The Easiest Target

It's Cheating

November passes slowly. I spend half of it avoiding time alone with Toki because the more I'm around him, the more I feel myself clinging closer and closer to everything he is that isn't Athan. Even his curiosity about why I remain Muslim after all my faith, parents, and other Muslims do to me makes me smile because unlike Athan who hurts people first then gaslights them, Toki tries to understand people first then decides what to do.

"Forced marriage is something against Islam completely. They were supposed to have my approval in my marriage," I say one day in the library.

"But they didn't get it," Toki insists.

I tear my eyes off my homework and purse my lips at him, nodding. "And that's something they'll have to answer to on the Day of Judgment. What's done is done."

"You're going to be paying for it! How is that fair?" he asks, frustrated.

"I can take it to a sheikh right now and ask for revocation of the marriage but then I'd have to live with my furious parents. They always threaten me with Yemen. I will get control eventually in America. I will never have control in Yemen. Which one is a better option right now?"

He folds his arms over the desk and rests his head to it. "You can come live with me," he says. I stop writing and look at him in shock. He buries his face over his arms, his ears turning red. "I mean it. If you ever need a way out ...."

"I don't want to be the one to ask for divorce."

"So you're okay with marrying him?" he says.

"Of course not," I say, drawing spirals on my paper as the nerves set in. I'm marrying Athan in less than a couple of months. I'm running out of time. I shake my head, my eyes stinging painfully with the thought. "But what am I supposed to do?"

"Come with me," Toki says, so seriously I can't even laugh about it. "I'll get an apartment and we can live together ...."

"I can't do that ...."

"Because I'm not your husband?" I nod, the bitterness in his comment making my chest tighten. "I don't get you. Athan's married to you and he dates other girls. Why would you stay loyal to him?"

"If I came and lived with you while I was married to Athan," I say as calmly as I can, "wouldn't it give you plausible reason to suspect I can do it to you in the future?" He looks at me, the remorse growing on his face when the words sink in. "I never wanna be someone to doubt. Even if it looks like it means being loyal to someone like Athan. I'm just being loyal to myself."

"Then what're you gonna do when he hurts you? Let it happen? Just because you're his you think you have to bear this?"

"I'm not his. I have the right Islamically to ask for a divorce for whatever plausible reason I want. I just don't see the benefit in doing it now. It's less safe for me to do it now than it would be for me to bear with it until I can leave him on my own terms," I gather my belongings quickly, blinking back tears. "I'm not a possession. You can't just take me or give me or toss me around like I'm a toy and expect me to go with it."

"That's not what I — Hadeel, wait. I'm sorry. You won't be safe!" he jumps out of his seat and holds my backpack to keep me in place. "He'll hurt you," he whispers, his voice breaking. "I know he will!"

I yank away and glare at him, my tears betraying me. "What do you want me to do? Be married to him and live with you? You want me to date you like he dates Carla?" my voice breaks. "I can't."