Love from a to Z

by S. K. Ali

  On the table in the hall outside the room, I laid out the pieces by the parts of the room they went to in my installation: ceiling, floor, left wall, right wall, far wall, and entrance wall.

  I sorted and tried not to think about anything else.

  • • •

  The thing about making things is that it soothes every part of me. And connects everything in me too.

  It’s the thing that gets me up in the morning.

  What if I didn’t have that anymore? What if I couldn’t get up in the morning to make anything?

  I put down the box of LED light tape I’d been holding in my hand. Back in the box and not in the section of the table I’d designated for ceiling items.

  • • •

  Since the news was out about my MS, out with Dad, my friends, and soon with Hanna, it emerged in the real world.

  Like a boggart from Harry Potter’s world, it took shape in front of me. Unmoving, but relentlessly forcing itself into my thoughts.

  My MS, it was real now.

  • • •

  I didn’t want to climb the ladder to finish painting the room.

  I was scared to.

  • • •

  I wasn’t part of any Hogwarts houses, because there wasn’t a house for people who’d rather tuck away, overwhelmed with fear.

  • • •

  Hanna came thundering down the stairs in her turbaned hijab and sunglasses, and the boggart disappeared. “Dad is calling you to pray Asr! And then can we play Monopoly? Dad said yes!”

  “Sure.” I left the table.

  “When are you going to start the world in a room? Like the house in a jar?” Hanna fingered one of the bottle caps and then slid her sunglasses up onto her turban to examine the pattern of holes on it.

  “Soon.” I went to the stairs.

  “Oh, I love it! Is this a goose?” Hanna picked up the small Canada goose I’d begun whittling yesterday. “It so perfect. Like Mom’s goose she made.”

  She hugged it to her heart.

  I nodded. “You can have it when I’m done.”

  “WHAT! It’s for me?” Hanna came over and threw her arms around me. “Thanks, Adam. I knew it was good to choose you for a topic for my Weekly Reflection journal this week. Mr. Mellon told us to choose something that made us proud. I chose you.”

  We went up the stairs together. “Mr. Mellon gave you homework for spring break?”

  “Yeah, can you believe it?” She led the way to the prayer mats spread in Dad’s study. Dad was sitting at his desk, reading the Qur’an, so Hanna lowered her voice. “But we won’t talk about it. Because there’s someone here who’ll say it’s a conflict of interest if I talk about how mean that is, to give kids homework when they’re supposed to be having fun.”

  When Asr prayer was done, I brought up Zayneb’s grandmother, and Dad said some duas for her soul to reach the highest of heavens, for her soul to be reunited with God.

  As I said ameen, I tried not to think of Zayneb in tears.

  “Why’d you delete Zayneb’s pictures?” Hanna asked as we were putting away the prayer mats after Dad had left. “If you want us to pray for her grandmother?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you looked like you were mad at her, deleting her pictures like that. But now you’re caring about her.”

  “I’m caring about her grandmother.”

  “Because you care about her, right?”

  I shook my head. “Listen, nosy, you’d better get the Monopoly game set up before I change my mind about playing.”

  She unwound her hijab and stuffed it into the basket of prayer mats. “Just remember, she’s our cuz. And that she said sorry to me after I sent her the pictures. And Dad said he’d set up the Monopoly board! That’s where he went.”

  She left the room.

  I pulled out my phone.

  I hadn’t deleted the photos of Zayneb and me at the museum. Without looking at them, I’d dumped them in a random album. In case Hanna asked me later if I’d received them and looked in my phone, a thing she did randomly.

  Finding the series of photos, I scrolled through them.

  I paused on a picture that Hanna had taken as a selfie of me and her. Zayneb was in the background, smiling at our backs. But in the next selfie, same spot, with her in the background again, she was frowning at a display she was reading.

  Maybe what drew me to Zayneb was the same thing that made me stay away from her.

  She wasn’t like a steady heartbeat. She had a heart that moved and rose and fell as things affected her.

  I flipped to another picture. There it was again.

  She was really frowning in this one, by a display of ornaments worn by the lower classes and slaves.

