Love from a to Z

by S. K. Ali

  She was talking about the prophet Muhammad. How he was proposed to by his boss, Khadija.

  Those were the two I kept thinking about as we moved through the museum, with Hanna flitting around and between us and the other museum visitors like a butterfly, excitedly “landing” on a display of jewelry every once in a while to stare at the stones and pearls, read the caption sometimes, and then, always, take a picture.

  I was thinking of Ayaan and the prophet Muhammad. And a third person too: Adam.

  How Ayaan would just say, Tell him. That you’re interested in getting to know him seriously. Make a move, advance like our queen. Like you’re supposed to. Be the boss you’re meant to be, Zayneb.

  I was thinking of how the prophet Muhammad was a soft, beautiful soul, who didn’t get bothered that a woman had asked him, didn’t get bothered that she was his boss.

  How Adam had that kind of a soul.

  I could tell from the way he loved his mother to the way he treated his sister.

  Like, right now he was calling Hanna over to a display case. When she arrived, iPad held out ready to snap, he bent over so that he was at her level and then told her quietly about whatever precious thing they were looking at.

  I hung back, my facial expressions blocked by a pillar display housing a bejeweled sword sheath, unnamed feelings eating me up inside and most probably spilling out on my face.

  My parents have always been pretty relaxed when it comes to relationships. As long as we’re in a group or in public and observe certain boundaries, it’s okay for my siblings and me to be on friendly terms with anyone. They have no interest in setting us up or arranging marriages or, the best, making harsh statements like Stay away from boys! My sister, Sadia, met Jamil on her own at college, and my brother, Mansoor, has been talking to the same person, Hodan, forever, since they met in middle school, and everyone knows where that is headed. I mean, it was great for my parents that they knew Hodan from the mosque and that she was related to Ayaan’s family, which immediately gave her another layer of legitimacy.

  Because they’ve told me I’m free to meet someone who shares my values, whether they know the person or not, on that front, I know that they’d be completely fine if I told them that I’d met a boy in Doha. Like Sadia had been okay with it.

  But I didn’t know what to do with all this.

  I mean, I knew he liked me. And vice versa, to the hundredth power, if we’re talking mathematically.

  But what did that exactly . . . mean?

  The “certain boundaries” my parents had coached Sadia, Mansoor, and me about were physical ones. Touching leads to kissing leads to sexing.

  Which they (and every sermon at the mosque regarding this topic) had warned us about—especially that being alone with someone you had the hots for and who also had the hots for you could lead to touching and kissing and sexing.

  Until Adam, I hadn’t understood this.

  • • •

  “This is my favorite necklace.” As we exited the exhibit, Hanna extended her iPad to show me a picture of a heavy-looking choker filled with rubies, emeralds, and pearls, which appeared to cover the entire neck and part of the shoulders of the mannequin head it sat on. “Adam said I have a good eye. Because this one took a lot of crafting to make.”

  I peered at it. “I love it. Especially the rubies and emeralds, the way they’re stuck inside the gold.”

  Adam glanced over at the image. “Yeah, some of these are stones, but the parts inside the gold are like enameling. We just read a bit about it back there.”

  “It’s called meenakari, and Adam says we’re going to try to do it at home,” Hanna said. “Like, an easy version.”

  We came out of the hallway onto the landing of the central museum staircase, into a burst of light.

  I looked up at the amazing ceiling with a star-shaped skylight.

  “This is my favorite place in Doha, the museum. Actually, one of my favorite places on earth.” Adam joined me in gazing up. “I love things that inspire me to try my hand at making stuff.”

  “Adam is a maker,” Hanna said, breezing by us, going back to her favorite activity of skipping around snapping pictures. “He’s making a world in a room at our house. You should see it!”

  Adam laughed and straightened his head to look right at me. “No, you shouldn’t. Because there’s nothing there yet. It’s a work in progress.”

