Pens of Fate

Leena chases after a train of thought

"What's this stuff you're always writing," my younger sister Inaya's voice cuts across my thoughts. My pen pauses, I look up at her, and she is already halfway out of the room.

"When you ask a question, if you want an answer, you kind of, sort of, have to stay within hearing distance," I say.

"I can hear you!" Inaya calls out from the hallway. "Go on."

"Also, it's not manners to talk to people by shouting at them from across the house," I say.

"I know what she's writing!" my younger brother Jasir's voice sounds from another corner of the house. "She's writing..." He gives a dramatic pause, "GIRLY TIPS!"

"Eww!" Inaya says.

"Excuse me, but last time I checked, you're a girl," I call out to her.

Inaya pokes her head around the door. "Yes, but girlhood doesn't require me to be on the receiving end of..." Her voice trails off as she gropes for words.

"GIRLY TIPS!" Jasir supplies the words happily.

"At least it's better than advice from aunties," I say, turning back to my writing.

"What are you, then, if not an auntie?" Inaya says.

"Ha-ha." I draw out the words. "I'm just eighteen."

"By the time you're done with your gap year and in college you'll be nineteen and then you'll be twenty and then you'll be a certified auntie for sure." Inaya grins.

"Let me write!" I throw my hands up in exasperation.

"Alright, auntie," Inaya says. Jasir joins in by breaking out into laughter.

I shake my head at Inaya as she leaves the room. It's a bit annoying being called "auntie" when I'm not even twenty. Sure, the neighbour kid calls me "auntie" when he comes to get the tennis ball that bounced into our house, but that doesn't make me one.

I put my notebook and pen away and open up the laptop. As Inaya would put it, the "disputed laptop". It's actually our shared laptop, but since each shareholder wishes to have 100% ownership of it, it's "disputed".

Inaya is nowhere in sight, so currently, it's all mine. I power it up and open Google. I start typing a search term related to what I was reading earlier in the day, but since my mind is still hung up on "auntie", the word winds up in the mix and I hit the enter key before I am aware of it.

Dear Little Auntie.

Huh? I look closely at the search result. Little Auntie? Isn't that an upside-down sort of a term? It interests me enough to click on the link.

A cutesy little blog pops up with an adorable header image. I look at the menu bar. The tabs say things like "meet the crew", "database of questions", "auntie recommended"--I find myself getting more and more interested by the second. Opening the pages, I figure out that it is a question and answer website, where you submit questions and get answers, only--and this makes me more disappointed than I would expect--they have stopped taking questions, so the blog exists as an archive of questions.

Still, an archive is interesting to go through. Awhile later--a really long while later--I wind up my blog reading marathon and get up to pray, as it is time for the formal prayer. I close my eyes, mustering all my strength to shake off the thoughts of the blog, and one-two-three, I step into the bathroom for the pre-prayer washing up. The water is refreshing. One completed prayer later, I raise my hands to supplicate to Allah.

"Dear Allah," I begin. "My dear Allah, my beloved Allah..." I go on to ask for the blessings of the life after death, then the existing life, stringing the supplications together one after another in a familiar flow of words. I pause. There is a strange supplication rising in my heart. Unplanned words spill from my lips and into my upturned palms: "My dear Allah, grant me the ability to write." I stop to consider what I just said. "To write well," I add. Fearing it may be a worldly request, I go on, "To write because you enabled me to, to write because I can use this gift..." The words trail away, leaving me wondering what I really want. I lower my hands and think, "I want to write a story that never ends."

***

What do you think of this chapter? Are you familiar with this family of characters from the Ramadan story "A Whisper of Peace"? If you liked it, please vote!