His Other Wife

by Umm Zakiyyah

  If you only knew what is best for you, you’d shut your mouth.

  If you only knew your Lord, you’d focus on what was best for you—and that is a job never done.

  So no, I am not a “good job” sticker in his notebook, a trophy or award on his desk,

  Or a sign he’s deserved me as a badge of honor on his chest.

  I am not your topic of interest used to win a petty debate.

  I am not your topic of apology used to say that not all Muslims live this way.

  Oh, sometimes I pity you—if only that would matter at all.

  But it doesn’t.

  Because I am a soulless object plastered to your debate wall.

  I am the one who isn’t best for him, if he only knew.

  I am the sticker who shouldn’t be—except for the non-existent few.

  I am the badge of dis-honor pinned to his chest.

  I am the objectified nothingness because he chose what isn’t best.

  So it doesn’t matter what I feel, what I think, or what I see.

  Because I am not even human to you…

  Even as I pray, cry, and make du’aa to Allah—just like you.

  But for now, I find peace in the words of Prophet Ya’qoob from the Qur’an…”

  The Arabic recitation was so powerful and unexpected that the hush that had fallen over the room during the poem became even more hushed still. Every woman in the room bowed her head in humble reflection upon hearing the beauty of Allah’s Words.

  “He said,” Kalimah finished with the English meaning of what she’d just recited, “ ‘Nay, but you have contrived a story [good enough] for you. So patience is most fitting for me…’”

  ***

  “I don’t think I have any judgment left in me,” Aliyah said jokingly. The women sat in Salima’s living room discussing Kalimah’s poem, the only one that had been performed that night. “After everything I’ve experienced this past year,” Aliyah said, “I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut and ask only one question when I hear about somebody else’s life.”

  “What’s that?” Kalimah asked from where she sat on the floor amongst the other women.

  “What is Allah’s view on this?” Aliyah replied. “And if I can’t be one hundred percent sure that the answer is that He’s displeased, then I don’t see how I have a right to express my own displeasure.”

  At that, the women grew quiet, and a few said, “Hmph” in deep reflection.

  “Astaghfirullah,” Kalimah said sincerely. “May Allah help us love what He loves and hate what He hates.”

  “Ameen,” the women muttered in agreement.

  “I don’t have a problem with polygyny…” one of the women piped in, her tone rising with the last word, suggesting that the infamous but would follow. Her voice sounded awkwardly loud in the room and broke the reflective atmosphere. “I’m just waiting to hear a good story of it.” Her half smile only thinly veiled the smug expression on her face. “So far, I haven’t.”

  She shrugged, an unapologetic sneer in that gesture alone. “MashaAllah, if your marriage is good…” she said to Kalimah, as if she were really saying, No offense, but… She huffed, a smirk creasing the side of her lips. “…but yours would be the first.”

  A tense silence fell over the room, and Aliyah watched as Kalimah’s calm expression became tight in offense. “My marriage is not a good or bad story,” Kalimah said, her voice rising authoritatively, firm in conviction as it matched the challenge the woman had thrown at her. Her unapologetic tone was Aliyah’s first glimpse into the feistiness that Salima had warned her about. “It’s my life,” Kalimah said, contorting her face as she regarded the woman with distaste. “How dare you demand to know the good or bad details of somebody’s life before you even attempt to trust that your Lord knows better than you.”

  A suffocating quiet permeated the tense atmosphere. The woman who’d expressed her opinion shifted uncomfortably, an embarrassed but defiant look on her face. She looked as if she was about to say something flippant in response.

  Aliyah glanced uncertainly at Salima, hoping the hostess would intervene to quell the growing tension. But Aliyah pulled her head back in surprise when she saw the close-lipped smile on Salima’s face. Salima was leaning forward, her chin resting on a loose fist, as if enjoying the emotional scene.

