CHAPTER 3 #2
Safiya turned it over.
"You think I need this?"
"I think you want a lot. And sometimes you try to become everything at the same time."
Muslimah. Partner. Businesswoman. Friend. Future wife. Somebody dependable. Somebody healed. Somebody successful. Somebody Solomon could be proud of.
"You think I can't?"
"I think you can do damn near anything you decide to do. But you don't have to prove all of it by next Tuesday."
Safiya laughed.
Then he said, "I'm proud of you."
There it was.
She tried to absorb it normally.
Could not.
"What?" he asked.
"Nothing."
"Safiya."
"I like when you say that."
"Say what?"
She looked away. "That you're proud of me."
Solomon's expression softened. "Why?"
"Because I want you to be."
The vulnerability embarrassed her. She rushed to cover it.
"Not that I need-"
"Stop. You don't have to clean it up."
He stepped closer. "I am proud of you. You changed your whole life. You took shahada. You learning your prayers. You working. You still trying to build something. You got things to work on. I do too. But I see you trying."
Safiya refused to cry in a bookstore parking lot.
Then he said it.
"I see you trying."
She looked away immediately.
He laughed. "Why you acting shy now?"
"Get in the car."
She smiled so hard her cheeks hurt.
They should have gone home. Instead they sat in the parking lot another hour while Safiya showed him her notes from The Ideal Muslimah.
"You highlighted half the page," Solomon said.
"Because it's important."
"If everything highlighted, nothing highlighted."
"I'm processing."
"You attacking the book."
She snatched it back. "You're not spiritually supportive."
"I helped you with Al-Fatihah."
"And now you're criticizing my highlighting."
He laughed.
Then Safiya grew serious.
"Some of this is hard."
"What part?"
"The wife stuff. I've had to survive men. So sometimes when I read about obedience, marriage, husbands having rights... my brain doesn't hear what the page is saying. It hears control."
Solomon did not interrupt.
"I've been in situations where love meant shrinking. Where peace meant don't upset him. Where being a good woman meant tolerating things that were destroying me. I don't want that again. But I also don't want my past deciding what Islam means."
Solomon nodded slowly.
"Then don't learn it from me alone. Read. Ask women who know more than you. Ask scholars. Go to classes. I'll teach you what I know. But I don't know everything."
Safiya smiled.
"What?"
"I just like that you said it."
"Said what?"
"That you don't know everything."
He reached for the book and Safiya twisted away laughing. Solomon caught her around the waist.
The laughter stopped.
His face was close.
Too close.
Safiya's hand rested against his chest. Neither moved.
There were moments when their boundaries did not collapse dramatically. No decision. No conversation. Just inches becoming fewer inches.
Solomon looked at her mouth.
Safiya knew because she was looking at his.
"Safiya."
His voice was lower.
She should have moved.
Instead she whispered, "What?"
Solomon closed his eyes for a second, then released her.
"We gotta chill."
She nodded. "Yeah."
Neither looked at the other.
Faith did not erase desire. It taught them what to do with it.
Some days they were better students than others.
Solomon dropped her home after midnight. Before she got out, he asked what time Fajr was. Safiya checked and told him.
"Set your alarm."
"I know how alarms work."
"Set it."
He looked at her. "Controlling."
"Supportive."
"Same thing in your dictionary."
That landed closer than the joke intended. Safiya's smile weakened.
Solomon noticed.
"Hey. I'm playing. You don't gotta turn everything into evidence against yourself."
Her hand stayed on the door handle.
"You working on it," he said. "That's all I'm asking."
Safiya hugged him. Solomon held her for a little too long.
Inside, she opened the book he had bought her.
Something was written inside the cover in Solomon's messy handwriting.
You don't have to become her overnight.
Build her.
- S
Safiya read it three times, pressed the book against her chest and whispered to the empty apartment, "That's my man."
? ? ?
Solomon's first full weekend home became a collection of moments Safiya would later miss more than the expensive memories she never had.
They went to a discount store for toothpaste and left with a lamp, two notebooks, a phone charger, a bag of candy neither admitted choosing and a tiny artificial plant Solomon insisted was ugly.
"Then why are you carrying it?" Safiya asked.
"Because you put it in the cart."
"You could put it back."
"Then you'd look at me like I killed something."
"It's a plant."
"It's plastic."
"It still has feelings."
Solomon stopped walking. "This is who I came home to?"
"Unfortunately."
At the register Safiya reached for her wallet. Solomon moved her hand away.
"I got it."
"I can pay for my stuff."
"I know."
"Then why -"
"Because I want to."
The simplicity of it disarmed her. She was so accustomed to proving capability that being cared for sometimes felt like a challenge she needed to answer.
