by Umm Zakiyyah
“Sweetheart, sweetheart.” Ismael gently shook his wife’s shoulder to wake her from the nap she was taking after Fajr Sunday morning.
Wearing black dress pants and a Polo shirt, he leaned over the bed with a knee bent into the softness of the mattress and watched as Sarah turned over and moaned. Her hair had loosened itself from its bun and was now a thick mass of blond behind her head.
“Sarah, are you up?”
“Mm,” she said, blinking until she opened her eyes to a squint. She looked at Ismael and sat up on her elbows, her puffy ponytail holder now visible as it held what was left of her bun just below the nape of her neck. “Where you going?” Her voice was scratchy, still having not recovered from sleep.
“Nowhere. I just got back.”
“From where?” She sat up, rubbing her eyes.
“I have something to show you.” Ismael grinned. “Get dressed.”
After Sarah had used the restroom, showered and dressed, she followed her husband out of the room as he held her hand.
“Mm, what’s that smell?” she said as they descended the steps.
“Close your eyes.”
Sarah creased her forehead and grinned. “What?”
“Close your eyes,” Ismael insisted playfully.
She closed her eyes then walked more carefully behind him down the steps. He led her through the foyer and living room then stopped where it met the dining room. He slipped a palm over her eyes and rested the other on a shoulder. He felt the familiar softness of her skin, and felt her hair tickle his hand. He uncovered her eyes and kissed the top of her head before saying, “Now.”
Sarah’s eyes opened wide, and Ismael smiled as she beheld the elaborately set up dining room table with the breakfast, part of which he had bought, the other which he made. “MashaAllaah.”
“Please,” Ismael said with a smile, “take a seat.” He moved forward and pulled out a chair next to his place at the head and she sat down.
“Now, I’ll serve you,” he said.
Ismael placed pancakes, eggs, cheese grits, and fried fish on his wife’s plate. Sarah couldn’t keep from smiling, and when their eyes met, they shared a brief moment of speaking without exchanging a word. Looking at her, he felt his heart swell. He couldn’t imagine how his life would be without his wife. They had been married for twenty-six years, years in which they had grown not only in their love for each other but their love for Allah. They had not known Islam when they met, but by the time it graced their lives, they knew with certainty it was what they needed. And they knew with no less certainty that they also needed each other.
“What’s the occasion?” Sarah grinned as she placed a cloth napkin on her lap in preparation to eat.
“Us.” He continued to smile at her as she lowered her gaze to arrange her napkin, and avoid the open compliment.
She shook her head, amusement in her eyes as she met his. “I have to admit, I had no idea.”
“I figured that,” he joked. “I was afraid you’d sleep the entire morning.”
She grinned and teased the food with her fork.
“And to apologize.” Ismael arranged his napkin on his lap to avoid his wife’s eyes.
“For what?” She held a forkful of food inches from her mouth, awaiting his response.
“For yesterday.”
Her head moved in the hint of a nod, and she brought the food to her mouth and chewed.
“Sweetheart,” Ismael said, “I’m sorry.”
She was silent momentarily as she finished the bite of food. “I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have gotten so upset.”
“No, you had every right to be upset. I shouldn’t have kept that from you.”
“It’s okay. I understand.”
“No, it’s not okay.” He sighed, shaking his head. “Sometimes you tell yourself you’re doing this for their own good, but I don’t know. Maybe I was just being selfish.”
Sarah set her fork down and reached to place her hand over her husband’s. “Don’t say that, sweetheart. What’s selfish about doing the right thing?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know, Sarah. Sometimes I don’t know what the right thing is. Part of me wanted to tell you, but I knew it would only distract you, or hurt you. And I thought, what if nothing comes of it? So I let Zaid and Aminah e-mail each other to see what she thought of him before saying anything to you.”
“They’ve been e-mailing each other?” Sarah’s eyes widened as she removed her hand from his, and Ismael couldn’t look at her.
“Yes, I’m sorry. I let her use my account.”
