F o r t y
This one is for khadijaholmes
:)

When you are alone
remind yourself that Allah
has sent everyone away so that it's only you and Him.

☆

Mashal

Day three of being in Alnihayya.

Minahil had been avoiding me ever since that bizzare, out of the world proposal which still looks like a joke to me.

With unsettling gazes, tense silence, awkward smiles, she was just not ready to talk to me about that. Little did she know that even if she had not avoided me, I still wouldn't have asked her anything.

All the questions I have right now are for Zeyara.

She had an appointment with a doctor right after breakfast so she left in a hurry with food stuffed in her mouth.

After finishing my food, I was getting bored, doing nothing but wasting oxygen alone so I went up to Saddia's table where she was laughing along with her friends.

"Hey new girl!" One of the girls on Saddia's table greeted me with a mischievous grin.

"Hi." I tried to sound cheerful even though I wasn't.

All the girls on this table were so daunting and confident with an air of expensive perfume around them.

They made me want to do what Jerry does when he sees Tom;
Run away and hide in a hole.

"Soha! Show some respect. She's not just a new girl, she's our eleventh leader." Saddia dejected, glaring daggers at her friend.

That girl, Soha, gaped in shock and I wouldn't blame her because I was doing the same.
"I am a what?"

"I'm surprised you don't know miss but your profile has been added as a leader in the database."

I wanted to tell her I didn't even know I had a profile but I didn't want to seem more 'un- professional' in front of those professional ladies.

"She and a leader?" Soha pointed at me and scoffed, batting her long eye lashes, "What quality does she have?"

"Soha please--" Saddia tried stopping her but she cut her off.

"Saddia I'm sorry but that's the truth honey. To be a leader you have to be working here for years, you need to go through Kashf and you need to have a special quality that differneciates you from the others. And this girl." She pointed at me again, "doesn't have any of that."

I think I should've felt offended by her words but I didn't because I knew that was the truth. Soha wasn't being rude, she was being genuine.
She deserved to be a leader more than I did. In fact, everyone in the cavern was more capable of being a leader than me.
I mean look at me, I don't even know what Kashf is that she is talking about.

The only thing I have that they don't, is me being Naeem Ansar's daughter.

"Soha she doesn't need any of that. She has it all in her blood." Saddia sighed, "she's Naeem Ansar's daughter."

The table grew silent at her words with an uneasy tension in the air.
"I-- I didn't know. I'm sorry miss." Soha apologised in a low voice, completely opposite to her previous tone.

"It's okay." I said and wanted to add "even I didn't know."

Soha's face had instantly dropped due to regret and shame that she had used those harsh words for the founder's daughter.

I hate this kind of blood privelege. The kind the king's children get. All they have to do is to be born to be a prince.
It's so biased but that's the bias keeping me afloat as well.

I had come to Saddia's table to ask her if she had some work for me but instead I was faced with this.
I was about to turn around and leave them at peace when a young woman, probably in her twenties walked up to the table, smiling.

I gasped inwardly when I recognised her face.
Zara.

"Saddia what time do we start the training session today?" She questioned and I couldn't help but notice how sweet her voice was.
As if she had never screamed at anyone.

She was all about simplicity, without any make up, soft features and a smile that made you want to smile as well. Her honey eyes shone from under her white hijab which was quite odd as everyone else was wearing a black one.
The picture I had seen in Zeyara's room didn't do justice to her at all. She was way more beautiful in reality.

Saddia smiled back at her. I could tell even Saddia was affected by her contagious smile. "In fifteen minutes Zara. I'll see you there bi' iznillah."

Training session?
This girl who looks so soft spoken and fragile can fight?
Not only her Mashal, even the tiny Marwa can fight so well.
I'm the weakest among them all.

"Saddia..." I muttered, gaining her attention, "Can I come too? For the training?"

"Sure!" She exclaimed without a second thought.

"Thanks."

Phew. I thought she won't agree but then again, she can't deny Naeem Ansar's daughter.

"Assalam o alaikum! You are our new leader right? The youngest one ever." Zara's eyes brightened when she noticed me.

I swallowed my unsurety and forced a smile. "Walaikum Salam. Yeah I guess."

"That's so cool!" She chirped and moved over to me. Before I knew it she had embraced me into a hug.
I had not even hugged her back when she pulled away grinning.
"I'm Zara from Syria and guessing by your accent, you look British."

I nodded a yes.

"You are going to join our training session?" She asked cheerfully, making me wonder where she gets all that energy from.

She's the most friendly person I've seen, after Marwa of course.

"Yeah" I replied trying to be just as cheerful as she was.

"Yay!" She clapped in excitement and glanced over at Saddia who was lost in a conversation with Soha.
"Saddia shall I take her over to Khawlah?"

"Yes please....you should go early. It will be very crowded today. MZS is going to come to the women training today to see our progress. The girls are dying to see him."

