Footsteps

by Umm Zakiyyah

  When Sarah met Rania an hour later, she was surprised to see a blond-hair, blue-eyed girl of no more than twenty years old staring back at her. She learned that Rania’s father was a Lebanese Muslim and her mother an American Christian who converted to Islam while Rania was in high school. Rania had stopped praying during college, around the same time she started dating the person who was responsible for her swollen lip and black eye, and her dropping out of college in the middle of her sophomore year to elope.

  Kate had made her point. That Sarah could not deny.

  As Sarah lay on her side with a fist planted under her cheek after praying Fajr, she felt the insignificance of her struggle, and the fog of emotions began to lift. Her chest tightened as she could see the look in her husband’s eyes as he stood opposite her in the foyer when Sulayman had rung the doorbell to let her know he was there to take her to the airport. Ismael’s eyes glistened from the tears that had gathered there, and he had said, “I love you, Sarah. I’ve always loved you. Please don’t forget that. And today, I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone, even myself. And no one but Allah can take that from me. You can run, Sarah, but you’ll always be with me.”

  Sarah had opened the door, ignoring his words, wanting to punish him, make him feel what she felt when he had married Alika. It wasn’t for fear of her soul, nor was it the inability to live as a co-wife. She was unwilling. She knew that now, although she couldn’t—wouldn’t see it then.

  She should have turned and said she loved him too, that he would always be with her. She should have given him a hug and cried into his shirt, begging him to be there when she returned and asked his forgiveness for leaving when they needed each other most.

  But instead, she had replied, “I know what you’re thinking, Ismael. You plan to take me back right before the three months are over so you can prolong the inevitable. But it won’t work. I told the same thing to the imam, and he knows he was wrong. You can have your three months, but no more. The ring is in the drawer next to our bed in an envelope with the picture you gave me. I won’t need either of them anymore.” Without looking at him, she opened the front door for Sulayman to come inside to take the bags, and she stepped outside. “As-salaamu’alaikum,” she said, knowing that the back of her khimaar would be the last thing he saw of her before she walked out of his life.

  The regret began to suffocate her, and she realized her grave sin. She had been too busy feeling sorry for herself to realize that she was harming none but her own soul. “And no one but Allah can take that love from me,” her husband had said. And what if He did? The possibility terrified Sarah. She had not bargained for that.

  At moments like these, Sarah missed her former life, when she could choose what she believed. When her principles were malleable, elastic—if not completely dispensable. She wanted to return to her fairytale world where she was the one who decided what was right and wrong. If she were the old Sarah, her husband would be the villain and she the victim, and her friends and family would be rushing to comfort the damsel in distress as she wallowed in pain.

  But right then, she felt like the villain.

  But why should she? She’d done nothing wrong. She didn’t have to be a co-wife. The mere idea of it enraged her. A moment later, the fire in her chest died to a flame. The word co-wife settled until it rested in her mind and slipped, ever so furtively, to the borders of her heart, as if hesitating, unsure if it should—could enter. And feared it could never escape.

  When the word found its way there, Sarah hated that it didn’t disturb her, that it didn’t anger or disrupt her soul.

  She was whole. She couldn’t be divided by two. So why should she accept living as half of a woman?

  “I don’t measure my worth by the actions of a man,” Nusaybah had said.

  Did Sarah imagine monogamy somehow secured her worth as a woman, a human? Or was Sarah like a disbeliever, whose value was determined by the tongues and eyes of humans?

  What was she so afraid of anyway? That her inadequacy would be displayed for all the world to see? Would its proof be Alika’s existence? What would, could Alika really take from her that had ever been hers in the first place?

  The image of Alika next to her husband swept through her mind like a furious wind knocking her to the ground.

  She cursed the pain she felt, the sorrow. She couldn’t understand it. Did not want to understand it. Yet, still, like the incessant panting of a stray dog, it was there. Because it had nowhere else to go.

  The aching in her chest became a fire so hot that her nostrils flared and moistened from its breath. She wanted to hate her husband, hate Alika.

