Chapter 14
Broken Not a halal love story Complete · about 20 min read
ater in the day, I was downstairs with Claire for Bikram Yoga. It was
my least favorite type of yoga but the most rewarding. The darkened
room seemed to have a pulse of its own as the yogi’s calm voice filled the
hot air with gentle instructions to hold our pose and take deep breaths. I
kept holding my breath and constantly had to be reminded to exhale. It was
therapeutic – the sweat and the heat. It felt like penance for everything I’d
done that day; I hadn’t been able to stop myself from thinking about Ahmad
since I got back.
When we got to the residence, we’d stayed in his car for another fifteen
minutes, talking about the most random things. He told me about this one
time he lost Afreen at the Frankfurt airport when they were waiting for a
connecting flight and how scared he had been, thinking she got kidnapped.
He was only sixteen at the time. He helped adjust my scarf, and as he was
about to finish telling his story, he held my hands, and looked at my fingers.
“Why don’t you wear rings?”
“I always misplace them,” I answered quietly. His index fingers stroked
mine as he continued with another story. Eventually, when I insisted that I
had to leave, he nodded and walked me to the elevators, and we said our
goodbyes as the doors closed and I started moving to my floor. I hadn’t
even gotten to my room when his call came in. “I’m taking you out on a
date on Friday,” his voice sounded like melted chocolate.
“Why are you just telling me this now?” I asked, laughing as I unlocked
the door to my room.
“I just thought about it,” he answered, “plus, I know Fridays are your
least busy days.” It was true.
The sting in my outstretched arm brought me back to the yoga class.
Claire was by my left, as graceful as a swan, with her right hand stretched
out in front of her and her left leg curved into the air behind her. There were
not a lot of girls in the class who could hold such a pose as long as she
could. Luckily, we just had to hold the pose for another second, and then
everyone curled into downward dog. After a few more stretching poses, the
lights came on to signal the end of the class. I grabbed my water bottle and
gulped water like my life depended on it.
“Hmm, I needed that,” Claire said as she twisted her head from left to
right. Her face was flushed, her freckles evident in this light. We rolled up
our mats and put down our names on the signup sheet for the next class. As
we walked back to our room, my phone beeped a message from Niac: Can’t
stop thinking about you. I read the message over and over again, unable to
find a suitable response.
“Okay, you’ve had that giddy look on your face since you got back.
What’s going on?” Claire asked, giving me a knowing look as she glanced
at my phone and then my face. “Spill it,” she said, pouring some water into
a green St. Patrick cup.
“Oh, it’s just Ahmad,” I said, trying to make it less of a deal.
“Oouuu the boyfriend. Must be nice,” she said in a singsong manner as
she walked into her room to answer a call.
I took the opportunity to go into the restroom to remove the workout
clothes off my damp body, and jump into the shower. As I closed my eyes, I
remembered the feel of his lips on mine – their softness, how his hands
glided down my back. I opened my eyes and could still feel his hands on
my face, the way his thumb lingered on my lower lip after our kiss, the way
his chest felt under my palms, and the firm yet gentle way he gripped my
waist as he pulled me in closer to him. I wondered what Ahmad was doing
at that moment and thought about his message: Can’t stop thinking about
you. ‘Same here’, I wanted to text back. ‘Not a minute has passed since I
got back that you haven’t crossed my mind.’ I shook my head as though the
single gesture would help dispel my thoughts and got out of the shower.
When I got in bed, I went on YouTube and searched for Islamic lectures by
Mufti Menk, and listened for only about ten minutes when the topic
changed to temptations. The lecture talked about how the devil tried to
distract us with temptations that seemed irresistible, and my thoughts were
on Ahmad the whole time.
* * *
I was with Ada and Sara discussing statutory and common law defenses
when his call came in. At the same time, Sara announced that she needed to
use the restroom.
I picked up. “Yeah, hello?”
“Bae?” As soon as I heard his voice, my insides started turning into
jelly. Is it possible that I’m falling even deeper for him?
“Hey.”
“You never replied to my text message. You started typing, and then you
stopped,” he complained.
“Yes, I’ve been so busy, ne. Sorry,” It wasn’t entirely true.
The silence didn’t linger for much. “I understand. Are you at the rez?”
“No, study lounge,” I answered carefully. I knew he wouldn’t just turn
up without giving me a heads-up, yet, I found myself suddenly
apprehensive.
“Okay, I’ll let you get back to it, then.”
“Okay, bye”
“Bye, babe.”
I disconnected the call and looked around the lounge. There were barely
any students left. Most would rather study in the library at this time of the
day.
“Is everything okay?” Ada was looking at me. She had braided her Afro
into two beautiful cornrows.
“Yeah,” I said. I found myself pulling the sleeves of my long-sleeved
top.
“You don’t sound happy,” she probed. “Are you guys fighting?”
I looked around the lounge again. Sara was nowhere in sight, but still, I
whispered. “I kissed him.”
“You kissed him?” she was surprised. She blinked her eyes a few times.
“Yeah. I did.” I’d thought about that morning a hundred times. He’d
initiated it by closing the distance between us, but I eventually leaned in.
