Brenda wanted a normal school year. Instead her mom died.
Salma needed space from her sister and terrible ex. Or else she'd lose her mind.
Delilah didn't think she'd have any more problems after moving far from her hometown. That was until she becam...
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❝What did you do before?" "I used to run a lot." "Cross country? Track?" "From the cops, actually.❞
― unknown
Song above: Lean 4 Real by Playboi Carti (feat. Skepta) The song playing when Ziyan is in his room for the chapter.
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Disclaimer: the opinions/views of my characters aren't reflections of my own. Ziyan is a drug dealer so his opinion on the authority/politics are meant to be realistic. Please note: Jamal, Ziyan's friend, is not Muslim. It's common for Black Americans to have Arabic names.
🌥ZIYAN🌥
There was a package coming from California, being shipped out with a fake Desi name. For the time being, I was Sandeep mothafuckin' Gupta.
Inside Sandeep Gupta's mail, there was a pound of California Cannabis ready to be sold to my long list of feening clients.
Based on federal law, what I was doing was a crime.
Based on my mood, I didn't give a fuck.
Weed was no different than beer or cigarettes to me. If you drank, you couldn't talk to me about the "dangers of marijuana" without me laughing in your face and calling you a hypocrite. To simply say "alcohol isn't as dangerous" was ignorant when there were countless Anonymous Alcoholic meetings throughout this country, drunk driving accidents, and numerous families torn apart because of a drunken parent.
The only person who could have a say was my dad. He didn't even smoke tobacco and refused to use the tobacco version of paan. Paan are a betel leaf, wrapped with areca nut, and closed with a tobacco paste. There were many variations of it throughout South Asia.
Paan mainly was only ever chewed, leaving the user with a slight stimulated feeling. Living in Pakistan, the kids would pick up left over cigarettes discarded on the road and copy the adults. Because my father witnessed his own dad die from cigarette smoking, he never touched them and he opted to the non-tobacco version of paan whenever offered going into his mid20s.
"Tobacco may not be haram," my father had said. Haram meaning forbidden in Arabic. "But Ziyan, anything that makes you a slave to the product is something Allah wouldn't want you to do. You keep reaching for that lighter, again and again. When you should be picking up the Qur'an for better guidance away from the fires of hell."
This, ladies and gentlemen, was my father.
Driving to Friday prayer, usually referred to as simply Jumu'ah, my dad would give me tips on how I could avoid being stabbed in the ass by the Devil's spear and danced around a pit of fire.
