Chapter 11: "Crafting Compassion"

Post your reactions as you read 😁. And a shout-out to  @sunrays_moonlight for a comment spam. It's been a long time since I've gotten one of those. Thank you 🥰

November 5, 2019

"It's getting to me now!" Salma told her friend. "I yelled at Uncle Dawood yesterday. Zayn's a trigger --"

"You've made up with your Uncle already?" Sarah guessed.

"Well, yes," Salma said, feeling frustrated. "I went to his house last night to apologize. We're good but that's not the point. I'm not supposed to be yelling at people just because they're there."

Sarah stayed quiet for a while.

"If I tell you to just forget about Pretty-eyes and live on, that won't work?"

"Obviously not, Sarah!" Salma almost snapped at her. "We're practically married for I don't know how long. This is not how it's supposed to work!"

"You're not supposed to avoid a guy you can't stand and yet once frustrated, you're not supposed to yell at people," Sarah said. "Are you supposed to set standards for yourself that are for humans?"

"No." Salma flat-out shot down her line of question.

Sarah shook her head at her stubbornness.

"Alright then," Sarah sighed. "If you don't agree on giving yourself a breather, then I'd say try to learn to relax around him. You've been avoiding him for so long that that's become your default setting towards him. Take baby steps. For starters, resist the urge to flee the space he's in. Stop dodging him."

"It's still weird," Salma admitted despite herself. "And now it feels wrong. He's tried to make it up to me. I can't move past it does not mean he deserves getting stuck in a relation devoid of emotions. Everyone deserves a shot at a happy life -- Maybe it was a mistake . . ."

"Salma!" Sarah snapped, giving up the pretense of not lecturing her. "It's okay not to like him or feel uncomfortable. He's been an absolute jerk to you! He knows it'd take you time. You're only human. He's scarred you. You don't owe him anything. Whatever you'd give is a favor!"

Salma said nothing as she ran a hand through her hair.

"Look, if it's a taking toll on you, you should probably call it quits."

"No, no!" Salma opposed the idea, almost frantically. "I want to give it a chance. I want 'us' to have a fair chance. He's earned it."

"For once in your life, can you talk about what you've earned?"

"A crap-load of problems is what I've earned!" Salma returned, losing her patience. "I'm just at a loss why none of you understand what I'm doing. I don't like Zayn. He's the stuff of my nightmares but I am trying to not return the favor by doing him wrong. Why must dislike equate to injustice? He's a human being. A crap one, at that, but I can't overlook the dignity bestowed on him by being one. I'm already fighting the urge to smash his head when he's around, can you please, please stop simplifying the matter by telling me to either be fine with him or just forget about him!"

Sarah looked at her warily, chewing on her inner lip, thinking.

"You're not fine with him, but you don't want to forget about him. Do you not see the problem here?" Sarah asked calmly. "You're forcing a preference on yourself that's not yours."

"I want to be fine with him and forget about what happened," Salma replied, "because now's not the time to cater to my preferences. There's more important problems out there, and if I don't woman up to them, people will get hurt! Hundreds of millions of people! I'm not letting that old dog tear away their freedom to pieces!"

"That's a lot of weight to carry. Salma you --"

"I have to make this work!" Salma finished firmly. "And I will have my Walima done in Sthooriya! I want to see the look on that evil wrinkled face by the end of it all. I want to see him know he's lost again as Grandma Nimra continues to live through me!"

Salma turned away with a hard look in her eyes. Sarah heard her frenzied muttering.

"There is no way he's winning," she said. "There's no way, he's winning at all!"

"Vengeance," Sarah said. "You're focused on vengeance and you expect something positive to come out of that? You will never be able to work out a relation with Zayn carrying so much frustration inside of you. You can't force yourself to like someone, Salma, that's not how it's done. You're taking it as a duty and it's only ended up hurting you more."

The was a pause.

"I know what hurts me. And it's not failure, it's what happens as a result of my failure. I heard my mum crying last night," Salma replied quietly as she kept staring out of her window. "And my Dad's gotten these constant frown lines he didn't have before. I owe them my life and if I fail, I cause them more misery. My life ceases to exist when my mum cries and my dad tries to reassure her when he wants reassurance himself. She didn't give birth to me to see me live my life cowering in fear of that monster. Half the time she's just hating on her mother for passing the Zamarud to me. It is horrible as is, imagine what happens if I fail!"

Salma's voice cracked. She took in deep breaths, calming herself down.

"The Sthooriy will breathe freely," Salma said through her teeth. "and that despicable old man will burn in his rage as I watch him crumpling onto the ground!"

