Good Girl | Fiction
In this household, you do as you’re told, no questions. Whatever it is you’re feeling – passion, anger, rage – you swallow deep inside you, regardless of the cost.
Salam alaykum friends,
I hope you’re well and finding ways to keep hope alive.
This week I’m sharing my short story, Good Girl, which found a home in Rowayat. I wrote this from a place of love, and to bear witness to the lives of every Muslim girl/woman failed by those meant to protect them.
Trigger warning: sexual assault
The summer before you turn eighteen, you are young, naïve and carefree. Your Facebook posts almost always feature lyrics from Trey Songz’s Chapter V album, anything by Lil Wayne and everything by D’banj. Your love for D’banj runs so deep that you give yourself the nickname ‘Lil Miss Endowed’ after his popular song ‘Mr. Endowed’. Your biggest crush and potential future husband is Percy Romeo Miller, AKA Lil Romeo. You fill the back of notebooks with their names, hearts drawn over them, and pray for whichever one of them God chooses to bless you with.
You have no summer plans beyond chores, studying and visiting your cousins. This summer is no different, except that the two weeks you and your sister would spend at your cousins is cut short to a night. Your mother brings you both back by Saturday because Uncle Kareem, her best friend’s son, is spending the night, and someone needs to be home to take care of his requests.
It bothers you more that you had to shorten your holiday to tend to a grown man, than the fact that you’ll have to keep your hijab on at all times, except in the privacy of your bedroom. Since there is no spare room in the house, Uncle Kareem takes up the living room, and it’s only when you’re cleaning up on Saturday afternoon that your mother tells you this is about to be your life every weekend until Uncle Kareem completes the Master’s degree he came from Nigeria to study.
You wonder why your house always has to be the refuge. The first and only time you attempt to challenge this idea of taking in every uncle or aunt who’s just arrived from Nigeria in the name of paying back or forward, your mother shuts it down.
‘Do you think your father would’ve been able to bring us over if he didn’t have people like Damola who opened up their home to him? Maybe he’ll still be saving up for tickets.’
You bite your tongue. In this household, you do as you’re told, no questions. Whatever it is you’re feeling – passion, anger, rage – you swallow deep inside you, regardless of the cost. Your mother is not God, you know, but if you try to defy her, you won’t know where to begin. In moments like these, you wish for your sister’s audacity. Or for parents like some of your friends. Parents who crack jokes with their children, whose children snuggle underneath them when they are feeling scared, sad or upset.
Often, you wonder why God didn’t bless you with such parents. Your relationship with your father is non-existent. When he isn’t working night shifts, or in the library studying for the next accounting certification, his ticket to finally securing a ‘normal’ job, he’s busy spending time with his friends, always needing to de-stress from ‘home responsibilities’.
As for your relationship with your mother, you tread around the house in perpetual fear of taking the wrong step, though you can never tell what the right step is. The only time you feel slightly at ease is when you bring home your stellar grades, but even then, your mother always cuts your joy short with her usual question: ‘Did anyone do better than you?’ Even if the person studied completely different subjects from you, there’s never a well done, good job, only unending comparison. You can never bring yourself to lie to your mother, not with an All-Seeing God watching you, and a sister ever ready to snitch.
Before Uncle Kareem arrives, your mother sings his praises. She’s so proud of how far he has come, completing a first Master’s, going on Hajj, memorising the Quran, starting a second Master’s while working a nearly full-time job and saving up to bring his wife and son over to the UK from Nigeria. You don’t remember the last time – if ever – you’ve seen your mother smile in the way she does as she fawns over someone else’s son’s achievements. You dream of a day when something you do would elicit a quarter of this elation she expresses.
Not only do you have to be home to run errands, but you also have to help cook enough food for Uncle Kareem to take away for the week until he returns again on Friday to repeat the cycle. There is no time to check your phone, message your friends, or beat your younger brother’s high score on Temple Run. Your older sister is nowhere to be found, as she always disappears when there’s a mound of chores. By the time this uncle arrives, your back aches, your neck hurts, your fingernails have snapped from peeling soaked beans for the moimoi your mother wants to make for him to take away. You want nothing to do with him, so you stomp your feet and slam the door.
