Accepting You

Chapter Forty Five

Chapter Warning: Contains derogatory language (in asterisk)

-

What was that? Asiya questioned herself as she left the living room.

A burst of confidence? Bordered by pettiness?

Whatever it was, it exited Asiya as quickly as it had arrived, and the flame that had lit inside of her now felt dim and lazy.

Asiya sprinted down the hallway and wedged through the open door of the entryway.

Her nails scratched against the front door as she wheezed to the ground like a tyre losing air.

Astagfirullah. Authubillah. Breathe, she instructed herself. Astagfirullah. You're fine, Asiya. She's not worth your deeds! Why did you do that? Where did that come from? Mind your words. Don't let your tongue give her your deeds. Breathe!

Asiya hugged herself into a corner as she replayed the scene from a few moments ago.

She wished she could brush off Hina's words as easily as she had acted to have done.

Maybe she could've done so if she felt more confident about herself. Perhaps she could've done so if she was a hundred per cent confident in Yusuf's feelings about their marriage, but she wasn't.

Asiya's self-esteem had been slowly eroding, but now it felt corrosive like it was spitting and hissing out of her, destroying and melting the few bits and pieces of herself that she had left.

The British public that Asiya had interacted with throughout her life was subtle when expressing their dislike.

They never expressed it directly.

It couldn't be explicitly called out without being dissected and explained. Actions were quiet enough to fly under everyone else's radar, except for the people they were intended for. That was how they got away with it.

The discrimination Asiya had experienced was administered through sudden job rejections after they had seen her in person, despite bragging on the phone that she was perfect for the role. Over-qualified even.

It was done through the shuffling of papers, where people would run their fingers under Asiya's surname, decide it was too difficult to pronounce and slip her application to the bottom of the pile.

It was expressed through dismissals. Dismissing problems when they complained.

Ignoring people's symptoms, to the point that Asiya's mother had been forced to teach her children to exaggerate. Exaggerate their symptoms so they would be taken seriously and not become another decimal point in a statistic when they went to the doctor.

Even when things were said, the statements were mixed into innocent sentences, like an untidy pile of Scrabble letters.

Delivered with backhands and discreet demarcations. Yous. They. Groups. Grouping until everyone lost their identity and blurred into one abstract mess of unlikeable colour.

Even though the silent movements were often the deadliest. Asiya could deal with them. She had grown up surrounded by them. Asiya had experienced it from everyone, Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

She had learnt to treat it the way it was made out to be, invisible, and to stop those actions from chipping away at her.

What Hina did so abrasively, unapologetically, was something that Asiya couldn't deal with.

Asiya and her mum had laughed away the significance of her first openly racist encounter.

The situation had occurred outside a train station. Asiya and her mother had just arrived in Bath to attend the university open day when a homeless man approached them.