Footsteps

by Umm Zakiyyah

  “Well, I guess my first question is,” he said taking a deep breath, “will you forgive me?”

  Forgive him? She creased her forehead and inadvertently lifted her head to glance at her father, who was staring at her with a smile on his face, as if he thought the question was the most sensible one in the world. Ismael gave his daughter a slight nod, as if to tell her it was okay to answer.

  “Excuse me?” Her voice was soft and hesitant, although more audible this time. But she continued to look at her father, as if she were speaking to him. And perhaps she was. Aminah wanted her father to repeat it for her.

  “I want to know if you’ll forgive me.” Abdur-Rahman’s voice rose, and Aminah was suddenly reminded that she had to talk to him.

  She held her confused expression and glanced in Abdur-Rahman’s direction then at her hands, an improvement from staring at the front of her abiya. “Forgive you?”

  “Yes.”

  “For what?”

  “Not knowing proper etiquette when I introduced myself to you and your mother at my house.”

  Oh. Aminah said nothing.

  “And for not announcing myself before coming into my house when your family visited.”

  At the reminder, she wanted to sink into the cushions of the sofa. She had been hoping for the miracle of erased memory of that night. Inside she cringed as she remembered how comfortable she had felt talking to his birds. His birds! O Allah.

  “And I want to thank you.”

  When Aminah didn’t answer, her father tugged gently at her hand. Aminah sighed silently, but she had already spoken, so she didn’t feel the same discomfort she had in the beginning.

  “Thank me for what?” Her voice sounded emotionless, if not sarcastic, and she immediately regretted her chant-like tone. It was rude.

  “For taking care of Freddie and Freda that day.”

  Aminah swallowed. He had no idea how she felt like an idiot listening to him. She imagined that seeing her talking to his pet had made him believe he could marry her, solidified their shared attachment to creatures with wings. She imagined herself standing next to him at their wedding as he carried the cages on either side of him. In her mind, she saw Abdur-Rahman lift the cage of birds and pull it close to his face so he can wag his head playfully and ask, “What do you think, Freda? I do?” Aminah grinned and brought a hand to her mouth to stifle laughter as she reminded herself where she was.

  She heard Abdur-Rahman’s nervous laughter. “I know it sounds crazy,” he said, and immediately Aminah felt bad. He had misunderstood her laughter. He thought she was laughing at him. Well, technically she was, but not at him really. “But they mean a lot to me.”

  Aminah knew she should say something but couldn’t think of anything, and the image in her head switched to one in which Freda was wearing a wedding dress instead of her. She smiled. “I know,” she said, surprising herself that she actually sounded like the Aminah who had teased Sulayman growing up.

  “Do you think it’s weird?”

  The question surprised her, and she had no idea how to answer. She gathered her eyebrows and again turned to her father, who held the same smile that egged her on. She smiled back at Ismael, gathering confidence from him, and thinking, Why not? “Yes,” she said simply, still smiling and holding her father’s gaze.

  Abdur-Rahman stammered. “You do?”

  “Yes,” Aminah said again, gathering confidence from her father’s grin, which gave her the security she would feel if it were Sulayman sitting opposite her.

  “But why?”

  She shrugged, this time glancing at her hands that smoothed the fabric of her abiya as she gathered her thoughts. “I don’t know. It just is.”

  “Does that bother you though?” She caught a trace of nervousness in his voice, and for a moment she felt bad for him. She was actually making him nervous. And she liked it. Yes, she thought, I like this. Payback for how he startled me when he walked into the house. Aminah couldn’t help feeling flattered, and in control. This meeting wasn’t going half bad. At this rate, she could go for hours. One quick glance at her father and seeing the twinkle in his eye made her grin, as if they were sharing a private joke.

  “Very much,” she said, knowing right then that she liked him. Yes, she liked the tree hugger, and together they just might have some good laughs. It was the sincerity in his voice, evidenced in the way he couldn’t hide his hurt feelings, that convinced her he was a good person. He didn’t know how to wear a mask, how to try to play it cool and impress her. And she liked that. That he was emotionally affected by what she thought of him and his birds made her realize he would listen to her and care what she thought.

