Love from a to Z

morning to make anything?
I put down the box of LED light tape I’d been holding in my hand. Back
in the box and not in the section of the table I’d designated for ceiling
items.
• • •
Since the news was out about my MS, out with Dad, my friends, and soon
with Hanna, it emerged in the real world.
Like a boggart from Harry Potter’s world, it took shape in front of me.
Unmoving, but relentlessly forcing itself into my thoughts.
My MS, it was real now.
• • •
I didn’t want to climb the ladder to finish painting the room.
I was scared to.
• • •
I wasn’t part of any Hogwarts houses, because there wasn’t a house for
people who’d rather tuck away, overwhelmed with fear.
• • •
Hanna came thundering down the stairs in her turbaned hijab and
sunglasses, and the boggart disappeared. “Dad is calling you to pray Asr!
And then can we play Monopoly? Dad said yes!”
“Sure.” I left the table.
“When are you going to start the world in a room? Like the house in a
jar?” Hanna fingered one of the bottle caps and then slid her sunglasses up
onto her turban to examine the pattern of holes on it.
“Soon.” I went to the stairs.
“Oh, I love it! Is this a goose?” Hanna picked up the small Canada goose
I’d begun whittling yesterday. “It so perfect. Like Mom’s goose she made.”
She hugged it to her heart.

---

I nodded. “You can have it when I’m done.”
“WHAT! It’s for me?” Hanna came over and threw her arms around me.
“Thanks, Adam. I knew it was good to choose you for a topic for my
Weekly Reflection journal this week. Mr. Mellon told us to choose
something that made us proud. I chose you.”
We went up the stairs together. “Mr. Mellon gave you homework for
spring break?”
“Yeah, can you believe it?” She led the way to the prayer mats spread in
Dad’s study. Dad was sitting at his desk, reading the Qur’an, so Hanna
lowered her voice. “But we won’t talk about it. Because there’s someone
here who’ll say it’s a conflict of interest if I talk about how mean that is, to
give kids homework when they’re supposed to be having fun.”
When Asr prayer was done, I brought up Zayneb’s grandmother, and Dad
said some duas for her soul to reach the highest of heavens, for her soul to
be reunited with God.
As I said ameen, I tried not to think of Zayneb in tears.
“Why’d you delete Zayneb’s pictures?” Hanna asked as we were putting
away the prayer mats after Dad had left. “If you want us to pray for her
grandmother?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you looked like you were mad at her, deleting her pictures like
that. But now you’re caring about her.”
“I’m caring about her grandmother.”
“Because you care about her, right?”
I shook my head. “Listen, nosy, you’d better get the Monopoly game set
up before I change my mind about playing.”
She unwound her hijab and stuffed it into the basket of prayer mats. “Just
remember, she’s our cuz. And that she said sorry to me after I sent her the
pictures. And Dad said he’d set up the Monopoly board! That’s where he
went.”
She left the room.
I pulled out my phone.
I hadn’t deleted the photos of Zayneb and me at the museum. Without
looking at them, I’d dumped them in a random album. In case Hanna asked
me later if I’d received them and looked in my phone, a thing she did
randomly.
Finding the series of photos, I scrolled through them.

---

I paused on a picture that Hanna had taken as a selfie of me and her.
Zayneb was in the background, smiling at our backs. But in the next selfie,
same spot, with her in the background again, she was frowning at a display
she was reading.
Maybe what drew me to Zayneb was the same thing that made me stay
away from her.
She wasn’t like a steady heartbeat. She had a heart that moved and rose
and fell as things affected her.
I flipped to another picture. There it was again.
She was really frowning in this one, by a display of ornaments worn by
the lower classes and slaves.
She was alive with passions, so alive that they exploded out of her, plain
to see, loud and proud, not hidden. Like mine were.
Something flooded through me; maybe it was impulsiveness; maybe it
was desire; maybe it was even physical desire at seeing her face so vividly
like this, where I could look at it unhindered by anyone. I don’t know what
it was, but it felt exciting.
It felt exciting to be connected to someone so full of life.
And maybe it was because of the dua I’d just made to pull me out of this
sunken feeling, but I gave in to the desire.
I wanted it wrapped around me, to be a part of it.
I didn’t press pause on what was coursing through me, because it felt
real.
I kicked pragmatism aside and went for it. Went for her.
No matter the outcome.
• • •
Zayneb, I’m sorry to hear about your grandmother. My dad and I (and Hanna) prayed for her.
Zayneb, I can’t figure out what happened yesterday between us. But there’s one thing I CAN
figure out and that’s how much I don’t know. How I don’t know what you went through at school.
With your teacher. I don’t know about the extent of the Islamophobia you’ve faced. I don’t know
what it feels like to be you. But here’s another thing: I DO want to know.
I paused and then added 
But if you don’t want me to know, I get that, too.
I followed up the message with a picture.
It was the one with both of us on the landing of the museum stairs,
looking up at the ceiling.
The light’s shining down on us, and we look sort of magical.
Hanna’s random photo clicks were the best.

---

Almost as good as her heart.

---