Huda and Me

by H. Hayek

  Aunt Amel poked her head out the window. She was tall enough to do that easily. I knew Huda was a goner. And sure enough, a split-second later Aunt Amel flicked her body around and raced out of the bathroom. I heard the front door open and then slam shut. I hopped back onto the toilet and watched her lope across the lawn and over to Mr Kostiki’s house. Moments later, Aunt Amel was leading Huda back home.

  The Incident

  I rejoin Amira and my sister outside the bathroom.

  ‘Ugh, your head is all wet. You look slimy.’ Huda never feels she has to hide her thoughts from me.

  I wipe the top of my head and flick away the remaining beads of water.

  Amira leads us further through the airport until we reach some huge sliding doors with cartoon pictures printed across them. At the top is a sign in Arabic, then English. I don’t bother trying to read the Arabic this time. Unaccompanied Minors Lounge.

  Amira swipes a card dangling from her hip over a sensor-pad and the doors slip open. The room bursts with colour. On one side are some funky red kids’ couches, plus a couple of round blue tables covered with fresh paper and brand-new textas. On the other side, a giant screen faces a smattering of lounge chairs. Stacked up beside the screen are video-game controllers, tablets, board games and books. This must be Jannah on Earth for kids.

  Amira asks whether we’d like lasagne or beef burgers for dinner. I say I want a burger. Huda says she wants six.

  ‘Let’s start with one and see how you go,’ Amira says and heads into a small kitchen area to get our food.

  My sister chucks her backpack on the floor and plonks herself down at one of the blue tables. She starts to colour in one of the clean sheets of paper. I want to throw myself onto one of the lounge chairs, but I know I need to pray before anything else.

  I unzip my backpack and pull out the compass keychain Dad gave me two years ago on Eid. I always keep it with me, even when I’m at school. The little red arrow points to a little black Kaaba, telling me which direction to face. Holding it in my hands makes me feel close to Dad again, and I feel tears prickle my eyes, but they’re not bad tears – they’re tears that remind me how much I love my baba.

  The green, fluffy carpet looks freshly vacuumed, so I lift my hands to pray, just as Amira brings out three huge, cheesy burgers – one for each of us. My tummy rumbles as I place my forehead on the soft floor. By the time I’m finished, my eyes are dry.

  Amira drops us to the departure gate, just in time for our departure to Beirut. Miss Rosetta is standing at the doorway leading to the plane with her arms crossed. Huda grunts when she sees her. Amira passes Miss Rosetta our passports and the new tickets for this flight. Miss Rosetta pretends to smile – I can tell because her eyes don’t look as happy as the rest of her face. Amira is so caring. I don’t think I’ll ever forget her sparkly green eyes and the way everything about her felt cheery and safe.

  Huda tugs at Amira’s sleeve and borrows a fancy black pen, then fumbles around in her backpack for something to write on. She pulls out an old piece of crumpled paper with orange writing scrawled across it – Aunt Amel’s list of jobs. My sister looks at it in her palm, and then at me. Then she does her best to unwrinkle it, and scribbles her school email address across the orange scrawl.

  ‘I’d love to be friends with you,’ my sister says to Amira as she passes her the pen and the half-scrunched bit of paper. She picks nervously at a cuticle. Her little round face has gone almost the same red as Raheed’s rosy cheeks.

  Amira gives Huda a smile, bigger than all the others we’ve seen so far. ‘I’d love to be friends with you too, Huda.’

  Huda throws her arms around Amira’s waist. I glance around and realise we’re holding up the queue. People want to get on the plane, not wait for a couple of kids to say their final goodbyes to their customer service agent.

  Miss Rosetta taps her heel on the tiles, then taps my sister on the shoulder. ‘Time to hop on the plane now, children.’

  Huda lets go of Amira, gives her one last wave, and then squints up at Miss Rosetta. ‘Where’s Martin?’

  Miss Rosetta raises one eyebrow. Then she purses her lips and jabs her finger towards the plane.

  My sister nods once and skips ahead. I grab our passports and tickets from Miss Rosetta and follow behind.

  We meet Martin at the entrance of the plane.

  ‘Hooda and Akeaw! Lovely to see you again. I trust Amira took good care of you and showed you the best of Dubai Airport.’ He checks the tickets for our seat numbers.