  “If you need to hear, quote,” Kalimah said, lifting her hands and making a downward movement with two fingers on each hand, indicating quotations marks, “good stories about polygyny before you accept its goodness in people’s lives, then that’s your problem, not mine.” She lifted her upper lip in an undisguised sneer as she regarded the woman. “Why aren’t Allah’s Words sufficient for you?”

  The woman threw up her hands, her face twisted in annoyance and defensiveness. “It ain’t that deep,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I was just expressing my opinion.”

  “No,” Kalimah said, her voice rising in insistence, driving home her point. “You were just being arrogant.” She met the woman’s gaze, unblinking. “It’s none of your damn business whether my marriage, or anyone else’s for that matter, would count as a good story according to your self-righteous, contrived standards.”

  The woman’s nose flared as she glared at Kalimah. Her lividness was almost palpable, as if it were all she could do to keep from physically striking Kalimah.

  “Do you go around asking sisters in monogamy whether or not their marriage is good?” Kalimah challenged, eyes narrowed.

  Aliyah cringed, feeling obligated to step in to diffuse the situation. “I think she was just trying to say th—”

  “I don’t care what she thinks she was trying to say,” Kalimah said, raising the flat of her palm to Aliyah, halting her midsentence. “But what she is saying isn’t too different from a kaafir.”

  There was the sound of several women sucking in their breath at once. Even the woman whom Kalimah was talking to appeared too shocked to speak. Her mouth fell open, her eyes narrowing in irate disbelief.

  “You’re like someone who recognizes the truth of Islam,” Kalimah said, unperturbed by the stunned silence, “yet rejects it because she’s heard only, quote—” She moved her fingers in the quotation mark gesture again. “—bad stories of Muslims.”

  Aliyah exhaled, having not realized she was holding her breath. She was relieved that Kalimah wasn’t calling the woman a disbeliever. The relieved expressions on other women’s faces suggested that they had been thinking similarly.

  But the impenetrable tension remained.

  “Islam is not your personal storybook to like or dislike,” Kalimah said, her voice suggesting finality with the issue. “It’s a way of life.” She shrugged smugly. “Live it, or don’t live it. There is still goodness in it, no matter how many, or few, so-called good stories you hear about it during your life.”

  ***

  Deanna stood in the kitchen of her parents’ home Monday afternoon still wearing the soft fluorescent pink bathrobe she’d put on that morning after taking a shower. The cloth belt was tied securely at her waist, the hem of the robe stopping just above her shins. Her back was leaning against the counter next to the refrigerator, one arm crossed over her chest, the other hand holding the stack of papers from the package that had arrived only two days after she was released from jail.

  Deanna had read through the contents twice each day since the package arrived. It was the first thing she did in the morning after waking up and the last thing she did at night before going to bed. It was as if with each new reading, she expected to uncover some hidden evidence that none of it was real. But today, she’d already read through the paperwork three times because she needed to decide what to do. The thirty days she had to respond were waning with each day.

  For the divorce petition to have arrived that quickly, Jacob must have been meeting with a lawyer while she was awaiting trial—when she was trusting him to represent her best interests. The mere thought of him plotting revenge after she’d gone as far as to ass
ign power of attorney over to him was enraging. His behavior reeked of the most vicious betrayal.

  Is he out of his mind? she thought angrily to herself, slamming the stack of papers on the counter behind her. As if filing for a divorce was not enough of an affront, he was seeking ten percent of all of her business assets and book proceeds, as well as significant ownership in her marriage business. Apparently, he felt that he had carried the greater financial burden of funding both her consultation business and book promotion—and that he was an integral part of their success.

  Yes, Jacob had been very generous with his money during their marriage, and she had often sought (and occasionally insisted on) his participation in many of her relationship workshops and book projects. But she had assumed that he had agreed from the goodness of his heart, not so that he could lay claim to what was rightly hers. She didn’t owe him a single cent for mere marital kindness. Her money was hers and hers alone, and she would not allow him to touch a single penny of it.

