Chapter Twenty-Four
Despite the invigorating weekend I’d had, when Monday came along, I awoke with a sense of dread – a feeling that was becoming all too familiar. Prior to Sheila joining the firm as partner, I didn’t love my job, but I didn’t hate it either. But now, every morning I would awake to knots of anxiety in the pit of my stomach, wondering if I should call in sick.
With a yawn, I checked the notifications on my phone, the breath dying on my lips the instant I saw that I had an email from one of the universities I had applied to. Bracing myself for rejection – because anything other than soul-crushing disappointment was too alien to comprehend – I opened it, my eyes scanning the text for ‘rejection’.
It wasn’t a rejection.
It was an acceptance.
I stared at the words on the screen, my eyes filling with tears. I was going back to university to do my LLM, it was being paid for in full and my life was finally going somewhere beyond thirty items on a list made by a man I didn’t know.
Energised, I pushed the covers off my body, got out of the warmth of my bed and rushed to the shower. If I hurried, I would still make it in time.
I was struck by an overwhelming sense of déjà vu when I half-walked, half-ran to the Tube station and threw myself onto the Piccadilly Line train that was already at the platform, just as the warning beeps began to ring, indicating the imminent closing of the doors. You don’t want to be partially inside the carriage when those doors close, trust me. I’ve been there and it’s pretty painful, not to mention embarrassing.
As I rummaged around in my makeup bag, I thought back to the morning I met Noah and how my life had changed for the better since. I knew it wasn’t because of him per se, it was because of the list and my own perseverance and determination, but he did deserve a little credit. If I hadn’t met him that day, I would still be the same Maya I was more than seven months ago; a shadow, going through the motions of life without actually living.
Carefully brushing on some powder and blusher, I looked around the carriage, half expecting to see him. I didn’t, of course. As always, the train was packed with commuters who wanted nothing more than to avoid eye contact with me and everyone else. I wished God would throw Noah in my path again, instead of constantly planting Zakariya on it. I knew that I didn’t really know Noah, but I felt like I did. We had connected instantly during our short conversation and I felt as though I had got to know him more because of the list. I knew that he was driven and ambitious, adventurous and open-minded. I knew that he had goals and dreams and he was determined to achieve them. I knew that he appreciated literature, films, art and history. He was the full package as far as I could tell: good looks, great charisma, intelligence. What wasn’t there to like about him?
Then there was Zakariya, who had all but told me he wasn’t interested in me and had only met me to keep his parents quiet. Zakariya, who judged me the moment we met and made me – a girl he didn’t know – feel guilty for being at an art class I had accidentally attended. Zakariya, who showed up at my house and made me more uncomfortable. And then proceeded to help me out: driving me home, recommending the Arabic class, buying me dinner, taking me to Snowdon. Ignoring me for weeks after. Preferring DC to Marvel.
The sad reality was that neither man was into me, I realised as I sat on the train. If Noah had been, he would have asked for my number before he ran off the train that day. If Zakariya was, he had plenty of opportunity to give me an inkling. The fact was, I was wasting my time, energy and brain space thinking about them. Right now, I could have been listening to a podcast or reading a book, or working harder at evening out my eyebrows. I could have been engaging in a riveting conversation with the man across the carriage with the unkempt beard, vacant look in his eyes and a vague scent of beer wafting from his direction. OK, maybe not. But my point was, I was wasting my time. It needed to stop. Neither deserved my attention and thoughts, especially not Zakariya. I needed to focus on myself, my career, my education and my list.
Emerging at Hammersmith, I took out my phone to tap through the gates and for the second time that day, I received news that both winded me and filled me with joy at the same time. It was from Mohammed: Dina was finally in labour, two weeks after her due date!
Without wasting another moment, I sent HR an email, turned back around and headed to the hospital, texting Mohammed that I was on my way.
‘Maya, salaam’alaykom!’ Dina’s mum, Aunty Noura, greeted me when I finally made it to North Middlesex over an hour later.
‘Salaam, Aunty,’ I replied, giving her a brief hug, relieved that she had arrived in time for the birth of her second grandchild, but also worried. Her and Dina’s relationship had always been strained and I hoped and prayed that her presence proved to be helpful, not stressful.
‘My poor daughter has been in there for hours and no one’s telling me what’s going on,’ she said loudly for the benefit of the labour ward receptionist. ‘I’m so worried. Ya Allah, protect my daughter! Ya Rab, deliver this baby safely! My Lord, listen to my prayers!’
