But what did it matter what momins of the community said when they picked apart the behavior of her son? What was a believer meant to be like when all their rituals and practices were stripped away? Amar was kind. If one of his sisters came home carrying heavy textbooks, he rose to help them before they even asked. He was generous. He had very little of his own money but still he would bring home the coffee drinks Huda or Hadia liked, or a bag of cherries for Layla come cherry season, or a candle with a floral scent. Layla gossiped sometimes, everyone did, but she had never heard her son speak ill of anyone. Once when she spoke of someone from their community, he said to her, “You don’t know that, Mumma, don’t say that if you don’t fully know it.”
Her heart had swelled. How her son was good in a way that she wasn’t, in a way that could instruct her. Layla had begun to think lately that there was no real way to quantify the goodness of a person—that religion gave templates and guidelines but there were ways it missed the mark entirely. And everything a momin should be in his heart, Amar was.
Seema sets down the tea for her and Layla notices she has chosen a mug of coffee for herself.
“Are your boys home?” Layla asks. She dips a biscuit in her tea. The crumbs break off and float on the tea’s surface.
“No. They’ve gone out for the afternoon. You know how kids are these days, always going out. Everywhere but their own home is a magnet to them.”
Layla removes her scarf. Seema sits across from her on her plush couch, her legs tucked beneath her. She cradles her mug in her hands. Not a single hair on her head is white and Layla knows she dyes it often. Seema is one of the few women of Layla’s generation who chooses not to wear a headscarf. Layla untangles her own unruly strands with her fingers.
“And Amira? Is she home?”
“She is at the library,” Seema says. “The bug of going out has bitten her too. Any excuse they’ll give me—Mumma, I have to go to get a book from the library. Mumma, I have to go and get a haircut. Mumma, the haircut lady was closed and so I walked to the cupcake place.”
Layla sits back in her seat. She can speak without fear of being overheard. She knew when she glimpsed the contents of Amar’s box that she would meet Seema in person, her words disappearing into the air once they were spoken, untraceable.
“Are you sure?” Layla asks. She traces the rim of the cup with her finger. She knows what she wants: to put an end to what has been brewing between the two. For the end to be swift. The last thing Amar needs is a young girl tempting him, distracting him from his studies, only to break his heart when a stronger proposal comes.
“What do you mean to say, Layla? Are you accusing me of not knowing where my daughter is?”
The tone of Seema’s voice has sharpened, but she still smiles in a pained way. Both of them notice the shift in the air, the room suddenly hostile.
“I only mean that you should keep a closer eye on her.”
Seema sets down her coffee mug, its steam still drifting up, and places her feet firmly on the ground.
“I found letters and photographs of Amira that she has been sending to my son,” Layla begins, keeping her voice steady. “For months, maybe even years.”
It is clear from the photographs that Amar has taken them, but she wants to conceal his part. The thought of a young girl sending photographs of herself to a young man is irrefutably inappropriate.
“You should read them—I’ve never known a girl to have such little sharam.”
Seema’s mouth is open and she appears completely shocked—maybe assessing if Layla is telling the truth, maybe processing what she had not predicted. Besharam. The word is like a slap. Modesty—the highest value a woman can embody, and the most crucial. Without it, a woman is nothing. They have drilled the importance of it into their daughters since they were little girls, as it was once emphasized to them. Guarded themselves from the gaze and touch of men until their wedding night, and warned their daughters to remain guarded. Nothing was worse for a mother than to realize her daughters had grown and abandoned regard for what she had most desperately wanted to instill.
Layla pulls a photograph from her purse. It was a risk to take it, but it was one of many. She wanted Seema to see proof. In it, Amira is smiling, her eyes dreamy, her lips glossy and one finger playfully resting at the corner of her bottom lip. Her arms are showing, her shirt is cut low, exposing her collarbone and the unmistakable line of her breast. The girl did not know what she was suggesting when she mimicked the photographs of models and actresses in magazines but it was clear to any viewer.
“We are lucky to catch this before anyone else. Now no one has to see it,” Layla says as she tears the photograph very gently. Seema will have to rely on her words, scold her daughter in a general way that Amira would be unable to deny but also be unable to trace back to Amar’s box.
Seema is offended. That much is clear. But more than that, she is humiliated—and she shakes her head in disbelief, maybe hoping that Layla will have no more to say. Layla knows what it is like for one moment to change your understanding of your child drastically. For a stranger to come into her home to tell of her daughter’s doing—it is no easy blow.
“It is clear they have lied to us both and clear that they meet—I don’t know how often. I left the letters as they were, but they gave me reason to believe there is much more to be concerned about.”
