CHAPTER 1
The Man Who Could Read Her
Safiya had been Muslim for almost a year when she decided Arabic still had a personal problem with her.
She sat cross-legged in the middle of her bed with her phone propped against a pillow, a notebook open across her thighs and one earbud pressed into her left ear.
On the page she had written, in large block letters, AL-FATIHAH - DO NOT PANIC.
Underneath were arrows, phonetic spellings, crossed-out phonetic spellings, three question marks and one irritated note to herself: WHY DOES EVERY VIDEO SOUND DIFFERENT?
The reciter on her phone began again.
"Bismillahir-Rahmanir-Raheem..."
Pause. Rewind. Again.
Safiya tried, stopped, and made a face. "Okay. Nope."
Her phone buzzed. Solomon calling.
She stared at his name and whispered, "No."
The phone continued vibrating. Solomon had asked her two days ago how memorizing Al-Fatihah was going.
She had said good. Good was subjective. She knew Bismillah.
She knew Alhamdulillah. She could make it convincingly through another several words if nobody asked follow-up questions. That counted as progress.
The phone stopped. Safiya exhaled.
Three seconds later a message appeared.
You studying?
Safiya looked suspiciously around the empty room.
Why?
The typing bubbles appeared immediately.
Call me.
I'm busy.
Studying?
Safiya considered lying. Not a serious lie. A tiny lie. A harmless, decorative lie.
Doing laundry.
The phone rang instantly.
"Allah, please help me," she whispered, then answered. "What?"
Solomon's voice came through warm and irritatingly amused. "You doing laundry?"
"Yes."
"Interesting."
"What is interesting about laundry?"
"Nothing. Put the camera on."
"Why?"
"I wanna see you."
That softened her before she could stop it. It always did. Solomon could irritate her for forty-five consecutive minutes, say something simple in the forty-sixth, and suddenly she remembered exactly why she tolerated him.
By the time distance entered their relationship, Safiya already knew the sound of Solomon's real laugh, the difference between his tired silence and his irritated silence, how he took his coffee, how seriously he took being a father,
and exactly how long he could pretend not to be amused before a smile betrayed him.
When work took him overseas, the life they had already built together had to learn a new shape: time-zone calculations, missed calls, sleepy conversations and video screens.
His beard looked fuller.
"You need a haircut," she said.
"You need to stop lying."
Her smile disappeared. "What?"
"Where the laundry at?"
Safiya glanced toward the empty floor.
Solomon waited.
"It's... in the other room."
"Safiya."
"Why are you worried about my laundry?"
"I'm not. You studying Al-Fatihah?"
Silence.
She hated that he could make a facial expression feel like cross-examination from another continent.
"I was going to."
"That's not what I asked."
"I had the video on."
"So why'd you tell me laundry?"
Safiya looked away. The answer was embarrassing.
"I don't want you hearing me mess it up."
Solomon's expression changed. Not dramatically. He did not always announce softness. Sometimes it simply entered his eyes.
"Why?"
"Because you're gonna correct me."
"That's generally how learning works."
"And you're gonna do that little face."
"What face?"
"That Safiya, what am I gonna do with you face."
He smiled. "This is just my face."
"No, that is exactly the face."
He laughed. "Read it."
Her stomach flipped. "No."
"Safiya."
"No."
"Read."
"I just told you I don't know it."
"And how you gonna learn it?"
"I was learning before you interrupted me."
"Doing laundry?"
She threw her pen at the phone. Solomon laughed so loudly she had to laugh too.
"Fine. But don't interrupt me every two seconds."
"I won't."
"And don't laugh."
"I won't."
"And don't-"
"Read, woman."
She looked down at her notebook. Her palms were sweating, which was ridiculous. She had survived things far more frightening than mispronouncing Arabic in front of a man who loved her.
She began slowly. Carefully. She made it through the first line, then the next. She stumbled and stopped.
"See?"
"See what?"
"I messed it up."
"You learning."
"Same thing."
"No, it's not. Go back."
This time he recited slowly first. Safiya repeated him. He corrected one sound. Again. She tried. Again. He nodded.
"That's it."
Her face brightened before she could hide it.
"There you go," Solomon said.
She hated how much two words from this man could affect her.
Not because she needed applause for everything.
She could work herself half to death without anybody noticing.
She could research something until three in the morning, build a plan from nothing, take care of somebody else while quietly falling apart herself.
But Solomon's approval landed differently.
She wanted him proud of her. Deeply. Dangerously, sometimes. She wanted him to look at something she had built and get that expression. She wanted to hear, That's my woman. She wanted her name to sound good in his mouth when she was not in the room.