  Fine, she thought in aggravation, if he wants full custody of our sons, he can have it. But she wasn’t parting with any of her money, and she was not sharing ownership in her business. If she was going to be left high and dry, abandoned and alone to fend for herself as a single woman, she wasn’t about to be held down by kids. She wasn’t going to let him get off scot-free, starting life with a clean slate, while all she received were child support checks to compensate for twenty-four hour childcare—and having not even the hope of another man looking her way. Because she was some other man’s “baby mama.”

  No, she wasn’t going down that road, not now, not ever. She certainly didn’t want a divorce, but if Jacob wanted to pretend that he actually did, she was going to call his bluff. Then she’d make him regret that he’d even thought about letting her go.

  There was the sound of movement coming from her father’s office, and she immediately snatched up the stack of papers and left the kitchen. She hurried up the carpeted steps and walked down the hall to her room, where she locked the door behind her. At her dresser, she yanked open a drawer and lifted a stack of neatly folded clothes and placed the papers beneath it before shutting the drawer again.

  As Deanna walked over to her bed, she caught a reflection of herself, and she halted her steps to study herself in the full-length mirror. She turned her torso from left to right, in awe at how attractive she was. As she admired her reflection and thought about how Jacob would be miserable without her, an idea came to her. Grinning, she slid her fingers into her entangled mess of hair, then turned her face from side to side to see which angle was more flattering. Her eyes traced her reflection from head to toe, and her heart raced as the idea took on a life of its own in her mind.

  With the divorce filing, Jacob lost any right to an opinion about her life. Her days of playing the “good Muslim wife” were over, and she refused to assume that degrading role again. When he came crawling back to her in the end, as she knew he would, their relationship would be on her terms, not his.

  But first she had some work to do.

  The mischievous grin spread on her face as she studied her reflection. She still had her figure, and now that she no longer felt any obligation to “guard her body from men’s eyes” out of respect for Jacob, she was going to do what she had set out to after Aliyah’s media ruse: use her sex appeal to get Jacob’s attention. Her efforts had flopped last time mostly because she had been so busy trying to balance Muslim modesty with sensuality, and it just didn’t work. This time she would definitely be the “hot Muslim.” And with Jacob filing for a divorce, the new photos would likely have a much more powerful effect. Not only because she had a more foolproof strategy this time, but because his male jealousy—and desire—would almost definitely kick in.

  But first she needed to devise a way to keep Jacob out of her pocket during the divorce—without paying a single cent in lawyers’ fees. She wasn’t even going to waste her time telling her parents about the divorce papers. Of course, they’d find a way to blame her or come up with some stupid plan about getting custody of the kids. But Deanna had a better plan. Her father wasn’t speaking to her anyway, and her mother was always holed up in her room most of the day, recovering from that stupid fall that Deanna had taken the blame for.

  If only Deanna could reconnect with at least one male friend who either was a lawyer himself or knew someone who was, then her plan would be complete. Then, she could kill two birds with one stone: pro-bono legal representation and arm candy to make Jacob fly into a jealous rage.

  Then after he came crawling back, she could sit back and gloat, telling herself, “Job well done.”

  Her smile faded as she was reminded of her struggles with her voice. She lifted her chin and studied the smooth skin of her neck in the mirror. Using the tips of her fingers, she massaged her throat, wondering when her speech would return to normal. Though her voice itself had returned, it was raspy and she hated the sound of it. And several days out of the week, she felt as if she had a sore throat.

  “Hi, I’m Deanna,” she spoke aloud to her reflection. She grimaced. She sounded like a lifelong smoker.

  How would she be able to resume workshops and interviews sounding like this? And how could she find a man who would be willing to even pretend to like her if she couldn’t even hold a decent conversation?

  Sadness and frustration overwhelmed her. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She wasn’t supposed to be living in her parents’ house struggling to utter an intelligible sentence.