I felt a sting when Saddia mentioned MZS. I immediately regretted saying that I wanted to go to the training. I didn't want to face Zeyara anymore. I was scared of him.
I was scared of the power he possessed to shatter the fragile castle of my dreams into shreds by just his words.

I would rather stay away from him and pretend he loves me, than facing him and hearing him say that he doesn't.

Zara said something but I couldn't hear her over my loud thoughts.
"Pardon?"

"I said let's go." She repeated and grabbed my hand, guiding me out of the cavern.

I wanted to protest but I couldn't find a good enough excuse. She was being overly sweet to me. I didn't want to be a rude brat to her.

We reached the elevator and moved up the floors with Zara ranting about how inspiring I was for her, being just 17 and already a senior leader.
I nodded, smiled and thanked her wherever it was needed.

When we finally reached the desired floor, we got out of the elevator into a broad, long coridoor with shiny black tiles and glossy black doors on either side. The sound of landing punches, kicks, bullets striking and guns launching played like background music.

"This floor is called the 'halba' which means 'arena' in Arabic." Zara explained as we sat in a cart.

"Take us to Khawlah please."

"Okay miss." Humna replied before the cart started driving itself.

"What do you mean by Khawlah?" I finally asked her to ease out my burning curiosity.

"That is the practice and training hall for women, named after Khawlah bint Al Azwar R.A, the legendary Muslim soldier and commander!"

I smiled recongizing that prominent name who had accompanied the army to save her brother and faught the Byzantine army. No one even knew she was a woman, the way she fought so fearlessly!
Such a beautiful history of Muslim women.

Zara pointed at a door on my right from where I could hear faint gun shots. "That is the room to improve your weapon skills. Then there's the hall for the men which is the Saleh hall. There are a number of halls and rooms here in the halba. Zanjabeel, Arafah, Fanaa', Uns, Noor etc etc."

"Whoa! Those rooms have some really good nomenclature."

She grinned from eye to eye and replied, "Some are Arabic words, others are from urdu and hindi."

I groaned silently since I had seen many other nations in Alnihayya. It wasn't only the Arabs and south Asians. "What about English and all the other languages?"

"The cavern is English. Then the labs and technicians floor is all about Chinese names." She said proudly with a supple friendly smile that made her cheeks pop out.

As we were talking and the cart was rolling over to Khawlah, suddenly I heard a piercing scream from a hall on my left. "What was that?" I asked frantically.

"That was probably from Kashf." She shrugged as if it was normal. "It's a special hall filled with dangerous traps and obstacles designed to test the skills of members who want to become a leader. It's dark and deadly with walls covered with spikes, flame throwers and moving platforms at every step. Many try to pass it but only eleven people were able to. One being Naeem Ansar and the other ten are our leaders. You're lucky you didn't have to go through that to become a senior."

I glanced at her sideways and gulped.
Very lucky indeed.

And I guess a lot of people are going to hate me for that, just like Soha. They have to go through an awful lot to become a leader and all I had to do was to exist.

The cart finally stopped outside a door with a huge wooden plate on top which read, "Khawalah Radi Allahu ' anha--- A legend."

We got off the cart and Zara opened the door for us.

The crowd was massive and so was the hall. The ceiling was about ten metres high. I could spot a long line of treadmills on one side. Dumb bells, cardio machines, free weights and loads of other gym equipment. There were rows of punching bags and boxing gloves piled at a side. The main essence of the hall though, was a fighting ring in the middle and the crowd of cheering women standing around it.

Zara was constantly saying something to me but the crowd was way too loud for me to hear her.
I pushed my way into the bustling crowd, curious to see what was going on in the ring, why were they all hooting?

I medelled in closer to the ring, losing Zara in the dense crowd and my eyes fell on Zeyara.
Then on the girl attacking him.
She was continously trying to hit him, punch him, kick him but he dodged her every single move. Either by stepping back at the right moment, by ducking or by spinning around gracefully.

The girl wasn't able to touch him even once.
She had started panting for breath, too tired by her continuous efforts but Zeyara seemed unfazed.
He didn't need to do a single thing except for tackling her attacks and she was losing just by that.

Finally, the girl too exhausted to continue, rose her hand up and mouthed, "I give up."

The spectators applauded with words of praise and encouragement for Zeyara while a few women ran over to help the defeated girl with some water since she was about to faint.

Zeyara on the other hand, smirked, face a bit sweaty but overall he still looked fresh as if he had not just spent twenty minutes in the ring.

He sat down in the middle of the ring and chucked down water from his blue water bottle.

He looked attractive even while doing that simple thing and my face flushed. I looked down to hide the embarrassing blush that had crept onto my face.

And it wasn't only me, the air was full of conversations of girls.

"He's the hottest guy in the whole Alnihayya."

