I was barely to the top of the stairs when Mom started yelling and Dad replied calmly, because he always replied calmly at first, before he got angry and loud. It wouldn’t even be about his reaction to Renaissance Man soon. I’d heard more than enough of these to know that the fight would become about old hurts that had never quite healed right, and it would go on and on, as sure as the moon rising in the sky, until finally there would be silence without peace.
When I turned seven, my father started throwing open my door at daybreak, turning on the lights, roughly shaking me awake, and yelling at me to get up. He was the world’s most obnoxious, consistent alarm, and he didn’t have a snooze button. I’d told him that I was responsible enough to get up to pray myself, but he refused to believe me, which was fair, but annoying.
“Get up, Danyal. It is time for Fajr.”
I groaned.
“Prayer is better than sleep,” he said, quoting the adhan.
“I know, I know,” I mumbled, like I’d done a hundred thousand times, and dragged my unwilling body to the bathroom.
Honestly, I’ve never been able to square the dawn prayer with the idea of a loving and merciful God. Why does a divine, all-powerful being require me to get up when it’s still dark, when even early birds are sleeping, to pray to Him? I mean, I know that remembering Allah is important and all, but I could also do it during regular business hours.
Sighing and muttering under my breath, I made my way downstairs, where my father was waiting. As crazy as Intezar thought it was, getting married young would at least keep my dad out of my room at five in the morning. I’d decided a long time ago that I’d buy my wife scandalous stuff to sleep in—nightshirts and tank tops and shorts— just to be absolutely sure the old man was never able to shake me awake again.
He seemed tired this morning, and given the comforter and pillows piled on the couch, he’d slept in the living room. I’ve never figured out why he did that. There was a perfectly good bed in the guest room he could use when he and Mom fought.
Honestly, though, I’d stopped trying to figure Dad out years ago. What was the point?
“Allahu Akbar,” he said, starting the prayer.
I raised my hands to my ears as well, hoping that my father would choose short verses to recite, so that I could crawl back to bed as quickly as possible.
He didn’t choose short verses. He never did.
And I was the disappointment?
As soon as we were done, I was on my feet and heading back to my room, when my father called out, “Wait.”
I groaned. “Yes, Dad?”
“Eat breakfast with me.”
I glanced out a window. The sun had barely started to rise. I could squeeze in another two hours of sleep if I was lucky. “Now?”
“You shouldn’t be wasting these early hours. The Prophet Muhammad said that there is great blessing in this time. Whatever you attempt, you will do well in.”
“Yeah. It’s the best sleep.”
Ahmed Jilani gave a grunt. And we were off for the day. This was a “that was kind of funny, but I don’t like you all that much, so I’m not going to smile” grunt.
“I’ll cook,” my father offered.
Oh...that was even worse. But there was obviously no way out of this. How had a holy undertaking made my morning so forsaken?
I played a quick game involving DC superheroes on my phone while my dad heated a pan on high and made sunny-side up eggs for us, the edges of the whites crisping. When the sizzle had died away, he sprinkled an excessive amount of red chili powder on them, before dripping hot oil over the pepper, and serving everything with toast. It was a very desi breakfast. Chef Brodeur would’ve had a stroke just looking at it.
“Thanks,” I said.
He grunted in response and pointed to my phone. He was a big believer in doing only one thing at a time. With a sigh, I put it on the table, screen facing down. We ate in silence for a few minutes, the crunch of slightly overdone toast the only sound between us, until my father said something I’d never heard before.
“Your mother was right.”
The piece of toast that had been on its way to my mouth dropped from my hand. “What?”
“About your contest. She had a point. I mean, she was also wrong....”
And just like that, balance was restored to the universe.
“What I’m saying,” he went on, “is that even if you getting into the contest is not worth celebrating, it is a good thing you are in it. At least this way you won’t have to write a final in history. This is an opportunity.”
I nodded. Here came the “it will look good on a college application” speech, which would transition into the “I know you’ve got the brains of a stupid donkey, but you should go to college” speech, which would then become the “being a chef is not a viable career path” speech. It was a familiar mutation.
Instead of launching into a lecture, however, my father simply took a sip of chai out of a giant mug that my mother had gotten for him. It read world’s okayest dad. Aisha Jilani could be savage when she wanted to be. Then he asked, “What are you writing about?”
“My teacher says I have to write about Winston Churchill.”
“Why are they making you write about that fucker?”
I stared at Ahmed Jilani like I didn’t know him.
I mean, there are things that you never expect to happen, but that your mind can still make sense of—alien invasions, zombie apocalypses, falling in love with a vampire—and then there is stuff so bizarre that stunned silence is the only possible response, such as the thought of my father using any variation of the f-bomb.
He looked embarrassed in the face of my shock. “Sorry,” he said. “That is not a good word. Make sure you never use it. Even for Churchill.”
“Um. Yeah. No. Totally. I mean, I don’t even know what it means.”
The super awkward silence continued, but finally Dad said, “What does your history teacher say about Churchill?”
“Tippett is a big fan. I thought everyone was.”
He seemed to think about this for a long time, a pained expression on his face.
Why? Everything I’d ever heard about Churchill at school or seen in movies or documentaries had been positive...though, honestly, I hadn’t really been paying close attention.
“Write what makes your teacher happy. That will get you the best grade.”
I wasn’t sure if that was a command or a question. “Are you sure?”
That was when Ahmed Jilani said something I’d never heard him say before for the second time in our conversation.
It was a sentence that I’d assumed all desi uncles and aunties lacked the capacity to utter.
“I don’t know.”
Even during the last class of the day—it was one of the maths, trig or maybe calc—I was still thinking about my dad’s outburst at breakfast. What had that even been about? As was typical of him, my father hadn’t answered any questions about his issues with Churchill. Instead, he’d just gone upstairs to make up with Mom.
I’d been wondering about it all day. In fact, I was so preoccupied with Ahmed Jilani’s use of the f-word that Mrs. Wright’s explanations about how angles can move or something because real life is not simple and two dimensional totally went over my head. Honestly, though, that would’ve happened even if breakfast had been boring and predictable.