Chapter 2 Zainab
ZAINAB
TWELVE YEARS EARLIER—BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
“Girl, hurry UP.”
I was struggling to keep up because my eyes were blurry with tears I refused to let fall. Not yet. Not until I was somewhere safe. Somewhere Stephon’s stupid, handsome, pressure-applying face couldn’t find me.
“Zainab, I swear to God, if we miss this bus—”
“I’m coming!” I wiped my face with the back of my hand and forced my legs to move faster.
We made it to the stop just as the bus rounded the corner, wheezing to a halt with that familiar hiss of the doors opening. Zahara grabbed my hand and pulled me up the steps, swiping her bus pass and then mine while I stood there like a zombie, barely functioning.
The bus was mostly empty—a few older women with shopping bags, a guy in the back with headphones so loud I could hear the bass from here, a tired-looking mother with a toddler on her lap. We slid into a seat near the middle, and Zahara immediately turned to face me.
“Okay.” She pulled our hijabs and niqabs out of her bag—the ones we’d stuffed in there four hours ago when we’d met the boys at the mall. “Let me fix your face before you get us both killed.”
I sat still while she worked, draping the fabric over my head and tucking it around my face with practiced fingers. We’d been doing this for months now—sneaking out to see Stephon and Meech, pretending to be good Muslim girls while we lived double lives. It was exhausting. Exhilarating. Terrifying.
And now, apparently, over. At least for me.
“He broke up with me,” I whispered, and saying it out loud made it real. Made the tears I’d been holding back finally spill over, streaking down my cheeks and probably ruining the mascara Zahara had let me borrow. “Right there in the food court. In front of everybody.”
Zahara’s hands paused on my hijab. “He did what?”
“Said he was tired of waiting.” I laughed, but it came out soggy and pathetic. “Said if I wasn’t ready to take our relationship to the next level, then maybe we shouldn’t be together at all.”
“That nigga.” Zahara’s jaw tightened, and I saw that protective fire flare up in her eyes—the one that always appeared when someone hurt me.
We were identical in almost every way, but that fire?
That was all her. I was the soft one. The careful one.
The one who thought too much and felt too deeply.
Zahara was the fighter. “I should’ve let Meech beat his ass. ”
“No, don’t.” I shook my head, fresh tears falling. “It’s my fault. Maybe I should’ve just… I don’t know. Maybe I should’ve just done it. Given him what he wanted. Then he wouldn’t have—”
“Stop.” Zahara grabbed my face with both hands, forcing me to look at her.
We had the same eyes—dark brown, almost black, with lashes that curled without mascara.
Looking at her was like looking in a mirror, except the reflection was always braver than I was.
“Listen to me, Zai. You made the right decision. You hear me? Don’t ever let some dusty-ass nigga make you feel bad for not being ready.
That’s YOUR body. YOUR choice. And if he can’t respect that, then he can go fuck himself.
Literally. Since that’s clearly all he cares about. ”
I wanted to believe her. I really did. But the ache in my chest said otherwise. Stephon had been my first boyfriend. My first kiss. My first everything except that. And now he was gone, and I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d made a mistake. If I’d been too uptight. Too scared. Too… me.
“You don’t understand,” I mumbled. “You and Meech—”
“Me and Meech are different.” Zahara’s voice dropped, and something shifted in her expression. That fire dimmed, replaced by something I couldn’t quite read. “And trust me, Zai, I wish I’d made the choice you made.”
I blinked. “What do you mean?”
She didn’t answer right away. Just finished adjusting my hijab, smoothing down the edges, making sure every strand of hair was tucked away. When she finally spoke, her voice was barely above a whisper.
“My period is late.”
The words hit me like a punch to the stomach.
“What?” I grabbed her arm, suddenly wide awake, my own heartbreak forgotten. “How late?”
“Three weeks.” She wasn’t looking at me anymore. Was staring out the window at the Baltimore streets passing by, her reflection ghostly against the glass. “Almost four.”
“Zahara—”
“I know.” Her voice cracked, and I watched my strong, fearless sister crumble right in front of me.
Tears spilled down her cheeks, and she pressed her hand over her mouth to muffle the sob that escaped.
“I know, okay? I know. I’m so stupid. We used protection most of the time, but there was this one time…
and I thought it would be fine… and now… ”
She couldn’t finish. Didn’t have to.
I pulled her into my arms and held her while she cried. Right there on the number 22 bus, surrounded by strangers who didn’t know or care that two sixteen-year-old girls were falling apart in the middle seat.