“I thought you guys were keeping it… what’s the word?”
“Halal?” I supplied.
“Yeah, halal,” she said. “So, this was your first kiss, all this while?” I
nodded. “Well, how was it?” her eyes gleamed with interest as she adjusted
her glasses, her voice taking on a cheery tune and dispelling the tense
nature of the conversation.
I opened my mouth to speak, then closed it, my mind replaying how his
hands went to the side of my neck while we kissed. “It… It was good.
Really good, " I finally admitted, still whispering.
“Haha, that’s crazy,” she was about to add something when we saw Sara
heading back. The conversation ended there, and we went back to studying.
Now I knew for sure I’d fallen even deeper for him.
* * *
I had a busy week. Between my classes, study sessions and volunteering
twice a week at Inn From the Cold, I barely had much time to leave
campus. My phone calls with Ahmad had become shorter and shorter, and
so were our text exchanges, in accordance with the strict set of instructions
I had gotten from a Muslim sister’s blog on avoiding temptations.
The first instruction was to pray istighfar, to ask God for forgiveness.
Second, I needed to limit the temptation by not being around said person –
so I now restrict communication. Whenever he asked to come see me, I
always had an already-rehearsed excuse. Third, fasting to keep the thoughts
out of my head. I continued with my Monday and Thursday fasts which
were a regular thing in my father’s house. Voluntary fasting was a Prophetic
sunnah and was not hard at all. Keeping him out of my head – now that was
the hard part. Terribly, terribly hard. Especially when he messaged me:
You’ve been on my mind all day or Hey, I’m just by that ice cream truck you
like. Should I pick up your fave? Or Guess you are busy. Picked you a tub.
It’s gonna be in the freezer waiting for you. Recently, there had been a lot of
Are you okay? You didn’t sound great on the phone just now or the one that
made my heart skip a beat every time: I miss you, babe.
I tried to keep myself very busy by covering kitchen duties at the
shelter. By the time I got there at 4 pm, there was usually a huge pile of
plates from lunch that the volunteers had to run through the heavy-duty
dishwashers. We would then set the table and would sometimes help serve
dinner.
Inn From the Cold was a safe shelter for displaced women. Some had
been displaced due to spousal abuse; they’d been kicked out of their homes
and had no source of income. I’d seen some women come with luggage and
some with only the clothes on their backs. Some stayed for just a night, and
others stayed for weeks. Some with kids and others alone. Whatever the
situation was, the shelter provided them with a safe space, meals to eat, and
activities to keep them occupied. Sometimes, as I watched women come in,
I imagined building a similar organization in Nigeria – how I would run it,
what I would embody, and what I would do differently.
This week had been unusually busy because we were hosting a huge
Thanksgiving dinner. Apart from regular volunteers like me, we also had
some drop-ins for the day who would help with the work. I was looking at
the schedule to see which group I would be working with when I heard
Jasmeet’s voice. I turned to find her in an elegant orange and black pantsuit.
That’s the Thanksgiving spirit! I, on the other hand, was in my regular jeans
and a long-sleeved shirt, my scarf wrapped as a hijab around my head to
cover my ears and neck.
“Fa’iza, thank you for showing up on time as always,” she said as she
smiled at me, “The kitchen is fully staffed. Could you go out front and help
serve the food? We need some help there.”
“Of course.”
“Perfect. Grab an apron, and you can help at the coffee station,” she
turned on her heels. I grabbed one of the green aprons that hung on the rack
by the kitchen doors and wore it, tying the belts behind me as I followed her
through the double doors.
The dining hall was bustling with loud chatter and laughter. Some
people were chatting like long-lost friends, others were just quietly
observing or lost in their own thoughts, and kids were being kids – running
around and playing, completely oblivious to whatever dire situation had
brought them to the shelter tonight. Kids needed this – a sense of
community at times when family units were disintegrated. I wondered yet
again how this would work in Nigeria.
“This is where you’ll work tonight,” Jasmeet said as she led me to the
coffee station at the end of the table. “You just need to place a mug here and
press this button,” she looked up to see if I understood, and I nodded.
“We’ll have someone here shortly to help you,” she gestured at the second
coffee station. I nodded with a smile as she walked away.
There was a lady already there. She looked as though she were in her
sixties, slim build, greying hair, and the hard-to-miss Cartier love bracelet
on her wrist. “Hello. Dear. I’m Amy.”
“Hi, I’m Fa’iza.”
“Is today your first time volunteering, too?”
“No, I’ve been doing this for a few weeks now.”
“How wonderful! By the way, I looooove your scarf.”
“Thank you,” I answered with a smile. I always got compliments about
my hijab, more here in Toronto than anywhere else. The news made it seem
like everyone in the West thought it was a sign of oppression, but that
wasn’t the case with the people that I had come across.
To my right, someone was wearing an apron, his back to me, in the air
was the scent of Million by Paco Rabanne. Brown shirt with the sleeves
rolled up, dark pants and a stubble. I blinked a few times because I was
pretty sure I was imagining things. “Ahmad?” my voice was barely a
whisper.
“There you are!” His face was expressionless as he turned and looked at
me.
