“Yup, the old man. From Sudan.” Sausun turns to Haytham. “He’s amazing. Study him.”
Haytham swallows.
“The thing I like about him is his entries are all without musical instruments, just pure vocal melody,” Sausun says, nodding at me. “Thanks for getting me to check the Muslim Voice out. I’m actually going to do a video tonight asking everyone to vote for Abdul Kareem.”
Oh man, I just made everything worse by asking Sausun to get involved. I’m afraid to look at Haytham.
“Okay,” he squeaks.
I risk a glance and see he’s still standing there in the exact same I’ve-been-run-over-by-a-truck pose, and I realize he’ll be like that all day unless somebody scrapes him off the road.
“Let’s go? To the wedding?” I suggest brightly.
Sausun nods and begins walking, her black abaya rising a bit with her steps to reveal a pair of sparkly turquoise Doc Martens.
She’s an iron-willed queen.
I follow behind with Haytham, who’s walking slowly.
“I’m so sorry. Really. I thought she’d just do it,” I tell him quietly.
“No.” His voice is low and sad, but then he clears his throat and continues slightly more upbeat—as though he’s mustering energy. “She’s right. She has to stick to her principles.”
His voice is still tainted with the squeak from before.
I nod, and as we make our way to the wedding site, I glance at his face to gauge the level of hurt. The level of burn.
But, weirdly, he’s actually looking at Sausun walking ahead, with starstruck eyes again.
Truly, I don’t think I’ll ever, ever understand guys.
* * *
Thanks for sending that Q & A
A text from Layth, as I’m sitting at the sign-in table in a respite after a horde of guests.
That Imam has got some cool stuff
He read more of Amu’s answers? And likes them? I feel a surge of pride. That Imam’s my uncle. My mother’s brother.
Cool uncle
Yours is here but I’m avoiding him
Hey he’s not a bad guy. He’s just on another wavelength.
Still avoiding him. I have my own reasons that Layth doesn’t need to know.
I’ll get to know Uncle Bilal after the wedding.
You know he actually paid for everything. My brother’s funeral, our bills, helped my mom get to England. Even my counseling. And he’s not loaded.
Then why don’t you like him if he’s so kind? I hope my skepticism doesn’t show.
He did this thing a year ago that got me mad. When he found out I wasn’t going back to school, he set me up with a job I hadn’t asked for. So he was off my list for a long time.
Because he doesn’t believe I’m ok being me. He thinks I’m going to Ecuador to get away from everything but I’m actually going towards everything I believe in.
I read that over and over again, feeling like I want to know more but can’t ask everything I want to know—about him, about his mind, what he believes in—because then he’d wonder why I’m so interested, and then explaining that would be weird.
But I can show interest in some parts of him without sounding weird.
Or is that also weird?
I hesitate briefly and then just do it. Can you send me videos from Ecuador? Of the animals?
Sure. I’ll let you know whenever I upload my stuff onto the Friday stream. Especially if I’m helping a sloth.
I smile.
Chapter Thirty-Five
“The nikah is a simple concept in Islam. It’s a contract that is essentially an offer and acceptance. Either partner can initiate the offer, and the acceptance has to be willingly given—it is forbidden that one partner be forced or be reluctant to enter the marriage contract. Thus, I always check with both parties before a ceremony to ascertain that neither has been compelled or unduly influenced to say yes to the marriage.”
Amu looks from Muhammad to Sarah and then smiles at the guests, his white beard nodding as he continues. “In this case, being the maternal uncle of the groom, I know for certain that the bride and the groom are quite enthusiastic about entering the contract. So enthusiastic, in fact, that it had to be pulled up a whole year so that they could start their life together earlier. So enthusiastic, I can see Muhammad’s foot tapping as he waits for me to finish this sermon so he can be Sarah’s husband, finally! Don’t worry—I won’t be long, ya walad.”
The audience laughs.
I’m sitting in the back, still at the sign-in table with Tats—and now Jeremy’s joined us—and we have a beautiful view of the entire ceremony. In the gazebo, under the floral ceiling that made both Muhammad and Sarah gasp when they first saw it, Amu is standing in his long white thowb, with a crisp navy thowb jacket that reaches the ground. Behind him, sitting on either end of a modern white chaise sofa with Sarah’s father between them, are Muhammad and Sarah, both looking up eagerly at Amu with smiles on their faces.
When Sarah entered the grounds with all her family flanking her, to Haytham singing Jason Mraz’s “I Won’t Give Up” with Muhammad standing beside him beaming, I left the sign-in table to give her a hug, and we both teared up. She’d been trying to save the whole dramatic wedding-dress-entrance for the wedding itself, and had originally planned to wear something a little simpler for the nikah than the elegant dress she’d already picked out for next year. But she told me that when her parents realized that Dad was making this party huge, they said she needed to show up “worthy of their family’s stature.”
So there she is in a fairy-tale white wedding gown that only she could pull off. The heavy dress is slathered in intense white beadwork from the wrists up the arms, all over the bodice, to the full skirt that puffs out Cinderella-huge all the way down to the hem from the trim waist, at which a taffeta bow sits facing the front, like she’s a present. A veil, just as pouffy as her skirt, its edges as intricately beaded as her dress, sprouts from her white-silk-hijabbed head. It’s pushed back now onstage so she can smile at the audience, especially at her family sitting in a curved row on the right, adjacent to the gazebo, all gazing adoringly up at her.
I actually admire her for doing this thing to make her family happy tonight. It’s not something I would have done—and I know Mom and Dad wouldn’t have expected me to—but Sarah, with her “saintly” ways, remembered the bigger picture for her. Which included a family wanting her to “choose them” at this point in time.
Sarah’s words in the cleaning closet come to me: Janna, it’s never simple. No relationship is. It’s a back-and-forth dance where sometimes you give more, sometimes you take.
“… the part of love that we wish to receive and give, that we crave but often don’t know how to articulate or communicate, is mercy. Mercy can be defined in different ways. It’s the ability to see the other as one worthy of your care, as worthy as you. It’s the realizing and the receiving of each other’s vulnerabilities. It’s the committing to safeguard those vulnerabilities, so much so that you become a protector, a comfort, a shield for each other to grow safely, without the hard shells we humans wear—must wear, it appears—to be resilient in this harsh world. Mercy is love that lets us be, that grants us the serenity and refuge of true love. And that is what I wish these two young ones today.” Amu ends his nikah sermon and begins the nikah itself.