  He was just a few inches taller than me, and, maybe because of that, when he looked at me, we were almost eye to eye. It made me look anywhere but at him. Mostly because—cringe—I was afraid he’d see the feelings on my face. I examined the huge circular light fixture suspended just ahead of us. “What else do you make?”

  He turned to look at the fixture too. “All sorts of things. Whatever gets my interest at the moment.”

  “Wait. Was the last thing you made the rock-collection box for Hanna?” I stole a glance. Oops, it happened to be at the same time he did.

  “I heard my name!” She flew by us, snapping a picture of us.

  I’d have to get that girl to send me those pics she took of Adam and me.

  Adam nodded. “Yeah, but I’ve started another project since.”

  “The world room? That Ha—” I paused as Hanna made her way around us again. “That your sister talked about?”

  “And something else. A special project that I started just this morning. Before I came here.”

  After a quick glance at each other, we both turned to the light fixture once more. It was super intricate, the designs on it.

  Wait. What was in that look he just gave me? Is he making something, a special project, having to do with me?

  Stop, I told myself. Be realistic.

  I cleared my throat. “So, when are you going back? To London?”

  He became quiet.

  I waited a bit before facing him.

  He wasn’t looking ahead, at the light, but down at the floor. “I’m not. Going back to school. That’s something else I have to talk to my dad about. I officially de-enrolled from university before I flew here.”

  Then he lifted his head, ran his fingers through his hair, and gazed up again. All the way up at the ceiling.

  He doesn’t look sad.

  “What are you going to do?” I couldn’t imagine it. Dropping out of school. Handling so many unknowns.

  “I’m going to make things.” He smiled. “The thing is, I’ve got a bit of money that my mom left for . . . ‘fun,’ she called it. She wanted me to have a gap year before university, but I never took it. So I guess I will now. I may even go spend some time with my grandparents in Canada. Dad’s side in Vancouver, Mom’s in Ottawa.”

  My heart lit up. That’s kind of close to Indiana. Close to Springdale.

  Well, closer than Doha and London, at least.

  “Are you guys coming? I want to see the other exhibits too, not just stand here.” Hanna materialized right in front of us, ever-present iPad clutched to her chest.

  A bit of annoyance crept into me. At her antics.

  I was glad I didn’t have a little sister or brother.

  Adam must have seen something on my face, because he laughed and said, “She’s been a great big sister to me all these years. On top of being a little sister.”

  He paused, watched her opening the door for us with an exaggerated flourish, and then added, “I guess she’s had to be all sorts of things.”

  Oh. Yeah.

  I hadn’t thought about how growing up without a mother must have affected her.

  And made Adam and her tight in a way I couldn’t understand.

  Like Daadi’s death in October had dimmed some of the lights inside me and made me clingy, to even a blanket my grandmother had knit for me.

  We followed Hanna into another exhibit hall, both Adam and me quiet. We drifted from artifact to artifact, sometimes the three of us together, sometimes separately.

  And then I glanced to my left and saw it.

  The Marvels of Creation
and Oddities of Existence.

  That was the caption under a framed double-page spread with Arabic writing and pictures of trees and plants.

  THE INSPIRATION FOR MY JOURNAL WAS STARING AT ME.

  AN INTERLUDE

  HERE, ONE MUST TAKE THE reins of the story from both Adam and Zayneb. Their observations of the events that unfolded next differ so vastly that it’s hard to understand what actually happened if we rely solely on them.

  To find the truth and present it clearly, one has to wade through two vats full of emotions and perceptions—i.e., their journals—to collect and clutch at those stray facts, proven to be facts as they showed up in both journals.

  These mutual bits were then combined with the feelings for each other they’d admitted to themselves up until this point, and thus I present the following to you.

  • • •

  Reading the caption below the glass-enclosed thirteenth-century manuscript, Zayneb let out a small “oh.”

  Adam came to stand beside her.

  They stared at The Marvels of Creation and Oddities of Existence folios.

