Chapter 4

I didn't like to admit it, but most of the time I was alone. And usually, I realised this in the evenings as the dying light swept over my open textbooks as I finished up my homework and squinted at my phone screen to check the time. My mom was out working. My sister was out pretending everything was normal. My dad was lying unconscious on a hospital bed.

And I was doing homework like always but I felt lost.

Sometimes, I wished I could be like Salma, who went out with her friends and did whatever girls did and hid her feelings behind her makeup and Lululemon sweaters. I wished I could also easily slip into that mindset; and drop everything and just live in the moment like Salma always did and just, live. But I was stuck in a routine that I couldn't change.

Some days, I forgot everything and it all seemed like nothing had ever changed. I expected my dad to come home from work and overlook my studies, lecture me for hours on end and remind me to focus on my education and how he had to walk ten miles on dry, cracked ground to get to school and how I had it easy and that if I let my studies go, I would end up on the streets, living in a soggy cardboard box and holding out an empty can of oatmeal to collect change.

His lectures had been nothing, though. At least he didn't hit me anymore.

I loved my father, I reminded myself, as I entered his hospital room that night. The sky was dark outside, and droplets of rain decorated the window, little patterns of water trickled down the glass. I settled down beside him, and stared at his chest which rose and fell in a slow rhythm. It was eerily quiet, past visiting hours.

I loved my father, I reminded myself, as my eyes trailed down his arms and rested on his hands which I had seen countless times before being raised in anger.

I loved my father, I reminded myself as I leaned back and set my head on the back of the chair and stared up at the ceiling, and tried to feel something other than regret and guilt and the bittersweet relief of not having my father around to breathe down my neck every moment.

I was a horrible son, I thought, while I counted the ceiling tiles which went blurry behind my tears. I was a horrible son, who was not at all grief stricken over his father's condition. I was a pathetic excuse of a person, who got his own father into this mess and had the audacity to feel relief. I was a crappy human being, I thought over and over again.

And I deserved to feel lost.

---

"Wow." Nadia snorted. "You look like crap."

She sat down beside me, and I pulled my hoodie over my head, crossing my arms on my desk as I buried my face into them. I had slept approximately three hours last night. And it may or may not have been because I'd stayed up wallowing in self pity and guilt.

"I'm trying out a new look." I tried to joke, but my voice comes out muffled and dead.

"Yeah, I hear the 'homeless druggie' look is really trendy these days." Nadia laughed.

"I can't look like a gorgeous model everyday, now can I?" I expressed, sleepily. "That would be unfair to you normal people."

"Uh huh." Nadia sounded distracted, but I refrained from peeking a look at her. Her beauty would be the end of me. "You tell yourself that, sweetie."

The conversation died as Salma greeted Nadia and the two girls whisper over something about Katie Stevens new boyfriend. They bet over how long Katie would keep the guy as I settled into a disturbed sleep, occasionally interrupted by the teacher barking at a student or the sound of chairs squeaking noisily.

I spent the entire length of that day's History class staring at the clock. Fowler had us on a group assignment and somehow, through the universe's endless blessings, I had been paired up with a couple who couldn't keep their hands off of each other and a guy who was stoned, indicated by his intense fascination with a dot on the board.

"Oh my God!" He shouted, which miraculously managed to separate the lip locked couple. "It's turning green!"

I tore my eyes off of the clock to follow his pointed finger. The dot remained black. I resumed staring at the clock while he giddily jumped up and down in his seat.

By lunchtime, I had somehow managed to drag my sleep deprived carcass outside, after grabbing a cup of coffee from the cafeteria and gulping it down. I had almost dozed off against the trunk of a tree when Ian popped up out of nowhere, his blond curls bouncing as he sat down beside me while I cracked open one eye to make sure I wasn't being attacked by a rabid squirrel.

"Hey!" He greeted excitedly and I grunted in reply. "Wow, you look horrible."

I shrugged at the comment. When Nadia had said the same, that morning, I admit that it was embarrassing but coming from Ian, I supposed I would live.

"Had a rough night." I managed to explain.

"Oh, yeah." He replied, as if he understood. Heck, maybe he did. He changed the subject, which I was grateful for. "Guess, what I have for lunch!"

I didn't know how to explain to the kid that my brain was a clogged up mess and that my eyes burned every time I blinked and that if an asteroid was to plunge into the depths of the earth and cause the entire planet to implode, I would probably yawn and go back to sleep so instead I lifted a shoulder.

"I dunno." I sighed.

"Tuna sandwiches!" He replied as if tuna sandwiches could provide me with five hours of sleep.

"Yay." I said, and yawned.

"My mom always makes me tuna sandwiches on Friday." He went on, and my nonexistent enthusiasm is ignored.

"Oh, thank God."

"For tuna sandwiches?"

"No, for Fridays."

I didn't care too much for tuna sandwiches. But Fridays were a blessing.

"True!" Ian chirped and in my mind's eye, I imagine him nodding, cheeks stuffed with tuna. "What are your plans for the weekend?" He asked.

A depressing image of me slaving over homework and scooping ice cream into my mouth while I marathon the Marvel movies popped into my head. I slowly opened one eye to see Ian watching me expectantly.

