Chapter 1: Chapter 1

Songs for this chapter are:

Saturday Night - Lecrae, Jozzy

Torn - Asa

Moving on - Asa

Misconception - Lecrae

Mustafa

The first time I read a Bible, I skimmed through the Psalms till my eyes caught the verse that I had been looking for, a heart-warming scripture:

"The Earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof."

The verse struck a chord within my soul since I was at a particular stage of my life where I'd been particularly appreciative in an intense way for the creation of the earth and it's surreal embodiment of magnificence so I had been digging deep into several books of both ancient and modern times that expatiated on the marvelous works of God. I'd done a surface stiff on the moon, the sun, the stars, and even the northern lights.

The Qur'an, a holy book that I was familiar with had done justice to the fact that the earth was truly a creation birthed from the mind of God and this in all entirety made God the most superior. I'd decided to check the Bible for extra confirmation, the same testimony but communicated in a different way and verily, The Bible testified of the same truth.

But now, is the earth truly the Lord's? If the earth was the Lord's, then why had I wandered through the valleys, gazed at the stars adorning the night sky, passed by the shores of the sea, and treaded the bare paths near the gardens yet the searing sensation of distress had been thoroughly engraved upon the tablets of my heart?

If God in his unquestionable wisdom and ethereal mightiness created this small version of paradise called earth, then why couldn't the charming beauty of all the petals of the variety of flowers I'd come across bending softly in alignment to the dictates of the wind, soothe my pain?

Those blossoms were an envoy of natural and aesthetically pleasing bodies which meant that they were good and all good things come from the Lord which explains why we fall in love with people and even animals. It explains why we relish the intake of oxygen into our lungs in the form of soothing, fresh air, and why we feel refreshed when making use of water to serve its purpose at the time.

But why did I feel all the more, miserable? Why was it impossible, even if it was just for a second, for me to be entrapped in the adorable assembling of the magnificent blossoms at the central park in Arabia? I'd gazed at the flowers for minutes when my eyes stumbled on them but the more I looked, the heavier my heart felt.

What about the sea? I thought it was an exemplar of sheer peace but as the waves rose according to the dictates of the forthcoming wind and then receded low, kissing the shore of the ocean, instead of feeling something soothingly favorable to wash over the rapidly building flyspecks of venomous pain that tainted my heart, I had only felt the elevation of distress as I watched the waves rise and fall like a merciless offloading of goods with the labels, pain, pain and a ton more of pain, compressing on my painfully heavy heart.

And the valleys of Riyadh? The sloppiness of it made my heart skyrocket a million times over like I was aware of the fact that I was plunging deeper into the bottomless abyss with slender fingers ebbing from unknown depths to squeeze all of the blood left in my heart that pumped with tiny shreds of hope by each step I took. Walking on a sloppy land did not make my spirits rise with a hopeful vibe as expected, it only made it plummet deeper into fear.

I traveled to Mecca since it was that time of the year where fellow Muslims from far and wide traveled to become pilgrims. I knelt amongst thousands of men and women in white jalabiyas and abayas in front of the Kaaba, muttering endless chants of the surah, seizing the opportunity to beg Allah with the sincerity radiating from the roots of my heart to give my soul a place to rest, a place to call home.

I fasted and visited the central mosque in Medina, observed all of the prayers from the salat Al-fajr to salat al-'isha all for the pursuit for peace or probably even a journey to the al-akhirah which would suffice greatly.

What and who was I to live for? Especially when I was wanted and loved by absolutely nobody? My children? Those cuties loved me and always wanted me around but could I father Ahmed and Youssef successfully without Farida? I had particularly grown so fond of that precious girl only for me to learn that she wasn't my daughter. Could I cope with the vacuum that that truth had left painfully in my soul?

Shortly after I signed the divorce papers with Cassandra, I traveled to my family house in Iran. My elder sister, Aisha dressed in her jilbab as always with her pink chiffon abaya underneath pulled me into her arms, rubbing my hair playfully like I was a big brown teddy bear.

She greeted me in the usual way;

"As-Salaam-Alaikum."

Peace be unto me? She said it so easily as if my life was already peaceful. If only she knew the depths of Arabia I had wandered to just in pursuit of that one thing but I returned her greeting with a wry smile.

"Wa-Alaikum-Salaam."

I headed straight for the library where my father always resided, studying volumes and historical columns on gemstones so he could extend his tentacles of business to every part of the world.