"He's Arab, I'm Arab we are made for each other!"

"He's so skilled."

"He should come here everyday."

"He will marry someone from Alnihayya right? That means I have a chance!"

"It's not a crush girls! I really love MZS."

That my friends, was the first time I experienced an emotion much stronger than hatred; jealousy.

The first time I realised that those cheesy clichés like 'love hurts' could actually be true.

I wished to go up to the ring where everyone could see me, grab Zeyara's hand and announce "He's mine. I'll break your legs if you even think of him."

Or even better, get a billion copies of our marriage contract and paste them in every corner of Alnihayya.

But instead, I could only grieve because he had been stolen from me. And he himself was the thief.

Zeyara stood up after drinking the water and grabbed the microphone dangling from the ceiling.
"I hope you girls understood what I was trying to teach you." He said with a serious gaze focused at the end of the hall, behind the crowd of girls.

That assured me a little. He wasn't even looking at them.

"Being girls you need to learn defence more than offence. Just like I did right now. Don't even let the men touch you and still win." He added. "Sister Saddia let's be honest your training doesn't seem to work at all. They're like frail lifeless....dolls. We don't need that in a battle."

Saddia appeared from behind me, embarrassed and walked up to the ring.
"I'm sorry MZS but even if they were well trained they can't beat you."

Zeyara frowned looking quite disappointed. "Why not? I'm only human Alhamdulillah. No special Jinn powers I promise."

The crowd laughed at his comment before he began speaking again.
"Alright then at the end of these three months of training whoever manages to beat me, will become the trainer instead of Saddia. But if Saddia is the one who beats me then she remains the trainer."

Saddia looked shocked and the girls whispered among themselves. The always professional looking Saddia looked like a weak cat in front of Zeyara.

"But for that I have made a few rules. You aren't allowed to wear those 'devil wears parada' heels anymore in the training hall. I mean it's a training hall not a---- nevermind." He shook his head in annoyance and continued. "And please no long nails. I know it helps to scratch the opponent but we're not having cat fights here. It's a war."

I chuckled at this while the other girls around me groaned.

Zeyara faced Saddia with a stern unwavering look and said, "And sister I want you to check every girl before she enters Khawlah. They should abide by the rules."

Saddia nodded meekly and Zeyara diverted his gaze back to the audience. "Let's go then. Two kilometers on the treadmills for warm up and then I want to see you punching those bags."

The girl who had previously said she loved Zeyara, was now whispering to her friends. "I already hate him."

The crowd started dispersing. Everyone was moving over towards the treadmills. Even the girls who had been groaning about heels and long nails being banned but that didn't mean they were lazy or didn't know how to fight well because the way they ran over to the treadmills was in itself quite an activity.

Zeyara was busy talking to Saddia and I was trying my best to mingle among the crowd so that Zeyara doesn't see me.
I was confused, debating whether I should go to a treadmill like the others or go and stand in the corner and pretend not to be there.

"Miss where did you go? I was looking for you." Zara's voice caught me off guard.

I heaved a sigh of relief to see her. "Please call me Mashal. It's so weird knowing that you are older than me. Can we please be on name basis?"

"Okay Mashal." She said happily, "Come with me now. I'm going to see my brother."

I nodded and followed her to wherever she was taking me. I had zero percent interest in meeting her brother but I just wanted to hide away from Zeyara's view.

Instead, she took me to Zeyara.

We were standing right in front of him when I gave myself an imaginative slap. How could I forget Marwa told me that Zara is Zeyara's cousin.

Zeyara was still talking to Saddia and we were facing his back.
"Zara I need to go." I whispered to her, wanting to run away from him.

"Why?" She asked confused, "You'll like him. He's a good soul. In fact he can speak good english like you and he has been living in England for some time."

I swallowed the urge to tell her that he was my husband and that I knew him. At least I knew the old him.

Before I could come up with some other lame excuse to save myself from the torture of seeing my husband who doesn't seem like my husband anymore, Zeyara ended his conversation with Saddia. Saddia walked away and he turned to face us.

I cast my gaze down on the floor to prevent eye contact with him.
An eye contact would have been destructive at that time.

"Zeyaraaaaaa!"

"Zara how many times do I have to tell you not to use my name here?"

"Ooops! Sorry." Zara giggled, "Don't worry no one heard it except for Mashal and she's a senior leader so I guess we can trust her. Right?

Zeyara answered her in his envious Syrian Arabic accent, "لا تفعل هذا مجددا عزيزي"

Zara replied back to him in Arabic and then they continued talking like that with occasional chuckles from Zara. All of that was beyond my understating because the little Arabic I did know, wasn't enough to get their entire conversation.
But I did catch whenever they took my name, which was quite frequent.

I had still not looked up at him, my sad eyes were fixed on the floor but Zeyara addressed me and I instantly jerked my head up to look at him.