  ‘She was great!’ trills Huda. ‘We almost became best friends forever, but we had to leave.’

  Martin raises his eyebrows, as though he’s impressed.

  ‘Akeaw, was Dubai Airport everything you thought it would be?’ I like that Martin asks me this. Huda hogs all the attention whenever she can.

  ‘I loved it,’ I say. ‘One day, when this is all over—’ Huda shoots me a warning look, and I choke a little. ‘I mean... what I meant was … when I’m a bit older … I’ll come back.’

  ‘That’s excellent. Good to hear!’ He hands us back our tickets. ‘You’ll be in row number fifty-six, seats A and B. And, lucky you, you’ll have a spare seat next to you today.’

  ‘Thank you, Martin,’ me and Huda say at the same time.

  Martin gestures to show us which aisle to walk down and points out what side our seats are on. ‘I’ll be down to check on you in a little while.’

  This plane is almost twice the size of the one we flew on from Melbourne. There are three seats on each side of the aircraft, by the windows, and four in the middle. They stretch on for what looks like hundreds of rows.

  We’re the first on the plane, and we take our time getting into our spots. Huda takes the seat closest to the window again. I sit next to her, and we keep the third seat for our stuff.

  The plane fills up quickly, and before we know it they play the safety video. After that, we’re in the air. Martin pops past and I give him a thumbs up. Everything is going perfectly.

  I decide to chill out with a movie and begin to flick through the options on the screen in front of me. There are a million to choose from, and I read each summary, finally deciding on a new-release movie about aliens and zombies that Mum and Dad would never let me watch at home.

  Just as I’m about to hit play, Huda elbows me. ‘Gotta go to the dunny. Move over.’

  She squeezes past me before I can even lift my tray-table, tangling my headphones. I grab my headset before she drags it down the aisle, pop it back over my ears, and hit play again on my movie. An alien begins to attack a family of zombies, and I sigh happily.

  Just as the zombies are about to rip off the alien’s head, through the gap between the seats ahead, I spot Huda charging back up the plane aisle. Her hijab is twisted to the side, and tears stream down her face.

  I hit pause on the movie, right at the bit where blood spurts out of the alien’s ears. Huda’s in such a hurry to get back to her seat that she’s bumping into people and knocking things off their tray-tables. She squeezes past me and curls into a ball on her seat.

  ‘Huda, what’s wrong? What happened?’

  She doesn’t answer. I wonder if she finally saw her reflection properly in the toilet mirror and realised she looks a bit too dressed up.

  ‘If it’s about what you’re wearing, don’t worry, you look okay.’ I’ve heard it’s okay to tell a white lie to make people feel better.

  She sobs harder and covers her face with her hands.

  ‘You look all right. Really.’

  Huda whispers, ‘Are you sure, Akeal?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure. Would I lie to you?’

  I’m about to hit play to see whether the zombies will actually eat the leftover alien bits when Huda speaks again.

  ‘Because the boy called me a little terrorist. He told me to take “that thing” off my head.’

  I feel like I’ve been hit by a cricket bat. I wonder if I heard her wrong.

  ‘Wha
t are you talking about?’ I stutter the words. They stick in my throat.

  She sits up and wipes her wet cheeks with the sleeve of her jumper. Then she sniffs and rubs her nose with her fist.

  ‘I went to the fancy toilets at the front of the plane. The ones for the rich people. I was waiting my turn to go in and an older boy came and stood next to me. He was looking at me a lot. Like he was gonna say I look nice in my scarf or something.’

  My sister’s voice is croaky and soft, and I can barely make out some of the words she’s saying. She pauses and swallows. Hard. Like it hurts to talk.

  ‘Then he said Muslims are bad, and that I probably want to hurt him. I don’t understand what he was talking about. I don’t even have a toy gun. And then …’

  Huda’s breathing gets deeper and heavier. She can’t get the words out through her tears.

  ‘And then what happened, Huda?’ I need to know, but I don’t want to hear it.

  ‘Then he grabbed my hijab and tried to pull it off.’ Huda’s tears take over and she curls up again.

