Love from A to Z(84)

I accepted it. “So what happened? With your mom?”

“She found me looking up Fencer again.” She stopped eating, put her fork down. “I didn’t mean to. I meant to dedicate all my attention to her. Because I was so happy to see her again. Truly.”

I cut half my second chocolate chip cookie and gave it to her. She took it and put it at the side of her mille-feuille plate.

“But then I remembered this comment I’d seen under this video from last week. Wait. I’ll show you.” She picked up her phone and clicked and scrolled and then passed it to me.

The video was titled Muslim Girls Save World from Villain Part Two. I lowered the volume as the intro blared, a mix of drumming and a man’s deep voice saying something in Arabic. Two people in niqab, the face covering some Muslim women wear, sat at a table with a tall, obviously plastic potted cactus on a chair between them.

“Yo, assalamu alaikum. May peace and the Force be with you guys!” the girl on the right said. “Today, my girl Janna joins me again. And we’re going to continue our interview with my ex-brother-in-law, on how he escaped getting captured for abusing my sister. Who, as you dedicated viewers know, is BACK HOME in America finally! But, inexcusably, the villain is at large, the one who kept her locked up. However, friends, never fear—he lent his alter ego, his thorny alter ego, for our interview.” She poked the cactus with a black-gloved hand. “Wait, we forgot to mic him. Guys, can we get the villain miked up?”

She looked beyond the camera and gestured with another gloved hand as though she were calling a waiter.

The video went dark then came back on to reveal the cactus wired with a lapel mic clipped to one of its thorny branches, a donut stuck on another branch. I chuckled.

Zayneb waved a hand nearby in slow motion. “Adam? We can watch the epic Niqabi Ninja videos later, but, for now, scroll down to the comments.”

I paused the video and found the comments. They were mostly glowing and So happy you’re doing this and Expose him! and other such things until I got to one that had a lot of likes, that veered off from the sentiments previously expressed.

Why don’t you admit it? Your sister was treated the way she was because of Islam. Not because of your brother-in-law. Not because of Saudi Arabia. You’re peddling the same thing that got her in trouble, hypocrite. Things won’t change until you give up being Muslim. On your own or by other means. I vote for other means.

I made a face. “A hateful troll.”

“Look at the account.”

“Stone Wraith?”

“Yeah. Click on it.”

I clicked and saw a channel with one video, a time lapse of a plant. “He’s got one video. But wait, a bunch of playlists. And, whoa, eighteen thousand subscribers?”

“Check when he joined.”

“This month? This year?”

“Exactly. Just when Fencer deleted his other accounts.”

“You think this is him?”

“I’m sure it’s him. Because his subscriber count is close to what he had on his old accounts. Not as much, but close.” She reached for the teapot and poured the last bit into her cup. “It’s him. And he has some way to communicate to his old followers. Some forum or something. That’s how they all migrated to his new accounts.”

“Good sleuthing.”

“But it was completely out of the blue. Like, I subscribe to those girls, the Niqabi Ninjas, and watch their videos regularly, and I happened to see this comment at the beginning of last week, but it only pinged in my mind as my mom was eating lunch here in Doha, talking about my grandma’s grave, how beautifully taken care of it was. She showed us a picture of it, and it was nothing like the cemeteries we know. But just seeing it brought this grave stone image into my head, and then I remembered that my friends had found out Fencer’s new alias was Stone Wraith, and then ping, the comment under the Niqabi Ninjas just flashed in my head, and I made up my mind to look into it.”

I nodded to encourage her to continue.

“Then I made a mistake, because I got this idea with my mom sitting right there. I pretended I needed to go to the bathroom. But instead I went to my room and texted my friends at home and got on my laptop and was looking into Fencer’s YouTube account and going down this rabbit hole of the videos on his playlists, see what he’s commented on. And my mom opens the door and walks in and sits on the bed to hug me.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Yeah, uh-oh. I close the browser windows quickly, but then she happens to see my texts and they’re like Fencer this, Fencer that. And my last one was eat him alive for the last time.” She laughed but in a bitter way. “Can you believe it? Like my mom sees that?”

This time I shook my head to encourage her to continue.

“Then she starts asking me questions. Like what have I been doing here the whole time and why haven’t I dropped it and, and . . . We got into a huge fight. And I got mad and left. And there I go again, breaking everything apart.” She took a bit of the cookie and ate it. “I’m sorry. Because again, talking to you, I feel like I’m ungrateful. Because I have a mom. That I seem to always be fighting with.”

I sat back and looked out the window at the turquoise water. “The thing with my mom was she preferred when I was up-front with her. I wasn’t always, because I was a kid, but that’s what she liked. Like she’d tell me to face my feelings.”