Ismael watched as his wife’s raised eyebrows softened and she picked up her fork again before eating in silence.
“Mm,” she said a minute later.
“What?”
“The food.”
“What about it?”
“It’s really good.” Sarah smiled at him, and inside Ismael relaxed.
“I was hoping it would be.”
A few seconds later, she asked, “And what has come of it?”
“Has come of what?”
“Their correspondence.”
Ismael lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “It seems like Aminah really likes him.”
Sarah started to nod again. She reached for the bottle of syrup and squeezed the dark, sticky liquid over her pancakes.
“Sweetheart,” Ismael said, “don’t think you’re being left out. That’s why we had the meeting yesterday. Nothing is settled. I haven’t given my answer yet.”
“But it seems like you like him already. Does it matter what I think?”
“Yes, it matters. Aminah needs you more than anything. Now’s not the time to withdraw, sweetheart. She needs your guidance and advice.”
Sarah seemed to consider this as she ate.
“I don’t want you to ever think I’m hiding anything from you, Sarah. It’s not like that.”
She continued to eat in silence.
“I was awake most of the night last night,” Sarah said finally, her eyes on the food she was putting on her fork. “I couldn’t sleep. I was thinking about all of this.”
Ismael listened.
She shook her head. “Honestly, Ismael, in a way, I don’t blame you. You did what you thought was best. From your point of view, I see where you’re coming from. And perhaps you were right. Maybe I couldn’t handle that right then.” She looked at him. “But I can’t understand why you couldn’t just tell that to the brother.”
He furrowed his brows. “That it was too much for you to handle?”
“No, that it was too much for us to handle at the time.”
He drew in a deep breath and nodded. “Perhaps, that would have been better.”
She shrugged. “But there’s no point in dwelling on the what ifs. Right now, he’s proposed, and we need to give him an answer.”
Ismael nodded and sliced his pancakes with a fork and butter knife.
A minute later, Sarah grinned at him, and he met her gaze.
“What?” he said, a grin tugging at his mouth.
“Thank you for the breakfast. It was really thoughtful of you.”
“Well, I was hoping to make up for what I did.”
“I forgive you.”
His eyes widened. “Really?”
“Of course.”
He chuckled self-consciously. “I love you, sweetheart. I really do. Please don’t ever forget that.”
“I know,” she said softly. “I don’t see how I could.”
Ismael opened his mouth to say something, but he decided against it, placing a forkful of pancake there instead. He smiled at his wife even as he chewed, and he prayed that she really would never forget how much he loved her. He could not imagine what his life would be if she did.
Tamika sat with her knees raised in front of her, her thighs supporting the notebook she was using to write notes on what Sister Nusaybah was saying. Aminah and Khadijah sat on either side of Tamika. Khadijah sat with her back against the wall for support, an
d her small protruding belly could be seen under the thin cotton of the T-shirt she was wearing. Her legs stuck out in front of her, crossed at the ankle, and she kept switching which ankle crossed the other, as if her four months of pregnancy were already plaguing her with discomfort. The notebook she had brought was lying closed in the small space between her and Aminah, who sat pretzel style raising her notebook slightly whenever she wrote something down. Alika sat against an adjacent wall and had no notebook, but the way she rested her crossed arms on her raised knees and creased her forehead as Nusaybah spoke made Tamika imagine Alika was absorbing more than all of them together.
The class was supposed to be for Alika. But upon Khadijah’s insistence, Nusaybah opened the class to the three of them, but not without making it clear that it was open to no one else. Tamika understood that Nusaybah was a private person. Tamika had sensed this about Nusaybah when she met the hairdresser a year before when Sarah had arranged for the sister to style Tamika’s hair on the day of her nikaah. Tamika remembered seeing Nusaybah come to Sarah’s house just hours before Tamika and Sulayman would marry. Nusaybah was wearing all black with a jilbaab that began at the top of her head and fell over her feet as she walked. A niqaab was affixed to her face revealing only her eyes. But she was prepared to cover even them. An extra layer of the veil was thrown behind her head and the thin fabric sailed gently behind her as she walked, from a distance giving the illusion of a sheer cape atop her head.