"Mashal go and do what the others are doing." He uttered that order with a stern face and eyes rimmed into mine.

I wanted to be happy that at least he had taken my name and talked to me but the way he glared at me, with no softness in his eyes, only disgust, made me lose more hope.

He was talking to Saddia and Zara with a smile on his face and sugar in his words but for me, he showed frustration and subtle hatred.

His gaze was violent, the kind which makes you want to break the eye contact immediately but I kept staring at his face.
It was something I had been dying to do.
That prominent scar was still etched on his face and by the looks of it, it was here to stay.
Other than that, he was exactly the same as I remembered him. He flinched and looked away when he sensed that I was examining him.

"Okay." I replied in a low, barely audible voice and looked down again, telling myself not to break down.

"Let's go." Zara smiled at me, completely ignoring her cousin's rudeness to me.

We left him standing there and walked off to the end of the hall where the women were busy running on the treadmills.

We found ourselves two tracks, placed side by side and then Zara instructed me on how to use it.

I was jogging at the speed of 4.5 and I thought I was probably the fastest there and I dwelled in that sweet perception of mine until after ten minutes I felt like I couldn't do it anymore and I pushed the stop button, stepped off the treadmill proudly thinking I had conquered the world but then I looked around.

Zara's metre read '8.0' and she was still running like crazy. She didn't even look tired, her breathing was fairly steady.

As if that wasn't enough of a shock for me, I examined my surroundings to realise that most of the girls had already completed their 2 kilometers by running at much faster speeds and a few who were still running, were running at 10, 7.5 or like Zara, 8.0.
And Zeyara said these girls were not 'well trained'.

"Done?" I heard Zeyara asking me and turned to see him standing in front of me, arms crossed and a deadly expression on his face. It was beyond me how he came in front of me like that.

I looked down in embarrassment and shook my head negatively. "I'm tired I can't do it."

"Then leave." He spat, "We don't need plastic dolls here."

His words were so poisonous that I flinched. I knew I was about to cry but I bit my lip to prevent that. Crying at that moment would mean, becoming a joke for all the girls to laugh on.

"It's my first time running like this." I whispered with my head still down.

"Ah great! See everyone it's her first time doing this." Zeyara exclaimed rather loudly, getting their attention. The girls stopped running and diverted their heads to him. "She ran for ten minutes at 4.5. Clap for her or better still bring her a medal."

The entire hall started laughing at me, at my weakness. I felt a sinking feeling in my heart, drowning in that sea of humiliation.

Hearing those words from someone else wouldn't have hurt that much but hearing them from Zeyara who had never used anything but a soft tone and beautiful words for me, it was a massive blow to my ego and the lousy self respect I carried.

"Now everybody grab your gloves and I want you to tear up the punching bag." He announced, walking away from me. Ignoring me like I was an insect. "You can use your hands, your legs, feet whatever. Today all you have to do is to tear that up."

"But that's so difficult! We could keep punching the whole day and they still won't burst." A girl complained, diverting all the attention towards herself, for which I was glad.

With my eyes on the verge of tearing up, I turned and started walking towards the door.

"If you don't tear it you don't proceed to the next session." Zeyara shrugged, "You'll keep on doing that everyday until you burst the bag and then you can proceed."

Behind me I could hear the footsteps of the girls and their chatter as they readied thesemleves for the task at hand. I was going to leave. O didnt belong there. No one needed me there, not even my own husband.

I had just reached the door of Khawlah and clenched the handle obnoxiously when I couldn't keep it in any longer.

The tears rolled down my eyes and settled in my veil.

I was happy being a bird, completely forgetting that birds aren't strong.

Maybe that is one of the reasons for Zeyara's sudden dislike for me. He must have seen all these beautiful, talented, strong girls and immediately regretted marrying me.

I pushed the handle down, about to open the door and walk away from there when I heard his voice again.
It was barely a whisper, I could feel him up so close to me.
He was standing behind me, facing my back.

"وَلاَ تَيْأَسُواْ مِن رَّوْحِ اللّهِ إِنَّهُ لاَ يَيْأَسُ مِن رَّوْحِ اللّهِ إِلاَّ الْقَوْمُ الْكَافِرُونَ "

I stiffened at his voice, at him being so near to me and by the words of Allah.
It was from Surah Yusuf.

And do not despair of Allah's Relief. Surely none despairs of Allah's Relief except the disbelieving people.

I heard his footsteps as he walked away and I loosened my hold on the door handle.

I wiped my tears and promised myself then and there that I won't back off.

☆

Excuse # 1:
My cousin came over with her kids so I had to be a good girl and entertain them.

Excuse #2:
I am lazy.

Excuse #3:
I kept on day dreaming about them instead of actually writing it down. 😂

Excuse #4:
Imagine this as my face.

I'm sorry! 😔😟

-Muskaan.