You Must Be Layla

by Yassmin Abdel-Magied

  ‘Watch it, you black dog!’

  It was the voice that had snarled at her only yesterday. Clenching her teeth and closing her eyes to stop the hot, furious tears from spilling over, Layla opened her mouth to retaliate, but nothing came out. Her mind went blank.

  What – what – why can’t I say anything? What’s happened to my voice? Layla’s heart was beating a mile a minute, and she noticed that she was trembling. She wondered if this was how Mama and Baba and Ozzie felt when people said stuff or yelled at them in the street. They didn’t talk much about the incidents where people were racist or Islamophobic, but Layla had heard her parents talk to Ozzie about what to do in the case of verbal or physical abuse. She couldn’t believe that her fast-talking tongue had betrayed her when she needed it most. It was like her brain had just run away. C’mon, c’mon!

  Layla’s eyes flew open.

  Peter was gone. There was no one in sight, and she was standing alone in front of the building. She could have almost sworn she had imagined his words, had it not been for the tears running freely down her cheeks. She couldn’t wipe them without putting the books down. ‘Ya Allah, give me strength!’ she whispered under her breath. Her emotions were a mix of terror and deep, dark anger. Oh, how she would show that Peter Cox that he had messed with the wrong girl. Oh, she would make him pay by taking the one thing she knew he wanted – the GDT prize.

  Watch me invent the best thing since fried cauliflower!

  CHAPTER 7

  LAYLA spent the rest of the week with Baba at home. He had reorganised his shifts at the hospital where he worked as a medical technician, so he could have the week at home with his daughter.

  It’ll be a nice relaxing week and I can probably sleep in for another hour, then maybe have breakfast and read a book until lunch. Layla was lying in bed the next morning, staring up at her cream bedroom ceiling, lips pursed as she hummed. Layla loved looking at the ceiling and making plans, it was her morning routine before she got out of bed. Maybe I can have an afternoon nap before everyone else gets home too. She smiled to herself and snuggled into her favourite sleeping position: on her side, knees up to her chest, right cheek resting on the top of her right palm. But Layla’s rest was short-lived.

  Baba clearly had other ideas as later that day the young Sudanese girl sat curled up on the lounge room couch in a blue jalabeeya, reading a book by Isaac Asimov. Her braids were up in a loose knot, spilling over her shoulders. Baba walked toward Layla with purpose, her father’s distinct gait an obvious sign to Layla that she was just about to be given a chore. Oh no! Layla squinted and pretended to be concentrating really hard on the book, so that maybe he wouldn’t disturb her.

  Kareem was in his corduroy work pants and a polo shirt that he’d bought from Kmart when they first moved to Australia. ‘I still fit!’ Kareem would tell Fadia proudly, every time he wore it. Fadia was less than impressed, as the light blue material was worn through and had holes all over the seams. She had patched the sleeves up so many times the shirt made him look like a pirate. Today though, Kareem wasn’t in the mood to boast about his shirt.

  ‘You’re being punished! This is not a holiday, ya bit!’ Baba admonished Layla, whose nose was almost touching the page of the science fiction novel Mr Gilvarry had lent her. ‘Layla, bringing the book closer to your face won’t convince me to change my mind.’

  Layla glared at her father over the pages, annoyed.

  ‘Stop with that face! I took a whole week off day shifts to take care of you after that incident with Peter, so–’ Baba noticed the book Layla was reading. ‘Wait a minute! Asimov? Where did you get that book?’

  Layla smiled to herself. Maybe this could work after all.

  ‘Oh, Mr Gilvarry gave it to me. He told me to read about a bunch of different things, so I can get original ideas if I want to invent something for the competition I told you about yesterday.’

  Baba nodded, distracted for a moment. Layla knew that Asimov was one of her father’s favourite authors as he talked about him constantly, but Kareem read all his books in Arabic. Layla’s father was always pronouncing names of authors and characters with a thick Arabic accent – in this case, Isaac Asimov was said ‘E-zayk Azee-moof’. Any time Kareem recommended a book or author to Layla, she had to figure out what the ‘Strayan’ pronunciation was before she tried searching online or in the local library.