“It’s gonna be okay,” I whispered into her hijab, even though I had no idea if that was true. “We’ll figure it out. Whatever happens, we’ll figure it out together.”
“Baba will kill me.” Her voice was muffled against my shoulder. “If he finds out, he’ll actually kill me, Zai.”
“He won’t find out.” I pulled back, holding her face the way she’d held mine just moments ago. “You hear me? He won’t find out. We’ll get a test tomorrow, and if it’s positive, we’ll… we’ll figure out what to do. But he won’t find out. I won’t let him.”
She nodded, wiping her face, trying to pull herself together. “Okay. Okay.”
We spent the rest of the bus ride in silence, holding hands like we used to when we were little. Before boys. Before secrets. Before everything got so complicated.
I had no idea that in less than an hour, keeping secrets from our father would be the least of our problems.
The house was dark when we got home.
Not unusual—Baba liked to keep the lights low in the evening, said it was better for prayer and meditation. But something about the darkness felt different tonight. Heavier. More ominous.
Or maybe that was just my paranoia talking. I’d been on edge since the bus, my mind racing between Stephon’s rejection and Zahara’s possible pregnancy and the million ways our lives could implode if anyone found out the truth about who we really were behind closed doors.
Zahara squeezed my hand as we walked up the front steps. “It’s fine,” she whispered. “We’re fine. Just act normal.”
I nodded, taking a deep breath. Normal. I could do normal.
I opened the front door and stepped inside.
“Assalamu alaikum, Baba, we’re—”
The slap came out of nowhere.
One second I was greeting my father like I did every day, and the next my head was snapping to the side, my cheek exploding with pain, my vision going white at the edges. I stumbled backward, crashing into Zahara, who caught me before I hit the floor.
“BABA!” Zahara screamed, but before she could say anything else, his hand connected with her face too. The sound was like a gunshot in the quiet house. She fell against the wall, her hijab slipping, her hand pressed to her cheek in shock.
I’d never seen our father like this.
Shamir Ali was a strict man. A devout man.
A man who ran his household with an iron fist disguised as religious authority.
He had rules for everything—what we wore, what we ate, who we spoke to, where we went, how we prayed.
And yes, he’d disciplined us before. A slap here, a belt there, whatever he deemed necessary to keep his daughters in line.
But this was different.
This was rage.
“You think I’m stupid?” His voice was low. Controlled. Somehow more terrifying than if he’d been screaming. “You think I don’t know what my own daughters do behind my back?”
My heart stopped. Actually stopped, frozen in my chest like a dead thing.
He knew.
Oh God, he knew.
“Baba, please—” Zahara started.
“SILENCE.” He stepped toward us, and we both shrank back against the door. “Brother Tariq saw you. At the mall. With those corner boys. The ones always coming in to my store sniffin’ around you. What you think I didn’t know?”
Brother Tariq. Of course. That nosy, self-righteous snitch who worked at the halal butcher shop two blocks away. He must have seen us at the food court. Must have run straight to our father like the good little soldier he was.
“Take them off.” Baba’s voice cut through my thoughts. “Take off the hijabs.”
Neither of us moved.
“NOW.”
His hand shot out and grabbed Zahara’s hijab, ripping it off her head.
Her hair spilled out—long and dark and pressed straight, nothing like the natural curls she was supposed to have.
And underneath the hijab, her outfit was revealed—tight jeans, a fitted shirt that showed the curve of her breasts, hoop earrings she’d hidden in her bra.
She looked like a regular teenage girl. Which, to our father, was the worst thing she could possibly be.
He turned to me next, and I didn’t fight when he snatched my hijab away. What was the point? He already knew. He’d already seen Zahara. My outfit was almost identical—jeans, a V-neck shirt, a thin chain necklace with a heart pendant that Stephon had given me for my birthday.
Baba looked at us—his daughters, his flesh and blood, standing in his foyer dressed like the around the way girls he’d spent our whole lives telling us not to become—and something in his face shifted. The rage was still there, but underneath it was something worse.
Disgust.
“KIM!” His voice boomed through the house. “FATIMA! KHADIJA! Get in here. NOW.”
I heard movement upstairs. Footsteps. Doors opening.
Our father had three wives—our mother had been his first, but she’d died giving birth to us.
Kim was wife number two, Fatima was wife number three, and Khadija was the youngest, wife number four.
They all lived in this house with their children, all under Baba’s rule, all complicit in maintaining his version of order.