  Adam wondered if he should bring up that he knew she had a Marvels and Oddities journal just like him. Wondered whether that would sound slightly stalkerish, or whether it was cute. Or perhaps even romantic?

  The truth remained that he had previously wanted it to come up naturally, and here it was now right in front of them.

  Zayneb wondered if this—being presented with the real Marvels and Oddities—was a cosmic moment of significance in her life. The universe, or, in fact, the creator of it, sending her a message. That her life was on the right course.

  And then her phone buzzed.

  An e-mail from Fencer.

  The subject line read Analysis assignment = D- for extensive use of false equivalencies.

  Zayneb stared at the notification and then swore.

  It was a muttered swear, quiet in its volume but strong in its impact. On Adam.

  He tilted his head at her (in her journal, she recorded this tilt as being “judgy”) and asked, “Whoa. Everything okay?”

  She said, “No. My beeping”—as Adam recorded in his journal—“social studies teacher just gave me my first D ever.”

  “That stinks.” He tried to think of something to say to make her feel better. “Can you do the assignment over?”

  She shook her head. “I can’t. He’s like a crazy Islamophobe who hates on us Muslims.”

  Adam was taken aback. At this fact and the intensity of the way she pronounced it. He thought he glimpsed a . . . Was that a snarl on her face?

  “Can you go to your principal? Speak up? If this teacher is treating you unfairly?”

  Zayneb surprised herself by grimacing at Adam. At him using the word “if.” She was surprised both that he had said “if this teacher is treating you unfairly”—as if she wouldn’t know whether someone was treating her unfairly—and that she had made a face at him so openly.

  But he was in the wrong to use “if” so effortlessly, so she held the grimace and exploded with “It’s because of the principal I’m here in Doha for two weeks!”

  Adam put his right hand in his pant pocket and pinched the seams inside, something he did when he was getting worried.

  Zayneb’s expressions were getting him worried.

  He’d never seen anger completely taking over someone’s face as it was now, plainly and frankly, in front of him.

  “I spoke up, as you said, in the stupid teacher’s class, and then, yes, I took my frustration out by doodling a simple knife, BUT I WAS GOING TO ADD THE FORK, and then I got suspended for one week!” She walked ahead for a bit then paced back. “That’s why I’m here in Doha!”

  Her voice was loud.

  He looked around, wondering if the other visitors were getting as alarmed as he was. Luckily, the family nearby had exhibit headphones over their ears as they stood in front of a video on Islamic calligraphy through the ages.

  “Whoa. Okay, do you want to sit on that bench over there to talk about it or even go to the café downstairs?”

  She marched to the bench and took a seat. Then she stood up, agitated, wanting him to understand the depth of her predicament. “He got me suspended. Got my friend removed from student council and now just gave me a D for dishing up the same BS he teaches in class.”

  Adam walked over to the bench and sat down at one end. He was confused about how to proceed.

  Pragmatism, his old friend, poked him. Ah, yes.

  He’d take it logically and find out why she was suspended. “So you got suspended for speaking up in class?”

  “No, for drawing a knife.”

  “Okay. Can I ask why you drew a knife?”

  “To accompany the hashtag EatThemAlive, which is this movement to get racists removed from their jobs. Which we plan on doing to Fencer, my teacher.” She sat down at the other end of the bench. “STILL plan on doing to him. Get his racist ass fired.”

  Adam blinked at the Marvels of Creation and Oddities of Existence display right across from them. “Because he hates on Muslims?”

  “Yes, completely for that reason.” She lifted her phone and scrolled through it. “Like, look at this gross article he passed out in class just last week.”

  Adam reached for it and drew a breath at the title. GIRL BURIED ALIVE IN HONOR KILLING.

  He flicked through, reading slowly. When finished, he lowered the phone “Whoa.”

  That irritated her, the “whoa,” the third one he’d muttered in the span of a few minutes.

  It sounded too much like the reaction of her classmates to that buried-girl article.