  She was alive with passions, so alive that they exploded out of her, plain to see, loud and proud, not hidden. Like mine were.

  Something flooded through me; maybe it was impulsiveness; maybe it was desire; maybe it was even physical desire at seeing her face so vividly like this, where I could look at it unhindered by anyone. I don’t know what it was, but it felt exciting.

  It felt exciting to be connected to someone so full of life.

  And maybe it was because of the dua I’d just made to pull me out of this sunken feeling, but I gave in to the desire.

  I wanted it wrapped around me, to be a part of it.

  I didn’t press pause on what was coursing through me, because it felt real.

  I kicked pragmatism aside and went for it. Went for her.

  No matter the outcome.

  • • •

  Zayneb, I’m sorry to hear about your grandmother. My dad and I (and Hanna) prayed for her.

  Zayneb, I can’t figure out what happened yesterday between us. But there’s one thing I CAN figure out and that’s how much I don’t know. How I don’t know what you went through at school. With your teacher. I don’t know about the extent of the Islamophobia you’ve faced. I don’t know what it feels like to be you. But here’s another thing: I DO want to know.

  I paused and then added But if you don’t want me to know, I get that, too.

  I followed up the message with a picture.

  It was the one with both of us on the landing of the museum stairs, looking up at the ceiling.

  The light’s shining down on us, and we look sort of magical.

  Hanna’s random photo clicks were the best.

  Almost as good as her heart.

  ZAYNEB

  MONDAY, MARCH 18

  ODDITY: KIND IGNORANCE

  FIVE MINUTES AFTER AUNTIE NANDY left for the gym, I heard a knock on the apartment door. I didn’t have time to scarf up, so I hooded myself with Binky, pulling the blanket off my bed, draping it onto my head with the rest of its length dragging down my back and onto the tiled floor behind me, its width wrapped around my pajama shorts. Whoever it was at the door would get a jolt at my ghostlike appearance.

  I didn’t give a shit.

  I opened the door to the Emmas.

  We stared at one another for a few seconds, me at their mournful expressions and appearances—Emma Z. holding a plastic bag of what looked like take-out containers, Emma P. clutching a bouquet of flowers, and Emma D., empty-handed but back again—and them staring at my white-shrouded self.

  I turned and led the way to the living room.

  “We’re so sorry to hear about your grandmother,” Emma P. said, placing the flowers on the dining table.

  “This is for whenever you feel up to eating.” Emma Z. placed the bag of food beside the flowers. “Whenever.”

  I nodded from the corner of the big sofa I’d already settled into, cocooned in my blanket. Emma D. joined me, taking a seat to my left. Emma P. proceeded to Adam’s—the club chair—and Emma Z. sat on the two-seater.

  “You guys know she died in October, right?” I asked. “That’s when they killed her.”

  They nodded.

  “And you know who did it, right?” I asked. “We did. Beca
use we’re okay with bombing other countries.”

  They nodded again.

  “I’m really angry. Then get sad. Then angry. It just doesn’t stop.”

  “Are there some special prayers you can say? Or things you can do?” Emma Z. said. “To help?”

  “There are things. And I’ve said them.” I sighed and pulled the bedspread around me tighter.

  “Is that something special you have to wear when someone passes?” Emma P. indicated my blanketed self with her hands rotating in the air.

  “This? No, it’s my blanket.” I dropped it from my head so that it fell back and showed my pajama top. “I’m wearing pajamas. And I didn’t know if you guys were guys, so I used my bedspread as a scarf.”

  “Oh, sorry!” Emma P. looked embarrassed. “I just thought . . . I don’t know what I thought.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Your hair is nice,” Emma P. said, rotating her hands again, this time a bit higher to indicate the messy hair escaping from a quick, high bun I’d wound it in.

  We sat silently for a while.

  Then I got up, emerging completely from the white blanket, and went to the kitchen. “You guys want drinks?”

  There was nothing in the fridge.

  I came back to the living room empty-handed. “Well, there doesn’t seem to be any if you did want some.”