I gulped. I had forgotten what Aunty Noura was like. But then I heard the most deafening, wretched wail coming from one of the closed doors. It sounded like Dina. Stricken, I turned to stare at Aunty Noura, who also began to moan.
‘Ya Allah! Ya Rab! My poor baby! Have mercy, Ya Arhamar Raahimeen!’
As Dina’s mum proceeded to call all her relatives and speak to them in loud, fast Arabic above the sounds of the screaming and moaning from the labour rooms, I snuck over to one of the midwives.
‘Is everything OK with my friend?’ I asked her quietly. ‘Dina Al Farawi? Are there any updates?’
‘Nothing to worry about,’ the midwife reassured me. ‘She’s doing great, there are no complications. It just took a while for her to dilate to the full ten centimetres, that’s why she’s been in there a while.’
‘But all the screaming .?.?. it’s really worrying,’ I managed to say, feeling faint as another long, primal moan pierced my ears.
‘All very normal. Your friend is incredibly brave, she didn’t want an epidural and is surviving on gas and air only. Don’t worry and be strong, OK?’
‘Shu? What did she say?’ Aunty Noura all but yelled at me as I approached her and I repeated what the midwife had told me.
‘Huh!’ she scoffed, folding her arms across her ample bosom. ‘These midwives have no clue. Babies should be delivered by doctors . Australia is much better than this God-awful country with its God-awful NHS!’
‘Don’t they have midwives in Australia, Aunty?’ I asked innocently.
‘Oh, be quiet, child, I can’t hear myself think!’
Three hours later, baby Sama entered the world at nine pounds and two ounces. She was beautiful like her mummy, with a head full of dark curls and the chubbiest, rosiest cheeks. Dina looked exhausted, but happy. She had to have a bunch of stitches after the delivery and I couldn’t fathom how she was managing to smile after all that.
‘Dina, you’re bloody amazing,’ I whispered as I stroked her damp, sweaty hair while the baby lay naked on her chest.
‘I’m not,’ she replied, barely able to speak. ‘It’s the baby who’s amazing. Isn’t she beautiful?’
After some cuddles and a cup of tea, I took my leave so she could rest and enjoy this time with her family. As I turned to go, I caught Dina staring in awe at her baby, like she was the most precious thing in the world, and a lump formed in my throat. I didn’t know why; I was truly thrilled for her. I guess I just hoped that one day, I would experience the same.
Later that night, after texting back and forth with Dina and making sure she was OK and didn’t need anything, I took out the notebook and flicked through the now worn pages and found number fifteen:
15.GO SKYDIVING
AMAZING! BEST THING EVER!
It wasn’t the best thing ever. Holding a newborn baby that had grown inside of you was truly amazing, not jumping out of a stupid plane.
But I didn’t have a baby. Or even someone to make a baby with. And if there was one thing in this world that petrified me more than snakes, tarantulas and walking through Edmonton at night, it was the mere idea of throwing myself out of an aeroplane. Life in London was dangerous enough as it was. Every time I left my house, I was at risk of getting stabbed, raped or at the very least, mugged. I didn’t need to participate in thrill-seeking activities for a buzz.
But I had to do it. This was number fifteen, exactly halfway through the list. I had come so far. My comfort zone had been shed so long ago that I no longer knew where it was. I had grown with every task I had completed and I didn’t regret a single one, not even Ulysses . I HAD to do it, whether anyone wanted to do it with me or not.
But maybe there was someone – well, two people – who were crazy enough to join me:
MAYA: Who wants to go skydiving with me?
I posted into the group chat I shared with my twin cousins. Pinky’s response came instantly:
PINKY: Hell yes, I’m there. When and where?
Pretty’s took a while longer and when it came, I felt a massive grin spread across my face:
PRETTY: Only if it’s in Dubai.
Three weeks later, I was on a plane with the twins, on our way to an extra-long weekend in Dubai. I would have liked to have gone for longer, but Sheila wouldn’t let me take more than three days off because of the ‘short notice’. No one else had booked leave and Lucy was fine with me handing over my urgent tasks to her, but she still refused on ‘principle’. God, I hated her more and more each day.
