BY THE TIME SHE HAS REACHED THE BOTTOM OF THE STAIRS she has shaken the heaviness of sleep and now moves quickly, aware of the little time they have left to eat. Fifth day of Ramadan. Middle of the night. She flips rotis she rolled out last night. The heat of the stove dissolves the numbness of her face, her eyelids. One after another and they rise and she presses down with her spatula, feels the rush of heat as they deflate. In her tired state, the black spots appear like unique patterns. Hadia and Huda are used to fasting but this is the first year that Amar—only ten, five years before his baligh age—is trying. The first three days he kept half roza, broke it when Layla coaxed him with macaroni and sliced fruit, reminding him he was still too young. He could wait to assume the obligation that would last his lifetime. But last night, after she finished telling them stories about the Prophet’s love for his grandson Hussain—a rare end to their nights now—he insisted he would fast the full day and that she should wake him for sehri. She regards him as younger at ten than her daughters seemed at nine, when they began wearing hijab and praying and fasting during Ramadan. Were you two also that little then? she wonders when she sees her daughters, now thirteen and fourteen.
The rotis are put into their box and the lid sealed shut. Now she fries an egg for Rafiq, reheats leftover spinach for the children. She rinses a bunch of purple grapes. The month of Ramadan awakens a primal instinct in her: she is sensitive to how much her children eat, watches them drink a glass of water and then gulp milk and still worries for them. Some nights, when she feels particularly affectionate toward her daughters for fasting, she piles the food on trays and carries them either to the girls’ beds or to a corner in her room, where they huddle and feast half awake in the night.
She does not know why Amar decided this was the year he would try to keep fasts. More perplexing is that it seems he genuinely wants to, despite fasting being the most difficult and tiring ritual for the body. First begin to pray, she had told him. First stop bothering your sisters so much. First learn to control your anger. But who was she to say no? What was the phrase—beggars cannot be choosers? If this was how he wanted to participate, she would support him. She would make it easier for all of them. She would let them stay up at night if it meant they were snacking and not waking her or Rafiq, let them sleep in during the day. She would plan the meals that broke their fast around their tastes. This was the month she allowed them takeout days in a row, endless helpings of dessert. She wondered if Amar’s recent insistence might be because his friend, Abbas, Seema’s boy, had just turned fifteen and begun fasting himself. Layla liked him and his younger brothers—much more than she liked Seema—partly because of how much their friendship meant to her son. But also because Abbas always made a point to say salaam to her and he dipped his head in that respectful way before joining Amar outside. Or maybe her son was just reacting to Ramadan, a month so holy she was sure it softened the heart of every believer.
She is startled when she hears Rafiq’s footsteps. Sometimes he wakes with enough time for them to prepare sehri together, and they stumble about the kitchen. Other times it is just her, turning on only the lights she needs to see the space before her.
“Let’s eat upstairs?” she says, and he nods his slow, half-asleep nod and brings out the trays. Layla sets glasses on one tray and pours water in some and milk in the others, ever conscious of the ticking clock, anxious there will be no time left for her children to eat before being hungry all day.
“We don’t need to wake Amar,” Rafiq says, when she counts out five plates. He lifts the heavier tray.
“But he insisted—he wants to.”
“He doesn’t need to yet.”
“Shouldn’t we encourage him?”
“On any other day, yes. Tomorrow is going to be the hottest day of the summer, the longest roza, and he’s still going to want to play basketball.”
She returns a plate to the shelf and follows with the second tray. Sometimes he surprises her with his lenience, other times it is his strict adherence that unsettles her. She could guess, but could never accurately predict, where he would stand on a matter. They set down the trays in their room and Rafiq begins to divide food onto the plates. Layla goes to wake the girls. Amar will be so angry in the morning when he realizes no one woke him. You promised you would, you promised—she would hear it all day. Promises meant more to Amar. And she had no doubt he would refuse breakfast, refuse lunch, and if he ate it would only be in secret.
She does not want another day disrupted by his bad behavior, the domino effect it has on Hadia and Huda. Yesterday there had been one of those bizarre, rare hot summer thunderstorms that forced her children to entertain themselves indoors. Before the storm passed, all three of them were in time-out—or maybe the term was “trouble” now; they were getting too old for the reprimands she knew how to implement. Some fight over the television remote and she was exhausted. The television screen black, Hadia sent to her room, Huda to hers, Layla’s voice hoarse from shouting that this was not appropriate behavior, and Amar was to sit quietly in the kitchen with her and think about what he had done, how he had thrown the remote at a wall so the battery compartment came loose and the batteries fell out. Huda screamed that he had aimed it at her, while Amar insisted loudly that he had not. Layla did not know what to do, except to tell them to scatter. Maybe her hold over them was lost but Rafiq, when he was home, still had his spell that he could conjure just by looking at them, just by sitting in the same room. They listened to him and were not rude to him and for whatever reason they had decided that not only would they not listen to her, but they would be rude too, openly questioning her decisions—Hadia mumbling, of course you let Amar stay downstairs still, and Huda stomping up the stairs after her.
Amar and Layla had stood in the kitchen in silence. Amar watched the rain hit the window, anger emanating from him like steam rising from a hot mug. Upstairs, either Hadia or Huda slammed her door shut and banged things around in her room to emphasize her frustration.
Amar pointed to the glass and said, “Look, when it rains harder the drops join together more quickly.”
She raised her finger to her lips to shush him, but when she turned back to the window she saw what he meant.
She waited for the rain to stop its storming and stepped out into her garden to check on her tomatoes, and the moisture from the damp grass seeped through her sandals. They were fine. Little green tomatoes just beginning to grow. Amar watched her from behind the sliding door, his face pressed against the glass so his eyebrows looked strange and flattened down. She tried not to smile. He was so alone in their home. Hadia and Huda were ready to comfort each other. Her daughters’ faces were not at the window to see her and accuse her of special treatment, so she waved Amar over and he came. They walked together and he followed closely. What did he notice that she didn’t? He tugged at a leaf of her basil plant as if to show her he was angry still, then let go before it snapped, the bush shaking and drops of rainwater flecking out in all directions. Her son knew how to look closely at the route of rain on glass. She had not taught him this. What could she teach him about how to be in the world other than how to behave?
Amar looked at her in a way that asked, have you forgiven me yet? And because he looked at her in that way—his initial anger replaced by shyness—she knew the power was tilted in her favor, and she could try to extend his guilt, hoping it would make him think twice next time.
“You know, Baba would be very angry if he saw what you did today.”
They didn’t care how she was affected. Maybe children could never imagine their mother as being anyone other than their mother.
“I already know that.” He put his hands in his pockets. Then looked up at her from the corner of his eye. “Are you going to tell him?”
“No.”
“Will they?” He nodded toward Huda’s window. How quickly he separated himself from them.
“Maybe if you apologize they won’t.”
His face soured. What was it about an apology that was so difficult? It always felt like it cost something personal and precious. Only now that she was a mother was she so aware of this: the stubbornness and pride that came with being human, the desire to be loyal and generous that came too, each impulse at odds with the other.
“You have to apologize when you have wronged someone no matter what, especially if it is your sisters.”