Layla sips her tea. There is satisfaction in bringing down the woman who, at times, has made her feel small. Who had once made a comment about Hadia and Huda being already in their twenties and still not engaged, whose husband had in recent years been one of the men who pointed out to Rafiq the sight of Amar smoking beneath a streetlight, or asked why Amar did not participate in any of the youth events at mosque. The hypocrisy of knowing that the Ali boys also smoked. But Layla feels for Seema too, and does not want to hurt her so much as show her that neither of them were without children who would bring them pain and lower their name, or above having secrets that carry shame. To say to her—look more closely at what your daughter has done before you point a finger again at my son.
“I had no idea,” Seema says. “I had noticed her gone for hours at a time and never doubted her.”
“We would have heard about it if someone else had seen them. But it is only a matter of time.”
Seema nods.
“I am afraid I know my son—he hardly listens to us in the small matters, he will not listen to us if we tell him to end this. It will have to come from her.”
“Of course. I will speak to her.”
“We do not want to push them in a way that inspires them to take this…friendship…any further. I imagine that if I went to Amar and he decided not to listen to me, he could ask her to—God knows what.”
Run away. It seems an impossible implication, but these things do happen. Seema drags her hands down her face. A tired sound escapes her.
“Boys will be boys,” Layla says, the line they all know. “Especially in the face of apparent temptation.”
She has gone too far. Even she feels sour at having said it. But Seema only has Layla’s word to rely on and what she is imagining now will likely be worse than what the box contains. She does not want Amar to be accused of anything other than falling for Amira’s advances. Seema swallows, lowers her gaze; she shakes her head in disbelief at some thought she does not voice, a glazed look on her face.
“I wish I could doubt you, Layla, but instead I feel as though I’ve always known this was coming. When—years ago—Amar would come to see my boys, Amira would always try to join them. I would tell her it was inappropriate but—you know, it is hard to get them to realize the weight of what you are saying. I would tell her, over and over, Amira stop, Amira there is no need to follow them around, Amira what were you doing sitting with him on the couch?”
“Amira is a fine girl,” Layla offers. “They are just b
eing children. Amar is working very hard now on his studies—I do not want him to have any distraction. Especially not a distraction like this.”
“Have you told anyone?”
“Only my husband. But no details—he does not know about the pictures or the content of the letters.”
“Thank you,” Seema says, and for a moment she looks like she will cry from relief. “I will only tell mine too.”
“I ask one favor.”
Seema looks at her.
“Please do not tell Amira how you found out. My son has a temper, and it has been a rough few years. He has just recently become responsible; I am afraid that if he thinks that we were the ones who told her to end it, he will react against us, and will not believe that Amira truly wants it to be over. He will try more to win her over. He can be so stubborn.”
Seema looks horrified at the idea of him winning her over, of both of them abandoning all decorum and continuing their childishness until it ruined them all.
“I understand. I for one have no problem with Amira knowing just how angry we are. We have never doubted our children. We have always trusted them. Now we know.”
“It will be all right. They will learn from this.”
“Yes,” Seema says.
There is a long silence and neither wants to find something lighter to speak of.
“If our daughters act this way,” Layla says, rising to her feet and placing the unfinished cup of tea on the table, “what hope can we have for our sons?”
* * *
IT WAS WHAT Hadia had said once in passing that Layla could not shake. You have no idea what he does and what he hides. It returned to her as she snipped eggplants from the stem, as she chopped onions and watched them brown in hot oil. Where would her son hide what he wanted to keep secret? She remembered that birthday years ago, that box with a lock. On six different occasions she had checked if he had left it unlocked while he was out. On the seventh try, when she saw it was ajar, the spare comforters thrown over it messily, she felt only excitement and an overwhelming curiosity. It was her right to know. She was his mother.
When she looked through the journals and the photographs, the letters and the trinkets, she felt ill. Tickets to concerts he had never told them about. Neon wristbands to places she did not want to picture. For a moment, Layla glanced at Amar’s journals, but she could barely make sense of his handwriting. Each deciphered sentence threatened to unravel her understanding of him and carried with it the threat of more secrets. It did not matter that she was his mother. What she could ever hope to know of him was just a glimpse—like the beam of a lighthouse skipping out, only one stretch of waves visible at a time, the rest left in the unknowable dark.
Hadia and Huda were their father’s daughters. It was their father they tried to impress, his approval they sought. If he made a joke or even gestured toward a joke they would laugh. She had known this when they were little girls at dinnertime glancing at him to see if it was safe to speak, had known it from the way their eyes delighted when he let them climb onto his back. He could switch seamlessly from playmate to parent, whereas Layla was stuck in the one role, and was not given much authority even within the one.
