Love from A to Z(55)

But I said, Alhamdulillah, hallelujah, oh yeah, right away. Quietly, inside myself.

Dad wasn’t here to see my first foray out after my MS scare.

I could explain away the unsteadiness on my feet to Hanna (“hurt myself” was enough), but that feeble excuse wouldn’t have worked on him.

Hanna skipped ahead until she got to the center of the lobby, where a marble staircase split into a pair of winding ones that met on the second story. She dipped her head right back on her neck to look up at the ceiling and then, still staring up, took her iPad out of the turquoise-sequined cross-body purse she wore.

“My other rule is that you can take pictures of everything and anything that’s beautiful as much as you want so that you can remember this trip forever and ever,” she said when I reached her. She showed me ten photos that she’d just taken of the magnificent alcove ceiling above the staircase. At the center of the multilayered design was a star-shaped window to the sky. “See, my field trip rules are better than Mr. Mellon’s!”

“Nice. Oh, wait. Remember I asked you if it’s okay if a friend came on our field trip?”

“You mean Zayneb? She’s not a friend!” Hanna said. “She’s like a cousin. Because Dad told me Ms. Raymond was Mom’s best friend, so that makes her our aunt for all time. Anyone related to her is our cousin.”

I nodded gravely while laughing inside, thinking of having to pretend to be cousins with Zayneb just a couple of days ago. “Yeah, so we have to wait for Zayneb, our cousin, at the fountain.”

I couldn’t wait to see her again.

Since we knew that we were okay with each other.

More than okay, hopefully.

Hanna took a few more pictures while I walked to the dark stone fountain that commanded the space behind the staircase. In an echo of the museum’s stunning ceiling, the water was contained within two niches, a star inside an octagon. Arranged neatly around the fountain, again with geometric precision, were square, white café tables, as well as neat pairs of white couches with low tables between them.

I took a seat at one of the tables and looked out the tall windows at the water, Doha Bay, which almost completely surrounded the museum.

This place, this perfect space, is my favorite spot in the whole city.

It connects me to Dad and makes me understand why Doha is our home now.

? ? ?

After Mom passed away, Dad found it hard to work from his home office on Saturday afternoons, like he’d always done.

For a while he shifted from room to room but then would end up staring into space or reading or watching something, with Hanna strapped into either a bouncy swing or a baby seat fitted with brightly colored, dangling toys bobbing above her head.

And me? I disappeared.

Because we had school the next day, the deal with Mom on Saturdays had been that if I got my homework done early, I could play an extra hour of video games on top of the hour she usually let me have each day.

As Dad began flitting between rooms, when he went back to work after grievance leave, and things got back on schedule at home, I’d game for exactly two hours, shut in my room.

At first.

And then, after two weeks, with no one to check on me, I’d game for a bit more, then a bit more, then more, until I fell asleep with the controller in my hand.

That’s when Dad began taking us out on Saturdays, whether homework was done or not. We went to different touristy spots around Doha, and he’d let me explore while he kept an eye on Hanna.

The one place I’d ask to go back to again and again was the Museum of Islamic Art.

There was a big playground outside that was fun—for Hanna and me, because it had equipment designed for different ages. Even a bungee trampoline that I was into and a kiddie carousel that preoccupied Hanna as she grew into toddlerhood. There were also bike rentals, and, during the cooler months, Dad would bring a tiny helmet and a portable bike seat for Hanna, and we’d ride around the horseshoe path edging the bay, looking out at the water and the skyline of cutting-edge architecture situated across it.

Then one day we went into the museum itself after our bike ride, to get a snack at the café, and, when we got to our table with our drinks and cookies, Dad discovered that Hanna had fallen asleep in the bike seat he’d been carrying her in.

We looked at each other, shocked.

Until that point Hanna had been a no-sleep kid. Except when she’d drop at the end of the day, usually sometime between seven and ten o’clock, with no telling when her tiny form would be found curled up sleeping somewhere in the house.

This didn’t mean she was hyperactive—because she wasn’t—just into doing things all the time. Sometimes quiet things, sometimes loud things, sometimes staring at an ant colony for hours while pretending to write about it in a “secret” notebook.

She was just not into saying good-bye to the day because daylife was her friend.

But here she was, at three years old, sleeping at four o’clock at the Museum of Islamic Art.

Dad put a hand on her forehead. “She’s okay. No fever.”

He gently put her upright seat into a chair between us. She continued sleeping.

I passed Dad his drink from the tray I’d been holding and placed the plate of chocolate chip cookies at the center of the table. He stared at Hanna as he took a sip of his coffee.

“Huh. I’ve never seen this.” He reached for a cookie and looked at me, stumped. “There’s a first for everything, I guess.”