Longing For Paradise | ONC 2022 |

Chapter 1

Your existence is but a test.
Your eyes are closed and you cannot move.
How did you use your time?
You stare at the bluish black shapes
stretching beyond your vision.
Do you know your Maker, your last herald?
You don't, but you think your
silence might be given a chance or missed.
They disappeared into abyss.
A promise of better things whispers seduce.
Your eyes, ears, and nose, all
attacked with lilting silk and emerald songs.
An unimaginable warmth calls.

- Makhami Al Layl (Entwined with Nights)

Noor Al-Ansari was everything you were not: so beautiful poets scribbled on paper to gift her, so exceedingly clever no one could win in argument with her, and all at the astonishing age of mere twenty one.

Indulgent as he was, her father decided it was time for her to marry, and upon no accounts of his own will. If it were up to him, she would never have to get married. But his wife had made a valid point: a woman cannot go on in life without the safety and security provided by her husband, and God knows when he himself will be buried six feet under. No, it is for the best Noor gets married.

Yet to find her a proper groom was a real challenge. Who on earth could a man good enough for her? There was hardly a man in their circle who was upright as he was accomplished.

"You're just as picky as your daughter," his wife, Fatima once told him.

"Then you pick someone," he had retorted. Had he known she actually would go ahead and pick someone of her choice, he wouldn't have said so. Truth to be told, his wife's choice wasn't bad, but it was not good enough.

"Tell me, what are your future plans?" He asked the young, spritely man sitting beside his son.

"My father wants me to follow him in business. He has networks stretching from Srihatta¹ to Shan Gan². He's planning to take me to Srihatta next year. InshAllah³ if I get married this year, I will go for pilgrimage."

"MashAllah⁴," Al Ansari smiled. Mostly because he didn't want the boy in front of him to continue about his father's business. "Hassan, why don't you take Mahmoud and show him the gardens. I'm sure he'll love it."

"I don't mind sitting in," Mahmoud said.

"I insist," Khalid almost bared his teeth. "You know that our gardens are famed in the entire city. We have acres covering plants and flowers so exotic I'm sure you won't see whether in S-rihatha or wherever."

As his son escorted their guest outside, he heard a whisper calling his name. He turned around to see his wife glaring at him as she entered from behind the large set of curtains that separated the drawing room from the rest of the house.

With a cup of tea in her hand, she took a seat opposite her husband.

"Khalid, what the hell was that?" She charged him. Her husband shrugged.

"He would not stop talking about his father when I asked him what his plans are. Don't tell my only son-in-law is an airhead who can't make life plans of his own."

"You're just being picky. I wish my father had been picky for me back then."

"What would've happened if he was? No matter what his requirements were I would've matched them. Nothing could've stopped me from marrying you, my beloved Fatima."

"Spare me the flowery words and find a solution. Do you know where your daughter is?"

"Isn't she home?" He asked. Fatima snorted.

"As if. When I went to her room to tell her to sit with me behind the curtain, she was nowhere to be found. This time she didn't even take her maid servant with her. That poor child didn't even know a suitor was coming."

"Oh no! What if she runs into wild men? Aren't you even worried woman?" Khalid sat upright.

"Khalid would I be sitting here drinking tea if I were worried?" He relaxed back into the sofa as he stared at his wife. He wondered how she was sure their daughter would be safe.

Noor knew the streets from the back of her hands. But knowing was one thing and being perceived was another. There was no way she would be left alone safe if anyone on the streets knew she was a woman: the peddlers would swarm her with tantalizing offers to buy their next best thing.

Dressed in heavy garments, she left only her eyes uncovered. Under the warm sun, nobody would question her, they'd think perhaps she was a gypsy, or a poor man who had to wear everything on himself to avoid getting robbed. But the best thing about her disguise was that she didn't stand out in the neighborhood she was walking through.

As grimy topless children played about, their mothers stoked fire out in the yards that had no fence, no one knew whose house started where and whose house ended where. Perhaps sharing was easier when you're poor and have nothing to lose.

As she reached the end, she made her way to the house with a turned entrance. Grateful for her face covering, she dusted the roped and opened the door, swiftly stepping in and closing them behind her.

As the noon sunlight snuck in through the cracks, a ring of dust rose in the air. Noor followed their dance before she opened her veil and put it aside. Shrugging off her layers of cloth, she hung them on the chair behind a large desk, and went straight to the armoire and brought out the large stack of papers. Examining them to be in proper shape, she stuffed it all in her cloth backpack, along with the almost empty ink bottle and the spare papers. Covering them with a layer of cloth, she heaved them on her back and left for home.

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Footnotes:
1: Old name for Sylhet, a city in modern day Bangladesh.
2: Name for Chang An changed to fit Arabic letters.
3: Directly translates to "if God wills".
4: an Arabic phrase that is used to express a feeling of awe or beauty regarding an event or person that was just mentioned. It is a common expression used by Muslims & Arab Christians to mean, in its literal sense, that "what God has willed has happened".