  But she hated only herself.

  Her husband’s words were simple words really. Yet they had masked a complicated deception that in essence wasn’t deception at all.

  The tears filled her eyes in the quiet of her sister’s home, and she realized it wasn’t her husband’s secrets that bothered her. It was that she loved Ismael more than she understood, more than she could control. And none but Allah could take that from her.

  But what if, even as He took it from her husband, He left it with her?

  The mere possibility tormented her with a trepidation that ripped from her the veil of strength and confidence, and exposed the raw, bleeding wound of her heart. A heart in want of healing. In want of faith.

  Realization, and relief—that cursed relief! —settled over her as she accepted that it was not polygamy that bothered her. It was insecurity, an insecurity that Ismael could neither grant nor take away. Even if he never married anyone else.

  Desperately, Sarah reached for the anger. The resentment. The fear for her soul. Anything to validate never returning to him—to dividing her worth in half. She could not, would not, accept something as demeaning as this. She was worth more. She was more.

  But like a voice echoing off the cold, bare walls of a dark cave, her calling out brought only hollow, fading echoes of her own voice.

  Wasn’t a human’s worth personal, determined by a person’s belief in Allah and righteous actions?

  Or did she believe that her belief in Allah and submission to Him would somehow be disrupted if she accepted her husband’s marriage choice? If so, then perhaps her belief in Allah was already weakening.

  Did she believe in Allah any less, now that He had decreed this “demeaning” life that His beloved Messenger and his wives had lived? Or maybe she thought she was worth more than Aisha, the daughter of Abu Bakr As-Siddeeq, who never hesitated in his support or belief in Allah’s Messenger, a woman who was a respected scholar and teacher of Islam. Or maybe she was better than Zaynab bint Jahash, who gave so much charity that she was termed “the one with the longest hand.” Or better than Umm Salamah, whose sincere du’aa and faith granted her the honored status of forever being written down in history as one of the Mothers of Believers.

  Arrogance.

  That was Sarah’s problem. She was too proud to submit to a life she had treated like a plague. Hadn’t she kept Nusaybah and her husband away from her home? Hadn’t she shared only the most negative and frightening stories of polygamy to terrify her husband from ever attempting it? Hadn’t she lied to her husband—and herself, saying she couldn’t handle it, saying “I respect the women who do.” When, in reality, she would not handle it and loathed the mere existence of women who did.

  Oh, if only she could, even if for a moment, have her former life back. And this time make it real. Then she could draw her own boundaries and make every man in her life live within the confines of them.

  But even then, in her former life, in her fairytale world, she didn’t control hearts. Not even her own.

  She only thought she did.

  Monday night Ismael sat behind the steering wheel of his car as Alika sat in the passenger seat. Even as he sat next to Alika, reveling in the ease and comfort he felt in her presence, he missed Sarah. He wished she would be there when he came home. The house was so lifeless without her. And his nights were r
estless and the bed cold.

  But in the past two days, he accepted that Alika was right. He should not call or go there, no matter how difficult it was for him. Sarah was running, and she would keep running as long as he ran after her. If he wanted her, he had to stand still and trust in Allah. Sarah would realize when she turned her head—and certainly one day she would—that no one was behind her.

  Sarah was having a tantrum, and like a parent purging the ineffectual behavior from a child, it was best to let her alone. It wouldn’t be long before she, like a child, stopped kicking and screaming to find no one in the room but her.

  Yet he also understood his role in her outburst. That made it extremely difficult to step back and turn away. He wanted to hold her, calm her, and apologize. Even if he committed no sin, he had committed a crime. A marriage was based on trust, and it pained him that he had damaged that, even if only partially. He could only hope the damage was not irreparable.

  It wasn’t that he thought Sarah unable to handle the news that kept him from telling Sarah about Alika when he first expressed his intentions to the imam. It was fear. And cowardice. He didn’t want to face the reality, so he convinced himself he was doing it for her own good. Just as he had with Aminah and Zaid.

