and the Fajr Adhan had just sounded in my phone a minute ago.
"What's this desperation," came his muffled voice from where he'd buried his face in the big hotel room pillows, "We're here for some time now."
"And we're catching every sunrise we can!" I cried. "Come on, Hasan, you've been sleeping since last evening!"
He didn't reply, and I figured he was unconscious again.
"Well then. Good night."
I stood.
I recited Ayat ul Kursi and blew it over both of us. And then, grabbing a towel, my backpack and phone, I left the room.
The walk from the hotel to the beach was barely six minutes, but I still couldn't deny the awkward loneliness that engulfed me once I was outside of the hotel's premises. I wasn't used to being outside without having Hasan or anyone else accompany me, much less in a completely strange city.
I loved it, but being by myself was very weird. And it was still fairly dark, which additionally made it somewhat creepy.
But I forgot all of that when I was at the beach again. The sounds of the waves drowned out everything else just like it had yesterday. At night, the beach seemed altered, yet the inexplicable peace it gave me remained the same.
For some time I just stood there, completely consumed by the smell of the saltwater, the moonlight overhead which made the waves glitter, the contentment of being here while Hasan wasn't and thankful there was nobody else here. Then I spread my towel across the sand to pray Fajr, a little far from the water.
Soon I was done and the sky was a beautiful wonder between pink and purple now. The sun would rise soon was what I was thinking of, almost giddy with joy, when I heard him.
"You ought not to be out alone at this time here, madam," said the voice of a old man from not very far from me. It was accented and I barely understood half of his sentence.
I turned around and saw his cart first, and then him, pushing it laboriously across the sand. "They find it peaceful. Not us."
"What?" I asked.
I wasn't doing the right thing, I knew. I couldn't just talk to a strange hawker at this hour, especially one that just told me I wasn't safe here by myself. But something made me believe he wouldn't harm me.
"The sea; they like it. It calms them. And you're one of them, I can tell. But not us."
By 'us' did he mean the people who lived in a town overlooking the ocean? Or the vendors like himself who spent more than half the day here, with hours of having nothing to look at except the water?
I watched him set up his business for the day and decided not to ask what he meant by that. Instead I asked, "But what's not to love?"
He smiled, but it seemed fake. "I didn't say we don't love it, madam. What fool doesn't love his daily bread!"
It made no sense to me. I walked some steps to hear him better.
"But then why isn't it peaceful to you?"
"Oh, madam," he smiled. "Not everything you love will give you peace."
"What does that mean?"
"Not everything you love will give you peace," he repeated. "And not everything that gives you peace will continue doing that forever."
He confused me further with every word, and I was just starting to make him explain when I saw Hasan sprint towards me.
"Good morning," I said when I thought he could hear me, but when he was in front of me and I saw his face, I started to panic.
"What the hell is wrong with you, Adinah?!" He halted and spat, looking back and forth between my face and the man's. "What do you think are you doing here?!"
"You weren't getting up, and I - "
"Damn right I wasn't getting up, because I was asleep. You couldn't wait an hour for me? Who allowed you to leave the hotel and roam about? Are you a freaking toddler, Adinah? You don't know you can't just get up and walk out by yourself?!"
Why couldn't I? I wanted to ask him, but I was scared. He was too angry.
"You're overreacting, Hasan - "
"I'm overreacting?" He screamed. "I'm overreacting. My wife wanders off in the middle of the freaking night and roams a strange city and I'm supposed to be all chill with that? Is that what you're trying to say?!"
"Yes, because I'm capable of taking care of myself. I didn't want to miss the sunrise," I said, nearly breaking down at that because the sun was rising right as we stood here fighting, and I couldn't even take a moment to turn and look.
"Oh you are? You're Amaan's height and weight at most, Adinah, and a woman, which makes you even more vulnerable than the kid. Don't try to delude yourself even for a moment that you're anything to take care of yourself, because you aren't."
I was just about to contradict that when he decided to go on.
"And who gave you the freedom to do as you liked? Did you forget you have a husband who you must obey? You think you can just do whatever you want and I won't say anything?"
This was a lot. I didn't know he'd react this way or I wouldn't have left the room. But I was angry too, now. What did he mean I must obey him? He needed to know I was enough for myself.
