Elm Creek: A Readymade Family, Volume 1

4

FOUR

’Alîyâ knew Mrs. Kendall from a women’s committee they were on together and called her several days later to arrange a visit to the Kendall home, though she didn’t express the reason for it over the phone. It was arranged to take place on a Sunday afternoon after final exams were over, and for the next two weeks, Hâroon could barely concentrate as he waited for it.

But there was one dampener to his excitement—Ya’qoob was barely talking to him. If Hâroon addressed his brother, he usually got a glare or glower in response and any vocal replies were stiff and curt. It was as if Ya’qoob was taking out his feelings of betrayal and anger over Noorah’s engagement on him, and he  thought it likely that he was. Sympathetic to his brother’s pain, Hâroon tried not to allow his behavior to rile his temper, despite how much Ya’qoob provoked it. In Ya’qoob’s sixteen years of life, Hâroon had never seen him so temperamental, moody, and difficult.

But he couldn’t imagine the pain Ya’qoob was going through to be so betrayed by the girl he’d set his heart on long before he was old enough to recognize it. Hâroon’s feelings for Lila paled in comparison to how Ya’qoob felt about Noorah. He only hopeed that eventually his brother would recover and return to his usual self, though he had his doubts.

On the day of the meeting, after Dhuhr, he and his mother headed off in the used pickup truck his father had given him free use of after he’d obtained his driver’s permit when he was sixteen to pick up his sister. As they left, Ya’qoob stood on the porch of the large farmhouse and watched them with an almost expressionless stare that worried Hâroon far more than his glares.

“Do you think he’ll be alright?” he asked his mother softly as he turned the truck away from the house and drove down the trail leading to the gates.

She sighed. “I don’t know, Roon. Your brother invested his whole heart into Noorah. That’s hard to recover from. And I don’t think he was wrong about her husband either. Her parents think something is going on, even if she tries to act happy. Maybe we should have married them early before her head was turned, but we can’t change anything now.”

They couldn’t. But Hâroon desperately wished otherwise.

“You’re not making it easier,” his mother murmured, her voice cautiously gentle. “You know how he feels about Lila, but you’re not considering his opinion at all. Your brother has never been wrong about anyone he didn’t like. Don’t you think you should listen to him? Attraction can easily lead one astray from what’s right in front of him. You’re a young man attracted to a girl, so you’ll be blinded to what others of a more objective view see. I think you should strongly consider what your brother is saying, hon.”

For the first time in his eighteen years, Hâroon felt ire toward his mother and was even tempted to snap at her—as wrong as it was. Of course they didn’t always see eye-to-eye, but he’d always been the obedient one who obeyed without complaint or question. It was Ya’qoob who caused a ruckus when made to do what he didn’t want to or prevented from doing what he desired. But Hâroon wanted something that his family seemed to want to prevent him from.

Instead of replying, he breathed in and out, saying the isti’âthah under his breath until he’d calmed. Only then did he speak. “He’s wrong about her. He’s judging by what she was like before. I don’t really think he can judge much of anything when he’s so torn up about Noorah. He’s acting like Lila is Qais.”

’Alîyâ sighed. She didn’t look like she agreed with him, but she said nothing more about Ya’qoob’s opinion of Lila and the drive continued in silence.

When they reached the house Maryam Scott lived in with her husband Sâlih on the suburban side of Pear Orchards, she was already fully dressed like ’Alîyâ in an ’abâyah, khimâr, and niqâb, waiting in a rocking chair with one-year-old Huda on her lap, while Sâlih Harrison, her Black American husband, held two-year-old ’‘ishah on his hip.