Love from A to Z: List 4

I woke up to Auntie Nandy’s rendition of “Wild World.”
Finally, a seventies song I knew all the words to. The singer, Cat Stevens, had become Muslim—in the seventies too—so any time one of his songs came on the radio, Mom and Dad would point it out.

“The Blues has the power of three birds. It’s like a surprise attack in the video game! When you strike it midlaunch, boom, three birds shoot out of the one, and bang, the enemy’s setup gets mangled.”

I sealed the three birds into one again and set it down beside Squish on the night table. They looked like an odd couple together—one, pristine, with colorful plush elements, including feathers, and the other...well, Squish.

As we were getting ready to go to the Corniche, the waterfront promenade that edged the coast in Doha, where the city met the waters of the Arabian Gulf, Mom called.

“Does he treat his family well? Is he family minded?”
“Oh for sure.” I nodded my head vigorously.

Dad wasn’t here to see my first foray out after my MS scare.

Hanna took a few more pictures while I walked to the dark stone fountain that commanded the space behind the staircase. In an echo of the museum’s stunning ceiling, the water was contained within two niches, a star inside an octagon.

Hanna’s cookie remained on the plate so I slid a napkin toward me and folded and creased it and kept folding it like origami paper until I had a little envelope.

“Walaikum musalam!” she answered, infusing the greeting with bubbly energy.

I mean, it was great for my parents that they knew Hodan from the mosque and that she was related to Ayaan’s family, which immediately gave her another layer of legitimacy.

After a quick glance at each other, we both turned to the light fixture once more. It was super intricate, the designs on it.

“Are you guys coming? I want to see the other exhibits too, not just stand here.” Hanna materialized right in front of us, ever-present iPad clutched to her chest.

To find the truth and present it clearly, one has to wade through two vats full of emotions and perceptions—i.e., their journals—to collect and clutch at those stray facts, proven to be facts as they showed up in both journals.

Reading the caption below the glass-enclosed thirteenth-century manuscript, Zayneb let out a small “oh.”
Adam came to stand beside her.
They stared at The Marvels of Creation and Oddities of Existence folios.

Adam was taken aback. At this fact and the intensity of the way she pronounced it.

“Hanna, do you mind just waiting in the ceramics area? Zayneb’s kinda upset at something right now.”
Looking crestfallen, Hanna walked away, glancing back at Zayneb a few times.

Zayneb shook her head, aghast. “No, he was trying to get the class riled up about Muslims. He was using the Turkish girl, not expressing care for her. You don’t even know Fencer. And I just can’t believe you’re giving a real-life Islamophobe excuses.”

Zayneb stood stock-still, mouth agape. “You’re falling for Fencer’s tricks, and you’re not even sitting there in his class?”

Before, I’d thought that the more impressions you got of someone you liked, the less projecting would be happening. That you wouldn’t see them according to how you wanted to.
I hadn’t realized that, in this case, I’d been hoodwinking myself all along, though.

When I shook my head, he adjusted his seat so that it leaned back before sitting down and putting his feet up on the ottoman.

“Yes, okay, you’re right. Mom’s death was hard. It devastated me. But that was only because it progressed so fast at the end. It wasn’t the MS that got to me. She’d had it since she was in her twenties, when I met her, and it went into remission for so long, especially after she had you. We’d read that pregnancy does that, almost makes the disease disappear.”

I’ve never seen myself so happy in photos before.
It could have been the fact that they were impromptu pictures, and I hadn’t had time to arrange my camera-ready smile. Which was just slight turnups of the corners of my closed mouth, like a there, are you satisfied with my smile smile.

A drone strike. A missed target. Collateral damage.

A wedding caravan of cars and buses dispersed, shredded, gaping holes, gaping wounds, missing body parts, missing bodies.

“I cried so much when I heard last night. But Connor told us not to badger you with messages.”

As an act of solidarity with me and my diagnosis, everyone in the group, including Emma D., who’d dropped by while we were gathering for the photo, after visiting a friend, and even Tsetso, who was already back at university in France, posted the group picture of us on all our socials, with no message accompanying it.

It was one of those pictures that was frame worthy, that would be talked about when we grew up, that already felt nostalgic.

“See Adam? I am a great photographer!” Hanna crossed her arms at me before flouncing over to sit on the arm of my chair.

The thin blades of wood, the flattened bottle caps I’d scraped the paint off of and then drilled with patterned holes to let light through, that I was going to use in homage to the geometry found in nature—I could sort these little bits of art I’d collected.

We stared at one another for a few seconds, me at their mournful expressions and appearances—Emma Z. holding a plastic bag of what looked like take-out containers, Emma P. clutching a bouquet of flowers, and Emma D., empty-handed but back again—and them staring at my white-shrouded self.

“We didn’t tell you, because we didn’t want it to be on your Hufflepuff conscience. It involved some methods we Ravenclaws and Slytherins are familiar and comfortable with.”

Her interest in my answer was practically palpable, the way she made small, jittery movements on my right.

She was dressed in a loud pink-and-green shalwar kameez, a long scarf wound around her head.

Islamophobia is the thing keeping it okay to kill people like us without repercussions.

You cut me
Now I sit, sharpening my blade
One day I will loom, a shadow no more
Silence your hate, leave it shredded
Strewn around your feet