On Sunday, when you return home from the mosque, your mother is in the living room chatting with her wonder boy, and as you attempt to slip upstairs, she calls you right back. ‘Where do you think you’re going? Serve Kareem his food, I need to pray.’
You turn into the kitchen, dish out the ewedu and stew, add two pieces of chicken, then warm it up in the microwave. You set out a tray, place a small plate with a mound of Amala and the warmed soup, then you carry it to the dining table alongside a glass of Tropicana orange juice. He doesn’t lift his head from his phone when you tell him his food is on the table, doesn’t even say as much as ‘thank you’. But you don’t care. You can’t wait to be in your room where you can finally play Temple Run and beat your brother’s score before he returns from the mosque.
It’s the end of August, so with your bedroom being quite hot, you leave the door ajar, pull apart the curtains and push open the windows. You can’t take your hijab off just yet, so you remove the pin that holds it underneath your neck and allow it to hang loosely, the ends thrown across your shoulders. You settle on the floor, phone in hand, your back pressing into the bedframe.
You’re so engrossed in your game that you don’t notice the uncle walking into your room until he settles on the bed next to you. Even then, you pay him no mind. This is not his first time here; he sat in the same spot when your mother made him give your sister the ‘hijab’ speech. In this house where you and your siblings share a room, there is no such thing as privacy. Whenever there are too many guests staying over, your bedroom floor becomes someone’s place of rest, your double bed carries the weight of three.
So, nothing about Uncle Kareem’s presence alarms you at first. Your full attention is on getting the temple runner to collect the coins, since you’re so close to victory. But the longer he lingers, his stew-breath invades your space and your thoughts.
With your mother in the next room, you decide that if you ignore him, he’ll simply disappear, even though you can’t figure out why he’s here in the first place. When you beat your brother’s score, instead of dancing Yahooze or Alanta and texting your score, you swallow your elation. Something about this uncle makes it impossible to be: you can’t check your messages, you can’t share the screenshot with your brother, you can’t even make a single limb move.
When he finally shifts on the bed, you let out a sigh, thankful you’ll be left alone. But he clamps on your shoulder with one hand, while the other finds its way into your jumper, swipes your bra away, cups your breast. Your chest tightens, and you freeze as you try to make sense of the situation.
Here’s Uncle Kareem, your mother’s wonder child. Uncle Kareem, teacher at the children’s class in the mosque. Uncle Kareem who recently returned from Hajj and brought all those religious books for your parents, even gifted you the rainbow-coloured Quran you’ve always wanted. Uncle Kareem with a wife and son back in Nigeria.
You don’t want this, but you can’t find the words to stop it.
Your phone is still in your hand; you dial your younger brother’s number. In the time it takes to ring, Uncle Kareem hesitates, but when you say, ‘Ibs, where are you?’ he sniggers and carries on.
‘Leaving the mosque. What’s up?’ Your brother’s friends mess about in the background, he laughs, and you wonder why on earth you didn’t wait with him. Why were you in such a hurry to come back home?
‘Nothing. Please come home quickly.’ You hope he hears the fear in your voice and picks up speed, though you wonder if it won’t be too late by then. And if it isn’t, what could your brother do? He’s thirteen, while this man with his hand under your jumper, pressing hard on your breasts, is twenty-eight, twenty-nine? For a long time, you’ll beat yourself up for not thinking to call someone else, someone who could strike fear into this man’s heart, even though whenever you try to think of a potential person, you come up short.
You attempt to move his hand, but he swats your hand away. You sputter, ‘Stop… Can you please stop? You’re making me uncomfortable.’ You hate that you can’t curse him out like your favourite rappers. Their lyrics pump through your veins like a record on a loop, spinning your shame, fear and disgust, rather than bringing you the comfort you seek.
‘How do you think I feel?’ He says. For a brief second, you feel sorry for this man, unable to help himself, and at the same time, you want to spit in his face.
You rack your brain for anything else to get you out of this. ‘My mum is home.’