“What are you doing here?”
“Volunteering,” then he turned his attention towards a lady that was
walking towards us. “Good evening. Coffee?”
“Yes, please,” she answered timidly. She had a bruise on her face, and I
stared at it, wondering if someone had hit her.
“Milk, sugar and creamers are over to your left,” I said when Ahmad
was done serving her.
“Thanks,” she said quietly, her eyes on the floor.
As more people flowed in, Ahmad would help hand out the coffee I’d
poured to the people waiting in line and direct them to sugar and everything
else they needed. He was surprisingly good at this.
As it quieted down again, I looked at mothers feeding their children and
instinctively turned around to look at Ahmad. I’d caught him looking at me
with a hard-to-read expression as he moved closer.
“Why are you avoiding me?” his eyes fixed on mine. “And don’t say
you aren’t because I had to volunteer at a shelter to see you.” His voice was
gentle. He didn’t seem angry, but there was something unreadable about his
expression.
I looked around. The lady by my side, Amy, was in deep conversation
with a gentleman by her side. I looked back at Ahmad. “I’ve been busy, ne.
Sorry.”
He nodded slowly. I knew he didn’t believe me. “You see, Fa’iza, we
can’t do this,” his words were measured, deliberate. “You can’t just ignore
me when something bothers you.”
A boy around fifteen approached us, interrupting him. “Just getting
coffee for my mum,” the boy said.
“Happy thanksgiving,” Ahmad said, pouring him a cup. When the boy
left, Ahmad moved closer to me again. With him being this close to me, all
the emotions I had tried so hard to keep at bay all week came rushing back.
“Was it something I said or something I did?” He was not smiling.
I shook my head.
“So, what’s it then?” He was standing very close to me. We were not
touching, but I was aware of how his eyes flickered down to my lips and
back to my eyes. I remembered my thighs pressing against his in the
kitchen that morning and how good his hands felt around my waist. I could
feel my heartbeat quickening, and I took a step backwards. His eyebrows
shot up, but he didn’t close the distance I had put between us. He chuckled
and rubbed his forehead. “It is about the kiss, isn’t it?” I remained quiet,
trying to dispel the memory which was vivid in my memory. “Talk to me.”
I forced myself to look up at him. “It’s haram, Ahmad. I feel guilty.”
My voice sounded like it would break, my whisper was loaded with
uncertainty. I was scared and embarrassed at the same time.
His eyes got softer. “I’m sorry,” he swallowed. “I’m sorry I pushed you
to do something you weren’t ready for.”
I shook my head. “No, no, no. You didn’t push me,” I said, then adding
in a whisper: “I wanted to.”
He looked like he was going to sweep me in his arms but thought
against it. He was restless with his hands and couldn’t decide whether to
fold them across his chest or put them in his pocket. “The past week has
been torture,” his voice was so low, “how was it so easy for you to just pull
away?”
“It wasn’t,” I wanted to reassure him. “I’m just supposed to stay aw–”
“Who said?”
“Nouman Ali Khan, Omar Suleiman, and Mufti Menk,” I answered,
listing off all the Islamic scholars whose lectures on chastity I’d been
watching all week. I started busying myself with arranging coffee cups in
neat rows to avoid looking at him.
“What you feel for me – what we feel for each other – it’s not going to
magically disappear because you stay away,” his voice was still low, and his
eyes were still on me. “But baby, we can’t work around it, if you keep
avoiding me.” I melted a bit when he called me baby. He rarely ever did,
but when he did, it sounded so… sweet.
We were interrupted by Jasmeet, who was going around to thank the
drop-in volunteers personally. “A pleasure to finally meet you, Mr.
Ahmad,” she said as she shook his hand, “thank you for your countless
donations over the years.”
“My pleasure,” Ahmad answered.
“Oh Fa’iza, I see you have met Mr. Ahmad already,” she turned towards
me, “the new coding lab and all the computers in there were donated by
him”
I stared at her and then at Ahmad, who was looking embarrassed. He
was a regular donor at Inn From the Cold? He had never even mentioned it.
Ahmad Babangida, the philanthropist. Who would have thought?
After another hour of cleaning up and putting away the garbage and
recyclables, we were all exhausted. We dropped our aprons in the baskets
provided and got our personal belongings from the lockers, and left at 8 pm.
“Why didn’t you tell me you are affiliated with the shelter?” I asked
him.
“It never came up,” he shrugged. He looked at both sides of the road as
we crossed. “When you mentioned how much you wanted to help women
and kids, I couldn’t believe how similar we were. It’s one of the things I
love about us.”
Love. Did he just say one of the things he loved about us? “Why women
and children?” I asked instead.
“The statistics show that one in three women have been subjected to
violence by a partner, and only a few percent of them seek shelter elsewhere
when it happens,” he sighed, “I feel it’s my duty to help in providing a safe
space for those who do. We all owe it to them.”
“I know, right?” I agreed. I thought about the happy cherub faces I saw
at dinner, “and the kids.”
“Yes! And the kids,” we had reached the bus stop. “Imagine their
mothers going back to their abusers because they had no safe place to stay.
Imagine how it would affect them.”