Khadijah had told Tamika that Nusaybah was her mentor, having introduced Khadijah to Islam and took her in after she converted from Christianity. Although Khadijah’s parents did not officially put her out of the house when she became Muslim, the environment in her Decatur home became so suffocating that it was nearly impossible to practice the religion with any peace. Nusaybah, who at the time had recently remarried her first husband and moved into a new home, did not hesitate to offer Khadijah a home, where Khadijah stayed for almost a year. During that time Nusaybah lent Khadijah money to complete nursing school although she was struggling financially herself. Khadijah’s description of Nusaybah’s selflessness during that time reminded Tamika of the kindness displayed by Aminah’s family after Tamika’s mother had kicked her out of their home upon discovering Tamika’s conversion to Islam.
“She’s like a second mother to me,” Khadijah had reflected once, and Tamika was moved. She could tell Nusaybah meant a lot to Khadijah, and as Tamika sat before Sister Nusaybah for their first class session, she sensed that she too would one day be indebted to Nusaybah for her benevolence.
Nusaybah sat before them wearing a long, loose abiya from her shoulders, similar to the kind Aminah and Tamika wore, but Nusaybah wore hers as a dress would be worn under a jilbaab. The ocean blue fabric seemed to illuminate her coffee brown skin, and its navy pearl-like buttons gave her a distinguished look as they ran up the front of the material and halted below her throat. The soft blue fabric gently traced the outlines of her neck, where a thin 14-karat gold necklace hung bearing a pendant gold band like that usually worn on the ring finger of the left hand. Her hair was an assortment of thin, short braids, gray strands interwoven with black from which a curly frizz found occasion to release itself from the small plaits and at the hairline that surrounded her face. An array of moles freckled her cheeks, emanating a wisdom born from a youth that was quietly retreating to give way to a patient serenity that only five and a half decades of living could bring. Her eyebrows were attractively thick with a natural arc that underscored the luminous dark chocolate of her eyes. The laugh lines around them suggested she had found much occasion to laugh in youth, but the creases now intimated a tendency to merely smile, a patient yet sincere tugging at the corners of her mouth, to express pleasure, amusement, or a wise gesture offered in place of words.
In a word, Nusaybah was arresting. Tamika observed a gracefulness about the woman that escaped even in her voice, an effeminate baritone that reminded Tamika of the powerful singing voice of the deacon’s mother at her former Milwaukee church. The woman’s normal alto singing range could easily border on a tenor in some gospel hymns she sang before the congregation. Tamika was always stunned by the woman’s deep voice and found it striking that a woman could have such a masculine tone and still exude femininity in its sound. When the deacon’s mother spoke, one could not help but listen, and disagreement would not enter one’s mind. It was as if her voice alone was proof that God had appointed her as shepherd of men upon the earth, and one could not argue with the chosen. Nusaybah had the same voice, and Tamika found herself captivated by the woman’s careful, measured words that were spoken as if she had all the time in the world, but with an urgency that conveyed that she did not have enough.
Tamika noted how Nusaybah’s eyes would become luminescent as she spoke, as if the mere mention of the Creator or His Messenger was so profound as to elicit tears from her eyes. When Nusaybah recited a Qur’anic verse to reference or substantiate a point, it was always a soft, commanding recitation, the most striking melodious sound Tamika had ever heard. Tamika found herself in awe of the woman’s authority in Qur’an and Islam, and was impressed by the ease with which she would reference a verse in Arabic and English then proceed to cite its chapter title and verse number without ever opening the book. When quoting a statement from Prophet Muhammad, Nusaybah always said “sallallaahu’alayhi wa sallam” with an unhurried patience that was a sharp contrast to the usually rushed recitation of the words by other Muslims, as if the words invoking Allah’s blessings and peace upon His prophet were said more out of obligation than a sincere desire to convey a respect held in their hearts for him.
