by Jenny Robson
You always could do that, you know, Faheema. You always could make me feel better, take my mind off things that were awful and frustrating and driving me crazy.
“Okay. How did your netball go, Madame Olympic Gold Medallist?”
“We lost. Seven-two.”
“Of course you lost. You’ve never been in a team that won. Ever.”
“Well, it wasn’t my fault.”
“Okay, how many times did you actually manage to catch the ball?”
“Twice. But still, it wasn’t my fault. It was Marcie. She just couldn’t shoot straight.”
“Oh, and it had nothing to do with one Wing Attack being so short that the ball kept flying over her head?”
“Hey, I’m not so bad.”
“Yes, you are.”
“Am not.”
“You are! You’re dreadful.”
“And you? I suppose you’re the bee’s knees at netball, Louise. Hey! You’re the bee’s knees, Louise! The bee’s knees, Louise, the bee’s knees, Louise … That’s a good one, don’t you think? I’ll have to remember it for next time Mr Abrahamse wants a poem from us!”
I was laughing again. You could always make me laugh. Always! And behind your head, our two rainbows arched all the way across both of our waterfalls, the one as curved and beautiful and steady and perfect as the other.
You were suddenly serious. “I missed you being there, Louise. It wasn’t much fun all on my own.”
*
I gave my parents time, lots of time, just as you suggested. I waited all through August and September, even though I was getting really impatient. Then all through your month of Ramadan.
That was the first Ramadan that you were joining in the fasting properly, remember? No food or drink from dawn to sunset. Not even a sip of water. And I worried so much about you.
“Are you okay, Faheema? You aren’t feeling dizzy, are you? Do you want to sit down? Should I carry your bag?”
But you just smiled at me with your dimples extra deep.
“Stop fussing! It’s no big deal. This is a joyful time, a chance to feel closer to God, see? You have to see the forest, not the trees, Louise … hey! The forest not the trees, Louise. I must remember that one.”
But even so, I left my lunchbox in my case at break times. How could I possibly eat when you weren’t even allowed water? And when I got home, I slipped the food into the bin before Mom could notice.
And I waited all the way till early November, two weeks before your sister’s wedding. I waited till I could speak to Mom alone while Dad was still at work.
“Mom, can we go and find a dress for Yasmiena’s wedding? You promised, remember?”
My mom stared at me for a long time. She made me feel as though she hardly knew me, as though she didn’t know where I’d appeared from. As though I wasn’t even her daughter but some foreign, alien being.
She answered at last and her voice sounded harsh and bitter. “How can you, Louise? After all we went through that afternoon in July? Your brother could have been killed, do you understand that? If he’d caught his normal train, if he hadn’t decided to go to work early for some overtime, he could have been on that train outside Edgeware Road station. He could have been in the carriage that got bombed. And now … now you want to go and party and celebrate with these people! Don’t you care about your brother at all?”
What could I answer to that? I realised then that all the time in the world wasn’t going to help. Mom’s cellphone rang: Jeremiah was a bullfrog …
She turned away from me to answer it.
*
But you had some good news. At least there was that!
Just after Yasmiena’s wedding, just as we were writing our Grade Seven end-of-year exams, our very last exams of primary school, your father called you into his study. For once, he had switched on all the lights so that the books on his many shelves shone. He was still glowing from the joyous celebrations, still so happy that your sister had truly married the son of the imam. He told you that he’d reconsidered, that he had decided you could attend Riverside High after all. Yasmiena was proof, he said, that his daughters could attend a secular school and still grow up to be devout and dedicated Muslim women. It wasn’t necessary for you to attend Habibia College to learn what was upright and decent. Your afternoon studies at the madrassa were sufficient.
“There you go, Louise,” you said with your eyes shining as we sat together on the river bank. “We’ll still be seeing each other all the time. School every day and here at Gap Falls. Plus, you can come to my house any time you want. I told my mom you were sick for Yasmiena’s wedding. I didn’t say anything about the London Underground bombings. So it’s easy. We can still be best friends. ’Cause I’m telling you, I don’t want anyone except you for my best friend.”