“I wanna talk to Abba about doing something like this in Abuja or
Kaduna,” I said.
“Really?” he turned to look at me, “That would be amazing.”
“I mean, I still have to figure out the logistics,” I reached into my bag to
get my bus pass as we got to the bus stop right in front of the parking lot,
“I’m gonna wait for the bus here.”
“Can I drop you?”
“We can’t be alone together.”
“Let me guess, your YouTube Muftis said that?”
I nodded.
He ran his hand through his head, “I think we’ve done really well this
evening, we managed to keep our hands off each other,” his features
softened as I laughed. He stared for a second too long. “Or I could come on
the bus with you,” he added.
“You would leave your car here?”
“I’ll come back for it,” he brought out his wallet and took out his card to
pay for a bus ticket.
I looked up, and the bus was approaching us in the distance. It was a 45-
minute bus ride to the residence. I usually liked long bus rides; I didn’t
think he would. “The only reason I’m coming with you is because I don’t
want you going back and forth.”
He had a triumphant look on his face as we turned away and started
walking to his car. We got in, and as I watched him shuffle his music,
images of his finger on my skin flashed across my mind. I remembered how
he put my arms around his neck right before we kissed, the feel of his
thighs against my skin. It got harder to breathe.
“So, did your Muftis suggest the best way to handle our… situation?”
he glanced at me before starting the engine, but I looked away, watching the
car drive off the curb.
“Yeah, they had a couple of ideas.”
“Care to share?”
“Marriage,” I said.
“And what do you think about that?”
“My parents will wonder what I’m doing if – barely a year into my
degree – I go back home and say I want to get married. They would think
I’ve gone mad.”
“They wouldn’t oppose it, though, would they?” he probed.
“No, but I’m expected to get married after school or at the earliest,
towards the end of school,” I answered. No one got married early in my
family. The earliest a girl was expected to get married was immediately
after her first degree, but most people do years after completing their
Masters.
“So, that’s in what – three years?” he probed again, gently.
“Yeah, thereabouts.” It seemed like enough time. A wife at twenty-one
or twenty-two? Didn’t sound half bad.
“Okay, so do you plan on avoiding me for the next three years, then? Or
how does this work?” I hadn’t thought about that. His hands rested on the
steering wheel when we got to the red traffic light, and when the light
turned green, his left hand moved to the gearbox and lingered close to my
thigh.
“Fasting,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure it was helping in this case.
I’d been fasting consistently that week, but I’d constantly caught my
thoughts slipping back to him.
“That works,” he agreed, “but you can’t fast every day now, can you?”
“You have better suggestions?” We reached the residence now. He
found a parking spot and pulled in.
“Don’t take this the wrong way. I think getting married just to get laid is
the reason marriages aren’t working anymore,” he looked at me. The light
from the lamp posts filled the car with a yellow afterglow. “Do you
understand what I’m trying to say?”
“No,” I confessed.
“Okay, so you find yourself madly attracted to someone, and you get
married,” his voice was low but confident. “The first few months are
fantastic, and you’re having all this amazing sex you never even imagined
in your wildest dreams. Life continues and with time, you realize sex is the
only thing you enjoy together and now that it’s out of your system, there
isn’t much to keep the relationship going. Life happens, maybe a kid or two.
She’s busy dealing with the changes in her body, and he doesn’t know her
enough in a non-sexual way to empathize with her insecurities. She’s just
his wife and the mother of his children and that alone cannot sustain a
marriage. What they thought was love has now become a mere…” he
paused for a moment as he searched for the right word, ‘duty.’
“What sustains a marriage, then?”
“Security,” he said without thinking as if he’d thought about it several
times, “knowing that my woman will always be my woman, regardless of
what life throws at me; that she’s a friend first, then my wife.”
“And for the woman?”
“I can’t answer that for you, Fa’iza. You need to know what you need in
a partner and not just on paper, but in reality too. It’s easy for any man to
claim to be patient, but how do you know that’s for real, if you haven’t seen
how he treats you when things don’t go his way? When he loses out on a
huge contract, for instance?” he looked away, his eyes settling on the
dashboard. “Any man will claim to love you, but would that love remain on
the days you’re difficult to love? You need an unshakable belief in him
being constant. I would imagine that’s what security feels like for a
woman.”
I thought about the married people I knew – the few times wives
returned to their parents’ houses due to unspoken issues, how everyone
stressed patience to both parties. Is that what marriage becomes after the
initial love struck feeling wears off – lifelong servitude of endurance and
tolerance?
“What I feel for you, Fa’iza – it’s indescribable. I want you so much it
hurts.”
“We can’t kiss anym –”
“Are you afraid of what it might lead to?” he asked me quietly.
I nodded. What if we get so carried away, and it doesn’t stop at just
kissing?
“I respect that,” he started, then he cleared his throat, “I respect what
you want. We’re never gonna do anything you feel uncomfortable with.”
“So, what are we going to do about…” I didn’t know how to articulate
the tingle and the heat I felt every time he was around me.
“The feelings? We’ll take it one day at a time,” a smirk formed at the
corner of his lips, “and lots and lots of fasting.”