  There was a long silence, and Aminah couldn’t resist looking toward Abdur-Rahman to witness the nervousness herself. He was fiddling with his hands and biting his lower lip as his gaze rested in his lap. She then looked at her father, and he winked at her.

  “Do you have any questions for him?” Ismael asked loud enough to let Aminah know it was her turn to put him on the spot.

  “Yes,” she said with a shyness that was more from what she was going to ask than the meeting itself. “Just one.”

  “Are you ready?” Ismael teased the brother, who looked up suddenly and forced a smile. Aminah could pinch her father. He didn’t have to ask Abdur-Rahman that. The brother was already suffering enough as it was.

  Abdur-Rahman cleared his throat. “Yes. I think I am.”

  “What made you know you wanted to marry me and not anyone else?”

  “I think it went pretty well, don’t you?” Ismael said, placing a hand on Abdur-Rahman’s shoulder as they stood opposite each other by the front door.

  Abdur-Rahman felt as if he had been the butt of a joke, but he didn’t want to say that to Aminah’s father. He wondered if tonight hadn’t been Aminah’s way of making fun of him for even thinking to propose to someone like her. It made him grow sick at the thought. He didn’t want a repeat of his experience with Samantha.

  He lifted a shoulder in a shrug and avoided Ismael’s gaze as he slipped his hands into the pockets of his suit pants. “I couldn’t tell.”

  There was a long pause before he heard Ismael’s voice again.

  “Brother, she likes you.”

  Abdur-Rahman gathered his eyebrows and met Ismael’s gaze, feeling uncertain if this was another joke. He couldn’t shake the feeling that Ismael and his own father were somehow alike. “You really think so?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “But she said she thought I was weird.”

  Ismael laughed. “She was teasing you.”

  A hesitant grin formed on Abdur-Rahman’s face and he creased his forehead in uncertainty. “What?”

  “Yes, she was.” Abdur-Rahman saw Ismael’s sincere smile and couldn’t help smiling too. Maybe Aminah’s father was right.

  “It sure didn’t sound like that.”

  “Well, take it from me. You did well.”

  He shook his head, too self-conscious and unsure of himself to believe something like that. “I made a fool of myself, you mean.”

  Ismael shook his head and met Abdur-Rahman’s gaze. “Trust me, brother. I’m her father. If you had made a fool of yourself, I wouldn’t be talking to you. I would be showing you out the door, saying, ‘Don’t call us. We’ll call you.’”

  Abdur-Rahman laughed. He really liked this family. It felt so much like his own. “Yeah, I suppose.”

  There was an awkward silence as Abdur-Rahman stared intently at the floor, unsure how to ask what he wanted to.

  “Brother,” he said, searching for a way to form his words. He met Ismael’s gaze. “Do you think she’ll think I’m, you know, a bit crazy for the answer I gave to her question?”

  Ismael chuckled and shook his head with such confidence that Abdur-Rahman found himself feeling confident too. “Not at all.”

  Abdur-Rahman nodded, looking at the floor again with his hands still in his pockets, unsure what else to say.

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nbsp; “Weird maybe,” Ismael conceded jokingly, “but not crazy.”

  Abdur-Rahman grinned, still unable to completely believe that Aminah was teasing him when she said she thought that he was weird, and that bothered him. “But who wants to marry weird?”

  Ismael smiled. “Everyone,” he said, “if you think of its synonyms unique and special.”

  Faith narrowed her eyes from where she sat next to Sarah on the couch, trying to think of the best way to answer her friend’s question. Sarah had said she was coming to Faith as “friend and counselor,” and given both titles, it was difficult to find the right words to say to Sarah. If Sarah had come to Faith “the friend”, Faith could speak her mind with all the “What I would do” prefixes. If she had come to Faith “the psychologist”, Faith wouldn’t have to share personal opinions at all. In fact, it could be unethical and unprofessional. Faith would be able to hide behind her wise nods and wide desk and share nothing. She could appear as if she had mastered all the obstacles her patient was seeking to overcome. But as a friend, she couldn’t hide behind her PhD and wall plaques. She was forced to think of her own marriage, a union of thirty-two years to Ronald. That she would not do on the job. But she couldn’t help the vague sense of recognition whenever a patient’s story held a parallel to her own.