Tamika had been in the class for only an hour, and already she had learned more than she had learned since accepting Islam. The topic had been broached in her previous studies and readings, but never in this depth, and never with this much devotion, which seemed to permeate even Tamika’s heart as the teacher spoke. Recitation of Qur’an had evoked tears from Tamika before, but never words themselves, except the ones she had recited upon becoming Muslim. Now she sat listening to Nusaybah speak about the oneness of Allah and creation’s obligation to Him, and Tamika felt her eyes moisten at the woman’s words.
Tawheed, Nusaybah explained, formed the foundation of Islam, and it was this concept alone that drew the dividing line between Islam and all other religions and ways of life. Tamika had read the book Fundamentals of Tawheed before becoming Muslim, but at the time she had only a general grasp of what she was reading. Now as she listened to Nusaybah explain the unique oneness of the Creator, she was stunned by both the vastness and complexity of the God she had believed in since childhood.
“Allah created all things,” the teacher translated the Qur’anic verse she had just recited, “and He is the agent on which all things depend.”
Nusaybah went on to explain that this verse, among others, pointed to the fact that ultimate power rested with the Creator alone, and all of creation depended upon Him in that regard. Only He could decree good or bad. Humans had no power whatsoever over one another, except in that which Allah allowed. By creating us and our deeds, Nusaybah said, God gave us limited free will, a freedom governed by His power. Any creation that a human believed to control the ultimate outcome of his affairs was in essence an idol, in direct opposition to pure monotheism. Belief in one God necessitated an ultimate dependence on the Creator, even as the help of humans was sought on earth.
“Be aware,” she quoted the Prophet, “that if the whole of mankind gathered together to help you in something, they would be able help you in only that which Allah had already written for you. Likewise, if the whole of mankind gathered together to harm you, they would be able to harm you in only that which Allah had already written for you.”
Thus, not only did the ultimate destiny of any of our experiences rest with Allah alone, it was all written, predestined before we were put on earth. This writing was based upon His eminent knowledge of all affairs before they occurred. Even the falling
of a leaf from a tree was known before its stem loosened from the branch. It was all recorded, predestined—subject to fate.
Any attribution of fate to any other than the Creator himself was a form of idolatry. Even seemingly innocent reliance on amulets, lucky charms, and rabbits’ feet were forms of paganism that contradicted pure belief in God alone. Common superstitions like knocking on wood, a broken mirror, or the number thirteen, too, were types of shirk that precluded a pure, unadulterated belief in Allah’s power over all things.
Tamika listened to Nusaybah’s words, inspired by how they clarified more definitely why Tamika was never content as a Christian. How could the Creator depend on anyone, or anything? How could God have the attributes of a human? How could a human have attributes of Allah? The Creator endowed His creation with the faculties of hearing and seeing, but their limited hearing and seeing was in no way comparable to the divine ability of the One above the heavens to hear and see all things. He heard all that was spoken in the far reaches of the earth or whispered in the most private of quarters, even in the most secluded homes, while having eminent knowledge and understanding of it all. He suffered no confusion or difficulty in comprehending or hearing the multitude of languages, subtleties, and conversations spoken all at once from the billions of humans upon the earth. Unlike His creation, His sight was all-encompassing, and He could see into the very breasts of humans while having complete sight and control over the entire universe. His knowledge of the affairs of His creation was nothing like one could even hope to comprehend.
It was in allowing the infiltration of foreign concepts regarding Tawheed that accounted for the current contradictory foundation of belief in God in the once monotheistic religion of Christianity. When Tamika’s heart had been unable to find peace with the alleged divinity of Allah’s prophet Jesus, “His son”, it was because her natural in-born desire to worship Allah alone would not allow it. The nature of divinity itself rendered such an earthly manifestation of Allah—in Jesus’ divinity and the fatherhood of the Creator—impossible by the very definition of God.