I started smiling, and we burst into laughter. So help me, God.
A
my least favorite type of yoga but the most rewarding. The darkened
room seemed to have a pulse of its own as the yogi’s calm voice filled the
hot air with gentle instructions to hold our pose and take deep breaths. I
kept holding my breath and constantly had to be reminded to exhale. It was
therapeutic – the sweat and the heat. It felt like penance for everything I’d
done that day; I hadn’t been able to stop myself from thinking about Ahmad
since I got back.
When we got to the residence, we’d stayed in his car for another fifteen
minutes, talking about the most random things. He told me about this one
time he lost Afreen at the Frankfurt airport when they were waiting for a
connecting flight and how scared he had been, thinking she got kidnapped.
He was only sixteen at the time. He helped adjust my scarf, and as he was
about to finish telling his story, he held my hands, and looked at my fingers.
“Why don’t you wear rings?”
“I always misplace them,” I answered quietly. His index fingers stroked
mine as he continued with another story. Eventually, when I insisted that I
had to leave, he nodded and walked me to the elevators, and we said our
goodbyes as the doors closed and I started moving to my floor. I hadn’t
even gotten to my room when his call came in. “I’m taking you out on a
date on Friday,” his voice sounded like melted chocolate.
“Why are you just telling me this now?” I asked, laughing as I unlocked
the door to my room.
“I just thought about it,” he answered, “plus, I know Fridays are your
least busy days.” It was true.
The sting in my outstretched arm brought me back to the yoga class.
Claire was by my left, as graceful as a swan, with her right hand stretched
out in front of her and her left leg curved into the air behind her. There were
not a lot of girls in the class who could hold such a pose as long as she
could. Luckily, we just had to hold the pose for another second, and then
everyone curled into downward dog. After a few more stretching poses, the
lights came on to signal the end of the class. I grabbed my water bottle and
gulped water like my life depended on it.
“Hmm, I needed that,” Claire said as she twisted her head from left to
right. Her face was flushed, her freckles evident in this light. We rolled up
our mats and put down our names on the signup sheet for the next class. As
we walked back to our room, my phone beeped a message from Niac: Can’t
stop thinking about you. I read the message over and over again, unable to
find a suitable response.
“Okay, you’ve had that giddy look on your face since you got back.
What’s going on?” Claire asked, giving me a knowing look as she glanced
at my phone and then my face. “Spill it,” she said, pouring some water into
a green St. Patrick cup.
“Oh, it’s just Ahmad,” I said, trying to make it less of a deal.
“Oouuu the boyfriend. Must be nice,” she said in a singsong manner as
she walked into her room to answer a call.
I took the opportunity to go into the restroom to remove the workout
clothes off my damp body, and jump into the shower. As I closed my eyes, I
remembered the feel of his lips on mine – their softness, how his hands
glided down my back. I opened my eyes and could still feel his hands on
my face, the way his thumb lingered on my lower lip after our kiss, the way
his chest felt under my palms, and the firm yet gentle way he gripped my
waist as he pulled me in closer to him. I wondered what Ahmad was doing
at that moment and thought about his message: Can’t stop thinking about
you. ‘Same here’, I wanted to text back. ‘Not a minute has passed since I
got back that you haven’t crossed my mind.’ I shook my head as though the
single gesture would help dispel my thoughts and got out of the shower.
When I got in bed, I went on YouTube and searched for Islamic lectures by
Mufti Menk, and listened for only about ten minutes when the topic
changed to temptations. The lecture talked about how the devil tried to
distract us with temptations that seemed irresistible, and my thoughts were
on Ahmad the whole time.
* * *
I was with Ada and Sara discussing statutory and common law defenses
when his call came in. At the same time, Sara announced that she needed to
use the restroom.
I picked up. “Yeah, hello?”
“Bae?” As soon as I heard his voice, my insides started turning into
jelly. Is it possible that I’m falling even deeper for him?
“Hey.”
“You never replied to my text message. You started typing, and then you
stopped,” he complained.
“Yes, I’ve been so busy, ne. Sorry,” It wasn’t entirely true.
The silence didn’t linger for much. “I understand. Are you at the rez?”
“No, study lounge,” I answered carefully. I knew he wouldn’t just turn
up without giving me a heads-up, yet, I found myself suddenly
apprehensive.
“Okay, I’ll let you get back to it, then.”
“Okay, bye”
“Bye, babe.”
I disconnected the call and looked around the lounge. There were barely
any students left. Most would rather study in the library at this time of the
day.
“Is everything okay?” Ada was looking at me. She had braided her Afro
into two beautiful cornrows.
“Yeah,” I said. I found myself pulling the sleeves of my long-sleeved
top.
“You don’t sound happy,” she probed. “Are you guys fighting?”
I looked around the lounge again. Sara was nowhere in sight, but still, I
whispered. “I kissed him.”
“You kissed him?” she was surprised. She blinked her eyes a few times.
“Yeah. I did.” I’d thought about that morning a hundred times. He’d
initiated it by closing the distance between us, but I eventually leaned in.
“I thought you guys were keeping it… what’s the word?”
“Halal?” I supplied.