But the sun wasn’t out that day. Low clouds spread across the sky. And there were no rainbows curving across our waterfalls.
9. ties’a
So the next January we both started at Riverside High, both assigned to Mrs Dube’s registration class. You even had the cheek to send Colin Gottschalk packing so that I could sit next to you. Remember that, Faheema? It was such fun, watching him gather up his bag and pencil case and move away to the middle row while you stood there with your hands on your hips. Steadfast and solid as a rock. Well, a very short rock! You didn’t even reach as high as Colin’s shoulder. So don’t you tell me you’re a coward with no courage.
Oh, and our new uniforms were a soft cherry red, a really cheerful colour! How good it was to leave those dreary blue-check dresses behind us!
But there were other things that weren’t so good as we began our Grade Eight year. Gadija Ibrahim and her group of friends, for instance. We didn’t know them from primary school: they’d all been to Nural Islam. They wanted to know you, though, didn’t they?
“Hey, Faheema, why don’t you come spend breaks with us?” Gadija invited you that first week. She was also in Mrs Dube’s class. “With me and Fatima Osman and Mariam Desai? We sit next to the sports field under that big chestnut tree. It’s really nice there.”
Gadija and her friends were Muslim, like you. But since you were my very best friend, I tagged along. After all, for the past seven years we had spent every break time together. It came as naturally as breathing. And yes, Faheema, I could sense the eye messages passing between Gadija and her friends there under the chestnut tree as we joined them. I knew they were silently asking each other: “What’s she doing here, this Christian girl? Why doesn’t she go and join her own kind? Can’t she see that she’s just making everyone feel awkward?”
You did your best to include me, though. To make me feel like I belonged.
“Hockey, Mariam?” you said, flashing me your dimpled smile. “No ways! We’re not interested. Louise and I play netball, don’t we, Louise? We’re devoted netballers. Well, we aren’t star players, but we enjoy it. A lot. Hey, Louise?”
And then, a few days later, some white girls – Susan from down the road, and Jackie Greenwood and Kelly Jackson – invited me to join them on the benches past the tuck shop. “Shame, man. That Muslim bunch can’t be much fun for you. Come sit with us.”
You tagged along too. And you felt what it was like to have eye messages passed back and forth about you. Even though I also tried my best to make you feel part of the group.
*
We ended up arguing. And it wasn’t our usual fun-arguing. Neither of us burst out laughing.
“There’s nothing wrong with Gadija and her friends, Louise. They’re nice girls. Kind girls, especially Mariam. And even if we’re best friends, that doesn’t mean we can’t mix with anyone else. We don’t have to cut everyone else out of our lives.”
“Well, I feel more comfortable sitting with Susan and Jackie and Kelly. Especially now that Susan has stopped being so weird. At least they don’t talk all the time about people I’ve never heard of.”
“Okay, then. Fine! Why don’t you sit with your friend
s and I’ll sit with mine. Then everyone will be happy. Then no one will feel out of place or like they don’t belong!”
I felt really sad when you said that. Sad and pulled apart. After all our years and years, was this the end of our friendship? Finally? This one stupid argument? When even my parents’ rules hadn’t been strong enough to split us apart?
Or perhaps this argument was just the tip of some massive iceberg hidden beneath dark waters so we couldn’t see the whole of it? Was this what it meant to start growing up?
When I looked at you again, there at our desks pulled so close together, it felt like you had closed yourself off from me. All I could see were the differences between us. The differences in the tones of our hands on the desk tops. You with your jet-black hair, so long and thick and neatly plaited. Me with my long, tangled blonde curls. You learning to pronounce those strange Arabic words, reading Arabic symbols that to me seemed only complicated designs without meaning.
