Footsteps

by Umm Zakiyyah

  He shrugged. “Closer to the truth.”

  “Number two,” she said, resting a forefinger on the two fingers of the other hand as she spoke, “you never gave me a choice. All of a sudden, this girl is in my life. In my family, for goodness sake, at Sulayman’s walimah. I can’t believe you even imagined something like that was fair. That, that—” Her voice started to crack, and she feared she would break down, but she refused. No, she was not going to give him leverage, not this time.

  “Number three?” he said coolly. “I think I’m pretty clear on number two. We’ve gone over its tafseer a million times.”

  Her jaw dropped, and she stared at him in disbelief, her hand still poised, ready for number three. “Wh, wh,” she couldn’t get the question out. Her vision became blurred, and the tears spilled from her eyes before she could stop them.

  His expression told her he regretted it. And he started toward her, but she stood and moved before he could embrace her. Instead, she went to the bathroom, slammed the door, and locked it. Inside, she cried, sobbing terribly, hating herself for not being able to stop, and even more because he could hear every sound. She ignored his pounding, his pleas for forgiveness, his begging for her to open the door as he wiggled the handle. But she could not ignore the silence when he had given up entirely. And that hurt more. The last words she heard through the wood were, “Sarah, sweetheart. I’m sorry. It’s just that I, no,” he said in an apparent effort to form his words correctly. “I love you, sweetheart. Please don’t leave me, that’s all I ask.” A pause and a breath. “I can’t do this without you.” A longer pause and another breath. “Please understand.” He stood there for a minute more, she sensed his presence as his ear was against the door hoping she would move to open it, and then he was gone. She was left feeling desolate, alone on the closed top of the commode, feeling like a fool as she heard the faint sound of the front door close and fearing that she would never see him again. She was afraid that she wouldn’t have a chance to apologize like he had, to say that she loved him too, and that she couldn’t leave him, didn’t know how to leave him. How was it possible to leave someone who was, in reality, a part of yourself?

  The memory of that day made her grow more exhausted in bed, although the numbers on the clock told her she had less than forty-five minutes before ‘Asr would be in. She had to pray. Feeling as if a load a bricks was weighing her down, she sat up and turned herself until her feet touched the soft of the carpeted floor. Sarah hung her head, thinking about Allah and hoping He would forgive her for the mercurial behavior that plagued her recently. One second she was the calm, rational wife. The next she was like Road Runner, unable to stop herself from running into a wall of resentment that roared a raging fire in her chest. She liked herself as the former, although it meant more than she was ready to accept. If she remained the calm, rational partner, would Ismael mistake that as her approval of him taking another wife?

  She needed perspective. She needed advice. Preferably from someone who could relate. Unfortunately—or perhaps it wasn’t so unfortunate, given her predicament—she knew but one sister currently in polygyny in the entire metro-Atlanta area. Of course there were more, at least she imagined that there must be more than the sister she knew. But it was as if they were all in hiding. Perhaps, from people like Sarah herself. Even though she had known this sister for almost seven years and the sister sometimes visited her and Aminah, Sarah had never told Ismael that the woman was a co-wife. Like most sisters, Sarah looked at polygyny like a contagious illness that could be caught at the mere mention of its reality in the community’s mist, let alone the contagion when you and your husband befriended couples in the situation.

  So Sarah had kept the sister at arm’s length, and although she imagined the sister’s husband to be a remarkable, if not knowledgeable, brother, Sarah had kept herself from even mentioning him to her husband. Sarah had even turned down invitations to dinner for fear that upon meeting Ismael, the brother would share his “success story” with multiple wives, and Ismael would then be corrupted in his inevitable masculine fantasies on the union.

  But even then, as she stood and dragged herself to the bathroom, having decided that she would call the sister after Thuhr, she found her logic a bit perverse. Sarah never hesitated to share with her husband unsuccessful stories of the marriage type, even though most of them she did not know firsthand. But when she knew of success in polygyny, she hid it like she would a major sin, hoping the next day that no one in the world knew but Allah.