His grip tightens on your shoulder. ‘So?’ His voice is loud and laced with venom, it’s so clear he’s confident he won’t get caught by your mother. In fact, the look in his eyes says he’ll get what he wants before he leaves you alone.
You decide then that it’s probably best to wait it out, so you force your mind to take you to a place away from here.
Your brain runs through instances of where, when or how you may have given this man the wrong signal. A memory from the morning floats to mind. You were clearing the dining table post-breakfast when you bumped into him on your way to the kitchen. You said, ‘Salam alaykum,’ he grabbed your waist in response, then winked. Your stomach turned, you looked around hoping someone had caught him in the act, but you were all alone. You didn’t mention this to your mother because in a battle of he-said she-said, between ordinary you and wonder child, the winner was clear.
When he’s done, he heaves himself up from the bed without a word, and you only begin to breathe when you hear his heavy footsteps heading downstairs. You wonder if he was possessed or if you imagined the whole thing.
Your aching and bruised breasts tell you otherwise, so you jump up, double lock the door and sit with your back pressing into it. Until today, it had never occurred to you to lock your bedroom door when you’re alone, but it’s now a lesson you’re bound to remember. Even after you move out of your parents’ to your own flat, you never exhale until your fingers turn the double lock and you hear the slabs slide in place.
You stare into the mirror attached to your wardrobe door, wondering what it is about you, about the way you look, the way you’re dressed. Your jumper is a size 12 even though you’re a size 8, you’re wearing a maxi skirt, you literally just returned from the mosque.
Later that evening, after he has left your house, having eaten dinner to his fill, you go down to the living room where your mum is sitting.
‘Uncle Kareem touched my breasts.’
Your mother’s head swivels right, away from the TV towards you. Her gaze follows your outfit from top to bottom, and your mind thanks God that you didn’t change out of the clothes you were wearing earlier. ‘Are you sure?’
You step back, wondering what there is to be sure about, why this is the first question your mother thinks to ask you. Her gaze is still on you, but not meeting your eyes, so you realise she’s awaiting a response. You nod and go on to explain the details of how you were minding your business in your room with your hijab on, how you told him to leave you alone, how you specifically reminded him that your mother was home, in the next room for that matter, how he didn’t care.
She grows silent, a look of determination across her face, and for the first time in your life, you feel something akin to joy that your mother will finally be on your side. Her look says, leave this to me, and you trust it with all of your heart. You have absolutely no reason to worry.
At night, when the event of the day runs through your mind as you struggle to fall asleep, your mother’s final expression comforts you, though you have to work hard to push aside other thoughts like how she neither held you nor asked if you were okay.
You plug in your earphones and listen to a playlist of your favourite songs, and over time, you disappear into another version of your fantasy of the day you’ll meet Percy Romeo Miller. But this doesn’t last long; your fantasy is incessantly interrupted by questions. Why? Why you? What was it about you? What gave him permission to do with your body as he liked? You didn’t ask to be touched, you didn’t want to be touched, you never invited this upon yourself—no matter what they say.
You had always categorised girls who get touched into two groups: those who want to be touched, and those who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, wearing the wrong things. At least, that’s what the aunties always say. The first question is always, ‘What were you wearing?’ And there was that video from earlier in the summer, which one of the aunties shared in the mosque women’s group chat — a clip from the Ask Your Sheikh TV show. A woman had dialled in to report being sexually assaulted by her father; she wanted to know what the consequences and repercussions would be for him, not just in this life, but in the hereafter. The Sheikh’s immediate response, after a long throat clearing, was, ‘What were you wearing?’ Because men – including blood relations – couldn’t control their impulses, it was the job of girls and women to do better.
You will come to learn that this is all garbage, you will come to despise these conversations, you will rile and storm every chat with venom when these excuses are used. You will eventually find evidence contrary to their words, memorise hadith and verses of the Quran, and reclaim knowledge of the religion for yourself.
