Love from a to Z

ADAM
MARVEL AND ODDITY:
KISSING ZAYNEB
Who knew kissing Zayneb would be such a problem while being necessary
to my living healthily on this planet? As necessary as how I’ve learned to
keep my MS attacks at bay?
Kissing her took skill.
You had to know when to move in. And that was hard.
Like right now: We were paused by our hotel room door as Zayneb stood
in front of the long mirror outside the bathroom, stuffing her hair into a
scarf—the hair I’d woken up with my face buried in.
I wanted to kiss her one more time before we left the room, so I waited
with my back against the door.
But I wasn’t waiting for her to finish hijabing.
She’d also been talking nonstop since we woke up, sharing her eagerness
to start our excursion today.
“The only way to make this scarf work is by wearing it with plain clothes
and tucking it in neat and trim, like so.” She turned to me, her face framed
in the print of vivid blues I’d bought for her at the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul.
“Thanks again for the BLUIEST scarf in the world, Squish.”
“Are you done talking?” I took my patient hands out of my pockets and
reached forward and brought her close to me, until the only space between
us was for our words. Well, my words. “Are your lips done? So I can kiss
them peacefully?”
She nodded and tilted her head up, closed her eyes.
As our lips met, a curl of hair fell from her scarf. Her hands rose to the
back of my head, pulling me in hard.
• • •

---

Zayneb, interrupting Adam’s journal here: Fade to black.
Adam, taking my journal back: We delayed our excursion, the one I
wanted to come to this part of Turkey for, because Zayneb tore off her hijab
in a fit of passion and, yeah, fade to black.
Zayneb: THE SCARF WAS SUPER SILKY AND FALLING OFF.
YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW TO CHOOSE THE RIGHT FABRIC FOR A
GIRL’S HEAD YET.
• • •
Who knew that four years ago I’d see a girl at the airport, and she’d end up
being the part of me that had been missing for so long.
There was a reason love was a round-sounding word.
It completed you and then some, like treading a circular path, the way it
was immemorial. Whole.
But also . . . infinite.
It went on and on as long as you went on and on, to meet it, keep it,
treasure it.
And I would.
ZAYNEB
Before I placed flowers by the grave of the girl buried alive, the girl who’d
started this whole journey that led me to my heart, I said two simple
prayers.
First for her, for her soul to be freer than it had ever been on earth, and
then for me. Please, God, don’t let the hatred through which others see the
world distort my own sense of justice.
I smoothed the grave before laying the flowers down.
It felt like I’d laid down my last guard against vulnerability.
I was okay seeing things through my own eyes. Not defensively, the way
people who hate saw me. I was done with that.
I needed to be done with that now that I was starting law school in the
fall.
I would be studying the only thing I wanted to know the most about:
human rights.
For everyone.

---

Because that was the only way the world made sense. When the arc of
care went far and wide.
So wide it journeyed and battled to exclude none.
Beside me, Adam straightened up after saying his own duas, and I
glanced at his eyes, glittery with tears.
There was no one around, just us two in this desolate location, so I sank
into him, and he stretched his arms to engulf me, his kisses covering my
own tears.
Oh, I forgot to record my marvel today. It’s the greatest one of all.
You probably guessed it.