Scarred For Life

Chapter 16

*

"Will that be all?" Khalifa asked as Adnan returned to the car with a sour look in his eyes.

"Let's just go," he muttered, putting on his seatbelt. "I'm tired of this place already."

"Did someone piss you off in there as well?" Khalifa asked as he pulled out onto the road.

Adnan didn't reply. He didn't even know why he had been upset. When he had entered the hall, his thoughts had been clouded by only one person. But when he saw the faces staring back at him, he was reminded suddenly of the face he kept thinking about ever since that seminar. A part of him had hoped that she would be there. But he knew she wouldn't. She hadn't looked all that interested during the seminar, so he should have known that she wouldn't be here.

A part of him was hoping to see her though. When his thoughts weren't wandering off to evenings spent with Sa'ada on the Bay of Aphrodite, her face was the only thing he kept thinking of. It called to him, like the mystical call of the Sirens which drove sailors to their deaths on the open sea. Day in and day out, she wove in and out of his thoughts like an enchanted thread destined to tangle up the fabric of his reality. Adnan couldn't get her out of his mind, no matter how hard he tried, or how much he forced his thoughts to stray back to the beach.

One particular memory proved to be the right one though. It steeled his thoughts at once, for it was the day he found out what it meant to be in love;

*

The room was much smaller than he had imagined it. Even before they had left the country, his father had shown him several pictures of the house, and the room where he would spend the next few years of his life.

"Your uncle will be so happy to have you here," his aunt had said as she escorted him upstairs. "This house has been dreadfully quiet for years now. It will be good to have someone who will liven it up a bit."

He had simply nodded.

Aunt Adama and Uncle Rabiu were as detached from the family as one could get. They had left Nigeria a long time ago, never once bothering to look back on the Motherland. The foreign life suited them, in a way the Nigerian one never could. Adnan's father used to tell him that Uncle Rabiu was accidentally sent to Africa right before his birth. Instead, he should have wound up somewhere in Europe or thereabouts.

That day, his uncle didn't come back home. Adnan had spent the whole day in his room, fixing it up so it didn't look so plain and lifeless. He had hung up a poster of a Lamborghini Gallardo right above the bed, and at the bottom right corner he had glued on a photo of Lionel Messi. On the bedside drawer, he had placed a replica of the family portrait from back home, to remind him that they were still alive, and not some figments of his imagination which would come to be forgotten.

He had arranged his shoes on the rack behind the door, and placed all his clothes in the wardrobe just the way they had been back home. He moved the TV until it was right across from the bed, and he also moved the drawer so it was right underneath it. He then placed his PlayStation on the drawer, while his mp3 player went into the bedside drawer as well as his headphones.

A second poster of his favorite football club - Chelsea - went on the adjacent wall, the striking blue color matching that of the sheets. He planned to speak with his aunt to see if he could have only blue sheets in the room. The brown duvet would have to go as well, and the ceiling fan creaked whenever it was turned on. That would have to be fixed as well.

His prayer mat went into the drawer, as well as his Quran which his mother had specifically gotten for him before he left the country. He had promised her to read it everyday until he returned, to remember her by and to keep him company in the darkest of hours.