Tricky Teen Girl: A Whisper of Peace [Ramadan Story]

3 Goals to become a better Muslim

The email from the Ramadan Journal vendor is a refund of my payment for the journal. That means...
I'm not getting it this Ramadan.
I push the laptop away and put my face in my hands. I had really been looking forward to this. Last year I really had fun with my journal, doodling away in it and oohing and aahing over the typography. Now I have no charts to fill up or lists to tick completed.
Wait!
Ramadan Legacy! The app I downloaded and filled up with goals has been sitting innocently in my phone waiting for me to give it attention. OK, so I didn't get the journal, but this will make up for it. Sort of.
In any case, it'll be fun checking off stuff I've completed from my goals.
Goals, goals, goals...I open the app and flick through it to a random goal.
"Study the life of the Prophet, peace be upon him." Oops. I haven't even touched this one yet! I know who to approach in this moment of emergency.
Leena!
"Leena, Leena, Leena!" I burst into her room without knocking.
"Inaya!" Leena springs upright from where she had been sprawled carelessly across her bed. "Knock before you come in!"
"But it's an emergency!" I hop impatiently on the spot.
"Are you dying?"
"What?"
"Do you have indigestion?"
"No!"
"Is it like last time when you had to go to the toilet twelve times in one hour?"
"Leena!" I cross my arms and glare at her. "I want my Seerah book!"
Leena straightens up. "Your Seerah book?"
"My Seerah book."
"Your Seerah book." Leena looks thoughtful.
"Chanting its name like this isn't going to make it appear from thin air," I say impatiently. "If it works that way, let's make it a proper set-up and join hands and chant up a storm."
"Oh, don't be ridiculous." Leena waves her hand in the direction of Jasir's room. "Jasir has it."
"What's Jasir doing with it?" I am very surprised, almost shocked.
"He has Islamic Studies homework," Leena says, smiling at me, amused.
"Oh." I turn on my heel and head into Jasir's room. The door is slightly ajar. I rap on it with my knuckles and walk straight in.
"Go out and knock and come back in properly," Jasir says lazily from his spot on his bed.
"Stop trying to be Papa," I say, settling down on the bed next to him.
"I'm serious!"
"So am I."
He fixes me with a look. I give him a push on the shoulder.
"What do you want?" he says finally.
"The Sealed Nectar," I reply.
"The what?" he sits up a little.
"My Seerah book." I give him a nudge.
"You mean Mama's Seerah book that I'm using for my Islamic Studies assignment," he says, nudging me back.
"I don't see any assignment being prepared," I say, gesturing towards his study table. (He has the table removed every time his friends come over, so that they don't think he's a nerd. Papa set up the table for him so that he could write his lengthy assignments without straining his back from bending over. Mama and Leena are the ones who humor him by folding up the table and stowing it away in the store room every single time his friends come over. Sometimes there's only a five-minute notice. Then Jasir has to compensate for it by actually coming out of his room to greet Mama's friends when they come over to visit, like the good boy that he isn't. Leena doesn't ask for compensation, and no, it's not because she's being generous. She says she'll save it up and ask a big favor from him one day.)
"Look closely and you'll see." Jasir points. I follow the direction of his pointing finger and see a neatly stapled sheaf of papers, with a carefully handwritten title gracing the top of the cover page. I know without opening it that it is entirely blank inside.
"You know and I know and the neighbor's two-year-old kid knows that there's absolutely nothing inside that booklet," I say.
"He's three years old now," Jasir says, "but that's besides the point. The point is that I need that book."
"You need it for Mama to make notes out of for you to copy into your assignment booklet." I make a face at him.
"Details, details," he says. "You can't take it."
We lock gazes with each other until he says, "First one to blink is a rotten egg!"
I wave my hand in front of his eyes so that he blinks by reflex. "Loser!"
"That's cheating!"
"Winner takes The Sealed Nectar!" I leap up towards the books piled haphazardly on his study table.
"I didn't say that!" he raises an arm in protest. During fasting he isn't motivated to move much, not even when such a claim is being contested as to who should have this book.
I find The Sealed Nectar and move out of the room as fast as I can before Jasir pulls out his winning stroke:
"MAMAAAA!" The shout is enough to shake the whole house, but the one it shakes is, obviously, our dear Mama, who comes running with a kitchen knife in her hand. There is still some potato peel attached to it.
"Oh, you're fighting!" she says, taking in the situation, looking from Jasir to me and back again. "I thought you were being strangled."
"He couldn't have voiced such a loud 'MAMA' if he was being strangled," I point out from my position in the hallway.
"Oh, shush," Mama says. "Give it back to Jasir."
"But--"
"No buts!"
"But, you see--"
"Inaya!"
"But you don't even know what this is about!" I hold out The Sealed Nectar to her, but she is already heading back towards the kitchen.
"Book. Here. Now." Jasir folds his arms behind his head and wiggles his foot at me in triumph.
"Oh, you little--!"
"Nuh, uh, uh," he raises a finger. "Do you want me to call Mama again?"
I glare at him before placing the book back on the desk. Then I go back to my room. This needs some serious thinking.
***
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