The library smelled of garlic as usual as I walked in after knocking faintly on the large brass door. My father looked up at me from a big brownish scroll that he had his face buried in and surprise monopolized the initial look of seriousness on his wrinkled face. Removing his square-shaped spectacles, he placed them on the desk before him with an almost inaudible clink. He made an indescribable sound at the back of his throat before he opened his mouth to speak.

"What are you doing here, Mustafa? I wasn't expecting you, " his croaky voice diluted the silence in the library.

"I know, Alhaji. I know I said I won't be coming back for a long time but I can no longer stay in Nigeria, Baba. It's a bad place for me, " I said, looking at my sandals that were now worn out due to the effects of a distasteful voyage, but more importantly, I couldn't afford to establish eye contact with my father.

"And why is that? I thought the land has brought you a good fortune so far. You have the wife of your dreams, your business is doing well and—"

"Cassandra and I..." a tear slipped down the right side of my face, seizing my ability to garner up words for a second as my heart did a knot of a painful squeeze per millisecond but I did my best to talk nevertheless. "...We are divorced. She cheated on me and got pregnant for another man and made me believe that the baby was mine. She used me."

"Are you really telling me right now that you let those creatures who are worse than an ifrit make such foolery of you?"

I remained silent. Then his voice cracked harshly through the silence.

"Look how stupid you made yourself. When will you become a real man? I sent you to Nigeria to study, and more importantly, to become a successful businessman. An unshakable figure just like your mother. I raised you to be a man who would expand my business to a notable country in Africa, your mother's homeland and after several years of living your life in there, you are returning to feed me with abominable messages of a WOMAN, using you! La Samah Allah!"

"Alhaji–" I looked into his terror-inducing, ice-cold scrawny eyes as more tears slipped down my own.

"Don't call me Alhaji or even Baba. I can't be the father to a total coward, a man with no sense of reasoning and caution. I am gravely disappointed in you and I will not let someone who is an exemplar of disappointment be my son talk less about staying in my house. You are a grown man!..." he hesitated for a moment then he continued. "...or a kid actually because a real man will never let a woman of all creatures to treat them like fools. Go look after that business where she squandered your money and make sure to never think of asking any of my workers for gemstone supplies. I will never support an idiot like you. Akhraj min bayti 'ayuha aljabaana!"

And I left, shutting the door behind me. I'd made sure to exit through the back room so my sister wouldn't see me. I was overwhelmed with shame that I wouldn't even let her see me in my state talk more about dealing with an answer to give her if she asked me why I was crying.

My very own dad, the man I had looked up to all my life as my hero as a child said all of those words to me. The same man who would take me across the valleys in Tehran and buy me traditionally baked cookies, just the type that I liked, and would pack rolls of roti in a foil accompanied with my favorite brand of yogurt with a smile on his face that brought out the one-sided dimple on his face. He would place me firmly on his horse, with all of my snacks packaged in a saddlebag. He would then proceed to speak as he rode the horse.

"Love with all of your heart and always be compassionate about all that you love to do and have been called to do. Be strong-willed and never give up so easily. If I'd given up and fled away from Iran during the war, I would not be the successful businessman I am today."

He was the same man who repeated those words to my ears and I would always nod with a cheeky grin, sipping on my yogurt innocently as I would say, "Yes, Baba, " but he rejected me now and blamed me for following the principles that he laid down for me to follow.

And he showed me his true color. He was a misogynist. Little wonder why my mother's personality was something he couldn't stand, hence why they fought very often.

I had no one else to blame but myself for my grief. I became overly passionate that I turned into a fool. I loved the people who didn't love me in return simply because I was keen on becoming a great guy.

But...wasn't Cassandra the only person I ever loved?

Cassie was as beautiful as a sunflower on noonday the first time I saw her in a typewriting class. I was a transfer student from Tehran (during that time, my father had to send my sister and I away from Iran due to the intense war between the nation and the USA) and had passed all of my exams so I was immediately moved to the same class she was in.

I always relished watching her slender fingers gracefully type on each alphabet with some indecipherable emotion laced behind her composure. I felt divinely connected to her and Allah saw it too. He made us cross paths very often.

The first time I talked to her, something really weird happened. I had seen her by the corridor, trying vigorously to rip her sweater off her body. She'd kept scrunching up her nose like she had perceived something burning. First, I thought she was trying to act out a scene or was just up to something funny like a prank of some sort because I'd seen people walk past giving some comments in hushed tones and giggling subtly.

