Love from a to Z

ODDITY:
HATERS
We took our stuff to a newly empty table by the window.
I poured her tea and placed the plate of raspberry cream mille-feuille in
front of her like a waiter, and she laughed. “Wow. Beautiful. Did you know
that I watch dessert-making videos? It’s my de-stressor.”
“And then you try to make them yourself? The desserts?”
“No, I just like watching others making them. Less work.”
“Ahem.” I cleared my throat. “As a maker, I have to advise you that
that’s extremely wrong. To watch from the sidelines and not participate.”
“I’d fail.” She used the side of her fork to cut into the layers of her pastry.
“Look at this delicate thing. So many steps, so many ways to get it wrong.”
“You were named after a maker.”
She paused with the fork halfway to her mouth. “I was?”
“Yeah, Zayneb bint Jahsh, the prophet’s cousin. She made leather crafts,
bags, and other things. Apparently, she was known for the quality of her
work.” I picked up the chocolate chip cookie I’d brought for old times’
sake. “My father, the historian, makes sure I get this kind of info, especially
if he thinks it’s about something I’d be interested in. Like other makers.”
“Oh, yeah, I heard that long ago about sahabiya Zayneb. In Sunday
school.” She nodded and took a forkful of her pastry. “Maybe one day I will
try making some French dessert. Or maybe I’ll start with my grandma’s
roti.”
She took a knife and cut through her pastry, put half on a napkin, and
passed it to me.
“For me?”
“Yeah, it’s really good.”
I accepted it. “So what happened? With your mom?”

---

“She found me looking up Fencer again.” She stopped eating, put her
fork down. “I didn’t mean to. I meant to dedicate all my attention to her.
Because I was so happy to see her again. Truly.”
I cut half my second chocolate chip cookie and gave it to her. She took it
and put it at the side of her mille-feuille plate.
“But then I remembered this comment I’d seen under this video from last
week. Wait. I’ll show you.” She picked up her phone and clicked and
scrolled and then passed it to me.
The video was titled Muslim Girls Save World from Villain Part Two. I
lowered the volume as the intro blared, a mix of drumming and a man’s
deep voice saying something in Arabic. Two people in niqab, the face
covering some Muslim women wear, sat at a table with a tall, obviously
plastic potted cactus on a chair between them.
“Yo, assalamu alaikum. May peace and the Force be with you guys!” the
girl on the right said. “Today, my girl Janna joins me again. And we’re
going to continue our interview with my ex-brother-in-law, on how he
escaped getting captured for abusing my sister. Who, as you dedicated
viewers know, is BACK HOME in America finally! But, inexcusably, the
villain is at large, the one who kept her locked up. However, friends, never
fear—he lent his alter ego, his thorny alter ego, for our interview.” She
poked the cactus with a black-gloved hand. “Wait, we forgot to mic him.
Guys, can we get the villain miked up?”
She looked beyond the camera and gestured with another gloved hand as
though she were calling a waiter.
The video went dark then came back on to reveal the cactus wired with a
lapel mic clipped to one of its thorny branches, a donut stuck on another
branch. I chuckled.
Zayneb waved a hand nearby in slow motion. “Adam? We can watch the
epic Niqabi Ninja videos later, but, for now, scroll down to the comments.”
I paused the video and found the comments. They were mostly glowing
and So happy you’re doing this and Expose him! and other such things until
I got to one that had a lot of likes, that veered off from the sentiments
previously expressed.
Why don’t you admit it? Your sister was treated the way she was because
of Islam. Not because of your brother-in-law. Not because of Saudi Arabia.
You’re peddling the same thing that got her in trouble, hypocrite. Things

---

won’t change until you give up being Muslim. On your own or by other
means. I vote for other means.
I made a face. “A hateful troll.”
“Look at the account.”
“Stone Wraith?”
“Yeah. Click on it.”
I clicked and saw a channel with one video, a time lapse of a plant. “He’s
got one video. But wait, a bunch of playlists. And, whoa, eighteen thousand
subscribers?”
“Check when he joined.”
“This month? This year?”
“Exactly. Just when Fencer deleted his other accounts.”
“You think this is him?”
“I’m sure it’s him. Because his subscriber count is close to what he had
on his old accounts. Not as much, but close.” She reached for the teapot and
poured the last bit into her cup. “It’s him. And he has some way to
communicate to his old followers. Some forum or something. That’s how
they all migrated to his new accounts.”
“Good sleuthing.”
“But it was completely out of the blue. Like, I subscribe to those girls,
the Niqabi Ninjas, and watch their videos regularly, and I happened to see
this comment at the beginning of last week, but it only pinged in my mind
as my mom was eating lunch here in Doha, talking about my grandma’s
grave, how beautifully taken care of it was. She showed us a picture of it,
and it was nothing like the cemeteries we know. But just seeing it brought
this grave stone image into my head, and then I remembered that my friends
had found out Fencer’s new alias was Stone Wraith, and then ping, the
comment under the Niqabi Ninjas just flashed in my head, and I made up
my mind to look into it.”
I nodded to encourage her to continue.
“Then I made a mistake, because I got this idea with my mom sitting
right there. I pretended I needed to go to the bathroom. But instead I went to
my room and texted my friends at home and got on my laptop and was
looking into Fencer’s YouTube account and going down this rabbit hole of
the videos on his playlists, see what he’s commented on. And my mom
opens the door and walks in and sits on the bed to hug me.”
“Uh-oh.”

---

“Yeah, uh-oh. I close the browser windows quickly, but then she happens
to see my texts and they’re like Fencer this, Fencer that. And my last one
was eat him alive for the last time.” She laughed but in a bitter way. “Can
you believe it? Like my mom sees that?”
This time I shook my head to encourage her to continue.
“Then she starts asking me questions. Like what have I been doing here
the whole time and why haven’t I dropped it and, and . . . We got into a
huge fight. And I got mad and left. And there I go again, breaking
everything apart.” She took a bit of the cookie and ate it. “I’m sorry.
Because again, talking to you, I feel like I’m ungrateful. Because I have a
mom. That I seem to always be fighting with.”
I sat back and looked out the window at the turquoise water. “The thing
with my mom was she preferred when I was up-front with her. I wasn’t
always, because I was a kid, but that’s what she liked. Like she’d tell me to
face my feelings.”
I told her about the time we made French fries together, when she
allowed me to cry.
“Wow. Adam.” She sat back too. “That’s unbelievably hard. Mine is like
a first-world problem compared to that. My fight with my mom.”
“But wait, I’m getting this new idea from that time. The Time of the
French Fries.” I sat up and leaned forward to get her attention, to get her to
understand that what I was going to say was serious. “See, this is what I do.
I go over my times with my mom and get ahas. Like I have a new one about
the French fry memory: What if she was trying to tell me that in order to be
strong, you have to be weak first? Like, feel your weakness?”
She nodded, her eyes on me and sparking with interest. “Go on.”
“Like we can only get to our strongest to face stuff after we’ve felt the
lows?” I indicated her journal. “And your journal is all your lows, but now
you’re ready to be your strongest? Take Fencer down? Speak up about your
grandmother’s death? Stand strong, no holds barred? Win?”
I looked to see if her eyes were still sparking, but they weren’t. They
were tear filled.
She opened her journal and flipped through and said, “Can I read you
something?”

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