  She stared at him. Wait, what are his views on issues like these anyway?

  Like, did he even have any of the same values she did?

  “Could you stop saying ‘whoa’ like that? It’s kind of annoying.”

  He looked at her. She found him annoying?

  “WHY ARE YOU GUYS JUST SITTING HERE?” Hanna stalked over to them. “I went ahead to the ceramics room and thought you were behind me and almost went to the science room. But you guys are just taking a rest here?”

  Zayneb turned to her. “Yeah, we are. Because we’re old. And your elders. Have a little respect, ’kay?”

  Adam raised his eyebrows and took his hand out of his pocket. He wasn’t worried anymore.

  He was getting tired.

  And he wanted to get Hanna away from Zayneb. “Hanna, do you mind just waiting in the ceramics area? Zayneb’s kinda upset at something right now.”

  Looking crestfallen, Hanna walked away, glancing back at Zayneb a few times.

  “She’s got nothing to do with your teacher,” Adam said quietly.

  Zayneb, guilt flowering within at the way Hanna looked back at her over and over, with a mixture of shock and shame, felt her anger quelling.

  She was about justice. And this, what she’d just done to a little kid, wasn’t very just. “You’re right. I’ll apologize to her.”

  Adam sat up. That was refreshing to hear. She’ll apologize to Hanna.

  And she seemed to have calmed down. “Well, I’m sorry that you got suspended. That your teacher is a terrible person.”

  He looked at her face and saw that it was true—she had calmed. A bit.

  A frown knitted her brow, though. “I can’t sit still when things are wrong. I need to do something about it. Or I can’t rest.”

  “Well, we are what we want.”

  Now Zayneb tilted her head at him. (In his journal, he recorded this tilt as being “in disbelief.”) “What does that mean?” she asked.

  “It means whatever we want in life is what defines our existence.”

  “Okay, so what do you want?” It must be something super peaceful, chill, zen, Zayneb thought. If he was as good as he appeared.

  “I want peace. I want to see it in the things around me, natural and not, but mostly natural. The marvels of creation.” He nodded at the manuscript displayed in front of them. “I want
to examine how the wonders around me are connected, find peace through that. What about you? What do you want?”

  He smiled encouragingly, and the frown she wore softened, because his smile was that open.

  She also felt satisfied about being right about him. About his wants being so chill. Peace.

  But the truth was there couldn’t be peace without—

  She took a breath. “I want justice. And I want it now. For everyone.”

  His smile grew as though he liked hearing that, and she, for the first time in a long while, had a sudden, beautiful thought: He likes me for the way I really am.

  So she went on. “And sometimes I feel like I’m the only person who feels this want so strongly. Because I’m the only one in class speaking up. The only one in my family, that’s for sure, who cares this much. Who goes on marches and writes stuff and just gives a care.”

  “Maybe they do in their own way.” Zayneb had softened so much that he went on. “Maybe everyone does. Care about justice on some level.”

  Her brows activated and began their approach to each other again. “What do you mean? Do you mean, everyone everyone? Like, even Fencer?”

  “Well, he gave out the article about this girl killed by her family. Maybe he wants justice for her?”

  Zayneb shook her head, aghast. “No, he was trying to get the class riled up about Muslims. He was using the Turkish girl, not expressing care for her. You don’t even know Fencer. And I just can’t believe you’re giving a real-life Islamophobe excuses.”

  “Whoa,” he said. And the second it came out of his mouth, he regretted it intensely, like he had regretted few things in his eighteen years.

  Adam leaned back, stumped on how to proceed. Her voice had become loud again, and the family, who’d removed their headphones, turned in unison to look at Zayneb.

  He had to explain himself.

  “I’m not giving him excuses. It’s just something I thought about while reading the article.” Adam refused to put his right hand in his pocket, refused to worry about what Zayneb was doing or its effect on those around them. “I just wanted justice for her, for the girl buried alive. That’s a terrible tragedy.”