I opened my Geography book, very close to tears. Maybe high school wasn’t going to be much fun, despite the cherry-red uniforms!
*
At least there was netball to cheer us both up. At least that was something we shared. Not many girls at Riverside High were interested in netball. Most of them were waiting for the hockey season to start, eager to be out on the huge sports field, wielding vicious hockey sticks and whacking the ball at a thousand kilometres an hour across damp grass.
“Please, girls,” said our PE teacher, Miss Kometsi. It was only February, but she was already worrying about some early netball fixtures. “Please, any of you girls who are keen on netball, I need you urgently. Monday afternoon two o’clock at the netball courts, alright? Hopefully this rain will have stopped by then.”
It was a strange thing, the rain falling that February. Normally in the Western Cape we only get rain in winter. Our Geography teacher, Mr Bradshaw, went on and on about El Nino and La Nina and how the world’s climates were turning topsy-turvy. That was his favourite word, remember: topsy-turvy!
“Let’s see if we can get a reasonable netball team together,” continued Miss Kometsi.
I looked at you, smiling and you smiled right back. And I knew without a doubt that we were both thinking the same thing: this was our chance! This was our once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! In that moment, the arguments of the past week meant nothing. Susan and her crowd, Gadija and her friends, were just a cherry-red background blur. Blonde tangles, jet-black plaits – who cared when our hearts both beat with one desperate hope. It was you and me against the world. You and me, about to fight for our dream!
*
That Monday afternoon at the netball court was just the most wonderful experience, wasn’t it? Even though a light drizzle was falling, even though there were still puddles on the court from the weekend’s downpour. You managed to catch the ball every time. Well, almost every time. Jumping high off the tarmac to make up for being so short. And I was controlling my steps and jumps so well. I hardly foot-faulted once. Up and down we dashed after the ball, stopped only by the thick white lines, till we were both panting, our hair sticking to the perspiration and drizzle on our foreheads.
Finally Miss Kometsi gathered us around her to announce the team for the first fixture. You and I gripped hands.
“There’s a great deal of work ahead, I fear,” said Miss Kometsi. “Enthusiasm isn’t enough. We need skill and ball control as well. We’ll have to practise twice a week at least for the whole of this term. But the following people at least show some promise.”
She looked down at her list and called out names, one after the other. Your name was called out and you shrieked with joy. My heart sank. Was it going to happen again? Beside me, you had your eyes closed. You were whispering, chanting fervently as though you were praying: “Please, Louise, please, Louise, please, Louise.”
And then, at last, I heard my name. The very last one on Miss Kometsi’s list. But what did that matter – I was in the team too! Together we hugged, and bounced up and down on the tarmac with its proud white lines and its twin netball posts bowing their nets towards us in honour of our glorious achievement.
“I must tell Kyle,” I said. “I’ll beg my mom to phone him tonight.” Kyle had moved away from London and Aunt Helen by now. He was working at a hotel in the Cotswolds. Far, far away from any suicide-bomber targets, so Mom and Dad kept reminding each other, smiling their relief. Well out of reach of any murderous Muslim terrorist attacks.
“And I have to tell my folks,” you said. “The very minute I get home after madrassa.”
Together in our cherry-red blazers, with our chins high, our shoulders squared and triumphant, we marched in step towards the iron school gates.
*
The drizzle had cleared away completely. The sky was a gentle red behind soft clouds as you turned down your street. As you practised in your head exactly how you were going to announce your good news.
But you didn’t know that a powerful storm was already breaking inside your home that Monday evening.
That terrible Monday evening! Nothing could have prepared you for it.
You called out as you swung open the front door. “Mom! Dad! Just listen to this! You’ll never guess what! We got chosen – Louise and I are both in the netball team! WE BOTH GOT CHOSEN!”
But your mom and dad didn’t answer. The passage was still, the kitchen empty. You found your parents in your dad’s study, in silence and in darkness apart from the flickering of the small TV.