And because she wanted that so badly, sometimes she hid the pieces she feared might disappoint him.
Like not knowing Al-Fatihah as well as she had implied.
Like saying laundry when she meant I am embarrassed.
Like changing ten percent of a story so the other ninety percent would land easier.
Solomon watched her through the screen. "What?"
"Nothing."
"That wasn't nothing."
She sighed. "Can we finish?"
"Safiya. Stop trying to be good at being Muslim in front of me."
The words hit somewhere unexpected.
"I don't."
"You do. You just lied about laundry because you didn't want me hearing you mess up a surah you've been learning for three weeks."
"Almost a year."
Solomon stared. "That's what you took from that?"
She laughed.
"Listen to me. I don't know everything either. If I tell you something about Islam and we don't know it's right, look it up. Ask somebody knowledgeable. Don't make me your imam."
"I wasn't."
"Good. But I can help you. I like helping you."
Her eyes lowered.
There it was again. Those little sentences.
By the time they finished, Safiya had repeated Al-Fatihah so many times the words continued moving through her mind after Solomon changed the subject. He asked about work. She asked about his children. His whole face changed when he spoke about them.
Safiya loved watching it happen.
Solomon could be guarded about himself, but fatherhood betrayed him. He remembered tiny details. A school assignment. Something one son had said. Something the other needed. A disagreement he was trying to handle from too far away.
Distance bothered him most when it interfered with being useful.
Safiya understood that about him before she understood what it might eventually cost.
"What are you doing when you get home?" she asked.
"Sleeping. See my babies. Handle some business."
"What business?"
"My business."
"Solomon."
He laughed, then became serious. "I want to build something."
Safiya stopped playing with her pen. "What?"
"I don't know exactly yet. I just know I don't want my whole life depending on somebody else's schedule. Somebody else's company. Somebody else's decision about whether I can take off, travel, be with my kids."
Safiya listened.
This was another kind of intimacy between them. Before their relationship became heavily physical, Solomon had gotten into her mind. They could spend hours talking about ownership, real estate, education, businesses, technology, parenting, mistakes, money, religion and lives they did not have yet.
Sometimes they disagreed so hard Safiya would hang up irritated, research his argument just to prove him wrong, and discover he was right. She hated those days.
"What kind of something?" she asked.
"I said I don't know."
"Okay, but service? Product? Real estate? Online?"
Solomon smiled. "There she go. Laptop brain."
She reached for the computer beside her.
"Safiya. It is almost two in the morning where you are."
She glanced at the clock. 1:47 a.m. "That is not two."
"Go to sleep."
"You don't control me."
"Never said I did."
"I could research this tonight and send you a whole business plan before breakfast."
"You probably could."
His calm agreement annoyed her more than arguing would have. Safiya closed the laptop.
Solomon grinned. "See? Manipulation."
"You manipulated me!"
"I literally agreed with you."
"You agreed in a manipulative tone."
He laughed. "Go make wudu before you sleep. You told me you're trying to get in the habit."
She had. Safiya had also hoped he had forgotten.
Her relationship with Islam was new enough that everything required conscious effort. Prayer times. Arabic. What invalidated wudu. Which rak'ah she was on. Where her hands went. What to say after rising from ruku'. Whether she had done one sujood or two.
She had once become so confused during salah that she stood completely still, trying to reconstruct the previous minute of her own life. Afterward she sat on the rug and laughed until she nearly cried.
Becoming Muslim had not made her instantly graceful. It had made her aware of how much she did not know.
"Safiya?"
"I'm going."
"Good."
"There you go again."
"What?"
"That proud voice."
Solomon became quiet.
Her joke felt too revealing.
"I am proud of you," he said.
Everything in her went still.
Almost a year of mispronunciations, alarms, awkward questions, Ramadan lessons, masjid nerves, scarves that never looked like the videos, prayers she sometimes made on time and prayers she had to fight herself not to delay,
and days when she still kept a transliteration nearby because fear could make familiar words disappear.
And this man had watched her try.
"Don't make it weird," she whispered.
"You made it weird. Go make wudu."
She smiled. "Goodnight."
"Safiya?"
"Yeah?"
"You don't have to lie to me because you're scared you won't make me proud."
There it was. The thing she loved and hated about Solomon.
He saw through her.
Not everything.
But too much.
"Goodnight," she muttered.
"Goodnight."
She almost ended the call.
"Solomon?"
"Yeah?"
"I miss you."
His expression softened. "I miss you too."