I had no idea what to make of the scenario until I'd heard her yell, "who put fire on my clothes?"

Then it hit me that she wasn't joking. Something was certainly wrong. I walked up to her and told her to gently take her sweater off. She obliged and then I placed it close to my nostrils. She raised a brow seeing that I had dared to inhale the fumes from a burning sweater, then she relaxed. Afterward, a tear slipped down her cheek.

"So, my sweater wasn't burning?" she asked.

"No, it wasn't. Are you okay though? Why are you crying?" I asked but she said nothing. She'd only grabbed her sweater from my hold and walked out speedily.

I didn't understand why that happened but soon enough, the answer came to me because we'd been around each other very often and I had on another occasion, caught her trying to put out the fire on the stove with a pot on it when the food wasn't even done. I asked her if she wanted to eat her food undone but she'd replied saying that she thought the food was burning.

Why did she keep perceiving odors that did not exist?

Later on, when the question lingered and bugged me more than necessary, I decided to conduct a little research and I found out that what she was experiencing was an actual ailment. Her olfactory organs were dysfunctional to the extent that, whenever she perceived a non-existent odor it affected her sight for that eerie moment so it made her hallucinations even more vivid and seemingly real.

It terrified me.

One afternoon, I mustered the bravery to talk to her about it because I thought it was new to her and maybe an immediate visit to the doctor would be of great help but that was when she broke down, crying so bitterly. I sat there, thinking of a way to make her stop crying because I'd started to feel like I was making her feel more pathetic.

Then she surprised me by opening up to me. She told me everything. Every single thing about her past and how she got to start living with such a humiliating ailment, the efforts her dad made to help eliminate the ailment and how much shame the disease made her feel, and the fact that everyone around had in a way shamed her in one way or the other, finding that exhibition of her symptoms funny and how she always tried to ignore it. I watched her cry and listened without saying a single word.

She then ended her confession with;

"It's unbelievable that you didn't laugh at me like other people did when you saw me trying to rip my sweater off like a madwoman."

"It wasn't funny. It was scary. I was really scared for you. Learning about all of the things that you went through makes my heart ache so much that trying to think of a way to make you feel better makes my heart squeeze painfully because it hurts to even try to imagine being in your shoes to be able to decipher the kind of words to say to you."

"You already made me feel better when you told me compassionately that day that my sweater wasn't burning and for inhaling the sweater so I could realize it wasn't burning or else you would have been set ablaze. I was initially embarrassed and flustered hence why I ran away but it made me shocked in an intriguing kind of way to see that you cared."

After that intense conversation, Cassie and I became friends and it was easy for our friendship to blossom since we were both commerce students and had most if not all of our classes together. We even attended dance practice lessons after school hours and soon became a dance duo called, TafCass.

She was a great friend and as time passed, I got to realize just how down-to-earth Cassandra actually was. She stimulated me to be a greater friend and to be more passionate about sticking up for her and for our friendship.

The day when our friendship had been put to a test came and that was when I realized that Cassie was going to go to any lengths to stick up for me. I fell really ill, lost a robust amount of blood, and was clearly going to die. Even before the doctor had thought of contacting my family or a few classmates at school for a donation, Cassandra donated her blood.

When I recovered from the illness and learned that it was Cassie who saved my life, I asked her why she had dared to donate her blood when she was nursing her own illness. She answered, "What are friends for? Besides what does my blood have to do with my ailment?"

I knew the former question was rhetorical but I wasn't sure how to answer the latter so I stayed mute, taking her hands in mine as I squeezed gently. She then said,

"You've been great to me and you are my first friend every since Krystal died. I had to save you knowing I had the power to. I should only stick up for you and be there for you."

So where exactly did things go wrong? How could I have ever predicted that such a down-to-earth person would break me so terribly? Was I really foolish for choosing to stay loyal to her and to love her even beyond the way she loved me? What exactly did I fail to observe?

Our friendship was solidly genuine. Cassie could lay down her life for me and I could do the same for her too. So, what exactly went wrong? We'd been through so many phases in our friendship that helped affirm the fact that what we had was pure.

When Dan's presence posed a subtle threat to our friendship, making me realize that Cassie and I could never be more than just good friends, I decided to keep my brewing feelings for her under control but I trusted her nevertheless.

