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Chapter 20: Love arrives with a danger sign

20 June 2020

Whatever Allah grants to people of mercy - none can withhold it; and whatever He withholds - none can release it thereafter. And He is the Exalted in Might, the Wise.

[Surah Fatir]

Chapter 20:

Love arrives with a danger sign

Wearing a pair of three quarters, a stonewash blue shirt, and black house slippers, Ahmed dipped the sponge in soap water and wiped it across the bonnet of his car. He repeated the act several times until he was satisfied that every inch of his most cherished possession, a luxury car gifted to him by his elder brother when he returned from Ireland, was scrubbed clean. He went ahead to turn open the faucet as a spring of water washed away all remnants of dust, revealing the shiny white metal from underneath.

"Why's Massu out today?"

Glancing over his shoulder, Ahmed looked on as Afreen, who was earlier painting under the canopy in their back garden, walked up to him.

"Please, Afreen, don't call this beauty Massu, you're disgracing my babe," Ahmed exhaled, feeling the pain of his car for being given such a miserable moniker, courtesy his twin.

"I'm just using a short form for it, no ill feelings," she teased Ahmed. "You should be happy that I'm not calling you Ahmu or something, and limiting the nicknames to your car."

"I'd rather bear your outrageous nicknames myself than see my love being dishonored by a ridiculous title," he mused.

Sighing dramatically at Ahmed's adoration for the beast, she remarked, "So much love for Massu, save some for your future wife too, the poor girl will have to compete against a non-living object to seek your attention."

"Maybe it's not my attention that she's seeking," Ahmed replied almost immediately, his face expressionless, as he held the water hose and continued washing his car.

What he thought would slide as a random comment was immediately taken note by Afreen, who turned around to observe Ahmed with a new perspective.

"Ahmed, what's going on?" She demanded.

"Car wash, that's what's going on, if it wasn't obvious enough," he muttered wryly.

She gazed at him as he invested his entire concentration on the task at hand, while Afreen tried to figure out what he was hiding.

From the past week, Ahmed was Ahmed yet he was behaving differently. It wasn't something that you'd immediately call out, he still laughed, joked, colored with Fariha in her coloring books, sat with family during the evenings and spoke about the new adventures and little successes at Zaika, it was the same old him and yet a part of him was missing. Afreen was sure that the rest of the family hadn't even noticed it yet, but she knew Ahmed more than she knew herself, and she was so certain that his mind was bothered by something he wasn't willing to disclose.

"You're not being you," she put forth, not fond of her choice of words but unsure how to get him to speak.

"If I'm not me then who are you talking to? My jinnie?"

"Ahmed, what's up?"

"Hey, that rhymed," he grinned, running further away from the subject of conversation.

"No, it didn't," Afreen deadpanned.

"Yes, it did. Ahmed, what's up? The last two syllables rhyme, what a waste of your English lessons, you can't even decipher basic rhymes. If Fariha was here, she'd agree too," he commented needlessly, scampering from Afreen's questions. There was no absolute way that Afreen could get the slightest hint of what was going on in his mind, he couldn't hurt her that way, not after she had come this far from her past.