"I can do whatever is halal. I didn't disobey you, I just didn't feel you'd say no if I had asked, which was why I didn't feel the need to ruin your sleep to ask for permission."
"Oh for God's sake, Adinah, how can you be so darn stupid?! Do you have any idea what things could happen to you had you not been lucky today? Do you want to die?!"
"I didn't die."
"You could've! You never think about anyone but you, do you?! You don't think of anything except what you want to do!"
"I blew Ayat ul Kursi on you!"
"Well, I nearly lost it, and Ayat ul Kursi doesn't seem to work on keeping me safe from my own assumptions. Can you imagine what it was like for me to wake up with you gone?! I was going berserk trying to find you all over the suite and when I go downstairs, with no phone, no shoes, trying at five in the morning to locate my wife like a madman, the receptionist tells my my wife walked out. In a strange city neither of us has ever been before."
I remained silent. I'd figured now that anything I'd say would give him more things to throw at me. Maybe if I remained shut he'd stop, too.
"And when I do find her it's on the beach chatting with a goddamned pakora seller! Wallahi, just why you were so hellbent on coming here to be roasted at this hour is beyond me."
The sun was out now and it was getting hotter by the minute. I turned around to look at the horizon and ended up having to squint. And there were also a lot of people here now.
"I wanted to catch the sunrise and you never let me. I detest you."
"The feeling is mutual!"
"And you're in pj's."
"No shit, Sherlock! We're going back to sleep."
"No, we're going out."
"First of all," he said, "breakfast."
We reached the hotel again, and he went straight to the bathroom to shower while I readied my own stuff.
Soon it was clear Hasan was gonna take a while, so I decided to nap. Which my thoughts obviously didn't allow me to do.
His anger was valid. His panic was valid. I was already wondering how I could apologise to him for doing what I did because I was now realising I was wrong. I didn't shy away from my mistake.
I couldn't exactly say what he said was wrong, but I was having a hard time letting it go. Not because it was the first time he'd ever been this mad at me, nor because he honestly looked like he was worried I'd be hurt, which meant he thought of me as anything but a woman who could take care of herself. It was because of his choice of words.
Words, which were all that mattered to me now.
He had said I must obey him, which wasn't wrong, so why was I thinking about it, playing it over and over again in my head, trying to find out why it hurt me so much to hear it coming from him?
Maybe I was just bothered about the fact that he yelled at me, and I understood where he was coming from, but he never understood the truth that I wasn't wrong either.
Whatever it was, I was thoroughly disturbed by the whole thing. And consequently, I found myself wishing again that I could go somewhere where he wasn't around.
Suddenly, he interrupted my thoughts and crept up behind me.
"Am I the only," he sang. "The only belieeeever?"
"Hasan, stop."
This man was something else. It took him less than a half hour to become himself after such a huge fit of rage. But I was glad he was okay again.
"There's something happening here, there's something happening - "
"Stop!!"
" - here. The only . . . Only believer!"
"Hasan I swear if you don't stop right this moment - "
"There's something happening here, I hope you feel what I'm feeling tooooooo - "
I started to get up then, but his arm around me stopped me.
"Let go of me!"
"Confession."
He said it a lot now. Out of nowhere he'd remember something that he wanted to let me know and just let it out. He claimed I wasn't trying to open up to him the way he was, but I honestly didn't feel the need to tell him anything of my past. My present and future already belonged to him.
But totally unlike the other times he said that, my eyes stilled and my breathing hitched.
It was the way he said it; his voice was hoarse and his tone weighed by something sad. Just moments ago he was singing, and now he was all serious.
I didn't want to hear it. But I turned my head by a fraction to make him speak anyway.
"I hadn't wanted to marry you."
When he said it and my brain processed it, when my head felt like it had just shaken on my pillow because of the humongous burden he just laid on it, that was when I realised how quickly we can go from feeling one thing to a completely different one. Seconds ago I was as comfortable as I could ever possibly be, faking being irritated while if anything, I was glad Hasan was already forgetting what happened sometime ago . . . and now I was feeling claustrophobic to the point that the sheets on my body and his single arm over me suffocated me.
Soon, I was sure, I was going to start crying. So without wasting any time, I spoke, lest he'd see me cry and decide not to talk further.