  Then it wasn’t its failure she feared, Sarah realized as she turned the knobs of the faucet in preparation for wudhoo’. But its success.

  How bizarre.

  It would be her worst nightmare if Ismael could actually make this work, she realized as fear enveloped her at the prospect. Then she would have to face it everyday. And that she was unable to do, unwilling even, if she could imagine her ability to cope at all.

  Why should she cope? She didn’t have to. No, she couldn’t control his view on polygamy. But she could control hers. She had told him years ago that the subject was not even open to discussion.

  Had he simply taken her on her word?

  If so, it made sense that he would imagine he had to approach it like he did. But she didn’t want it to make sense. But yet, there was the question that harangued her as she poured handfuls of water over her arms and rubbed them from the elbows to the fingertips. Why would he talk to her on the onset when she had told him she would never accept something like that? But she had said, “I respect the women who do.”

  Sarah hated thinking of his side, but it was all she could do to protect what was left of her patience. Whatever happened, or did not happen for that matter, she was still Muslim, and O Allah, she didn’t want to lose that. That would be the worst.

  With a heavy heart, Sarah finished cleaning her feet and let them fall, wet, on the floor, not caring to dry the tiles right then. She hadn’t been herself lately, and wet floor tiles weren’t the end of the world.

  As she prayed, she felt regret overwhelm her, and she was ashamed before her Lord. She hoped Allah would excuse her jealous outbursts, as He had forgiven her mothers’ centuries ago. The wives of the Prophet, “the mothers of believers,” hadn’t been able to avoid the jealousy Sarah now suffered, although their piety prevented them from behaving as immaturely as she. At that reminder, Sarah felt hope swell inside her, knowing that she was praying to Ar-Raheem, the Most Merciful Redeemer. Al-Hakeem, the Most Wise. As-Samee’, the All-Hearing, the Hearer of all things, all prayers. Al-Baseer, the All-Seeing. And Al-‘Adl, the Most Just.

  O Allah, You love to pardon, so pardon me!

  Head on the floor of her room, Sarah cried her heart out to her Lord, knowing He was Most High, most far removed from imperfection and err, and she felt the tears soak the carpet beneath her face as she prayed a supplication so heart-felt she felt its earnestness burning in her chest.

  O You who knows me better than I know myself, help me,

  O Allah, help me. I cannot do this without You. Preserve me, and preserve my husband. For he taught me about You. Forgive me, forgive him. We are nothing without Your blessings, Your mercy, Your love. O Allah, remove this jealousy from me, except the jealousy for Your sake. O Lord of the heavens, Lord of the earth, Lord of Angel Gabriel, and Lord of Abraham, Jesus, and Muhammad. I implore you, I beg you, O Allah, O Most Gracious, to respond to my prayer! Certainly, I have wronged my soul, so forgive me, for You are the All-Forgiving, Most Merciful, Hearer of all prayers. You are the One who guides, so I ask You to guide me, guide my heart.

  And protect me from myself. And O You who turns hearts,

  make my heart firm upon Your religion. Take my soul as a believer, and allow me to recite the testimony of Your Oneness at death.

  At the sound of the doorbell, Nusaybah peered through the peephole and opened it, standing behind it to let the sister inside. The sister had called an hour before to ask if it were okay if she stopped by, and na
turally, Nusaybah told her she would love to have her.

  Nusaybah expected this visit sooner, given how much Alika had told her of her and Ismael’s steps towards getting married, which was being conveyed to Alika through her wali, Imam Abdul-Quddus, since the imam had deemed it no longer necessary for Alika to talk to the brother directly. But Nusaybah understood it took time with things like this. It was difficult for most women to adjust to the reality of something that seemed so unreal. So she said nothing of her thoughts as Sarah stepped inside her apartment and embraced her after closing the door.

  “I’m sorry to drop in on you like this,” Sarah said after they exchanged the traditional Islamic greetings. “I just felt like I needed answers right away.”