Outside, they sat in the car eating candy before driving anywhere.
"This is our date?" Safiya asked.
"You complained about the restaurant being too expensive yesterday."
"I said the appetizers were disrespectful."
"Same thing."
She leaned back. "I like this better anyway."
"Sitting in a parking lot?"
"Sitting with you."
Solomon looked at her, and she immediately regretted saying something sincere without preparing a joke behind it.
"Don't make it weird," she warned.
"You made it weird."
"See? This is why I don't tell you things."
He laughed, then turned serious. "Tell me things."
Safiya picked at the candy wrapper. "Even when they're stupid?"
"Especially then."
She looked at him.
"I missed doing nothing with you."
Solomon nodded. "Me too."
They stayed another forty minutes. They argued about music, watched half a documentary on his phone, discussed whether a duplex was a better first investment than a small business, and nearly missed Asr because neither wanted to end the conversation.
When the prayer reminder sounded, Solomon looked at the dashboard clock.
"We gotta go."
"We can pray when we get there."
"That's how twenty minutes becomes an hour."
Safiya sighed dramatically. "I liked overseas Solomon better."
"Overseas Solomon couldn't see you rolling your eyes."
"Exactly."
They found a quiet place, made wudu as best they could with what was available, and prayed separately. Safiya stumbled over a phrase and corrected herself. Solomon did not comment afterward.
In the car she asked, "Did you hear me mess up?"
"Yep."
"And?"
"And you fixed it."
That answer stayed with her.
? ? ?
Safiya's Fajr alarm sounded at 5:11 the next morning.
She opened one eye, turned it off and closed the eye again.
Her phone rang.
She ignored it.
It rang a second time.
Safiya grabbed it without looking. "What?"
"Get up."
Solomon.
"You called me?"
"Yeah."
"Why?"
"Fajr."
Safiya looked at the ceiling. "You could've texted."
"You would've ignored it."
"I ignored your call."
"You answered the second one."
"That is not the point."
"Get up."
She groaned. "You up?"
"Obviously."
"How do I know?"
Solomon switched to video. He sat on the edge of his bed looking almost as miserable as she felt.
Safiya started laughing. "You look terrible."
"So do you."
"You're rude."
"You're sleepy."
"You called me."
"For prayer."
Something about that mattered.
Not because Solomon was a flawless man dragging her toward righteousness. She had already seen him delay salah because he was working. She had watched him say I'm about to pray and still be sitting there twenty minutes later. She had asked questions he could not answer.
That made it safer.
Safiya did not need another human being pretending to be perfect. She needed somebody willing to turn back toward Allah beside her.
"Okay," she said.
"Wudu."
"Bossy."
"Safiya."
"I'm going."
They placed their phones down. Separate homes. Separate prayer rugs. Same prayer.
Safiya kept a small card near the edge of her rug because forgetting one thing sometimes made her panic and forget five others. She made wudu slowly and returned to stand.
By the second rak'ah, her mind wandered.
Work.
A bill.
Solomon's handwriting inside the book.
The way he had looked at her in the car.
She pulled herself back, then wandered again.
After salah, Solomon texted.
You finish?
Yes.
How was it?
Safiya considered typing good.
Instead: My body prayed Fajr. My brain attended a staff meeting, reviewed my bills and replayed last night.
His response came quickly.
??????
I'm serious.
I know. Keep praying.
Safiya looked at the message.
No lecture. No pretending he never struggled with concentration. Just keep praying.
She saved it.
That afternoon, Zahra called.
Safiya answered while walking between buildings at work. "What's wrong?"
Zahra was silent.
Safiya stopped walking.
She knew that silence.
"Zahra?"
"I need a favor."
Just like that, Safiya's posture changed.
"What happened?"
"I don't know yet. My mom..."
Zahra's voice broke.
There were people whose emergencies Safiya heard as information. And there were people whose emergencies entered her body.
Zahra was still the second kind.
Before Solomon had come home, before three people started sharing too much space, before friendship and loyalty tangled with jealousy and boundaries, there had simply been two women who recognized survival in one another.
"What do you need?" Safiya asked.
"I don't know. I just don't want to be alone."
Safiya looked at the clock.
She had work. An appointment later. Solomon was finally home. She had promised herself she would spend tonight reading. She had promised herself she would stop automatically rearranging her life whenever somebody else had a crisis.
Then Zahra whispered, "Please."
Safiya closed her eyes.
"Where are you?"
She did not know yet that complicated things often began like this.
Not with betrayal.
Not with bad intentions.
Sometimes they began with compassion.
With one person saying I need help.