"But . . . but I thought you - "
"Mamma forwarded that picture of yours that Jebrail had sent her to me," he said, cutting me off.
In his style Hasan was starting to try to tell me the story. I feared moving so I didn't interrupt even involuntarily.
"Everyone liked you, and they were all so happy to finally find someone they liked for me after all this time . . . so happy, that before I even saw your picture for myself, I was sure that I was not going to say no. I just couldn't. You know?"
This was something that I should've given a thought, let's not deny it. It was something I should've assumed. But I hadn't.
The reason for it could be that I'd been hopeful that maybe, just maybe, he had actually liked me. Maybe he had chosen me. Maybe he wanted to keep me, unlike my mother who didn't, not at all. Unlike my father who wouldn't have, had he been alive.
This is something every single woman in our culture wonders at one point.
Why do our parents raise us saying they love us, but rarely ever treat us like they ought to if they really did?
Why do our parents raise us saying they love us but differentiate between us and their sons at trivial things?
Why do our parents say they love us and still want us to get married and be gone, if it's not what they want for their sons?
Probably because they only think they love us. Maybe loving isn't the same as being under the illusion of loving.
Hasan here was telling me that he married me not because he wanted to, but because he didn't want to disappoint his parents.
As if he had sacrificed something.
I wish I could stop myself from saying it, but I couldn't.
"Thanks," I snapped, still not facing him. "You did me a great favour."
For a long moment he remained silent, unmoving, and I couldn't stop thinking about his arm still around me.
Just as I was about to push it away and try to leave, he spoke.
"You never allowed me to finish," he said, his voice still calm.
"I'd rather you don't say anything more, because although I truly can't imagine why, but Hasan, but when you say you did not want to marry me my heart aches."
At this point I was glad I was not facing him. It came out of me like a volcano erupting, uncaring it was destroying everything around.
"But never mind that. I am not allowing myself to care about all that. Because like it or not, we are in this marriage now, and all I want to focus on now is to keep it going. And I beg you not to continue, because I'm already feeling extremely unwanted and extremely fricking tired of being unwanted, and if you say another word I'm afraid I'll start crying and wouldn't know how to stop."
But by the time I reached the last word of my little rant my eyes were already moist and my throat trembled.
For another long moment he remained silent, and I believe I could've imagined it, I'm not sure, but I think I felt his grip around me tighten just a little bit.
"Adinah if I make right now a list of the things I love, you will be the first I mention."
His tone was what told me that he wasn't kidding, and the sincerity I heard in his voice pushed me off the edge.
I was sobbing now, and he let go of me slowly and rose a little.
"I may not say it every day, but since you've cooked up such absolute crap in your head about your worth, I want to make it clear once and for ever : Adinah Ilmas, you're the one thing that I really want now."
I refused to rise and face him although something told me he was waiting for me to.
"You are who I never realised I wanted, but I did. God, I did. Hell, I needed you. You are who my Allah sent to me, because although I, a mere human, remained unaware, He knew what I needed, right? He made me; He knows me in and out. And He sent me you.
"I have had so much faith in my parents all my life, trust me, but it has doubled now after my marriage, do you know why? Because my marriage united me with you. You, who my soul yearned for, without ever letting my heart know. And now that my heart knows, it celebrates every waking moment this woman who sleeps beside me with four pillows and cries too much and does mysterious things on that godforsaken laptop and likes cats and is not facing her handsome husband right now because if she did she's scared he'd kiss her breath away."
At that, I rolled over and buried my face in my pillow.
"Oh, don't worry, love, I wouldn't dare steal a kiss. You're going to give it to me with due respect. I'm waiting for it."
"That day isn't coming," I said, my voice muffled by the pillow. "By the way, I did not think you had such negative feelings about my laptop?"
"Well now you do. One confession led to another. What do you even do in it?!"
"Play games," I said.
Would that be counted as a lie? How different is playing with the lives of fake people from playing a computer game?
"Ah, play games. It's the only thing you like, isn't it? Like you're playing with my heart right now."
"I don't know what you mean," I said, though I knew what he meant. "I thought that was you."
"I love you," he said again, his forehead against my cheek, and just then, hoping he couldn't see my face, I let my tears fall.
Because I didn't say it back. Because I couldn't.
. . . Because I was still thinking about what he'd said at the beach.