  “Hey, we’re okay. We just wanted to make sure you were going to be okay,” Emma D. said. “Where’s Ms. Raymond?”

  “Gym.” I remembered Auntie Nandy’s stash of junk food. “Wait. I got something.”

  I dragged the big blue bin into the dining room and pried the lid off. “There’s stuff in here.”

  They stayed seated. “Zayneb, it’s okay. We’re good,” said Emma D.

  “Pop? Chips? Chocolate?” I held up different items. “It’s all in here. If I don’t feed you, I’ll feel my dad’s disapproval all the way from Pakistan. It’s a Muslim thing.”

  “We just came from Adam’s house and had a ton of junk there,” Emma Z. said.

  “Aha, Twizzlers!” I lifted the bag high like it was a trophy, then peered back into the bin, as I’d caught sight of the edge of a box that had become dislodged. I dunked my hand in.

  Cigarettes. Auntie Nandy smokes? Or did?

  I didn’t pull it out, just moved it, but when I did, a bottle covered in a plastic bag, wound tight with rubber bands, came free from underneath.

  Emma D. got up. “Okay, let’s break out the Twizzlers, then.”

  I tossed the package to her and took out a few cans of pop and passed those to Emma Z., and then dragged the box back to Auntie Nandy’s bedroom, into her closet.

  Had to hide the bin of sin quickly.

  But before I tucked it into its spot on the floor, under her row of pants folded on hangers, I examined the plastic bundle by taking off the rubber bands and undoing it.

  Yup, booze.

  Auntie Nandy wasn’t Muslim—so why did she have to hide it?

  It took me a while to reassemble everything back to its place so she wouldn’t suspect a thing, and by the time I got back, the Emmas were chewing on Twizzlers.

  When I sat back on my blanket, Emma D. passed me the package, and I took one out. I looked at the shiny red twisted candy for a moment. “I want to make someone pay for my grandmother’s death.”

  I didn’t need to look up to know they’d traded glances with one another.

  “But does that actually make the world a better place?” Emma P. ventured. “Like, doesn’t that just make more problems?”

  “Sorry not sorry to say this to you, Emma P., but that’s what people who don’t feel the pain of injustice say.” I bit into the Twizzler and gave her a stare, chewing fast. “Like, why are we supposed to just take it? Innocent people getting killed?”

  This time they didn’t trade glances but shifted uncomfortably in unison. Then Emma Z. spoke. “I don’t think that’s what Emma P. was trying to say, Zayneb. I think she’s trying to say that the better people should do better. Right, Emma?”

  Emma P. nodded, nibbling on her Twizzler.

  “But are we better people? Is it being better just to look away? Or post a few words of outrage online? What’s so BETTER about that?” I put the rest of my Twizzler on the arm of the sofa. It was plasticky and felt like lead going down my throat. “Isn’t it better to stop it for good?”

  “We went on a march before. In London. It was our junior-year trip and we were in Hyde Park and there was a march to remember the victims of war and we joined,” Emma D. said.

  “And the shoes to remember Palestinian victims? In Brussels?” Emma Z. asked Emma D., sitting up. She turned to me, eagerly. “Last year, on our senior trip, we went to Belgium, and we saw all these shoes, over four thousand, laid out to remember Palestinian lives lost in the last decade. That’s the kind of better we mean.”

  “But did those things make a difference? NO.” I stood up and paced, something Kavi pointed out I do when I get an energy spurt. “I’ve been reading a lot since last night about drones and war. The biggest global protest event in history occurred when we were babies, February fifteenth, 2003. People in over sixty countries, almost fifteen million people around the world, including a huge march in Rome that made the Guinness World Records, protested the invasion of Iraq. The protest was monumental. Unmatched before and since. But GUESS WHAT? The invasion still happened. And guess what? Overreach from that war, which lasts to this day, killed my grandmother!”

  I slumped back into the blanket I’d shed and re-cocooned myself, including shielding my face, sure it was burning up in pain and anger.

  “It’s true we have to do more. But not through violent actions.” Emma Z. spoke quietly. “Because that would just continue violence.”