  What had she ever done to deserve this? Why was Jacob punishing her like this?

  And how was she supposed to punish him in return if she couldn’t even speak properly? What handsome male lawyer would offer free legal services to someone in her condition? She probably couldn’t even call some of her old male friends from college. They probably wouldn’t even believe it was she, with her voice like it was.

  Asher.

  The thought came to her so suddenly that it halted all her others. The mere thought of reconnecting with her older brother made her physically sick. The last time she’d seem him was in passing at a family reunion several years ago, and she never made any effort to keep in touch. And neither did he.

  But her parents often mentioned that he had a successful real estate company that specialized in business property. Deanna couldn’t imagine him not knowing at least three male lawyers offhand who’d been clients of his.

  But would he help her? was the question.

  He owes me, Deanna thought in indignant aggravation, reminded of how he had remained a friend of Bailey’s for years. Finding her a male lawyer friend was the least he could do.

  But would he?

  Deanna grunted. There was only one way to find out.

  Chapter 27

  People of Unknown Value

  “Where is she?”

  Aliyah had barely gotten the door to her apartment open Wednesday evening in response to the knocking before she heard the demanding question. Reem didn’t even offer the salaams as she stood with her arms folded defiantly, her eyes glaring at Aliyah as if she’d stolen something.

  “As-salaamu’alikum,” Aliyah said, her eyes narrowed in concern as she waved Reem inside. “Is everything okay?”

  Reem stepped into the foyer, but she didn’t go any further. “You tell me,” Reem said, still wearing her veil even after Aliyah had reached behind her and closed the door.

  Aliyah shut her eyes and shook her head in a quick motion, as if to clear her head. “Can you tell me who we’re talking about here?”

  “So you’re going to act like you don’t know?”

  “Know what, Reem?” Aliyah said, growing annoyed. “Can you please stop speaking in code?”

  Reem yanked her niqaab up to reveal her face, throwing the black fabric behind her head like a cape. She kicked off her shoes and walked heavy-footed to Aliyah’s couch, where she sat stiffly on it, arms still folded. When Aliyah went to sit down next to her, she saw that Reem had tears
in her eyes.

  “She’s gone, Aliyah,” Reem whimpered, her voice awkwardly high-pitched as her chin quivered. “She didn’t come home last night, and her phone is off.”

  Aliyah’s heart fell in the realization that Reem was talking about her younger sister Mashael. “But I don’t want them there,” Mashael had told Aliyah when she’d come over and talked about her fight with Reem about the wedding. “I want it to be just me and Sheldon.” Aliyah had never thought Mashael would actually run off and elope. It just wasn’t a scenario that she associated with Reem’s family.

  “And the police won’t treat it as a missing persons case because she’s an adult,” Reem said. “So they’re not helping at all.” She exhaled a ragged breath. “What if something bad happened to her?”

  “Did your family try to reach Sheldon?” Aliyah asked.

  Reem nodded, her face still contorted in pain. “But his phone is off too.”

  Reem looked at Aliyah, eyes pooled with tears. “What if he kidnapped her and did something to her? What if—”

  “Mashael told me that she and Sheldon wanted to get married without any family there,” Aliyah interjected, feeling obligated to at least share what she knew. “But I didn’t think she meant they’d run off together.”

  Reem stared at Aliyah in disbelief, her crumpled expression conveying hurt. “What else could it mean?” she asked accusingly in rebuke, as if the little Aliyah knew made her fully culpable in the crime. “You should’ve called me as soon as she told you that.”

  “I forgot about it to be honest,” Aliyah said, slight defensiveness in her voice. She wasn’t about to take the blame for this.

  “You forgot about it?” Reem said, incredulous, eyes widened in disbelief. Aliyah sensed Reem needed a tangible target for her pain. “How could you forget something like that?”

  “Because Mashael just wanted advice,” Aliyah said, still defensiveness, “and there’s nothing alarming about that.”