I Have Lost My Way(45)
In any case, she takes a deep breath and lets the monster out of the closet: “If I can’t sing, if I can’t do this one thing I love doing, this one thing I’m loved for, I’ll be alone.”
And there. It’s finally out. The thing she fears.
* * *
— — —
The thing they all fear.
* * *
— — —
“You won’t be alone,” Harun says. “You have so many fans.”
“That’s not love,” Freya says. “That’s not lasting. I guarantee you that in time—months, maybe years—if I stop singing, even my most ardent fans will lose interest.” Harun starts to object, but Freya waves away his protest. “Answer me honestly. Your boyfriend, as big a fan as he is, do you think he’d still love me if I couldn’t sing? Do you think anyone would?”
* * *
— — —
Harun would like to tell Freya that James would never stop loving her. But if James can stop loving him, who is he to say? People stop loving people all the time.
* * *
— — —
“I would love you even if you couldn’t sing,” Nathaniel says.
* * *
— — —
Freya’s heart stops.
Or maybe it starts.
“You would?”
* * *
— — —
I already do, Nathaniel thinks. But that’s madness. That’s his father talking, or the feral starving man inside of him, so once again, he remains silent.
* * *
— — —
Harun thinks he would love her too. Not because she is famous or because she can help him get James back but because she is her. He should tell her something—something reassuring—but he’s too distracted by his phone. It is buzzing, the texts nearly constant, Ammi’s urgency so profound, he can see her shoulders hunched as she squints at the screen, pecking away at the letters with her ink-stained fingers. R U OK? Where R U?
If Harun and Nathaniel can love Freya even if she can’t sing, might his family be able to love him even if he can’t be the person they want him to be? And even if they can’t, can he let them continue to love a lie?
He pictures his whole family gathered around the table to honor a person he’s never been. His words to Freya earlier come ricocheting back:
You must do things the proper way.
The proper way is not to trade one betrayal for another. The proper way is not to let the food on Ammi’s table grow cold, to let her worry congeal into fear and then heartbreak. The proper way is to stop lying.
He understands why Freya is scared of being alone. It might sound crazy to some people that Harun, living among such a large family, feels that way too. But he’s carried this secret since he was nine years old. And secrets carve fissures, until the fissures become trenches, and the trenches become channels, and the channels become crevasses, and suddenly you are alone, on a block of ice, separated from everyone you care about.
He has felt alone for a long time.
The odd thing is, today of all days, he has not.
THE ORDER OF LOSS
PART VIII
HARUN
I have never told anyone the whole truth. The closest I got was telling Amir not that I was in love with James but that I carried a flaw and I feared this flaw would bring shame upon my family.
“But why?” he asked me when I confided this over the phone the day after I’d sent him that Facebook message.
The phone line crackled between us, ten thousand miles the least of it. “I love the wrong person,” I said.
He sucked in his breath. “A gori.”
If only it were so simple as a white girl. Saif had already cleared that trail for me. “No,” I told him. “Worse than a gori.”
In the ensuing silence, I knew he was trying to figure out what would be worse than a white, non-Muslim girl. He could not imagine.
“Not a girl,” I said at last.
The line stayed silent, but I could hear the change in his breathing and knew that he understood. In that moment, before he spoke, I did not care if he was horrified. I felt only relief. Someone in my family knew.
In a calm voice, he replied, “‘Do not lose heart nor fall into despair! You shall triumph if you are Believers.’” It had been a long time since I went to mosque or read the Qur’aan, but I recognized the quotation. What I didn’t know was if I could be counted as a believer anymore, having strayed so far.
Amir continued, “Do not worry, cousin. With Allah’s guidance, I can help you.”
“You can?”
“I believe I can. Do you want to recite the Salat Ul-Istikharah together?”
I had not recited the Salat Ul-Istikharah, the prayer we use to ask for guidance—or any prayer—in such a long time.
“Okay,” I said.
We said the prayer together, and I immediately felt lighter, better. But that night I began to panic. What if Amir told my parents? What would they do?
I didn’t hear from him the following day, and I texted, begging him not to tell anyone. He texted me back. And whoever fears Allah, He will make for him a way out and will provide for him from where he does not expect. And whoever relies upon Allah, then He is sufficient for him. Indeed, Allah will accomplish His purpose.