  Despite being impressed, Baba was not going to be distracted from his mission to get Layla off the couch. ‘Well,’ he said, standing at the foot of the cream leather couch, hands tapping on the furniture’s shapely wooden arms. ‘Even though this is a great book, and the movie is halfway decent, you are going to spend the day helping me out in the garden, okay?’ Baba tapped the top of the book pile that sat on the little table next to the couch. ‘Also, where did these all come from? Are they from your teacher as well?’

  The pile was high, and the books were still covered in a thin film of dust. Layla had dumped them hastily on the table, crowding out the numerous framed family photos on display. She even had to move the ebony statues that usually sat proudly around the photos to a different table – in fact, she’d hidden them in the drawers underneath the TV! Layla was hoping her father wouldn’t notice that the large elephant and gazelle statues were missing. They were his favourite pieces of art, purchased from an old uncle who sold his wares on the edge of the Nile back in Sudan. Today though, Kareem’s mind clearly wasn’t on his Sudanese home. It was, very firmly, on the weeding situation in his Australian backyard.

  ‘Yallah!’ Baba called, as he walked away from the couch toward the back door, his shibshib making a distinctive slapping sound against the tiles as he walked. ‘I’m waiting!’

  Grumbling, but relieved her father hadn’t noticed the missing carvings, Layla put down the book and headed to the backyard.

  Janey Mack! This was going to be a much more tiring week than she expected.

  That afternoon, Layla heard her phone ping. She was outside at the time, on her hands and knees, brown fingers blistering from prying out weeds from the cracks in the concrete patio. The Hussein’s backyard was very typically Queensland: the back door opened out to a concrete courtyard, which spilled out onto a square of grass, the size of the family’s lounge room. Garden beds bordered the grassed section, containing thick shrubbery; trees, which Kareem had painstakingly planted and watered regularly, and other random greenery that wouldn’t stop growing, no matter how hard they tried. Layla had been tasked with pulling out the weeds in the concrete area first, then moving on to the weeds in the garden beds. But the moment the teenager heard the familiar ding of her phone, telling her she’d got a Snapchat DM, her head snapped up and she scrambled off the ground, bolting into the house.

  Her phone was plugged into the charger on the kitchen bench, the long iPhone cord grey from use. Pulling the cord out, Layla fumbled with the phone, stabbing her passcode in and smearing dirt all over the cracked screen. The phone buzzed as she entered the six-digit code (Baba was weirdly paranoid about Sudanese Government interference so they had to use long codes) wrong three times in her haste. Calm down already! Layla scolded herself. She took a deep breath and finally got into her phone.

  The notification was from Ethan. Layla’s heart started beating a little faster. She didn’t think she would be hearing from Ethan or Seb at all. How had they even found her on Snap?

  Ethan

  Hey, teach wanted me to tell you about some homework we have to do for next week. Email?

  Layla sighed. Ethan was just messaging to tell her about work, not to see how she was going.

  Layla

  Hey. It’s LaylaTheWarrior@gmail.com

  Ethan

  Lol. The Warrior?

  Layla

  Yeh, didn’t you hear how I took Peter out m8? Defs a warrior

  Layla scrunched up her nose. She knew she was trying to impress Ethan with this warrior chat, so was it a bit too much? Gah!

  Ethan

  Yeh, that
was wild. I saw the video on Leesa’s snaps.

  Layla

  Lol. So, like, what’s his deal? Why does he hate me?

  It was a few minutes before Ethan’s reply came through, and Layla could have sworn she held her breath that whole time. Had she come across too strongly?

  Ethan

  Peter’s mean to everyone. Lol.

  Layla

  Has anyone tried to stand up against him before?

  Ethan

  Nah, no one wants to get into trouble … you know, with his dad and all.

  Layla sighed again. If no one else was game enough in the past to pick a fight with Peter, what was she thinking? I suppose I wasn’t really thinking at all.