  He was prolonging the inevitable, just as he was when he divorced her instead of accepting the khula’ she preferred. And he had not imagined that Sarah would see right through him both times.

  Ismael didn’t blame her. Couldn’t blame her. How could he? His mask of wisdom was really pride and shame under the guise of machismo. Alika herself had said she would be willing to wait another year if that’s what it took for Ismael to be ready. Why couldn’t he have done the same for Sarah?

  He had stoked his Muslim male ego by convincing himself he had committed no sin. Never thinking that, even so, he had done immeasurable wrong. “And make not Allah’s name an excuse in your oaths against doing good, acting rightly, or making peace between people” , read a verse in the Qur’an. “The best among you is the best to his family” was a famous teaching from Allah’s Messenger.

  And Ismael imagined that he really followed the Qur’an and Sunnah?

  He didn’t even understand their basic tenet of wisdom. Or honesty, kindness, and justice. And, yet, when violating the very sanctity of them by following his desires and thinking of no one but himself, he grew impatient with his wife as she admonished him, reminding him of this. He himself had actually used the oft-repeated scapegoat of zealous Muslims who trampled all over the feelings of their wives—and over the Sunnah.

  Perhaps he had committed a sin, a grave sin.

  Who was he to claim to represent the actions of the best man on earth? Who was he to imply to a believing woman, the most prized possession on earth—the woman responsible for the daily sacrifice and Islamic upbringing of their children, whom she had carried in her womb for nine months, and in her hands and heart for more than twenty years—that it was she who was in need of checking her priorities? Who was he to judge as selfish the woman who made it possible for him to come home and relax, knowing his children weren’t being sacrificed on the sordid altar of the world? Who was he to grow impatient with a woman whose patience had guided him to a sense of self, a sense of direction, a sense of hope? Who was he to think of only his heart when he opened his heart to a woman whose heart was just as fragile as the one he had broken when he did?

  “This is not the Sunnah,” Sarah had said.

  And how right she was.

  The Sunnah was based on wisdom, and was practiced with honesty, kindness, and justice. Yet he had distorted it to justify falsehood, cruelty, and injustice. And I am best to my family, the Prophet had said.

  But was Ismael?

  He had not even thought of Sulayman or Aminah when he signed the contract to marry a woman who would become, in essence, if not a second mother, an extension of the family they had.

  There was one thing Alika did have wrong. It wasn’t that Sarah expected him to run after her that made it unwise for him to, it was that he was the one who sent her running in the first place. And as long as his actions were as terrifying as they had been when she left, there was no reason for her to stop running from him. Not even reason for her to turn around to see if he was still there.

  “I’m sorry about getting frustrated with you,” Alika said, breaking the silence in the car. Her head was turned toward the passenger side window, unable to look at her husband. She feared that a glance would confirm that she had removed more bricks than she had laid down. “I was afraid of losing you and took that out on Sarah.”

  She heard him humph, and it scared her that her fear was possibly correct.

  “I’m the one who should be apologizing, Alika,” he said, and she exhaled a silent relief. “I’ve been so distracted by Sarah that I’ve neglected you.” She turned to him and saw him shake his head, his eyes on the road before him. “I was wrong, Alika. To you and Sarah.”

  He paused. “She said she left because I was willing to trample on one woman’s heart to win another’s.” He glanced at her with a look of sadness that Alika sensed was a goodbye. “She was right.”

  Alika turned to gaze out the window again, finding comfort in the glow of the street pavement under the lampposts they passed on the interstate. If she could hold on to this moment, maybe he wouldn’t see how it wasn’t worth it to hold on to someone like her if it meant losing someone like Sarah. Sarah had said it didn’t matter if he divorced Alika or not; she was leaving for her own sake, for her own soul. But Alika knew that wasn’t true. And she knew Ismael knew it too.