Amar was hers. He always had been. Sometimes, she even thought that she and Amar were like friends when they walked grocery store aisles consulting each other before choosing the syrup or the chips flavor, and like friends when he tossed her fruits, saying, you can catch it, you can, and she would hesitate but if she caught it he’d cheer. And Amar asked about her day. Nearly no one did that. She could not deny that there was a part of her that could disregard the shock and the sin and confess to herself that mostly she felt hurt that there was so much he had hidden from her. She felt like she had brought it on herself—that had she not pried she would not have known, and would have less to worry about.
That night they did not eat dinner as a family and Layla was relieved. Amar took his dinner up to his bedroom, where he studied for his chemistry exam the next day. Layla waited until he was asleep before speaking with Rafiq in the amber light of their bedroom. He ran his hand along one side of his face, ruffling then smoothing his eyebrow. It was his habit when trying to think of a solution when presented with an impossible problem.
“How far have they gone?” he finally asked.
“It’s unclear. They have photographs of each other in the same places but never together. His box is full of letters from her, promising herself to him, but other than how she felt during their meetings there is no indication really of what, if anything, they have done.”
“Does she love him?”
“They are children.”
He looked at her then.
“It makes a difference.” He spoke slowly.
“What difference, what do children know about love, when they have sacrificed nothing.”
He was bent forward, his elbow on his knee, his hand resting on his face in such a way that half of it was hidden from her.
“I thought you would be angrier,” she said.
He shook his head.
“You surprise me.”
“There is plenty to be angry with him about—but when you said you had found something, I thought you had come to me with more troubling news.”
“This is troubling news.”
“Yes.”
“It would cause a scandal.”
He nodded.
“The girl would be humiliated and soon after we would be—the Alis would never accept Amar,” she said.
“What lack is there in our son?”
Rafiq raised his voice. He dropped his hand from his face and looked at her as though he had forgotten that he was the one who was always harsh toward Amar.
“Ask yourself. If you would feel, in good faith, able to give your daughter to someone like Amar.”
Rafiq was speechless. After holding her gaze sternly for a moment he looked down at his hands.
“So what—we will never send a proposal on his behalf?” he said. A quality in his voice made her want to hold him.
“Of course not. He will continue to mature. He will make something of himself.”
“He will never listen to us, Layla. If we tell him to stop this inappropriate, apas e bahar behavior—he will never listen.”
“We won’t tell him.”
“So we let this continue? Knowing that they have gone as far as to meet frequently? And that poor girl—we just allow him to continue to influence her to sin? We cannot. She does not know any better. She does not know what she is doing, what this could lead to.”
“Influence? She is the one tempting him.”
Again he looked at her sternly.
“Amar does not need any tempting, Layla. Don’t forget what you already know.”
“We could talk to Seema,” she offered.
He shook his head.
“Think about it,” she pressed. “Seema would be the first to want to keep it quiet. Her daughter would be the begharat one, any way you look at it.”
Rafiq started rubbing his eyebrow again. She reached out to touch his arm, to say to him, we are on the same side, remember?
“This could be good for Amar,” he said finally. There was an unmistakable note of hope in his voice.
“How can you say that?”
“It could be, she’s a good girl. I’ve always liked her. If it were made halal she could influence him in the right way.”
“You still think she is good?”
“Our son is no saint, Layla.”
“They would never consider it,” she said, and then, “Right now it is good for Amar. He is happy. He sneaks away smiling when his phone buzzes. He wakes up still sleepy, after talking to her about who knows what all night. But what will happen in a week? In a month? When anyone else from the community finds out? In a year, when the girl gets
proposals from someone with twice his qualifications?”
Rafiq sighed. He seemed, in that moment, suddenly very old to Layla.
“Every day this continues it is worse for him. Every day that he has hope—it will only make the fall harder.”
* * *
LAYLA THRUSTS THE white sheet into the air, ridding it of any dust, then lowers it onto the lush grass. Amar kneels at the corner of the sheet and tugs at the edges to straighten it. She smiles as he does so: his initiative, his consideration. The two of them leave their shoes in the grass and step into the center of the sheet to sit side by side, Amar leaning slightly on her leg.
They watch Rafiq walk toward them, the lower half of his face hidden by the basket of food he carries. Huda runs a little to match his steady stride, her tight ponytail swaying. Hadia struggles behind them. Her lips are pressed together in concentration as she juggles a plastic bag filled with paper cups, plates, plastic utensils in one hand, the plastic bag twisting and tightening its grip on her wrist, and a large bottle of lemonade in the other. Layla made it earlier in the day, fresh and frosted from the ice that melts in it.
“Aao,” Layla says, looking up to Rafiq, come, she is squinting because of the sun, tapping twice at the empty space beside her. Something about the sweet air, the soft breeze, the cool grass that sinks beneath her weight, makes her feel bold enough to call for her husband to sit beside her, despite the presence of her children. It could be because he has granted their wish, or because neither can deny the beauty of the day, the contagious excitement of their children.
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