Her Encounter | Islamic Story

Chapter 34

"How are you even able to bear it, Aiza?" I asked still angry.

"You get used to it, now calm down," Aiza said, unnaturally calm.

"Calm down?" I put a face of disbelief. "How can you be not angry?" I asked finally sitting on the chair but with considerable, deliberate, dramatic force.

"Because this isn't the first time."

My anger was directed on a man in his Subaru who rode by us just as we were coming back from a marketplace who stuck his head out and shouted obviously on Aiza, 'Get the hell out of our country, you filthy terrorist!'

That was bloody unfair. Unfair on Muslims. On Muslim girls, to be more precise.

These fabrications! How! Just how blind people can be!

"Listen Denae, I've stopped minding people like him. What do you want? Me to contemplate over his words and shed tears. Then what? It's better to ignore."

I pulled myself up from the chair and went to sit close to her on the bed.

"Uhh. Just one of the things that make you wish you weren't a Muslim. Right?" I said casually. It wasn't even a question.

Aiza seated cross-legged in front of me in her blue shirt and white pants seemed to get offended by the words. Her brows creased, making her eyes look more sea-like.

"There is nothing...Denae, absolutely nothing in the world that can make me wish I wasn't a Muslim," she affirmed. To further emphasize her point, she added, "Even if I was told that I would be freed of my past with the price that I wouldn't be a Muslim, I would never accept it. Even a million years in the brothel are worth Islam."

I looked at her in disbelief. For unlike her acceptance to a life where she would be used just to be gifted Islam, I would give away anything just to have that single night with Pascal erased from my life.

"Everything?" I asked although I didn't need reassurance for she had made it quite clear.

"Yes, everything. Not having parents, those days and nights of being used and beaten up, all worth it. I'm actually thankful for it all, it wasn't just one thing that paved my way to this destination, it was many hurdles. I was led here by that force up there called Allah."

Her conjectures, love for Allah was commendable, not that I doubted it in the first place, the way she was regular in her prayers, the way she sometimes cried in it, everything about her just spoke of her love.

"As for me, I would do anything to have my parents back, to save myself from Pascal and then to not have the life I'm currently living." As I said that, all thoughts about Islam or the guy who threw profanities at her left my mind and were replaced by a sudden feeling of sadness.

It had been more than ten weeks since we had run away from my office building. Since then, every few days we changed the motel we lived in. Sometimes we even needed to run and hide if we found someone suspicious. It was hard, getting harder with the day.

Every day, every night was worse than the last. My hold on reality was getting weak. I stopped differentiating the nightmare from reality. Some more days and I would die from depression. Everything was falling apart.

Aiza's prayers were elongating. She would pray extra. Spend a long time in supplications and as I mentioned, cried a lot.

We no longer lived in Convanlea, we decided to try our luck in cities and towns near it. Lodging in one place, then in another in a span of days with our lives hanging by a thread, wasn't an easy task. I'd decided to give up now. I was totally done for. Aiza didn't know my plans, but I knew what to do. I knew how to surrender and still keep Aiza safe.