  Her face is red and wet. Her fringe sticks out of the front of her scarf and a few diamantes are falling off. I put my arm over her, so she’s wrapped up like she’s in a cocoon.

  Martin dashes towards us from the front end of the plane and kneels down. His face is flushed, and his voice is serious.

  ‘I’m sorry about what just happened, Hooda.’

  Huda doesn’t look at Martin.

  ‘Sometimes people can be …’ Martin pauses. He doesn’t know the word he’s looking for.

  ‘Mean,’ says Huda quietly, from inside her cocoon.

  ‘Racist,’ I say. I’ve heard of stuff like this, and worse, happening on the news.

  Martin nods. ‘But I don’t want you to worry. The boy won’t be coming anywhere near you for the rest of the flight.’

  Huda slowly unravels herself from her ball. She blinks her eyes a few times and clears her throat. Then she wipes her runny nose with the sleeve of her jumper again.

  ‘It’s okay, Martin. That boy is nasty, but I feel sorry for him for being so stupid,’ she says through sniffles.

  Martin takes a clean tissue from his pocket and hands it to my sister, but she waves her hand to say she doesn’t need it. She wipes her nose with her sleeve again instead.

  ‘I know it probably doesn’t mean much right now, but I think you look lovely in your scarf, Hooda,’ says Martin.

  Huda half-smiles. ‘You think so, Martin?’

  She’s still sniffling, but I know she’s hoping he keeps going with the compliments.

  ‘Yes, pink is totally your colour.’ Martin’s normal voice is back. He leans over and adjusts her hijab so it’s sitting right again on her head. Huda closes her eyes while he does it, as though she’s at the hairdresser.

  Martin knows just what it takes to make her feel better. I feel a bit awkward sitting there between the two of them, but I’m glad my sister isn’t crying anymore.

  ‘How about an ice-cream?’ says Martin, rubbing his hands together.

  Huda’s eyes widen. ‘Yes, please! Can my brother have one too?’

  Huda. No matter what happens, she still thinks of me.

  ‘Okay, ice-cream first, and then spaghetti and meatballs.’ Martin grins and heads off again down the aisle.

  There’s silence between me and my sister. I don’t know whether she wants to talk about it. I don’t know what to say.

  She speaks first.

  ‘Don’t worry about it, Akeal. He was just a dumb kid.’

  ‘Yeh, he is dumb. Don’t be upset, Buds.’ I only call her Buds when she’s feeling sad or when she’s done something really cool, like got an A in sports class.

  My sister nods and sniffs. ‘He was mean. But it made me feel better that he was wearing those ugly white runners Mum was gonna get you before Dad bought you these cool ones.’ Huda points down to my feet.

  Something clicks in my brain. The question comes like an itch that I need to scratch. ‘What did this kid look like, anyway?’ I try to sound casual.

  My sister thinks for a moment. ‘He had big blue eyes, brown hair – shorter than yours. He was wearing a grey T-shirt like the one Omar has …’

  I don’t hear the rest of what my sister is saying. Because I already know.

  It was Michael.

  The Plan

  I heard my bedroom door creak open. My shoulders tensed, but it was just Huda. She shut the door quietly behind her.

  ‘Undie folding, hey? You’ve always had a problem with that.’ My sister watched me for a second before picking up two pink pairs off the pile on my bed and shoving them in her pocket. ‘I’ll be needing these.’

  ‘What happened last night?’ I asked her. ‘What did she do to you?’ I hadn’t been able to talk to Huda since she’d jumped out the bathroom window.

  My sister rolled her eyes and plonked herself onto my bed. ‘Ugh, it was the worst! She told Mr Kostiki I had a fever and it was making me sleepwalk. Then she gave me a lecture for like six hours about how the police could’ve picked me up and taken me to a kids’ home if they’d found me running around in the night without shoes.’

  I noticed a bulge under my sister’s red school jumper. Huda tapped it. ‘It’s a special day, Akeal.’ She was grinning. And she was also using my name.

  ‘Yeh, a special day to get us both caught by Aunt Amel. C’mon, you’d better get changed and get on with your jobs before she does her check-in.’

  ‘I have something special for the special day.’

  Huda wasn’t grinning as much anymore. She was still smiling, but I could tell from her eyes that she was sad. So I stopped folding.