I knew Cassie would not make room for our beautiful friendship to suffer because of the reappearance of a guy who played an important part in her childhood. What Cassie and I shared could equally not be overlooked. We valued each other so I trusted her and believed that she would never use me.

On the day of the dance competition when Cassie kissed me by mistake because she thought I was Dan, it was hard for me to absorb that she had had someone else in mind while she was kissing me which made me feel a little miserable but afterward, I couldn't help but understand where was coming from. She had no power over the illness. She originally would never play with my feelings deliberately so I trusted her with all of my heart.

And she proved herself trustworthy.

Dan turned out to be a monster and Cassie came back to me. For a slight moment, I felt that she was perhaps trying to use me to get over the pain she was feeling but once I reminded myself of the roots of our friendship and the fact that I could rely on her, I knew Cassie would always stay true.

Besides, what are friends for? So what if she came back to me for some comfort from the pain she was feeling? So long as she didn't abandon me if Dan by chance came back into her life.

All of those phases proved to me that Cassie was someone I could love passionately.

The genuineness of our friendship continued to reflect later on as we grew older and progressed with our friendship. We soared through life together being the very best of friends. Through the pain and the strife, the laughter, and the mirth, we were there for each other.

We had the best of adventures, traveled to cities every holiday since that was the only time we got to see each other because we schooled at different universities.

We traveled to Laos one summer, visited all of the temples, and played archery which she was incredibly better at than I was, for a second she even reminded me of Mulan as the breeze blew past her hair making it stick to her face as she handled each arrow with conviction. I rooted for her and believed she would conquer all of her hurdles.

During Christmas, we traveled to Japan and joined the martial arts academy in Shinjuku as part of our plan to help Cassie protect herself from danger since she was unfortunately very prone to it. We saw the blooming of the most beautiful cherry blossoms and we purchased merchandise of our favorite anime shows. Well...Cassie's favorite anime shows.

What we had was just too pure to ever imagine that we would have such a chaotic marriage.

When I observed that she was starting to develop feelings for me on her own will, I proposed to her and she said yes with priceless, beautiful mirth. When did her genuine love for me transform into her love for my money? How could I ever have discovered when?

Our divorce crushed my heart beyond the ordinary. If it was some normal lady who treated me like Cassie did in our marriage, it would have been exonerating to disengage from her forever but divorcing Cassie, a woman I'd deeply rooted for and protected with all I had, a woman who stood with me through the highs and lows of my life destroyed me.

It turned me into a nomad in distress, a Muslim man in the pursuit of peace from Allah's fountains, writhing in an unreal kind of pain that I sought to be squelched.

So many things going through my mind made me question my existence by the moment. Envisioning the kind of pain Cassie herself was going through alone, tortured me a great deal. I still loved her greatly because she felt indebted to Dan for taking her away from captivity just like she'd felt indebted to me for not being judgmental towards her illness. Honestly, I couldn't blame her and her need to always pay people back for every amount of love they showed her. It showed that she was a good person, she was only repaying the wrong person and that made her go through hell but I just wished she would heal and become a better person for herself most importantly.

But for me?

I had no idea what to make or think of my life. I was hurt and broken with nothing to take away my pain. I wandered all around, became a vagabond in the pursuit of peace. I prayed, fasted, and went on pilgrimage and I came to a resolution - To end my life in the exact place where it had begun to be miserable.

And that explains why I'm standing helplessly by the bridge, staring out at the vast, colorless river before me, contemplating how blissful it was going to be to feel nothing but the peace and stillness of the water barricading all over my body.

It was so tantalizing a thought, that I deem it fit to get on with my pursuit for peace already so I slid over unto the other side of the bridge, pulling out one limb after the other as I clung onto the metal, till I could nearly feel my last finger holding onto the bridge before I could finally get to slip away and fall into the deep river with a peaceful, permanent slosh

Peace be still...

***

Exodus 14:14 - "The Lord will fight for you, and you shall hold your peace."

GLOSSARY

• al- akhirah - an Islamic term used to connote the afterlife.

• ifrit - a kind of djinn mentioned in the Qur'an. A powerful type of demon in Islam

• Jilbab, Abaya - Outfit worn by Muslim women

• Salat Al-fajr - Prayer made at dawn before sunrise

• Salat Al-'isha - Prayer made between sunset and midnight