  Layla

  Lol. True. I guess I’m just lyk dat.

  Ethan

  It was lit. U r defs a warrior.

  [GIF]

  Layla

  [GIF] Wyd tonight?

  Ethan

  Yo, my parents are actually here tonight so we’re having dinner together.

  Layla

  Oh cool!

  Ethan

  Yeh. TTYL bae.

  Wow. Layla put her phone down, beaming. Ethan thought she was lit! And he called her ‘bae’. This was definitely progress. Now she couldn’t wait for the week to be over.

  Outside again with Baba the next day, sweat dripping down her braids and forehead, Layla was becoming seriously frustrated. The sun was shining harshly on her head and the ground was heating up, making everything deeply uncomfortable. Worse, and more urgently, she needed an idea for her robotics invention, and all this patio weeding was just wasted time and energy. She was slowly losing patience with the weeds and yanking them out too quickly.

  Her father crouched down next to her and started tsking.

  ‘Layla! What are you doing? You need to get the roots too. That’s the whole idea!’ Kareem demonstrated, for the third time that week, how he wanted his daughter to pull out the green wisps of growth. ‘See, like this!’ Kareem offered a weed and root ensemble to his daughter, who glared at him before shaking her head. Laughing, Kareem threw the plant over his shoulder and onto the pile of weed corpses behind him.

  Layla growled under her breath. Her hands were starting to bleed from grabbing and twisting so many small plants and her legs were sore from crouching down.

  I wish we had something that could just weed this whole patio without me having to do this! Maybe something had already been invented?

  ‘Baba, is there a machine that automatically weeds patios?’

  Kareem, still crouching, stopped mid pull, and looked at his daughter, steading himself with his other hand. He thought about it, eyebrows furrowing together, then looked back down at the concrete and finished pulling out the weed. ‘Well, Layla habibti, why don’t you go and find out? Maybe that’s something you can try to design – it would certainly save people like me from having to hear grumbling when they ask their naughty daughters to help out!’

  HA! There was an opportunity she couldn’t miss. ‘Oh, sweet! I’ll just go do that now!’

  Before Baba could even utter a word in response, Layla had run into the house, slamming the flywire door hard.

  ‘Barra7a, Layla!’ Baba yelled from outside.

  Layla grinned. That door just couldn’t handle the Layla flick, you know? Without even changing into her indoor shibshib, Layla ran into the bathroom.

  Oh, thank goodness I got out of that!

  Running her hands under the sink, the green stains and mud slowly came off her fingers, revealing sore and puffy red blisters. Maybe the weeding experience would be worth it if it gave her an idea for her invention.

  CHAPTER 8

  LAYLA spent hours on her laptop that afternoon, googling things like ‘how to weed a patio properly’ and ‘machines that can help you prune your garden faster.’ Although it didn’t seem like there was the perfect product out there, it did seem like a complex issue. There were forums upon forums of people discussing the best technique to pull out a weed with its roots, what sorts of weed poisons were the most effective, the time of year to weed. So many details and so many opinions, Layla almost didn’t know where to begin!

  As Layla’s eyes started to droop with exhaustion, the Maghrib prayer began pouring out of the speakers of Baba’s computers behind her.

  ‘Allahhhhhhhhhh-hu Akbar, Allaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh-hu-Akbar!’

  Layla jumped and looked around. Her hands had been resting on the keyboards, pressing down on a couple of keys. The laptop was angrily making ping-ping-ping noises. Layla sighed. Ah, if she was bored of this project already, how on earth was she going to be able to keep interested enough to actually invent something?

  Layla shook her head and went to the bathroom to do wudhu, the ritual washing before you pray. Maybe she would feel a bit better after she had taken some time out to talk to Allah. It usually calmed her down a little bit. As she wiped her face with wet hands and ran cool water over her head, the back of her neck and tops of her ears, she felt herself start to relax. She never really liked doing wudhu – getting her braids wet was kind of annoying – but she often felt better afterwards. Mama said that doing wudhu helped wash the sins away. Who knew – but it definitely washed away the sweat from all the weeding!