Sarah saw Salma clench her shaking fist as she glared at the setting sun that set her angry brown eyes ablaze. This wasn't the girl who had been frequently visiting Sarah. This was fury, personified. A girl with her mind set on winning a war.

That old freak doesn't know what's coming for him,Sarah thought to herself. Salma silently stared at the sun till the sky bled pink. She moved away from the ledge, closing her eyes for a second before opening them as if to shake away her thoughts.

"It's maghrib," she muttered. "Where's the praying mat, again?"

Sarah pointed towards the mat quietly, a small frown on her forehead being the telltale sign of her brains working on a problem. She couldn't argue with any of what Salma said or was doing, but the part where she was approaching her relation with Zayn as an obligation. That's not how marriages are supposed to work. Not an Islamic one, anyway. If the purpose is not to have two people find solace in one another, Sarah didn't know what to call it, but the Qur'an didn't call that marriage.

She was putting too much pressure on herself to make it work. One, to defeat Agha Gul, and two, because she was feeling guilty that Zayn was stuck in a relation with her, especially after he had tried to make amends.

"You don't have to do this alone," Sarah said out of blue, once Salma finished praying.

"I'm not." Salma shrugged, folding the prayer mat. "I got you."

She surprised Sarah when she gave her a tight smile. The composure Salma was displaying was both impressive and worrying. Sarah knew it would be detrimental to her as it kept eating her on the inside. Salma needed help in tackling the problem, Sarah realized, and it was not her help she needed.

The moment Salma left, Sarah grabbed her phone and opened the group chat.

"You got me," Sarah muttered, "but I'm not the one you need."

"Assalamo'Alaykum Zayn, it's code Bee." She recorded a voice note. "Be at the campus café in five. Pronto!"

Barely fifteen minutes later, Sarah pushed her way through the tables to where Zayn was sitting in wait for her.

It's code B?" Zayn raised a brow, showing her a text from her father in the group chat.

Baba: Sari, what's code B?

"No, code Bee," Sarah replied, typing a quick reply to her father. "The buzzing one."

Sarah: It's Bee, Baba. My friend, Salma.

Sarah: I'll explain later.

"So what happened?" Zayn asked impatiently.

***

January 11, 2021

Salma sat against the wall, cutting patterns out of craft paper. The kids, who were running around the seminar hall wrecking a havoc a while ago, were now all strewn on the floor, bent double on their art work with their tongues sticking out in concentration.

"No, no! Not my face! I said paint the clown." Zayn's uneasy chuckle made Salma look up. Two of naughtiest boys were advancing towards him with paint brushes dripping a rainbow of colors. Their giggles told her they knew exactly which clown to color.

She was doing her job as interim president of the youth Club. Anne had told her to spend an hour with the kids and teach them about being compassionate. Salma figured holding a talk and quoting hadeeths and ayah about compassion would put them to sleep faster than her laptop screen when not used. So she decided to make them practice compassion.

And now they were doing art. Zayn went with the idea quietly. He just came with boxes of paints, unlike Salma, who had picked color pencils, sharpies crayons and craft paper – whatever was less messy. However, since he was minding his own business silently, Salma chose to not warn him about his choice.

"Come on guys, I think that's enough," Zayn wrinkled his nose as the two rug-rats turned him into a man of multiple colors.

"Okay, but will you teeych me kick later?" one of them asked, holding the brush behind his back, most definitely staining his crème colored shirt.

Oops! We'll have one angry mother to deal with tonight.

"I will but let's finish this first," A colored clown replied with Zayn's voice as he grabbed the kids hand and made him sit. The other followed.

Salma turned her attention back to the leaf she was cutting. Art was his expertise, but Salma could not understand what made him think it was a good idea to allow a bunch of human version of energy drinks to paint.

"But what about 'Amr bil maroof wa Nahi unil mukar?" Khadeeja, the fifteen years old sitting next to her, asked as she cut the craft paper into smaller squares for the kids to draw on.

"Is this why you volunteered to help?" Salma asked with a faint smile. With Zayn around, Salma was kind of glad to have her company.

"Not really," Khadeeja replied. "I had free time and I'd rather be here than at home."

Salma took in a deep breath and put her head on the wall. She knew why Khadeeja would rather not go home. The poor girl had had a rough year. Her parents had found out that the budding teenager has had a very human experience: she had started fancying a classmate. And instead of dealing with it like mature adults, their way of dealing with their daughter finding a boy attractive was to throw a fit, and drag her to the mosque for public humiliation.

Salma could still remember the second-hand pain and embarrassment she felt for Khadeeja when her crying mother brought her up to Anne after a session and told her to 'advice my disobedient daughter'. Anne was quick to usher them to her office but the seminar hall still had women when her mother threw a fit and the poor kid was dying with pain and humiliation.

