Shelter

Nadia wanted to do something special this Ramadan. She wanted to invite her friend to eat out with her at MacDonald’s, but through some misunderstanding they both ended up being stroppy the next day at school.

“Why didn’t you tell me your brother was going to come?”

“I thought it was obvious,” said Nadia.

“We could have gone to Macdonald’s! All you had to do was mention it.”

“I’m sorry, okay?” she said in a whiney voice that sounded like a deflating balloon on its last gasp. Fatima was kicking herself for not realising such a course of events would be obvious. She had accumulated an unhealthy amount of stress for a 14 year old trying to convince her mother to let her go and eat a fillet-o-fish meal for iftar with her best and only friend. That familiar feeling of misery accompanied by the right atmospheric changes- it was a gloomy day-that always materialised when Fatima had a stark reminder of her unpopularity and a sense that it would always be that way, was in no short supply. Her mother couldn’t even stay awake to give her the heavy news. Fatima had already pathetically followed her around the house in hope of changing her mind, right up until her mother went for an afternoon nap and all Fatima could do was stare at her as she lay there in the darkening room.

It wasn’t just that she wouldn’t be having this one of a few days of excitement in her life but that Nads would be so disappointed she wouldn’t talk to her for at least a week. Especially as they had planned and calculated the whole thing like a pair of excitable project managers. In between frustrated dreams of hot oozing coleslaw and the smell of chip fat Fatima was secretly glad that she wasn’t the only one in her class who needed supervision. This fact had gradually dawned on her since the whole debacle and she felt increasingly stupid for overlooking it. What was she thinking when she thought they could go to Macdonald’s by themselves, only being dropped off and picked up by an adult? How could she have resented her mother for stubbornly refusing? Now she felt both stupid and guilty. Her poor mother.

“We’ll go another time!”

“Yeah, okay,” came the whiney voice. Pretty soon Ramadan was over and both had forgotten such an idea had ever entered their heads. They were quickly content again eating caramel filled chocolates with sour skittle sweets over their laconic conversations at break time. This culinary invention had been Nadia’s. They were both surprised and pleased at how much they enjoyed this wonderfully simple bit of food creativity. Everyone would have found them weird, but as creative pioneers they knew they had achieved something popularity could never equal. It gave them an almost philosophical contentment for the duration of breaktime, sitting there in their bubble of suspended regard for people and surroundings. This happiest portion of her day would spend its brief life when Fatima turned around to see the playground had emptied without them noticing, and nothing but the multitudinous grains of rough concrete filled her field of vision.

This unpopularity wasn’t a permanent plague. It fluctuated with the seasons, and was almost completely conquered when she was able to ride the wave of her social learning curve by the time she got to university. By then she had long ditched Nads. That came soon after she realised she wanted more out of her friendships than sharing sweets. She wanted to talk about naughty things and giggle surreptitiously. None of Nadia’s straightforwardness and reticence would do. She wanted to finally grow up and shrugged at the inevitable cruelty this meant she had to show an old childhood friend.

Four years of door-slamming adolescence later, she was clean and pristine, groomed and chewing gum, high-heeled, made up and studying biomedical sciences. She had a popular and good looking circle of friends who kept her company constantly from lecture to lecture, who all studied with her in a collective effort of studiousness, like one collective brain. She made an effort to go beyond group study and go out on socials with her class mates to eat Middle Eastern cuisine when her parents let her. She was part of the Arab society, the Friends of Palestine society and the anti-war society, and used her extra student loan to buy fashionable clothes and T-shirts with political slogans printed on them. One of them had the words ‘American Imperialism on tour’ on the back with a list of countries underneath going back to the Cold War. She drank copious amounts of coffee made by multinational coffee chains and walked around in a cloud of designer scent. She was up bright and early every morning to make the hour long commute in time for her morning lectures. She didn’t mind the stuffy overcrowded tube carriages. Standing there with a bulky overpriced handbag draped over one arm and glossy textbooks nestled under the other, she looked like an educated Muslim woman. The more crowded the tube carriage, the more people there were to see her looking like an educated Muslim woman. Young men even offered her a seat when they saw her doing a difficult balancing act on her thin heels. She always took up the offer with a bashful smile.

She wasn’t so sprightly on the way back and braved the trek from station to home because she made a point to turn down her family’s offers of a lift. She didn’t want to feel like she was still at school. She would be so relieved when she finally reached home, she didn’t care that she often had to lay the table for an extended family dinner the minute she arrived. A constantly bustling house had its secret charms. She liked to be surrounded by people and relished the formalities she went through weekly with guests over endless cups of tea. She would spend the rest of her evenings doing coursework on her king sized bed and creamy silk duvet, flanked by four posts and surrounded by papers, seeking every opportunity to distract herself with online instant message conversations and phone calls. A look at her mobile phone log showed an unhealthy number of calls to one Nabila of whom any mention was never heard, not by her parents nor anyone in the house. It was absolutely imperative that no one caught wind of the existence of Nabila. Even the slightest notion would prompt questions about why she was never mentioned let alone why she never came round. For it was vital she never came around, crucial that there was no chance in God’s fiery hell she would ever be seen by another family member. For Nabila was a young man named Nabil.

These carefree days of study congealed into a fuzzy, nebulous series of sentimental memories. By the time she had started working as a biomedical research assistant she was so worn out by the evening rush hour, she gladly took up any offer of a lift from family. She spent her salary on designer handbags, cars, clothes and socialising with her mushrooming network of friends who were all of similar age and fashion sense. Nabila was eventually deleted from her address book after calls to that number had long waned. The contact details of other less savoury characters with whom contact had faded were also purged annually. She found herself spending more time in the cosy assurances of family company, and her socials with friends started to take on more religious themes. The excitement of student life had been replaced with the anodyne comfort of maturity and routine. It didn’t take long for the perfect suitor to wander under the radar and a marriage deal to be signed. The wedding planning atmosphere brought more friends and family to the house and brought everyone closer until there was camaraderie between her and her elder female relatives not too unlike that she had with her friends. Secrets were confided; traditions enacted, old wives tales narrated, dirty jokes exchanged, in bedrooms on beds and behind closed doors that captured and enclosed the spirit and mystique of this age old sorority.

Soon enough familial comfort became supplemented by the comfort of the marital home, of the routine of housework and cosy dinner parties, nappy changing and fluffy baby cuteness, the gaudy colours and sounds of children’s television, family shopping trips and walks to the park where cursory conversation was exchanged with other mothers, the smell of baby powder and CK Obsession, turkey twizzlers and parent-teacher meetings, birthday cakes and party poppers, homework sessions and door-slamming adolescence, university applications and A’ level results, graduation days and first cars, marriage arrangements and maternity wards, more nappy changing and fluffy baby cuteness.

Long ago when Fatima had concluded her life was a success, she wondered what Nads had made of hers. She missed her for the duration of these brief reminiscences, her fleeting nostalgia tinged with only the slightest guilt. She felt it safe to assume that Nads hadn’t done as well as she had before shrugging off the thought and Nads along with it to resume her onion chopping. Little would she have imagined that on one of the many occasions she had admired her reflection in the job centre window as she walked by, she was looking directly at Nads, who from the other side was looking at her old oblivious friend with swollen eyes. Had she seen her, she would have pitied her as an abject failure. Only Nads could know how successful she was as she sat waiting for an appointment with a consultant to discuss her claim for jobseekers’ allowance. Only she knew the relief of escape and unfettered freedom when she had decided her most recent beating was going to be her last. Only she knew what it was like to be given a first chance in life after having spent the previous few nights in a women’s shelter.

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