  Therein lay the dilemma. Really, she couldn’t play two roles at once. But she would have to. That was her only option, when she really thought about it. In the comfort of her home, Faith realized that psychologist and friend were one and the same. It was why she had the passion to help abused women. It was her heart, the friend in her. Although, she learned that it wasn’t always possible, or wise, to share your gut feeling, or even what the patient needed to hear. That was the most difficult part of the job. Since opening her now thriving private practice six years ago, her clientele expanded to include both women and men suffering from the more common, if not mundane, wearing down of marriage and life itself. But even as she was her own boss, managed her own office that she shared with two associates, she could never relax behind her desk. There were always legal and ethical guidelines that drew a line between her and her client, preventing her from truly sharing what was on her mind. So she should have been relieved that Sarah was not a patient. She could relax and be Faith the human being.

  Even so, did she feel comfortable sharing with Sarah the private and painful lessons she had learned over the years? If not, she could not effectively play the role of friend. Or was Faith herself still struggling with issues of trust, preventing her from opening up? If she were, there was little she could do to help someone else. She would have to place her trust in Allah. Faith did not know how to be dishonest. She would simply tell the truth, even if her heart didn’t allow her to open up as much as she would like.

  “Trust?” Faith said, with a shake of the head. “What does that word mean anyway?” She paused. “That I believe he’ll never cheat?” She met Sarah’s gaze. “Is that what you’re asking?”

  Sarah’s gaze fell to her hands, where she toyed with her wedding band, twisting it then pulling it up and down her finger. She lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe. But maybe more than that. I mean, do you trust him? Whatever that means to you.”

  Faith drew in a deep breath and exhaled. She understood that Sarah wasn’t so much interested in her personal life, but how Faith viewed it so that Sarah could compare it to her own. It was a human flaw to measure the normalcy of your life by looking outside your own. There was no such thing as normal, Faith learned, at least not in the specific sense. Yes, there were the basic tenets that we all learned in kindergarten. Don’t lie. Don’t steal. Don’t cheat. And don’t hurt anyone. But the irony was, each one had been violated by the time most people said, “I do.” And the one to whom they lied, from whom they stole, whom they cheated, and hurt most was the self.

  Faith, like most people, had lied to herself. Who didn’t look back and see herself as a victim? That was the first lie she would tell. Who hadn’t taken what belonged to someone else? She had done that for over fifty years before she finally gave her soul back to its Owner. Who hadn’t cheated herself out of a second, an hour, a day, a year—a lifetime? In addition to her cheating prior to a year ago, she was cheating herself each time she walked through the doors of her office with her head uncovered, and when she missed prayers whenever she was afraid of her associates, or patients, discovering her Islam. And in the end, had she really imagined no one would get hurt? Did she have any idea that, in the end, she would hurt most?

  Perhaps the best way to answer Sarah’s question was to ask, “Do you trust yourself?” Faith surely didn’t. She couldn’t imagine a sensible adult answering in the affirmative to that question.

  And how could she trust herself? She had no idea what test lurked in the next breath. She had no idea how she would tackle it, let alone if she would pass. And if she could not answer that about herself, the person whose soul was inside her own flesh, how could she answer it for another person trapped inside a human body just like her own?

  What had compelled Faith to finally accept Islam was that it forced her to look at no one but herself at the end of the day. How could she worry about what Ronald was doing when the angels were writing for her? No, she could not escape the inevitable devastation a wife would feel upon discovering what a woman in her youth would deem unthinkable. But she couldn’t help feeling more devastated in the quiet of the night wrapped in Islamic garb with her face on the ground in prayer, knowing that she was at risk of losing her soul to the world.

  Whatever misfortune befalls you,

  it is because of what your hands have earned.

