Love from A to Z(71)

“One day!” Emma D. turned to me. “I leave for Toronto on Tuesday. It wasn’t even spring break there. I just skipped classes.”

“She’s Canadian, like Adam,” Emma P. informed me. Was it my imagination, or did she widen her eyes at his name? At me?

There was an awkward silence.

Emma Z. leaned forward. “So, did you meet Adam here in Doha or before? Asking because he’s so quiet but, you know, befriends people fast.”

“Technically before Doha.” I tried not to whip my head to look at Emma P. Her interest in my answer was practically palpable, the way she made small, jittery movements on my right. “We met on the plane over here.”

“Oh my God, that’s so cute,” Emma D. blurted, before becoming subdued again, maybe on account of Emma P.’s feelings. “How? He just came up to you?”

I thought about it. Seeing him—okay, supercute him—advancing down the aisle of the airplane, the way we locked eyes immediately after those first couple of times we saw each other in the waiting area. I remembered the jolt of pure happiness that went through my body when he’d said salaam to me on the plane. First, because he’d been one of those guys who actually salaamed a girl, instead of acting like we didn’t exist, and second, because the cute guy I’d noticed had actually been Muslim. Which is a pure sort of rare. “Yeah, he did just come up to me. Because he knew I was Muslim, because of my hijab, I guess.”

Emma Z. sat back and glanced at Emma P., who began twisting a lock of her long brown hair.

I turned to look at Emma P. “But it’s nothing like that, okay? We’re just friends. Or cousins, as Hanna calls us. You know my aunt and his mom were best friends, right?”

She nodded, relief lighting her face, causing her to let go of her hair. “Oh yeah, I forgot. And yeah, that’s okay.” She looked at the other girls and shrugged her shoulders. “It’s okay, because Adam is not into me. He told me clearly, just today in fact. He’s into someone else, he said. Someone he met before he came to Doha.”

“We just wondered if it was you that he was talking about, ha-ha.” Emma Z. laughed. “But obviously it wasn’t.”

I just stared at them.

Because obviously it was.

? ? ?

I decided to write Kavi a long e-mail about what had happened to Daadi. Out of everyone, she, my best friend, would understand my sadness the most.

I needed to set it down in words before I spoke to her in person.

In the middle of composing the e-mail, tears streaming down my face as I thought of how happy Daadi must have felt to get into that car headed for a traditional village wedding, right in the middle of that grief, a message from Adam came in.

Zayneb, I’m sorry to hear about your grandmother. My dad and I (and Hanna) prayed for her.

Zayneb, I can’t figure out what happened yesterday between us. But there’s one thing I CAN figure out and that’s how much I don’t know. How I don’t know what you went through at school. With your teacher. I don’t know about the extent of Islamophobia you’ve faced. I don’t know what it feels like to be you. But here’s another thing: I DO want to know. But if you don’t want me to know, I get that, too.

I lifted up the edge of my pajama T-shirt to wipe away my tears and then enlarged the picture of us he sent right after this message. It was the same one I’d favorited yesterday when Hanna had first sent it, making a mental note to crop Adam out.

I sniffed and went back to my e-mail to Kavi. When I finished, I pressed send without rereading it. Kavi needed to hear my uncensored, unedited thoughts.

Then I went back to what had become my favorite pastime since last night: research.

I now know more about drone warfare than I ever have, more than most topics I was interested in previously. I know that every US president increased the military’s drone program, no matter what political party he belonged to.

Everyone had blood on their hands.

But I couldn’t find the answer to one thing I’d been searching for: What made the public okay with it? With accepting the killing of innocent people?

The answer came in the evening, when my sister, Sadia, messaged me an old picture of Daadi and me on the first day of second grade.

My grandmother was holding my hand, about to walk me to school.

She was dressed in a loud pink-and-green shalwar kameez, a long scarf wound around her head.

She was different-looking, but the same, too. Same, like a lot of the other people killed over there.

Maybe she looked too Muslim. And people thought it was okay if some Muslims got killed, because so many Muslims were weird anyway, like Fencer believed.

Like, if you believed Muslims were the type of people who buried girls alive, you would be okay with them being dealt with.

My grandmother in her pink-and-green suit with a covered head, holding my hand tenderly, looked into my eyes now and told me the truth:

Islamophobia is the thing keeping it okay to kill people like us without repercussions.

Then, with this realization, I fell asleep, exhausted.

? ? ?

Auntie Nandy was sitting at the edge of my bed when I woke up. “I’m sorry to be sitting here like this, but do you want to eat something with me? It’s past dinnertime.”

I nodded, my eyes on the ceiling. “The Emmas bought some food. It’s on the table.”