  I pulled the folds apart in front of my mouth so they could hear me. “I’m not a violent person. I’m not advocating violence. But I am an angry person. I’m advocating for more people to get angry. Get moved.”

  “Well, I’m going to be honest,” Emma D. said. “Until I met you, I didn’t think about it much. War and justice, things like that. Now I will.”

  “Same,” Emma Z. agreed.

  “Me too,” Emma P. said. “I’m going back to Northwestern, and I’m going to join the antiwar club.”

  I poked my head out of the blanket. “You go to Northwestern? That’s on my list. Just got rejected from UChicago, so not sure I’ll get in. My sis goes to UChicago, and I was going to live with her.”

  “Oh, I hope you get in! Ill show you around, no problem. And we can hang out together.” Emma P. looked excited. Genuinely excited.

  I let go of how tightly I was holding on to Binky as I felt some of myself relaxing.

  I looked at their kind faces, reassessing, and I realized something.

  They weren’t the enemy. Their ignorance was bothersome, but they weren’t the enemy.

  “Thanks for offering to help, Emma P.” I sighed and gave away holding on to my security blanket and then undid and rewound my hair bun. “And thanks, guys, for coming. And eating Twizzlers with me. You guys have been one of the best parts of visiting Doha, you know?”

  Emma Z. blew a kiss my way. “We love you, too. So much that we did a search-and-destroy mission.” She looked at Emma P. “You tell her, because it was your idea.”

  “When we were at Madison’s place the other day, Emma Z. and I stole her Coachella headdress and destroyed it,” Emma P. announced proudly. She raised her eyebrows at Emma D., who looked confused. “We didn’t tell you, because we didn’t want it to be on your Hufflepuff conscience. It involved some methods we Ravenclaws and Slytherins are familiar and comfortable with.”

  I beamed at the Emmas. Who . . . maybe were becoming my Emmas?

  “Zayneb, you have to keep in touch with us. Emma P. and I are leaving tomorrow. She’s staying with me on the East Coast before going back to Chicago,” Emma Z. said. She smiled at Emma P. before turning to Emma D. “Wish you were coming.”

&n
bsp; “One day!” Emma D. turned to me. “I leave for Toronto on Tuesday. It wasn’t even spring break there. I just skipped classes.”

  “She’s Canadian, like Adam,” Emma P. informed me. Was it my imagination, or did she widen her eyes at his name? At me?

  There was an awkward silence.

  Emma Z. leaned forward. “So, did you meet Adam here in Doha or before? Asking because he’s so quiet but, you know, befriends people fast.”

  “Technically before Doha.” I tried not to whip my head to look at Emma P. Her interest in my answer was practically palpable, the way she made small, jittery movements on my right. “We met on the plane over here.”

  “Oh my God, that’s so cute,” Emma D. blurted, before becoming subdued again, maybe on account of Emma P.’s feelings. “How? He just came up to you?”

  I thought about it. Seeing him—okay, supercute him—advancing down the aisle of the airplane, the way we locked eyes immediately after those first couple of times we saw each other in the waiting area. I remembered the jolt of pure happiness that went through my body when he’d said salaam to me on the plane. First, because he’d been one of those guys who actually salaamed a girl, instead of acting like we didn’t exist, and second, because the cute guy I’d noticed had actually been Muslim. Which is a pure sort of rare. “Yeah, he did just come up to me. Because he knew I was Muslim, because of my hijab, I guess.”

  Emma Z. sat back and glanced at Emma P., who began twisting a lock of her long brown hair.

  I turned to look at Emma P. “But it’s nothing like that, okay? We’re just friends. Or cousins, as Hanna calls us. You know my aunt and his mom were best friends, right?”

  She nodded, relief lighting her face, causing her to let go of her hair. “Oh yeah, I forgot. And yeah, that’s okay.” She looked at the other girls and shrugged her shoulders. “It’s okay, because Adam is not into me. He told me clearly, just today in fact. He’s into someone else, he said. Someone he met before he came to Doha.”

  “We just wondered if it was you that he was talking about, ha-ha.” Emma Z. laughed. “But obviously it wasn’t.”