“What’s wrong?” you asked. And suddenly the netball court and the sound of Miss Kometsi’s whistle through the drizzle seemed far away. “Mom, Dad? What is it? What’s happened?”
And I can just imagine that moment, Faheema. It must have felt for you the way that Thursday afternoon in July felt for me, there in our lounge with our TV flickering. Confusion. Panic. The fear that comes from seeing your parents overwhelmed by events way beyond their control.
10. ashra
Your dad was angrier than you’d ever seen him, there in the flickering Monday-evening darkness. His face beneath his beard seemed like a mask. Only something really serious, really important, could have made your dad this angry.
Your first concern was for your sister, Yasmiena. Had she done something wrong? Had she run away from her new husband? Had she upset her new father-in-law, the imam?
But it seemed you dad wasn’t thinking about Yasmiena at all.
“What is wrong with these people?” His voice shook with the power of his anger, breaking the silence like smashing glass. “Have they no respect? No comprehension at all? They have gone too far this time! This cannot be forgiven.”
And your mother was wringing her hands, with her lips moving in hushed prayer. “Allahumma ahyina Muslimina.”
You were frightened, weren’t you, Faheema? You knew that some calamity had come upon your home, but still you had no clue what it could be.
“Dad?”
Your dad barely heard you, barely noticed you were back from school.
“These damned-to-hell Christians – these so-called Christians! Most of them don’t even attend their own churches. Most of them barely know their own Bible. They ignore the religion of their forefathers. Yet they see fit to insult and degrade and ridicule Islam in this way! It is beyond imagining! It is sacrilege beyond bearing! How can we share a common world with such heathen?”
“Mom?”
It was your mom who realised how panic-stricken you were. She put her arm around you while she explained. “Faheema, my angel, they have published cartoons of Our Prophet, sallalla ’alayhi wa sallam, peace be upon him. They have drawn him as a joke and a terrorist, as though he has anything to do with bombing and killing. And that is so unjust. All his whole blessed life, Our Prophet taught only of love and kindness. All his blessed life, he practised only goodness and care towards others, sallalla ’alayhi wa sallam.”
Your father turned up the volume on the TV slightly as some man in a dark
suit spoke about freedom of speech, about the right of everyone to hold his own opinion and to express it.
“It is a basic tenet of democracy,” said the man in the dark suit with a picture of London’s Big Ben behind him. “Without freedom of speech, society would be in danger of descending into dictatorship. Without freedom of speech …”
Your father stabbed at the television’s off-switch so that the study fell into total darkness. It seemed to you as though the whole room shook with his anger, as though the whole house was in danger of collapsing into a pile of broken bricks and rubble around you.
“Freedom of speech? How dare they call it freedom of speech! It is not free! Don’t they understand how much pain it costs us, to see The Prophet’s holiness besmirched and mocked, sallalla ’alayhi wa sallam? To see Islam denigrated?”
You knew: this was not the time to tell your parents about the netball team. Maybe after supper?
Maybe by then your dad would have calmed down? He was on the phone now to Yasmiena’s father-in-law, the imam. Mostly he was listening to what the imam said, nodding, stroking his beard. Surely that would change things, bring your home back to normal? The imam was a gentle, soft-spoken man. When he talked at the mosque on Friday evenings, his soothing voice filled the air with quietness and thoughtful wisdom.
Your mom led you out of the study now, her arm still around you. She closed the study door so that your dad was left in the darkness.
*
By then I was already on my mom’s cellphone, talking to my brother in his faraway Cotswolds hotel. Mom sat smiling at the kitchen table while I talked.
“Yes, Kyle, I’m in the netball team. The proper one, not the E team! And our first fixture is at the end of March but we’re having two practices a week to get us ready. It’s fantastic, I’m telling you! And Mom said she’ll make her special lasagne so I can keep up my strength. Remember how she used to make it for you before your matches?”