Elm Creek: A Readymade Family, Volume 1

1

ONE

Oak Village, Arkansas

February 2000

With hours before sunrise, the early morning was dark and still. A frosty, frigid temperature hung in the late night air, freezing all that it touched. The wintry sky was overcast with thick clouds that left little space for any moonlight to peek through—the only light that illuminated the darkness was the glowing street lamps of the sleet-covered road that ran through the neighborhood and that which came from the outdoor lights of homes that had long ago gone dark.

Despite the late hour and the fact that most people would remain abed for several hours more before greeting the day, there was one who did not slumber with the rest of the neighborhood or even with his own household. A man of broad and athletic build, who appeared to be between his mid-twenties and early thirties, sat alone in a medium-sized bedroom, leaning against the headboard of the queen-sized bed he sat upon as he recited softly from the Qur‘ân. Under the bright light of the bedroom, his curly rich auburn hair appeared almost red-gold in color.

If not for the thick beard that reached to his chest—the rich auburn color an exact match for the shade of his hair—and the language that smoothly fell from his lips as flawlessly as if it was his own, he would have appeared to be the average Caucasian American male. Hâroon Scott, however, was accustomed to standing out among most of his fellow Americans, in appearance, beliefs, and even his own dress code. It had been that way since his teenage years; and twenty-four years of life of being aware of how different he was to most and how he was seen by them had well-accustomed him to the reality of never fully fitting in.

The eldest son of Scottish American parents, Yahyâ Scott and ’Alîyâ Paisley, his heritage showed in his head of rich auburn hair and leaf-green eyes. He’d been raised in conservative family that had given him a strong base for his deen, imbedding it within his very character. He had been committed and devout to the faith he had been raised within from a young age, due to his upbringing and his parents’ efforts in making certain he and his siblings—an elder sister and younger brother—connected with their faith in a way that not only was it a belief, but a way of life for them. It had been that strong base that his parents had nurtured which had given him the ability to withstand the fitnah of high school—during which dating, mixing with the opposite gender, drinking, and many other things looked down upon and discouraged in Islâm, had been prevalent—especially when one girl had started a relentless pursuit of him that had provoked a temptation in him he’d never experienced before and had been hard to resist.

Hâroon had been awake for about an hour. A daily habit ingrained into him from a very young age by his parents, there was hardly a day that passed in which he didn’t rise early from sleep to pray Tahajjud and then recite Qur‘ân as he waited for Fajr. Not only did being up early give him extra time to worship before the day started, but it also gave him some time to himself before he left for work.

He would have no such chance once he returned from work. As soon as he walked through the door, his wife Lila would leave their four-year-old twins, Ibrâhîm and Yusrâ, to him and he’d have to spend the rest of the day seeing to their needs. Even if he could be bothered to request for her assistance when it became too difficult to manage the two of them on his own, which had become more and more common in the last two years with Ibrâhîm’s erratic and uncontrollable behavior, she usually had a ready excuse or just ignored him. Hâroon had married the most beautiful girl of the high school they had both attended back home in Pear Orchards, Ohio—the girl every guy had wanted and every girl wanted to be—and he had nothing but regrets to show for it.