The ladies in the hall could hear the mother's loud scolding despite Anne's attempts to tell her to calm down. Salma could not take it anymore. She had barged into the office, laughing and screaming like a kid on a sugar-high and dragged Khadeeja out.

"I'm sorry Anne, the banners – I need her!" Salma had giggled and rushed out before either of the two ladies, or Khadeeja could react.

Although the issue was somewhat resolved, the way her parents reacted had left a bitter after-taste. Khadeeja felt betrayed. Salma understood. She wished her parents would have shown more confidence in her than acting like she had burned a building full of babies.

"Here isn't a bad place to be," Salma replied.

Khadeeja laughed.

"What?" Salma asked.

"Has anyone ever told you, you're like the least inquisitive person on the planet," she replied.

Someone had actually . . . Salma frowned trying not to look at Zayn.

"I just don't want to intrude," she said. "I hope everything is working out for you."

"Kind of is," Khadeeja replied.

"You're probably tired of hearing this," Salma said, "But although your parents mishandled it, they mean well. I understand that this sound like a load of tosh right now, but remember they are the last people to turn their backs on you. For them, it's like seeing their child take drugs in front of them. And it is a valid concern. This pure emotion is how usually Shaitan gets to us. Not many have the resolve you've displayed. They didn't know how strong you were."

Khadeeja smiled sadly.

"They still think I am this possessed child," she muttered, rolling her eyes.

"It's alright. You could be Hulk and to them you'll still be the baby that needs a diaper change."

"Brent and I keep our distance. It's just a respectful coexistence. I still love him though." She shrugged.

"That's good to know." Salma smiled.

Khadeeja raised a brow.

"The part where I still fancy a nonmuslim or the part where we keep our distance?"

"Both." Salma shrugged. "Brent is a good kid. It's normal that you like him."

Khadeeja scoffed.

"You really don't fit the bill of a practicing Muslim." She turned back to the craftpaper.

"And what does that mean?" Salma glanced at her sideways.

"You should condemn me to hell and expel my impure and devilish self from the holiness of this mosque," she deadpanned.

Salma laughed.

"Go to the Haram police sis. They'll do the honors for you."

"Speaking of which, you didn't answer. How does Anne's talk about not judging and correcting other fall in place with 'Amr bil maroof wa Nahi unil mukar?"

"Look, how I understand the whole 'Enjoin the good, forbid the evil command' is to first apply that to myself," Salma answered. "For example, if we take the lessons of that session, am I enjoining the good by being appreciative and repelling the bad by not judging others, and giving them excuses?"

"Secondly, there's a place, a time and a manner of correction. Humiliating someone publicly by calling them out on their shortcoming and sins isn't really 'enjoining the good, or forbidding the evil'. The girl who wrote the note, actually named the people who harassed her. Imagine if Anne would have publicly said names and shamed them like they shamed her. That would have been a horrible way to go about it. Or, she could have called them to her office and talked to them."

"Would have worked better." Khadeeja nodded.

"Yeah but people have egos," Salma said. "It could have been another disasterclass. Can you imagine the consequence of constantly being put by someone on the spot like that for everything you do?"

"You're asking me?" Khadeeja laughed bitterly.

"I mean it's obvious, isn't it? No one corrects themselves when a random person challenges their ego. We just rebel. It's just better to present it in a more generalized sort of a way. Also, if you're not a family or a friend – someone they trust - it's best to mind your own business then preaching a stranger over their painted nails or size of their head covering. You don't know their struggle. People aren't good or bad. They're both good and bad. It's best to focus on their good and your bad."

Khadeeja smiled, scrolling through her phone.

"Funny how this applies the other way around too."

Salma looked confused.

"When I first met you, I was doing exactly what you have written here in the footnotes." She started reading from the blog.

". . . while you read this, think of how this applies to you, not as how you were harassed but how you might have harassed. Have a good think. If you cannot think of something, start watching yourself from now on. Maybe you are judging the niqaabi girl for being judgmental, when she's not, for being backwards when that's not the case. For being a bore? An illiterate. An unpleasant person. Although Anne gave one set of examples, it goes both ways. Don't be a hypocrite, is what we all must remind ourselves. All of us err in our own way. We should be concerned about correcting ourselves. Period (no need to add the cliché 'and perhaps none of us will have to worry about the others.) . . ."

Salma laughed.

"Let me guess, you thought I was like the Haram Police trying to get you to do tauba and hate the nonmuslim boy?"

"Damn straight sister!"

Khadeeja's phone rang, interrupting their laughter.

"Yikes!" She jumped from her spot as she attended the phone. "Yes Mum? At the masjid – No, with Salma . . .

