You Must Be Layla by Yassmin Abdel-Magied

Author:Yassmin Abdel-Magied [Abdel-Magied, Yassmin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780143788522
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia

That evening, Layla couldn’t stop thinking about the theme that had popped up during the day with people talking about love and forgiveness. But how could she love and forgive when people had been so awful? She decided to bring it up at dinner.

‘Mama, have you ever forgiven someone who has caused you a lot of pain?’

Her mother laughed. ‘Ya3ni, I keep forgiving your father every morning for leaving the toilet seat up!’ Fadia’s brown eyes twinkled, and the wrinkles around her smile deepened as she teased her husband. Baba shook his head, clearly not finding it nearly as funny as Layla’s mother did.

‘No, Mama, seriously!’

Mama looked at Layla, her well-manicured eyebrow arching up with curiosity. ‘What makes you ask this question, ah, habibti?’

Layla shifted in her seat, her yellow cotton jalabeeya sticking to her legs in the hot Brisbane humidity. ‘Someone said at school today that love and forgiveness are the only ways to move forward, to heal pain and all this,’ Layla’s voice became mocking as she made air quotes with her fingers, ‘“airy-fairy” stuff.’ She continued, looking at her dad as well for reassurance. ‘I don’t know if forgiving someone who wants to hurt you makes any difference though.’

Baba wasn’t giving her anything, and her mother’s face betrayed no emotion either.

‘Aha ya shabab,’ Fadia said to everyone else at the table. ‘What do you think?’

‘If people talk about forgiveness, they should start also doing it themselves, shouldn’t they?’ Ozzie looked up from his meal for the first time that evening, his voice cutting, indicating that this meant a little something more to him. He let go of his fork and knife, ignoring them as they clattered sharply on the glass table. His face seemed irritated, as if Layla had said something to him personally.

Ozzie pushed his chair back from the dining table and threw his hands outward, aggressively. ‘Listen. If they want to talk about forgiveness, then they should take you off probation, give you your scholarship back and make Peter apologise to you for the way he treated you.’

Ozzie’s voice rose.

‘If they want us to forgive, they should stop talking about us in the news like we are all terrorists, or gang members.’ Her brother’s jaw clenched, then he jumped up abruptly, and the movement tipped his chair backward, the metal frame crashing into the tiles, skidding across the room and loudly hitting the bannister on the wall.

Layla grimaced; that was going to leave a mark in the wood of the bannister. She looked back at her brother, who wasn’t done.

‘If they want forgiveness, they can start actually accepting us, hiring us, rather than wondering why we’re all unemployed! That sounds like the kind of forgiveness I am interested in!’ The teenager then turned around and stormed off. His thudding footsteps could be heard climbing the staircase, walking down the hallway, and then SLAM; there went his bedroom door.

Layla looked around the table. Baba was unperturbed, diligently wiping up the juices of the meal with a piece of bread, all with the attitude of a man who had no problems in the world.

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