"Nothing much." I answered, and somewhere in the back of my mind, I heard Iron Man judging my pathetic life.

"Well..." Ian hummed, thoughtfully. "You could come over to my place?"

I stared at him for a moment, suddenly awake. I must truly be sleep deprived because I considered it over and his eager and hopeful expression proved hard to resist. It wasn't anything personal, but I didn't hang out with friends. I'd basically always been commanded to stay home and study, and once in awhile, meet up with friends and study. Of course, my dad would give me breaks. Sometimes.

Thinking it over, my life was pretty crappy. How bad could hanging out with a tiny child who ate a lot and wore dinosaurs on his pants, possibly be?

"Sure." I shrugged.

Ian is shocked and then recovers by grinning widely. His appetite also seemed to be have been affected because he begun swallowing without chewing.

"Ugh. Chew your food." I said, annoyed. Chunks of tuna are flying out of his face.

"Sorry! I'm just so excited." He laughed, and I get a great idea of what tuna looked like mushed up in someone's mouth. "I'm gonna kick your ass in Need For Speed."

Okay. I may have spent the majority of my life with my face in a textbook with my father's figure hovering over me with a belt in his hand, but no one stood a chance against me in video games. No one. I would end him. I narrowed my eyes.

"You're on, kid."

He stuck out his tongue at me, but suddenly paused, so that he looked like a weirdo staring over my shoulder with his tongue hanging out. I'm about to make a joke about it when he spoke.

"Hey, Abdullah." He said, still staring over my shoulder. "Doesn't your sister wear a scarf?"

I glanced behind me to a group of girls and almost choked. At first it's because I spotted Nadia and I had to fight to keep my eyes off of her because damn, those jeans were unfairly tight and that girl had serious curves. Finally, I realised that my sister is with her and laughing at some joke that one of her other friends made but something is wrong. Her hair is done up into a tight french braid and falls down her back. She wasn't wearing her hijab.

---

My family had always been strict concerning religion, but my parents had never forced my sister and I into anything. Sure, we were scolded and lectured for missing prayers. We got our fair deal of reminders to recite the Quran and were constantly warned of the dont's of Islam. Don't eat pork. Don't drink alcohol. Don't hang out with the opposite sex. We got it. We understood. Maybe we weren't perfect Muslims, but we tried. And these days, well, I guess we were just not trying that hard.

That is why I both do and do not understand when Salma slammed her fist into the table, making my mother flinch.

"It's my choice." She screams.

I remember seven year old Salma, hanging off my mom's arm, with tears in her eyes, begging my mother to buy her a hijab. I remember her wide smile when she was gifted a silky pink headscarf for her eighth birthday. I remember her stiff shoulders as she wades through her grade three classroom, ignoring the stares because she was so happy to care.

"Salma." My mother said, her forehead creasing. "I understand that. But I want to know why you decided to take it off. After wearing it for nine years! Wearing the hijab is an act of worship. You can't just wear it for so long and then toss it aside!"

"Ugh. You'll never understand!" Salma cried. "None of my Muslim friends wear it. I'm like a freak, walking around in this town with a cloth over my face."

As far as I knew, Salma only had one Muslim friend. Before Nadia, she had never spoke like this. I wondered for a moment if Nadia was making her feel bad for wearing it or if Salma looked at Nadia and figured hey, if she didn't wear it, why should I? The thought made me sad. That it wasn't only me who was sinking in regards to the deen.

"But you're not a freak, Salma!" My mother assured her. "What is wrong with showing modesty? What is wrong with preserving yourself until marriage? What is wrong with obeying your lord? How does that make you a freak, habibti?"

Salma shot up from where she sat, eyes flashing in anger. "You won't understand."

"Then help me understand."

I felt far away and helpless, watching my family argue like this, get divided up like this. Face off like this. I wanted to reach out and console my sister. I wanted to turn to my mother and tell her it will be okay. That we would make it through this. But I was unsure of it myself. All I saw was my family drifting farther and farther away from each other.

"All it's done is give me problems." Salma whimpers.

Problems. There it is, that concept again. I wondered that too. Why did Allah give us problems? Why did He test us? If we were supposed to learn lessons and come out stronger, then why weren't we? What was wrong with us?

"Then, I'll help you through them, Salma." My mom told her but I saw that Salma doesn't believe her.

"Mum, when do you ever have time to help me?" Salma spits.

"I'm sorry, habibti." My mom sighed. "When your father gets better-"

"What if he never gets better!" Salma cried, and burst into tears.

Her voice is rushed and hysterical and her words made my heart lurch painfully. What she said shocked me, but not because it was untrue. It could come to be true, and that was what made it all the more horrible. She continued, her face streaked with tears.

"What if he stays in the coma forever? What then? What will you do? When will you care about us?"

She turned and raced to her room, slamming the door shut and making the house echo. My eyes are widened by her outburst and her voice repeats itself in my mind, as if her questions have been set to replay themselves in my head. I turned slowly to face my mom, who had her head down, hands clasped together so tightly that her fingers are white.

What's happening to us, I thought. Why can't things be the same as before? Why did my dad have to go into a coma? Why did things have to change?

Why do things have to change?  

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awh. Hang in there Abdullah. And you too, loves <3