“Yeah, halal,” she said. “So, this was your first kiss, all this while?” I
nodded. “Well, how was it?” her eyes gleamed with interest as she adjusted
her glasses, her voice taking on a cheery tune and dispelling the tense
nature of the conversation.
I opened my mouth to speak, then closed it, my mind replaying how his
hands went to the side of my neck while we kissed. “It… It was good.
Really good, " I finally admitted, still whispering.
“Haha, that’s crazy,” she was about to add something when we saw Sara
heading back. The conversation ended there, and we went back to studying.
Now I knew for sure I’d fallen even deeper for him.
* * *
I had a busy week. Between my classes, study sessions and volunteering
twice a week at Inn From the Cold, I barely had much time to leave
campus. My phone calls with Ahmad had become shorter and shorter, and
so were our text exchanges, in accordance with the strict set of instructions
I had gotten from a Muslim sister’s blog on avoiding temptations.
The first instruction was to pray istighfar, to ask God for forgiveness.
Second, I needed to limit the temptation by not being around said person –
so I now restrict communication. Whenever he asked to come see me, I
always had an already-rehearsed excuse. Third, fasting to keep the thoughts
out of my head. I continued with my Monday and Thursday fasts which
were a regular thing in my father’s house. Voluntary fasting was a Prophetic
sunnah and was not hard at all. Keeping him out of my head – now that was
the hard part. Terribly, terribly hard. Especially when he messaged me:
You’ve been on my mind all day or Hey, I’m just by that ice cream truck you
like. Should I pick up your fave? Or Guess you are busy. Picked you a tub.
It’s gonna be in the freezer waiting for you. Recently, there had been a lot of
Are you okay? You didn’t sound great on the phone just now or the one that
made my heart skip a beat every time: I miss you, babe.
I tried to keep myself very busy by covering kitchen duties at the
shelter. By the time I got there at 4 pm, there was usually a huge pile of
plates from lunch that the volunteers had to run through the heavy-duty
dishwashers. We would then set the table and would sometimes help serve
dinner.
Inn From the Cold was a safe shelter for displaced women. Some had
been displaced due to spousal abuse; they’d been kicked out of their homes
and had no source of income. I’d seen some women come with luggage and
some with only the clothes on their backs. Some stayed for just a night, and
others stayed for weeks. Some with kids and others alone. Whatever the
situation was, the shelter provided them with a safe space, meals to eat, and
activities to keep them occupied. Sometimes, as I watched women come in,
I imagined building a similar organization in Nigeria – how I would run it,
what I would embody, and what I would do differently.
This week had been unusually busy because we were hosting a huge
Thanksgiving dinner. Apart from regular volunteers like me, we also had
some drop-ins for the day who would help with the work. I was looking at
the schedule to see which group I would be working with when I heard
Jasmeet’s voice. I turned to find her in an elegant orange and black pantsuit.
That’s the Thanksgiving spirit! I, on the other hand, was in my regular jeans
and a long-sleeved shirt, my scarf wrapped as a hijab around my head to
cover my ears and neck.
“Fa’iza, thank you for showing up on time as always,” she said as she
smiled at me, “The kitchen is fully staffed. Could you go out front and help
serve the food? We need some help there.”
“Of course.”
“Perfect. Grab an apron, and you can help at the coffee station,” she
turned on her heels. I grabbed one of the green aprons that hung on the rack
by the kitchen doors and wore it, tying the belts behind me as I followed her
through the double doors.
The dining hall was bustling with loud chatter and laughter. Some
people were chatting like long-lost friends, others were just quietly
observing or lost in their own thoughts, and kids were being kids – running
around and playing, completely oblivious to whatever dire situation had
brought them to the shelter tonight. Kids needed this – a sense of
community at times when family units were disintegrated. I wondered yet
again how this would work in Nigeria.
“This is where you’ll work tonight,” Jasmeet said as she led me to the
coffee station at the end of the table. “You just need to place a mug here and
press this button,” she looked up to see if I understood, and I nodded.
“We’ll have someone here shortly to help you,” she gestured at the second
coffee station. I nodded with a smile as she walked away.
There was a lady already there. She looked as though she were in her
sixties, slim build, greying hair, and the hard-to-miss Cartier love bracelet
on her wrist. “Hello. Dear. I’m Amy.”
“Hi, I’m Fa’iza.”
“Is today your first time volunteering, too?”
“No, I’ve been doing this for a few weeks now.”
“How wonderful! By the way, I looooove your scarf.”
“Thank you,” I answered with a smile. I always got compliments about
my hijab, more here in Toronto than anywhere else. The news made it seem
like everyone in the West thought it was a sign of oppression, but that
wasn’t the case with the people that I had come across.
To my right, someone was wearing an apron, his back to me, in the air
was the scent of Million by Paco Rabanne. Brown shirt with the sleeves
rolled up, dark pants and a stubble. I blinked a few times because I was
pretty sure I was imagining things. “Ahmad?” my voice was barely a
whisper.
“There you are!” His face was expressionless as he turned and looked at
me.
“What are you doing here?”
