“I won’t take anyone’s name,” she’d vow aloud, but he would have stopped listening.
Everyone important was a boy. The Prophets and the Imams had been men. The moulana was always a man. Jonah got to be swallowed by the whale. Joseph was given the colorful coat and the powerful dreams. Noah knew the flood was coming. Whereas Noah’s wife was silly and drowned. Eve was the first to reach for the fruit. But Hadia liked to keep her examples close. It was Moses’s sister who had the clever idea to put him in the basket, and the Pharaoh’s wife who had the heart to pull him from the river. It was Bibi Mariam who was given the miracle of Jesus. Bibi Fatima was the only child the Prophet had and the Prophet never lamented the lack of a son. And she liked to think that there was a reason that one of the first things the Prophet ever did was forbid the people of Quraysh from burying their newborn daughters alive. But still, hundreds and hundreds of years had passed, and it was still the son they cherished, the son their pride depended on, the son who would carry their name into the next generation.
* * *
SHE HOLDS ON to the banister to guide her. Everyone but Baba is asleep. She is supposed to be asleep too—but she is thirsty, and has dared to tiptoe downstairs for a glass of water. Amar’s test dominates the refrigerator door. In the blue light the ink of the 100% appears purple. She is not sure what to name her feeling, but she knows she does not like it—the way it shrinks her heart. That there could be a limit to the happiness she could feel for Amar. Earlier that night, Baba came home and he and Amar had shaken hands like businessmen. But when Baba told him they would go that weekend to the mall, Amar became again a boy who could cheer hurray and hug his arms so tightly around Baba’s legs that Baba started to laugh. Mumma had reached out and touched Baba’s arm, and smiled at him when he looked at her. Baba had been generous: he said that Amar could customize his shoes, which they knew from the posters cost extra. Amar was grateful, but when he spoke to Hadia and Huda he was arrogant: his shoes would be better than anything they owned.
After Amar’s test was posted on the refrigerator, she asked her mother if she could buy eyeliner and begin wearing lip gloss like the other girls at school. Maybe even wear it to Sunday school sometimes. There was a boy in her mosque that all the girls talked about, and they gathered in the bathroom and leaned toward their reflections in the mirror, their mouths little O’s, to apply lip gloss with an expertly steady hand, and if he happened to walk by they always laughed loudly. Hadia did not want to laugh when the eldest Ali boy walked by for no reason and did not want to wear makeup just so he would look at her, but it would be nice to not be the only girl in her grade who was plain, who was dressed by her mother in oversized clothes. Mumma told her it was wrong to do things intentionally to attract attention.
“Don’t be childish, Hadia,” Mumma said when Hadia reminded her that she had gotten A’s on her recent tests. “It doesn’t suit you. This was a special thing for Amar. You know that.”
She knocks so quietly on Baba’s open office door it takes him a moment to look up from his paperwork.
“Why aren’t you asleep?” he asks, and he invites her inside by folding his fingers toward him. Baba removes the glasses from his face and sets them down.
“I have to tell you something,” she says.
Baba asks her to sit in the chair in front of his desk, and she sits. Baba has a paperweight on his desk that Hadia made in the fourth grade, fat and finished with glittery glaze. When the teacher first handed it back to her she was so proud of how beautiful it was. Now it looks like a blob she wishes he would throw away. But he has kept it, and Hadia thinks that maybe she has been mistaken, maybe she should count again the faces in the framed photographs, ask Mumma for what she wants in another way.
“Amar told me you helped him a lot,” Baba says to her. “I’m proud of you.”
It is exactly what she had wanted to hear but now that she has heard it she only wants to cry.
“What did you have to tell me?” he asks.
“Nothing, never mind,” she says and shakes her head, but Baba knows she is lying.
“Tell me, Hadia.” He leans forward. He uses his about-to-be-angry voice. He looks impatiently at his watch and says, “It’s late.”
Baba is wearing his father’s watch. It is old but so nice and it makes Baba’s wrist look important. The watch has passed from father to son and one day it will be Amar’s. He does not even have to do anything to earn it. All he has to do is exist.
And Hadia thinks of Mumma leaning in to kiss Amar. How Mumma always says to Amar, mera beta, my son, but never says meri beti, to Hadia or Huda, as though daughters are unworthy of being called mine.
“Amar cheated. Look at the soles of his shoes,” she blurts, and the words sound ugly as soon as they escape her mouth.
Baba sits back in his seat. She had thought he would be instantly angry—this was the worst thing Amar could do, because it was a double lie, first to the teachers and then to his parents, but Baba just looks very tired.
“Go to sleep, Hadia,” he says finally, and his voice is very thin.
Earlier that evening, Amar had said to her, “You know, Hadia, I always thought that you were the smartest one. I thought that because you were so smart maybe Allah didn’t give Mumma Baba’s other kids as much brains. But it’s not so bad, not so hard to try.”
Now the thought occurs to her: what if she had not even wanted him to succeed all along? What if she liked being the smart Hadia, the responsible Hadia, the we-are-leaving-the-house-in-your-care-while-we-go-out-okay Hadia?
She turns around in the doorway. “Baba, you will still buy him the shoes, right?”
Baba runs his hand along his eyebrow and does not look up to answer her.
“Go.”
She begins to cry. She does not move. She does not know what she expected, but it was not this feeling—that she is the one who has done something very wrong.
“Will you tell him I told?” she asks, her voice so small.
He shakes his head.
“He really did study, Baba. He didn’t do anything else for two days.”
“Now,” he barks at her, pointing out the door. “I won’t tell you again.”
7.
LAYLA WAITS UNTIL HER CHILDREN ARE SEATED ON THE PADDED puzzle-piece mats in the children’s nook before wandering the aisles. She likes how tall the shelves on either side of her are, likes the look of the dust suspended in the afternoon light. Her children seemed at peace and occupied—Huda lying on her back flipping through a book, Hadia reading aloud to Amar, and Amar half leaning on her arm, trying to look at the pictures. A pile of books are stacked by his knees from when they first arrived and ran around in a frenzy pulling far more books than they would get through in a single sitting. What exactly is she looking for, she wonders, her fingers trailing spines.