  After praying, the family sat down for dinner. Baba began his nightly routine of enquiring about how everyone’s day had been. Strangely, Ozzie refused to engage when asked about his job hunt. ‘Nobody wants to hire me!’ he had snarled under his breath, and unusually, Kareem dropped the topic. Layla felt for her brother; she’d seen him spend hours perfecting his resume and walking around the shops handing them out, waiting for a phone call that never came.

  Baba then turned to Layla and asked his daughter how her research for a robotics invention was coming along.

  ‘Ah, it’s harder than I thought it would be!’ said Layla, slightly exasperated. ‘I guess I don’t know anything about weeding, so I don’t know what’s right and wrong?’

  Baba nodded with understanding, his moustache covering the knowing twitch of his lips. ‘Well, that’s your first mistake then, Layla.’

  Layla cocked her head. What was Baba talking about?

  Kareem rubbed his hands together, the plate in front of him wiped clean from the evening’s meal of cosa bi-al-bashamel. The oven tray with the Sudanese zucchini dish still sat steaming in the middle of the dinner table. They were getting through quite a bit of cosa this month. Baba leaned forward in his characteristic way, like he was about to tell Layla a secret.

  ‘When you’re trying to solve a problem, why solve someone else’s, hmm?’ he asked, rhetorically. ‘Why don’t you invent something that would help you? That way you already know all about the problem, and don’t have to guess like with the weeding.’ Baba leaned back, satisfied he had dropped some liquid gold.

  Layla’s eyebrows furrowed because she thought she understood, but wasn’t quite sure. Just before she could follow up with a question, Ozzie chimed in.

  ‘Yeh, it happens all the time, right. People think they know what’s good for us – like Muslim people – and come up with random ideas to fix us, without asking us what we actually want.’ Ozzie looked at his sister intensely. ‘You know what I’m talking about!’

  Layla looked down at her plate, the creamy sauce of the bechamel pooling around the mincemeat. She scratched the back of her neck, unsure. She didn’t really know specifically what Ozzie was talking about, but maybe she kinda got it. Like, when she watched the news and the politicians were talking about African gangs. Everyone on the TV had an opinion on Africans, but nobody ever asked any other African people or the kids themselves why they didn’t have a place to hang out or what they wanted to do.

  Layla grimaced, annoyed.

  Maybe she did know what Ozzie meant.

  The twins piped up, interrupting Layla’s train of thought. ‘Yeh! Us too!’ they said together. ‘Nobody listens to what we want!’

  Layla laughed to herself. Nobody
did listen to the twins, but that was because the twins mostly wanted to eat chocolate and play in the park all day.

  Mama reached over and started rubbing circles with the palm of her hand on Layla’s back reassuringly. ‘It’s okay, habiba. You can’t fix all the problems of the world. For now, the best thing for you to do is figure out what problem you want to attempt to fix and think of a solution for that,’ Mama said.

  A problem that she had that she could fix? Well, the only problem that she could think of right now was that she had to deal with bullies at school, but she couldn’t build a robot or something to fix that. Or could she?

  The rest of the week of suspension flew by in a blur of gardening, helping Baba with chores around the house, chatting with Dina and messaging Ethan. Dina seemed to be doing all right – actually, more than all right – at ISB without her. She’d become friends with a new girl who had joined their class, Bushra. Dina’s Snaps were now full of Bushra and her doing all the things they used to do together: swapping lunches, sharing tumblr posts and walking around the classroom block taking selfies. Layla didn’t really know how to feel about it.

  I mean yeh, it’s not like I wanted Dina to be alone, but she seems to have just replaced me with this other girl.

  It probably didn’t help that Bushra was super pretty too – she was Turkish, and the Turkish girls always looked so good in their unique hijab styles! Layla tried to convince herself that she wasn’t jealous. After all, Dina was still messaging her every day and spilling the ISB tea, but Layla couldn’t help feeling a little bit sad that she was missing out on all the fun.