Salma turned away from her, picking up the scissors again.

"Shalley?" a mellow voice called.

Salma turned to M.J with a smile.

"Yep?"

"Ich my weaf done?"

"Oh yes, just a second." Salma cropped the last bit of the leaf and handed it to the little kid. She decided to be in charge of the cutwork. The scissors she had were too sharp for the kids to use safely.

With his tongue sticking out between his teeth, M.J applied glue from the stick. Salma smiled. M.J was a shy one. He arrived with the bunch of buzz bunnies with Zayn but made a beeline towards Salma the moment he saw her. He was not comfortable around strangers.

"Ich thch blutiful?" M.J held up his card with an adorable little frown.

Salma looked at the explosion of colors with random craft paper shapes haphazardly pasted on what was supposed to be a card.

"It's perfect!" Salma exclaimed. "Tell me what you drew?"

"I – I dru cancer on ith," the kid pointed a cute little finger at a random mess of sharpies.

"Cancer?" Salma frowned.

"Yeah," he replied, pulling his arms of his head, getting uncomfortable.

"It's a lovely idea," Salma praised, having absolutely no clue what was going on. She patted M.J's back to ease his nervousness.

"Thankoo Shalley. . ." he muttered.

"Is there anything else you drew?" Salma asked. M.J bobbed his head. "Okay?"

"Dat's cancer," he repeated.

"Mhm."

"And – and thich ich Aiden," he pointed at another random set of lines. "He wins."

Salma turned to the kid, speechless. She had not thought there would be such a mature and beautiful thought process going behind random mess of lines.

"You're awesome M.J!" Salma gushed, this time earnestly. She hugged the little kid. "Aiden would love it! And he will beat the stupid cancer."

The kid smiled, feeling shy with all the praise.

"Thankoo," he whispered.

"You should explain this to Aiden when we visit the hospital, okay?" Salma said. "He loves stories. It'll make him so happy."

M.J rubbed his little feet together nervously as he nodded.

"Off you go then," Salma smiled.

Giving her a quick hug, M.J bounced off to his spot. A movement in her periphery caught her eye. Salma turned to the door to see Sarah making her way towards her.

"Nice look, Pretty eyes," she commented as she passed Zayn. Both his arms and most of his clothes were now stained with colors, but he no longer seemed to care as he helped the kids.

"Whoj Pwetty eyej?" asked one of the mischief personified with an adorable lisp, courtesy his missing tooth.

"Me," Sarah deadpanned. "I got pretty eyes, therefore the name."

Not bothering with them anymore, she turned to Salma.

"Are you done?"

"In a while," Salma replied, picking her phone to check the time.

She frowned to see Sarah's message.

"No, don't read them now that I'm here in person," Sarah said, annoyed.

Sarah: I need to talk to you about Zayn.

Sarah: Let me know when you are free.

Salma's frowned deepened. About Zayn? Her eyes inadvertently threw a glance at Zayn. Finding him staring at her, she quickly looked away. An unease engulfed her. She felt as if, Zayn could sense the subject of Sarah's messages to her.

"Sorry, I had my phone on silent," Salma said. "Masjid rules."

"Right," Sarah replied. "I'll be in my car downstairs. Let's go to Cody's."

"Yay!" A few kids yelled.

"No, just me and her," Sarah clarified in a no-mess tone. "You lot stay with him to clean the space."

"She's no compassionate at all," one of the kid's complained to Zayn.

"I know," he sighed. "She never made cards when she was a kid."

Salma saw too many long faces. Sarah shrugged and walked out.

"I'll be waiting," she muttered.

Nodding at her, Salma turned to the kids.

"Don't worry guys," Salma tried to cheer them. "I'll talk to your parents and we'll go for ice-creams after the visit to the hospital --"

An explosion took place in the hall as the kids cheered and threw random things in the air. Zayn's laughter could be heard over the din as the two boys had grabbed him in - what was supposed to be a hug – a chokehold and jumped excitedly.

Author's Note:

There you go. Salma crafting compassion. Clever idea 🤣.

Anyways, I shared news an exclusive scene last time. Some of you wanted to read Patrons-only content but y'all are broke like yours truly 😅. I feel your pain so I've been thinking. Patron support me with their hard earned money to earn access, but time is money, so I figured y'all broke people could invest in that sort of support. If "Lost II" ranks in top 100 in it's genre, I'll share the chapter "Cliffhanger" here. How does that sound 😁. Bring on the spams!

For those who have coins to spare, another exclusive scene is up on Patreon. That between Zayn-Sarah. Thank you for your support 🥰 . Also, I plan on posting Khadeeja and Brent's story sometime soon too. Happy reading!

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J.