Persuading Sheila to give me the time off was almost as hard as persuading my parents to let me go. I didn’t understand why they were so strict about me going abroad. Everyone I knew travelled! Although to be fair, Dina used to lie to her parents and pretend she was going on work trips all the time. She was quite possibly the only teacher who had travelled to thirteen countries in two years for ‘work events’.
It was my chacha and chachi – the twins’ parents – who stepped in and had a word with Ma and Baba. I overheard Chachi saying things like, ‘Restricting kids too much will only lead to resentment and rebellion’. Ha. I was hardly a rebel, but if I had to act the part to get to see the world, I would.
In that time, between visiting Dina and her newborn, running and work, I had done two more items on the list. Number sixteen was ‘Take Mum to a West End musical – Mamma Mia ? Grease ? Back to the Future ? Wicked ?’ Underneath, as always, he had written his own little comment on how it went. This time, it was: ‘ Wicked was simply wicked!’ It was cute that he wanted to treat his mum to a show and I was more than happy to do the same for mine. Since she had persuaded my dad to let me travel, I was also feeling particularly benevolent towards her.
Ma wanted to see Grease , her all-time favourite non-Bollywood movie. If there was one celeb she loved more than Princess Diana, it was Olivia Newton-John and so we made a night of it with a fancy Indian meal on Shaftesbury Avenue afterwards. Our throats were sore from singing along to all the songs at the top of our off-key voices, but it was worth it. I hadn’t seen Ma let go like that in a long time and I decided to do things with her more often.
On that note, I forced her to enjoy number seventeen with me, which was watching The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I was ashamed to admit that I hadn’t seen any of the movies. I always pretended to know what people were on about whenever they mentioned hobbits or the Shire. Once, when Arjun had come back from the Peak District, he said something about it feeling like ‘the Shire’ and I had responded, ‘Which shire is Peak District in then? Is it Yorkshire?’ In my world, anything beyond the M25 was the stuff of legends and fairy tales.
Ma quite enjoyed the first movie, although almost jumping out of her skin at some parts. By the time we got to the second though, she was fast asleep and snoring on the couch. When it was time to watch the final film, she politely declined.
‘Maybe next time we can watch the latest Karan Johar instead?’
‘If you had to compile a list of thirty things to do before you turn thirty, what would you put on it?’ I posed the question to the twins once we were safely in the sky and the cabin crew were going around with drinks. The three of us had adjacent seats on the left side of the plane, with me on the aisle and Pinky in the middle.
‘There’s so much I want to do,’ Pinky mused. ‘I want to travel more. I’d love to write something, like a novel or a collection of short stories. Maybe learn a new skill like knitting or sewing.’
‘Sewing would be cool,’ I said. ‘I’d love to be able to make my own clothes. Not that I have an eye for fashion. And I’m clumsy with my hands.’
‘You’d probably poke your own eye out with a needle,’ Pinky agreed. ‘Remember that time you cut your finger with scissors when your mum used to make us do craft sessions in the holidays?’
Pretty laughed at that. ‘Your hands would become a pin cushion. You’d bleed all over the fabric.’
‘All right, all right,’ I interrupted. Maybe not sewing then. ‘What about you, Pretty? What would you do?’ I peered around Pinky to look at Pretty, who was staring out of the window. At what, I didn’t know, as it was nighttime and we were too high up to see anything but darkness out there. I waited for her to say something crazy, like bungee jumping or going to Coachella.
‘I’m hoping I’m married before I turn thirty,’ she admitted quietly, still looking out of the window.
‘Woah, that’s deep,’ I said, downing my apple juice in three gulps. ‘I don’t think I could put a timeline on something like that. It’ll happen when it happens.’
‘ If it happens,’ Pinky agreed. ‘It’s not destined for everyone, you know. And who needs a man anyway?’
‘Thanks for giving me hope,’ Pretty muttered. ‘I knew you wouldn’t understand. What’s so wrong about wanting to get married? You want to get married too! If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be attending all these dekha dekhis!’
‘I don’t mind getting married, but it’s not a goal! It’s a “nice to have”. That’s different,’ Pinky rationalised calmly.
‘How is it different?’
The sisters began to bicker and I tuned them out and put on my headset instead. We had six hours of this flight left and four days together. I didn’t want to ruin it by arguing or getting too deep, so I left them to it and settled down with a film instead.
Our skydive was booked for Sunday, our last day. This was intentional in case we became so traumatised by the experience that we weren’t able to enjoy the rest of the trip. Given that none of us were rich, we were in a hotel apartment that was clean, modern and spacious, but not overly glam or luxurious like most of the city.