  And for much of it, He grants forgiveness.

  It was a Qur’anic verse that so aptly described the reality of human experience. So there was but one way to answer Sarah’s question, and it could be neither yes nor no.

  “I trust Allah,” she said finally, meeting Sarah’s gaze.

  It was not the answer Sarah wanted, or expected. Faith could tell that by Sarah’s sigh and brief rolling of her eyes to the ceiling, as if saying This is not going well.

  “We all do,” Sarah said, a suppressed frustration in her calm voice.

  “But we all don’t,” Faith said as gently as she could. “It’s one of the hardest things to achieve.”

  “And you’ve achieved it?” There was an edge of challenge in Sarah’s voice as she met Faith’s eyes, but Faith understood it as her friend crying out. She had seen it in dozens of patients, women and men, struggling in their marriage.

  Faith reached and placed a hand on Sarah’s leg. “That’s not what I meant.”

  Sarah shook her head, apparently trying to get a hold of herself. “I’m sorry, I just—”

  “It’s okay, Sarah. You’re going through a lot right now.”

  “I just don’t know what to do.”

  “Maybe that’s it, Sarah. Perhaps you’re not supposed to do anything.”

  Sarah’s gaze fell to her fingers again, where she began twisting and pulling the ring in silence for a few minutes. Faith kept her hand on Sarah’s leg, a show of comfort and support as she patiently waited for Sarah to gather her words, her thoughts.

  There was slight suppression of laughter before Sarah spoke, her eyes still on her ring finger. “For years I didn’t wear this.” A wry smile formed on one side of her lips. “Ismael took his off before me. We’d already changed his to silver when we found out, you know. I used to argue with him about it before I finally took mine off too. I told him he should wear it to show he was already taken. But you know what?” She looked at Faith then, a trace of amusement on her tired face.

  Faith let her eyes express interest in Sarah’s words. Sometimes speaking broke a patient’s rhythm, pulling them into the present and reminding them they were talking to a stranger.

  “He told me female coworkers bothered him more with it on.” There was dry laughter.

  “But for me,” Sarah said, “it was the op
posite. So I put mine back on, and he didn’t.”

  She creased her forehead and looked at Faith. “Isn’t it funny? How our lives are so different? Men and women, I mean.”

  At that Faith couldn’t escape the veracity of Sarah’s words. She nodded, a wry smile now on her face. “Yes, it is. It certainly is.”

  There was a long silence, and Sarah began twisting and pulling her ring again. After a few minutes, she halted the movement as her gaze grew distant.

  “I’m not being hypothetical, Faith.”

  Faith gathered her eyebrows. “What do you mean?”

  “He’s already married to the sister.”

  The news was so unbelievable and ridiculous that Faith laughed. As Sarah met Faith’s eyes, her expression quieted Faith’s doubt. Faith averted her gaze and removed her hand from Sarah’s lap, not wanting to believe what she was hearing. This wasn’t good. This wasn’t good at all.

  “Do you know her?” Faith said a moment later.

  Sarah laughed more audibly this time. “You do too.”

  Faith turned to her friend, her forehead creased.

  “It’s Alika.”

  Thirty minutes after Sarah’s confession, Faith heard her son call from upstairs, and Sarah had hurriedly covered her hair and put on her abiya. After Faith saw her friend out the door, she entered the living room and met her son’s grin and sparkling eyes, indication that Abdur-Rahman had reason to at least remain hopeful that things had gone well. She knew he wanted to go upstairs to where he had allowed his animals to fly and roam free while he was gone, if not to check on them, then to share the good news with them, or at least optimistic news.

  Faith grinned as her eyes asked him to tell all. But she couldn’t escape a sense of dread. She couldn’t will herself to be as excited as he was, not after the meeting with Sarah tonight. She had thought the Ali family to be like an extension of her own, but after Sarah’s confession, Faith was repulsed by the thought of their families being one. What example would Ismael set for her son, or worse, her husband, when this bit of information was announced during Ismael and Alika’s formal ceremony on Friday, the third of October after Jumu’ah prayer?