I gave the silver car a wide berth, wouldn’t move any closer. The wind was pushing against my legs, shoving cold up my sleeves, but I was frozen in place, looking from him to the Honda.
Finally, finally, Ali turned to face me.
“That was you?” I asked.
He had the decency to look ashamed. “My sister takes a chem class here a couple nights a week.”
I already knew that.
“My mom makes me drive her.”
This was now obvious.
“I saw you drowning in the rain,” he said, finally getting to the point. “I wanted to offer you a ride.”
“But you didn’t.”
He inhaled deep. “Zahra wouldn’t let me.”
I was staring at my shoes now, at the shattered remains of a leaf trapped in my laces.
I was stunned.
“You didn’t even have an umbrella,” Ali was saying. “But she just—I don’t know. I didn’t understand. I still don’t get what happened between you guys.”
This was so much. Too much to unpack.
Several months ago, when we officially declared war on Iraq, most of my friends started crying. I was devastated, too, but I kept my head down. I didn’t argue with people who didn’t seem to understand that Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan and Iraq were all very different countries. I said nothing when my history teacher’s army reserve unit got called up, said nothing when he stared at me while making the announcement.
I didn’t know why he stared at me.
It was like he wanted something from me, either an apology or a show of gratitude, I wasn’t sure. I wrote nothing but my name in the card we gave him at his going-away party.
Hate crimes were on the rise.
Muslim communities were in turmoil. Women were taking off their scarves, guys changing their names. People were freaked out. Our mosques were bugged, set on fire. Last month we found out that Brother Farid—Brother Farid, the guy always volunteering and helping out, the guy so beloved he was invited to a half dozen weddings last year—was an undercover FBI agent.
Heartbreak.
It was a time of change, turbulence, shifting sands. People were making names for themselves, even the most useless teenagers blooming into activists and advocates for change. Heretofore nobodies rallied for grassroots organizations, organized peace talks.
I was growing weary of everyone.
I hated the posturing at the mosque, the competitions to prove piousness in the face of persecution. I hated the gossip meant to shame the women who’d taken off their hijabs. People were particularly vicious to the older women, said they were all uglier sans scarves, decrepit.What’s the point of taking it off when you’re that old?people would ask, and laugh, as if a woman’s motivations to put on a hijab had anything to do with making herself more or less attractive. As if anyone had any right to judge another person’s fear.
Zahra had taken off her scarf.
Zahra, who’d been my best friend for years. Two months ago she stopped wearing hijab and stopped talking to me, too. Cut me out of her world—effectively shattered my heart—without further explanation. She wouldn’t even look at me at school anymore, didn’t want to be associated with me. From the outside, her reasons seemed obvious.
I knew better.
I knew Zahra hadn’t thrown away six years of friendship because of a single sea change. She’d hid the truth in another truth; we’d split for a Russian nesting doll of reasons. Butthis—tonight—to discover that she harbored this level of hatred toward me, this kind of anger—
I felt physically ill.
“I’m really sorry,” Ali was saying, when he hesitated. “Actually, I don’t know why I’m apologizing. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“No,” I said. “No, you didn’t.”