  Nusaybah waved her hand dismissively as she led Sarah from the front room, which she used for class, to a bedroom she had designated as a sitting room in the four-bedroom apartment. Whereas pillows aligned the wall of the furniture-less front room, a couch and futon embellished her homely sitting room. She understood that most people, especially her children and friends, preferred the comfort of a chair to the hard floor, even with a pillow being used as support on the carpet.

  After Sarah sat down on the couch, Nusaybah went to the kitchen to put drinks and snack crackers on a tray for Sarah if she grew hungry or thirsty during the talk.

  “Oh, you didn’t have to do that,” Sarah said as Nusaybah placed the tray on a small coffee table in front of the couch.

  Nusaybah smiled. “You’re my guest.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  Sarah reached for a cracker and nibbled on it, and Nusaybah folded her hands in her lap from where she sat on the futon.

  “You’re making me feel like a pig,” Sarah said after she swallowed what was in her mouth, a cracker still poised in the air as she spoke, chuckling. “Please eat with me.”

  “I’m not hungry,” Nusaybah said, hoping Sarah would not insist.

  A look of realization crossed Sarah’s face as her eyes widened at the thought. “Are you fasting?”

  Nusaybah only smiled, and Sarah’s expression conveyed that she understood her friend’s reason for not sharing the plate.

  Sarah finished her cracker and rubbed her palms against the fabric of her abiya to clean her hands. “I’m not that hungry myself.” She laughed. “I haven’t been eating much lately, so I should be.”

  “I can tell,” Nusaybah teased. But she was serious. It was obvious Sarah had lost a lot of weight. Dark circles were around her eyes, and her cheeks looked slightly sunken and pale. No, it wasn’t something someone would notice in passing on the street, and Sarah wasn’t even technically underweight. But anyone who had known the sister and was seeing her for the first time after several weeks, like Nusaybah was, would notice that her weight loss was not due to a sudden regard for her health, but the opposite.

  “Well, that’s good,” Sarah joked. “I’ve been wanting to lose weight for a while.”

  Nusaybah smiled. “Me too. But I prefer to burn fat instead of muscle.”

  Sarah’s forehead creased, and the meaning sunk in as she recalled sharing the same to former patients who wanted to lose weight.

  “That’s what you do when you starve yourself.”

  She started to laugh, as if to make light of what she was doing. “I wouldn’t say I’m starving myself.” She shrugged. “It’s just that I forget to eat.”

  Nusaybah laughed, her quiet laugh that was barely above a chuckle and didn’t require her to open her mouth. “Well, your body doesn’t know the difference. So you have to help it by giving it the right message to digest. Literally.”

  “Actually,” Sarah said, smiling awkwardly, and Nusaybah could tell she was ready to talk about what she had come for, “I’m more worried about my soul.”

  Nusaybah nodded. “But you can’t worry about your soul without a clear mind, which is by the way,” she smiled, “a part of your body.”

  Sarah nodded, clearly unable to argue with that. “Yes, I know. It’s just that food is the least of my worries right now.”

  “Food shouldn’t be a worry at all. You don’t think about it, Sarah. You just eat.”

  “Tell me that, and next week you’ll be calling Jenny Craig on my behalf.”

  Nusaybah laughed. “Well, think about it, then. And eat.”

  “Jazaakillaahukhair,” Sarah said seriously. “You’re right.”

  A moment later, she drew in a deep breath and exhaled slowly, her eyes growing distant before she asked, “How do you do it?”

  Nusaybah considered the question, trying to think of the best way to answer. Polygyny was a complicated subject, and one’s coping method depended largely on how it began, and the order in which a woman married the man. Other sisters whom she knew in polygamy despised ordinal numbers being used to describe them as wives. They felt the “first” or “second” inserted before wife was demeaning and implied a ranking or status that was synonymous to their order of importance in the union or in the husband’s eyes. But Nusaybah disagreed, as she disagreed with most polygynous sisters’ rejection of the pronoun my used before the word husband when married women spoke. They felt, and understandably so, that the husband didn’t belong to the wife, and they would say, “He is not your husband. He belongs to Allah.” This was an argument, in theory, to encourage a sister to open her heart to plural marriage. But the fact remained, he was her husband, regardless of how many other women had a right to the same pronoun inserted before a word indicative of the same man. Everyone belonged to Allah, and Nusaybah was certainly not ready to tell her husband that she was not his wife and their children were actually not theirs.