  ‘Okay. Tell me. What’s so good about today, and what’s that weird lump under your uniform?’

  Huda swung her legs around to face me and looked around my room. She took a deep breath. And then another.

  ‘Earth to Huda! What’s going on?’ I threw a pair of undies at her.

  ‘It’s my birthday.’ She threw them back and hit me in the face.

  My eyes widened. We don’t celebrate birthdays, but for some reason Huda celebrates hers, and we just go along with it.

  ‘I don’t blame you or anyone else for forgetting,’ she said with a sigh. ‘I know Aunt Amel has everyone stressed out and working all the time. So don’t feel bad. I just feel a bit down that Mum and Dad aren’t here.’

  ‘I’m sorry for forgetting. You’re right, everyone is stressed out, but we shouldn’t have forgotten.’

  A little pain went through my chest thinking that my sister had spent her ninth birthday feeling sad.

  ‘It’s okay. I got us a donut from the canteen today to celebrate.’

  Huda pulled a small brown paper bag from under her T-shirt. The donut was squashed and the paper had gone greasy, but this was Huda’s birthday. Plus, I was starving.

  Huda was smiling again now and licking her lips. ‘When I told Mrs Mustafa it was my birthday she gave me an icy pole and a donut for free. I saved it to share with you.’

  It was stuff like this that made me like my little sister. She grabbed the donut and ripped it in half. Her fingers looked a bit grubby, but I wasn’t going to complain. Not today. She looked at both halves of the donut, and as she passed me the bigger bit, the door swung open.

  Suha and Layla never knock – they barge in. Omar and Kholoud followed behind them.

  Kholoud closed the door and lifted her finger to her lips. ‘Shhh. She’s just started watching her favourite soap opera. We don’t have much time.’

  My older sisters joined me and Huda on the bed while Omar sat on my desk chair. He pulled a phone from his pocket. It was Dad’s – the one he’d left behind for us to use as the family phone. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  ‘Oh, no way! How’d you get that?’ Huda’s mouth was half filled with jam donut.

  ‘Suha and Layla pinched it from her robe pocket when she chucked the robe on the couch,’ Omar told us.

  ‘Took ages t
o make sure she wasn’t looking,’ Suha chimed in.

  I knew what this meant. It meant we could tell Mum and Dad everything.

  Kholoud kept her eye on the door. ‘Hurry up and call,’ she whispered.

  Omar scrolled down to Mum’s number. Before he hit dial, he looked at each of us. ‘We’re gonna be okay. Once Mum and Dad know, they’ll be packing their stuff.’ Then he tapped the screen and held the phone to his ear.

  We knew numbers overseas took ages to connect sometimes, but there was no connection at all this time. Just three long beeps, and then the phone cut. We could hear it from my bed. Omar swallowed. Then redialled. The same. He redialled again. Three long beeps, then cut.

  ‘Why aren’t they answering?’ Huda whispered, holding her hands up to her mouth.

  My big brother sighed deeply. ‘They haven’t turned on the international roaming setting. I showed them ten times how to do it before they left.’ He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead with his hand, like he had a headache.

  ‘What does that mean? We can’t call them?’ Kholoud asked the obvious question we were all thinking.

  Omar shook his head.

  ‘What if we used another phone?’ I knew the answer before I’d finished asking.

  ‘It won’t connect …’ Omar paused, and then to make sure we understood, he finished his sentence. ‘From any phone.’

  Huda jumped off the bed. A small blob of jam from the donut had dribbled onto the front of her jumper.

  ‘There has to be another way to let Mum and Dad know what’s going on!’

  Omar narrowed his eyes. Suha and Layla shook their heads.

  ‘Yeh Huda, you can just jump on a plane and tell Mum and Dad, then.’ Kholoud stood up to leave.

  Omar passed the phone to Layla and reminded the twins to put it back exactly where they’d found it. Then he gently opened the door. There was Aunt Amel, with her ear pressed to the door. She stumbled forward a little as it opened. She was cradling baby Raheed, who was fast asleep in her arms.

  ‘Want to tell Mum and Dad how awful I am, do you?’ Aunt Amel raised her eyebrows. Her voice shook, and her bottom lip quivered.