“Volunteering,” then he turned his attention towards a lady that was
walking towards us. “Good evening. Coffee?”
“Yes, please,” she answered timidly. She had a bruise on her face, and I
stared at it, wondering if someone had hit her.
“Milk, sugar and creamers are over to your left,” I said when Ahmad
was done serving her.
“Thanks,” she said quietly, her eyes on the floor.
As more people flowed in, Ahmad would help hand out the coffee I’d
poured to the people waiting in line and direct them to sugar and everything
else they needed. He was surprisingly good at this.
As it quieted down again, I looked at mothers feeding their children and
instinctively turned around to look at Ahmad. I’d caught him looking at me
with a hard-to-read expression as he moved closer.
“Why are you avoiding me?” his eyes fixed on mine. “And don’t say
you aren’t because I had to volunteer at a shelter to see you.” His voice was
gentle. He didn’t seem angry, but there was something unreadable about his
expression.
I looked around. The lady by my side, Amy, was in deep conversation
with a gentleman by her side. I looked back at Ahmad. “I’ve been busy, ne.
Sorry.”
He nodded slowly. I knew he didn’t believe me. “You see, Fa’iza, we
can’t do this,” his words were measured, deliberate. “You can’t just ignore
me when something bothers you.”
A boy around fifteen approached us, interrupting him. “Just getting
coffee for my mum,” the boy said.
“Happy thanksgiving,” Ahmad said, pouring him a cup. When the boy
left, Ahmad moved closer to me again. With him being this close to me, all
the emotions I had tried so hard to keep at bay all week came rushing back.
“Was it something I said or something I did?” He was not smiling.
I shook my head.
“So, what’s it then?” He was standing very close to me. We were not
touching, but I was aware of how his eyes flickered down to my lips and
back to my eyes. I remembered my thighs pressing against his in the
kitchen that morning and how good his hands felt around my waist. I could
feel my heartbeat quickening, and I took a step backwards. His eyebrows
shot up, but he didn’t close the distance I had put between us. He chuckled
and rubbed his forehead. “It is about the kiss, isn’t it?” I remained quiet,
trying to dispel the memory which was vivid in my memory. “Talk to me.”
I forced myself to look up at him. “It’s haram, Ahmad. I feel guilty.”
My voice sounded like it would break, my whisper was loaded with
uncertainty. I was scared and embarrassed at the same time.
His eyes got softer. “I’m sorry,” he swallowed. “I’m sorry I pushed you
to do something you weren’t ready for.”
I shook my head. “No, no, no. You didn’t push me,” I said, then adding
in a whisper: “I wanted to.”
He looked like he was going to sweep me in his arms but thought
against it. He was restless with his hands and couldn’t decide whether to
fold them across his chest or put them in his pocket. “The past week has
been torture,” his voice was so low, “how was it so easy for you to just pull
away?”
“It wasn’t,” I wanted to reassure him. “I’m just supposed to stay aw–”
“Who said?”
“Nouman Ali Khan, Omar Suleiman, and Mufti Menk,” I answered,
listing off all the Islamic scholars whose lectures on chastity I’d been
watching all week. I started busying myself with arranging coffee cups in
neat rows to avoid looking at him.
“What you feel for me – what we feel for each other – it’s not going to
magically disappear because you stay away,” his voice was still low, and his
eyes were still on me. “But baby, we can’t work around it, if you keep
avoiding me.” I melted a bit when he called me baby. He rarely ever did,
but when he did, it sounded so… sweet.
We were interrupted by Jasmeet, who was going around to thank the
drop-in volunteers personally. “A pleasure to finally meet you, Mr.
Ahmad,” she said as she shook his hand, “thank you for your countless
donations over the years.”
“My pleasure,” Ahmad answered.
“Oh Fa’iza, I see you have met Mr. Ahmad already,” she turned towards
me, “the new coding lab and all the computers in there were donated by
him”
I stared at her and then at Ahmad, who was looking embarrassed. He
was a regular donor at Inn From the Cold? He had never even mentioned it.
Ahmad Babangida, the philanthropist. Who would have thought?
After another hour of cleaning up and putting away the garbage and
recyclables, we were all exhausted. We dropped our aprons in the baskets
provided and got our personal belongings from the lockers, and left at 8 pm.
“Why didn’t you tell me you are affiliated with the shelter?” I asked
him.
“It never came up,” he shrugged. He looked at both sides of the road as
we crossed. “When you mentioned how much you wanted to help women
and kids, I couldn’t believe how similar we were. It’s one of the things I
love about us.”
Love. Did he just say one of the things he loved about us? “Why women
and children?” I asked instead.
“The statistics show that one in three women have been subjected to
violence by a partner, and only a few percent of them seek shelter elsewhere
when it happens,” he sighed, “I feel it’s my duty to help in providing a safe
space for those who do. We all owe it to them.”
“I know, right?” I agreed. I thought about the happy cherub faces I saw
at dinner, “and the kids.”
“Yes! And the kids,” we had reached the bus stop. “Imagine their
mothers going back to their abusers because they had no safe place to stay.
Imagine how it would affect them.”
“I wanna talk to Abba about doing something like this in Abuja or
Kaduna,” I said.
