A Place for Us

by Fatima Farheen Mirza

They had been reckless with their words before. Like water they could return to any shape asked of them.

To stand side by side in that way, to stumble through my thoughts until I had something to say, would only emphasize it—the impossibility of us.

And let me always feel that this life is mine, experience it proudly, fully, and ever alive.

Clouds passed rapidly, hardly any stars were out, and the moon was so bright it seemed to have been placed just to shine a spotlight on them.

it was as though she had been tucked in a compartment in his heart that hadn’t changed, and seeing her now he knew it never would: he could return to her at any age and feel for her the way he always had.

Do you like waking up before the rest of the world? When you were little did you think the moon followed you?

I want you to know there is a part of me that will always be who I was when I wrote that note and left it on your pillow. I never regretted that. I will always hope that you are happy, and safe, and healthy. I will pray you keep your promise. And that wherever you are, you are at home there.”

“Be careful who you point your blame at, Layla. And remember that anytime you point your finger to accuse someone, there are three fingers beneath it, curled to point right back at you.”

The gray clouds that had raced across the sky when he sat by Amira were gone.

“Baba,” he said, just to break the long silence. But he sounded like a child pleading—a break between the two syllables.

“No, I mean to the other place. The next place. I don’t think I’ll make it. I don’t think you’ll find me there.”

“We will wait until you are allowed in,” Baba said, as if to himself. “I will wait.”

“I don’t think He created us just to leave some of us behind,” Amar believed him. Amar wanted to.

“We will find you,” Baba had said, “don’t worry about that. Just worry about your deeds. I could find you anywhere.”

The Prophet was the leader of the entire ummah, his every action an example, but when his grandson climbed his back, he had bent the rules, and what if it had been because it was more important to protect a child from pain than to be unwavering in principle?

maybe His heart opened when His creations opened their hearts to one another,

Knew that it did not matter what anyone thought if her own heart were not at peace.

They have enlarged my life in a way I could not have anticipated and cannot fully express. I have no duty toward them except loving them, and because of this I am only loved in return. I am so unwilling to hurt them in even the slightest way that I spoil them instead.

that we could grow around your loss like a tree that bends around a barrier or wound.

That had I named you Ali or Mohammed or Hussain, maybe it would have been a constant and inescapable reminder for you to hold yourself to a standard they inspired.

You were stubborn with your sadness. You would enter it and not leave.

wonder if you realized that the world loved you, softened at your presence.

I stare at the white glow of the moon until something in me calms.

I was a kind of lonely I did not think anyone could understand.

That was my fight: to continue to do little things for people around me, so no one would find fault in my demeanor and misattribute it to my religion.

The most chilling of verses—We will send them signs and they will still deny—had become my own son.

there it is again—a moment from our life paused on the screen, how our backyard looked years ago, our children frozen in it.

To never look up and be made a child again by the wonder of the moon.

I had recited these very verses into his ear when he was a newborn. They were the first words he had ever heard. I wonder if his soul recognizes what his mind does not remember.

I will wait, until you are ready. I will always wait for you.’”

For his beloved grandson, out of his love for him, even the Prophet of Islam could pause the single most important requirement of faith, regardless of how many watched. What were we meant to learn from this that we had failed to?

And if what we have been taught is true, I will not enter without you. I will wait by the gate until I see your face. I have waited a decade, haven’t I, in this limited life? Waiting in the endless one would be no sacrifice. And Inshallah one day, I know I will see you approaching. You will look just as you did at twenty, that year you first left us, and I will also be as I was in my youth. We will look like brothers on that day. We will walk together, as equals.