  Nevertheless, knowing that we all indeed belonged to the Creator helped put everything in perspective. In fact, it was because of Him that Nusaybah was in a comfortable marriage to her husband, despite the fact that she could choose between the terms “first” and “second” depending on the perspective she had that day. Because, after all, when it came down to it, she was both.

  When Nusaybah and her first husband married, it was while they were still in the Nation of Islam, which they left following the direction of Elijah Muhammad before his death in 1975. Disagreements on how to actually practice the Sunnah that they embraced after their leader’s death accounted for her and her husband’s divorce more than eleven years after they married. But after a marriage that lasted just shy of seven years to a husband who openly practiced “the Sunnah,” having even earned a degree from the most prestigious Islamic university in Madinah, she realized that the Sunnah was more akin to what her first husband followed than her second.

  Like her, Nusaybah’s second husband had converted to Islam although he had never experienced the Nation of Islam and regularly referred to the organization as “the Nation of Kufr,” in other words the Nation of Disbelief. This was not a problem per se, because in essence, he was right. It was not a nation of “Islam,” and by definition any belief system opposite of Islam was disbelief, kufr. So it wasn’t this label that should have alarmed her, but the way in which it spewed from his mouth as if the mere mention of it was toxic to the tongue. When she would reflect on the good she had learned from the organization and how it had led her to Islam, he would argue that nothing good could come from an “evil organization” like that. But, ironically, he didn’t apply the same logic when he talked about what his Christian mother, who died while he was in high school, taught him about life.

  He had never known his father, and he lived as a thug on the streets of Philadelphia for many years before accepting Islam in his early twenties. That Nusaybah had grown up in a middle-class, success-driven African-American household should have alerted her of their potential incompatibility. She had lived her life as a reserved yet devoted Christian who followed the moral letter of the Bible, as she had been taught. She wore long, loose dresses, never pants, and counted it as a sin to show her ankle, something the Nation of Islam reinforced when she joined it, and her first husband was the first man sh
e ever dated. After her divorce, Nusaybah met her second husband as a marginally adept Arabic speaker who had done lectures at Islamic conferences and was accepted to a university overseas in one of the two holiest cities on earth. Impressed by his keen understanding of the Sunnah, she eagerly agreed to marry him and was certain he was nothing short of a Godsend after the heartbreak over the divorce from her first love. Nusaybah would have never imagined the man’s past would cast a shadow on his ability to practice the Sunnah “from the heart,” as her first husband would say.

  It wasn’t long before idiosyncrasies in his apparent practice of the Sunnah reared their head, and she found herself unable to escape his drastic difference from her first husband. For one, her first husband was, in a word, kind. Her second was not. Yes, he was kind to her, but the suspicion with which he regarded others who “claimed” to follow the Sunnah made her uncomfortable. If he was suspicious of someone, mostly due to “something strange” they had said or someone questionable they befriended, he would gather as much information as he could, making phone calls, writing letters, whatever he could to secure a fatwa, a religious ruling that would be his license to publicly label them as “astray,” even if the person was a teacher of his or a scholar himself.

  Nusaybah hurt for him mostly, recognizing his zeal in condemning others as an insecurity in himself, an inability to be humble in the face of others’ success, or in the face of others being correct in saying that he was the one, in fact, mistaken in a certain fiqh opinion. Even on the rare occasion that he discovered with sufficient evidence that he was the one in the right, the fervor with which he argued against his opponent, even attacking the honor of his brother, made her nervous, and she feared for his soul. But more than anything, she felt sorry for him. And feared for her own soul. More and more, it became clear that she could not be his wife, not if she were to protect her Hereafter at the same time.