“Really?” he turned to look at me, “That would be amazing.”
“I mean, I still have to figure out the logistics,” I reached into my bag to
get my bus pass as we got to the bus stop right in front of the parking lot,
“I’m gonna wait for the bus here.”
“Can I drop you?”
“We can’t be alone together.”
“Let me guess, your YouTube Muftis said that?”
I nodded.
He ran his hand through his head, “I think we’ve done really well this
evening, we managed to keep our hands off each other,” his features
softened as I laughed. He stared for a second too long. “Or I could come on
the bus with you,” he added.
“You would leave your car here?”
“I’ll come back for it,” he brought out his wallet and took out his card to
pay for a bus ticket.
I looked up, and the bus was approaching us in the distance. It was a 45-
minute bus ride to the residence. I usually liked long bus rides; I didn’t
think he would. “The only reason I’m coming with you is because I don’t
want you going back and forth.”
He had a triumphant look on his face as we turned away and started
walking to his car. We got in, and as I watched him shuffle his music,
images of his finger on my skin flashed across my mind. I remembered how
he put my arms around his neck right before we kissed, the feel of his
thighs against my skin. It got harder to breathe.
“So, did your Muftis suggest the best way to handle our… situation?”
he glanced at me before starting the engine, but I looked away, watching the
car drive off the curb.
“Yeah, they had a couple of ideas.”
“Care to share?”
“Marriage,” I said.
“And what do you think about that?”
“My parents will wonder what I’m doing if – barely a year into my
degree – I go back home and say I want to get married. They would think
I’ve gone mad.”
“They wouldn’t oppose it, though, would they?” he probed.
“No, but I’m expected to get married after school or at the earliest,
towards the end of school,” I answered. No one got married early in my
family. The earliest a girl was expected to get married was immediately
after her first degree, but most people do years after completing their
Masters.
“So, that’s in what – three years?” he probed again, gently.
“Yeah, thereabouts.” It seemed like enough time. A wife at twenty-one
or twenty-two? Didn’t sound half bad.
“Okay, so do you plan on avoiding me for the next three years, then? Or
how does this work?” I hadn’t thought about that. His hands rested on the
steering wheel when we got to the red traffic light, and when the light
turned green, his left hand moved to the gearbox and lingered close to my
thigh.
“Fasting,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure it was helping in this case.
I’d been fasting consistently that week, but I’d constantly caught my
thoughts slipping back to him.
“That works,” he agreed, “but you can’t fast every day now, can you?”
“You have better suggestions?” We reached the residence now. He
found a parking spot and pulled in.
“Don’t take this the wrong way. I think getting married just to get laid is
the reason marriages aren’t working anymore,” he looked at me. The light
from the lamp posts filled the car with a yellow afterglow. “Do you
understand what I’m trying to say?”
“No,” I confessed.
“Okay, so you find yourself madly attracted to someone, and you get
married,” his voice was low but confident. “The first few months are
fantastic, and you’re having all this amazing sex you never even imagined
in your wildest dreams. Life continues and with time, you realize sex is the
only thing you enjoy together and now that it’s out of your system, there
isn’t much to keep the relationship going. Life happens, maybe a kid or two.
She’s busy dealing with the changes in her body, and he doesn’t know her
enough in a non-sexual way to empathize with her insecurities. She’s just
his wife and the mother of his children and that alone cannot sustain a
marriage. What they thought was love has now become a mere…” he
paused for a moment as he searched for the right word, ‘duty.’
“What sustains a marriage, then?”
“Security,” he said without thinking as if he’d thought about it several
times, “knowing that my woman will always be my woman, regardless of
what life throws at me; that she’s a friend first, then my wife.”
“And for the woman?”
“I can’t answer that for you, Fa’iza. You need to know what you need in
a partner and not just on paper, but in reality too. It’s easy for any man to
claim to be patient, but how do you know that’s for real, if you haven’t seen
how he treats you when things don’t go his way? When he loses out on a
huge contract, for instance?” he looked away, his eyes settling on the
dashboard. “Any man will claim to love you, but would that love remain on
the days you’re difficult to love? You need an unshakable belief in him
being constant. I would imagine that’s what security feels like for a
woman.”
I thought about the married people I knew – the few times wives
returned to their parents’ houses due to unspoken issues, how everyone
stressed patience to both parties. Is that what marriage becomes after the
initial love struck feeling wears off – lifelong servitude of endurance and
tolerance?
“What I feel for you, Fa’iza – it’s indescribable. I want you so much it
hurts.”
“We can’t kiss anym –”
“Are you afraid of what it might lead to?” he asked me quietly.
I nodded. What if we get so carried away, and it doesn’t stop at just
kissing?
“I respect that,” he started, then he cleared his throat, “I respect what
you want. We’re never gonna do anything you feel uncomfortable with.”
“So, what are we going to do about…” I didn’t know how to articulate
the tingle and the heat I felt every time he was around me.
“The feelings? We’ll take it one day at a time,” a smirk formed at the
corner of his lips, “and lots and lots of fasting.”
I started smiling, and we burst into laughter. So help me, God.
A