Between Two Moons by Aisha Abdel Gawad

Author:Aisha Abdel Gawad [Abdel Gawad, Aisha]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2023-06-06T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

—

I lied to my mother. I climbed four flights of stairs. Summer was racing by, and Ramadan limped toward the finish line. It would be the end of holy days.

When Faraj opened the door to greet me, he had a dish towel slung over his shoulder. He gave me a one-armed hug and then hurried back to the stove. A pot of quinoa was boiling over.

“Can I do anything?” I asked.

“You can set the table,” he said.

But there was no table, just a breakfast bar with plates and forks already on it. So I just rearranged them slightly and put napkins down.

“I didn’t know Muslim men could cook. I thought it must be forbidden by God or something,” I said. He was pulling a tray of roasted vegetables from the oven. He looked up at me, his face flushed from the heat, and grinned.

“I’m not most Muslim men,” he said.

So everything was okay. He wasn’t still mad about the last time. And I was being charming and funny and cute. I would ask him about Sami and he would explain everything. And then I could go home and tell Lina that she had been wrong.

He arranged food very carefully onto the plates, spreading the quinoa down, then topping it with the vegetables, and then spooning some sort of yogurt sauce on top. He sprinkled herbs with a flourish, and I laughed.

“It looks like restaurant food,” I said.

“Better,” he said. “This is a cleansing meal. Perfect for breaking the fast.”

I glanced at the clock on his stovetop. It was time. He offered me the bathroom to do wudu. The bathroom was pristine, with nice-smelling hand soap. When I came back out, he was finishing up his own wudu at the kitchen sink. I felt suddenly nervous again. It was strange to pray side by side like this with a boy who wasn’t family. Even though I had long complained about the barriers separating the men’s section from the women’s at our mosque, and now there was nothing between us. I stood next to him. He raised his hands up. I closed my eyes.

“Allahu Akhbar,” he said.

I raised my hands up. “Allahu Akhbar,” I said.

When we had finished praying, we sat at the breakfast bar and ate. He offered me a date first, from a blue ceramic bowl. He held it to my mouth and placed it between my lips. My cheeks burned.

The food was good. A bit bland, but healthy-tasting. It filled me but didn’t make me want to clutch my stomach and go lie down in a dark room, like most iftar dinners did. For dessert, he removed a bowl of watermelon from the fridge.

We were talking about how good the watermelon is in Egypt and Pakistan when he turned to me and said abruptly, “I’m sorry about last time.”

“No, I’m sorry,” I said.

“I shouldn’t push you to open up more than you want to,” he said.

“No, I want to be open,” I said.

He leaned over and kissed me on the cheek.

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