  “I’m not going to leave you, Alika,” he said. Alika felt her throat catch and heart swell, and her eyes began to well. She forced herself to look at the lighted houses and billboards, finding her strength there, in her connection to the familiar world. “I want you to know that. I didn’t do things right, but I can’t right them by doing more wrong. I know that now.” She heard him draw in a deep breath and exhale. “But I owe you an apology.”

  The pause was long, and she looked at him, realizing that he was glancing from the road to her, waiting for her to meet his gaze. “Please forgive me for being willing to. It was selfish.”

  She started to speak but couldn’t find her voice. So she nodded, her brows gathering and eyes blinking to fight the tears that threatened release as she saw the kindness and sincerity reflected in his eyes. He smiled at her, and she smiled too, and sniffed, hoping to contain her emotions, and hold on to his.

  “You mean a lot to me, Alika,” he said, and she couldn’t look at him anymore. She turned to stare out the window, unable to keep the tears from slipping, and hesitating as they rounded her cheeks. “I know we’re still getting to know each other. But I feel like I’ve known you my whole life.”

  The light from the lampposts blurred, their yellow glow now fuzzy stars outstretched.

  “When I talked to you for the first time,” he said, “I felt so comfortable, so at ease that you could have been a sister or an aunt. I thought it was because the topic was so intriguing.” He paused, and they met each other’s gaze, Alika with tears in her eyes, and Ismael with them welling in his. “But it was really because you were.”

  “I knew I wanted to marry you when I came into the house that day. At first I didn’t know who it was, you know, because I only saw the back of a head. I wasn’t listening to eavesdrop. I guess a part of me really didn’t know I was listening until you turned around. But it wasn’t just because you were talking to Freda that I knew. It was because you showed me that I can’t judge. Honestly, and I know now that I was wrong, I thought you were uptight when I first met you. But that day, when I walked in and found you talking to my birds, I knew what I saw as uptight was really your piety. You feared Allah, so you put up a wall when I tried to greet you. I was a man, and you were a woman. You knew that there was a certain etiquette. I didn’t. So I misjudged you. But that day you were in my living room, I saw a part of you that you would’ve never
shown me on your own. Because of what I saw, I knew I wanted you, and only you, as my wife.”

  Aminah sat at her desk, pen poised as she reread her journal entry with a smile on her face. She didn’t want to forget Abdur-Rahman’s answer to her question, the same question she had asked Zaid.

  Although Aminah had told her father she had only one question for Abdur-Rahman, there had been something else she needed to know. And with a glance at her father and a nod of his head, she had gone on to ask what she knew she would be wondering if she did not. She hadn’t known exactly how to phrase it, especially without being misunderstood, but in the end it came out right.

  “Does it bother you that I’m Black?”

  There was a long pause. “Why would it bother me?”

  “Because I don’t look like I am.”

  “I never thought about it.”

  “What if I looked like I was?”

  Another long pause. And this time Aminah looked up and saw his confused expression. “I don’t understand what you’re asking.”

  “If I looked Black, would you still want to marry me?”

  “It wouldn’t make any difference to me.”

  “But what do you prefer?”

  She saw him furrowing his brows and looking at her father, afraid of saying the wrong thing, but having no idea what she was asking. “You mean in a woman?”

  “Yes.”

  She continued to look at him until he answered in the only way he knew how. “Islam.”

  Aminah grinned to herself as she remembered her father telling her that Abdur-Rahman was nervous about how he had responded. He didn’t know if she would think his response about her talking to his birds was weird. He had called her father the next day, afraid that he offended her when she asked what he preferred in a woman. Her father had said that Abdur-Rahman didn’t realize until then that perhaps she was asking about his external preference, and he had told her father that he thought Aminah was very attractive. She and her father had smiled at each other that day, sharing the private joke Abdur-Rahman would never understand. That it would never occur to Abdur-Rahman to mention a physical trait, let alone a specific color or race, as his first preference in a wife made it very easy for Aminah to relax in her parents’ good choice—and wise plotting in setting up the meeting. Who would have known that as Aminah searched for self-contentment as a human being, she would find it through someone who had found his through a hamster and birds?