But on this evening, all you can think about is that you were wearing all of the right things. All you can think about is that you were at the right place, that there was no better place for a good girl to be. All you can think about is that you were in the right time, in the brightness and quietness of a Sunday afternoon. Your own home. Your own bedroom. Your hijab and your mother, your protection. All you can think about is that before that, you didn’t miss any of your prayers throughout the day, including Fajr. All you can think about is that while you were at the mosque, you avoided giving hugs to those uncles who always want a hug. You don’t even hug your brother, let alone your father, especially after that video clip. All you can think is, what was it about you?
Throughout the week, you push the incident into the recesses of your mind, distracting yourself with books, music and Facebook games. Your mum is handling it, you have no reason to worry.
You don’t go to the mosque the next Sunday due to period cramps, so you’re home alone upstairs in your room, or you think you are, until you hear his voice downstairs. Your heart races. You grab your phone ready to call your mum, when you see her text message. ‘Salam alaykum. Please give Kareem his food. It’s in the microwave.’
Your stomach drops. You want to be shocked by your mother’s inaction, but you realise you are the fool – why would she choose you over wonder boy?
The anger comes much later, but in this moment, all you feel is fear. You jump out of bed and hurry to the door, your back pressing into it as you hear him walking up the stairs. You grab the abaya you left hanging on the wardrobe door and throw it on, followed by a large grandma hijab you would not be caught wearing outside the house.
The toilet is right opposite your bedroom door, and it’s only when you hear the lock click and he’s inside that you rush out of your room, taking the stairs three at a time. You head into the kitchen and start the microwave. While his food heats up, you pull on your trainers and leave the house to stand in the street, the front door wide open. You call your friend who lives on the street across the road from yours. She’ll be back from church now, you’re certain. You beg her to bring along her older brother too, if she can. She asks if everything is okay, but each time you open your mouth, the words stay stuck in your throat. What kind of daughter isn’t believed by her mother? And if your mother doesn’t believe you, why would anyone else?
Unable to find the words for ‘my mother can’t protect me, so I have to protect myself,’ you mumble something about being home alone, in pain, and desperate for company. You offer up entertainment, snacks, anything that’ll convince them to come over.
‘We’ll be there soon,’ she says, and you remain in the street, shouting out to the uncle when he asks what you’re doing outside and where his food is, that it’s in the microwave and he can get it himself. You only exhale when your friends arrive.
Weeks go by, he continues to show up at your house on weekends, so you learn to treat the incident like one of those nightmares that jolts you from time to time. You hope it will be a thing of your imagination which will come to fade. You learn to never ever be home alone when he’s there and if there’s ever a time he catches you off guard, you invent a reason to leave the house immediately. You never smile at him, but continue to answer his Salaams, because respectability is ingrained in your bones, and you curse yourself for responding. Each time you have to cook a meal that includes him, you imagine coughing up the thickest phlegm, spitting it into his food and mixing it, but you never follow through; you still want to be a good girl. You’ll come to learn that good girls get nothing but disappointment, unending palpitations and expensive therapy bills.
For a long time, you’ll be unable to connect the dots when all you feel is numbness. The day another uncle from another mosque gropes you in his car, then plants a kiss on your cheek, after he offers to give you and a few others at the mosque a ride—you vow never to trust a man again. If you’d known that this would be the cost, you would’ve done the one-hour bus journey. Or when that guy from your Maths class that you don’t like, perhaps can’t even stand the sight of, touches you under the desk in the library. You slap him so hard that he knows there’s no way he’ll ever get anything from you. But you wonder how you let yourself be touched anyway.
And it’s only seven years later, when you visit your parents’ home for Eid and Uncle Kareem is sitting there in the living room when you walk in, his wife and three children scattered around the house, and your chest starts doing the thing it’s been doing every so often for a while now, closing up on you, that you suddenly realise why you continue to enter into relationships where things are done to you. Even after you swear never again. Even with your body and mind forever screaming.
As you watch your parents chit-chatting with him, it hits you that the salvation you’ve been waiting for is not coming. No one, but you, can save you. And after you begin putting the pieces of your life together, you will make it your mission to save others.
But first, you turn around and head out the door of your parents’ home.
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Wishing you a blessed, restorative and fulfilling weekend ahead!
Love and duas,
Suad from Qalb Writers Collective
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