On Friday we went to the Sheikh Zayed Mosque in Abu Dhabi for Jumuah prayers, which was a magical experience. Pretty and I had to wear hijabs and abayas and I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. Maybe it was because we were in the mosque, or because we were in a Muslim country, but I felt good wearing it and blending in with the other women who wore it. I felt like I was a part of a global family and community. A woman I didn’t know walked past me and gave her Salaam to me, which never happened to me as I wasn’t a visible Muslim most of the time. That moment of solidarity reminded me that I was part of something bigger than myself and my family.
The mosque was huge and looked like something out of 1001 Arabian Nights , with its brilliant white domes and pillars made from marble. After the congregational salah was over, I sat in the women’s prayer hall for some time while my cousins explored and took pictures. It was so peaceful and serene. Pressing my head to the floor in prostration, I prayed for God to grant me peace in this life and the next and guide me towards what was best for me, whatever or whoever it was. I also prayed for the courage to get through the skydive on Sunday without getting hurt or humiliated. I was trying my best to block it from my mind, because whenever I thought about it, I could feel acid churning in my stomach. It wasn’t the jump itself that made me want to go back to London, it was how my body was going to react to the shock of it. What if I threw up in the sky and bits of my vomit landed on everyone else? What if I weed myself and it soaked through my jumpsuit and onto the instructor? Or worse .?.?. what if my bowels decided to release themselves mid-jump? There was a plethora of things that could go wrong, anatomically, each one leaving me completely disgraced forever.
Ya Allah, I beg you, please have mercy on me and let me find the courage to jump and please get me through it with my dignity intact, I beseeched, my forehead pressed so firmly on the ground that I could feel it getting carpet burn. I promise I’ll be a better Muslim if you do! I’ll help Ma more around the house and I’ll pray more regularly and I’ll do ten extra fasts and I’ll give a hundred pounds to a charity for .?.?. My mind went blank. There were so many valid and important causes. Palestine. Syria. Sudan. The Congo. Droughts. Floods. Famine. Clean water. Healthcare. Refugees .?.?.
.?.?. Orphans , I decided. Looking after orphan children was considered one of the most noble charitable acts. The Prophet Muhammad, peace be on him, was an orphan and looking after orphan children was mentioned a lot in the Holy Qur’an.
We went back to Dubai after visiting the mosque and then spent the evening on a desert safari, which was a lot of fun. After a thrilling (and sometimes scary) bout of dune bashing followed by camel riding and sand boarding, we were taken to a camp where we enjoyed a barbecue dinner, had our henna done and chilled with a pipe of shisha for the twins. Later that night, there was a belly-dancing show. We all clapped along to the music, maybe a bit too enthusiastically because suddenly the vigorous dancer was standing right next to me, flinging her red hair this way and that, bumping my shoulders with her hips and using her body to tell me that I should join her.
No flipping way. My face scarlet, I shook my head vehemently. She took this as a sign that I was interested and proceeded to grab my hand and hoist me to my feet, wiggling her ample bosom in my face and grinning almost maniacally. I began to feel sorry for her at this point. Her job wasn’t easy – trying to coax unwilling participants into dancing with her was probably the least of her problems. She probably had to fend off the ones who were a bit too willing, all the while acting like she was having the time of her life when all she wanted to do was curl up in bed with a good romcom and a tube of Pringles. She probably hated being ogled day in, day out, forced into jiggling her belly while onlookers analysed every inch of her flesh.
The story I had conjured felt so realistically woeful that I decided to give in to make her happy. Plastering a fake, toothy smile on my face, I wiggled my hips back at her and shook my hair out in what I hoped was the same sexy way she did. Her expression changed as I joined in and copied her moves to the rhythmic drumming. It was quite fun, letting go like that. I had never danced in front of anyone before. I was always the girl at the mehndi party who clapped along quietly in the corner, trying not to draw too much unwanted attention to herself. Forget being a wallflower, I was more like wall-paper. Completely unnoticeable.
But no one here knew me, besides the twins, who were hooting and cheering me along. I was on the other side of the world. There were no aunties insulting my complexion. No grannies asking me why no one wanted to marry me. No uncles comparing Malik’s successful career to mine. It was just me and the music, dancing in the middle of the Dubai desert under a diamond-studded sky.