Editor's Note: Don't worry if you feel that you're failing at achieving your goals and sticking to your plans. This month we talk about the difference between motivation and infrastructure and how we can build a routine that doesn't really require any motivation. There's also an insanely delicious tropical ice cream recipe. No ice cream machine needed, because you know that I like to keep it simple. And a very special user in the Spotlight section this month that is a huge inspiration to me with the work he does. Happy reading!

The Deep Dive

Some of you know that I'm a person who's neurodivergent - I'm pretty open about it and I mention it in my profile description. What comes with having a brain that works a little different is how we deal with tasks and how we organize our time. I remember when I was younger, long before we had smartphones, how I used to struggle with getting things done on time and how I loved to do deep dives of research into a given topic that was especially fascinating at the moment. I also used to be the person that tries every new productivity trend, hack and app - just to find that the know-how itself didn't guarantee that I would actually get the stuff done that was on my to-do list. It was always very easy for me to get excited about something new and immerse myself into it. But sticking with the system, actually following through over weeks and months, that was very challenging. It's a little bit like buying shoes: you need to find a system that really fits you so you will stick with it. So today we'll try to create the system that does it for you. While the following article is by no means for neurodivergent people only - my heart is especially close to all you beautiful fellow people who are struggling with being forced to live in a world that doesn't quite fit your needs.

The Monday After Eid

You know the feeling.

The last night of Eid, you are full – of food, of warmth, of something that feels almost like clarity. You prayed. You connected. You felt, briefly but genuinely, like the best version of yourself. Like someone who has her priorities straight.

And then Monday arrives.

The inbox is full. The apartment needs cleaning. The routine reassembles itself around you like it never left. And that feeling – that specific, luminous Eid feeling – quietly slips away before you even notice it's gone.

By Wednesday you are wondering if you imagined it.

This is not a you problem. This is not a faith problem. This is one of the most universal experiences in Muslim life, and almost no one talks about it honestly – because we have confused the feeling of devotion with devotion itself.

They are not the same thing. And understanding the difference might be the most freeing realization you have this year.

What Allah Actually Asked For

There is a hadith that reframes everything.

The Prophet ﷺ said: "The most beloved deeds to Allah are the most consistent ones, even if they are small." (Bukhari & Muslim)

Read that again slowly.

Not the most intense. Not the ones performed during Ramadan or Hajj season or on the days when your heart is wide open and the tears come easily. The most consistent ones. Even if small.

This is not a consolation prize for people who can't sustain the high. This is the actual standard. Allah is not asking for the feeling. He is asking for the showing up – quietly, repeatedly, on the ordinary Tuesday when no one is watching and nothing feels particularly sacred.

The spiritual high of Eid and other special days is a gift. It is real, it is meaningful, and it is not meant to last. It is a refueling station, not a permanent address.

The question is not how to live there forever. The question is what you carry with you when you leave.

Why Motivation Always Runs Out

Here is what your brain is doing during Eid.

The celebration, the connection, the sense of spiritual alignment – these experiences trigger a release of dopamine, the neurotransmitter associated with reward and anticipation. You feel energized, clear, motivated. You make intentions. You mean them completely.

And then, inevitably, dopamine levels normalize. The spike cannot sustain itself – that is not a design flaw, it is basic neuroscience. The warmth fades not because your faith was shallow but because your brain is functioning exactly as it should.

The problem is that most of us have built our practice on top of motivation. We wait to feel ready, inspired, spiritually open – and then we act. Which works beautifully during Ramadan, when the entire environment supports that feeling. And works very poorly on an ordinary July morning when nothing feels elevated at all.

Psychologist and habits researcher James Clear puts it plainly: you don't rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems.

Motivation is a feeling. Feelings are weather – they change constantly and cannot be controlled. Systems are infrastructure. Infrastructure holds even when the weather is bad.

The goal of the post-holiday period is not to resurrect the feeling. It is to build the infrastructure that makes showing up possible without it.

What Islam Knew Before Psychology Did

Here is what is remarkable: Islamic tradition has always understood this.

The concept of niyyah – intention – is not a one-time declaration made on the first of Muharram or at the beginning of Ramadan. It is a living, renewable practice. Every single action can be preceded by a fresh intention. Every morning is a reset. Every prayer is a new beginning, regardless of how the previous hour felt.

This is a profoundly sophisticated psychological tool dressed in spiritual language. It means you are never too far gone. You are never too inconsistent to begin again. The slate is not wiped clean once a year – it is available to you every single day.

And then there is muhasaba – the Islamic practice of self-accounting. At the end of each day, you sit with yourself and honestly review: what did I do, what did I intend, where did I fall short, what do I carry into tomorrow? Scholars practiced this daily, not as self-punishment but as gentle, honest self-awareness.

Modern habit science calls this a "daily review." It recommends it as one of the highest leverage practices for sustainable behavior change.

The structure was already there. We just stopped using it.

Less, But Present

The biggest mistake people make after a spiritual high is trying to maintain the volume.

During Ramadan you prayed tarawih every night, read Quran for an hour, attended lectures, gave sadaqah regularly. And then Ramadan ends and you try to sustain all of it – and within two weeks you have collapsed entirely and are doing none of it.

This is not weakness. This is an unsustainable system meeting ordinary life.

The alternative is not to do less because you have given up. It is to do less *intentionally* – to identify the two or three practices that are truly non-negotiable for you, and protect those above everything else.

Not the practices that feel best during the high season. The ones that serve you most during the low.

Maybe that is five minutes of Quran after fajr. Maybe that is one honest du'a before sleep. Maybe that is a single line of journaling at the end of the day. Small enough that on your hardest days it still feels possible. Consistent enough that over months it quietly reshapes who you are.

Identity is not built in the peak moments. It is built in the ordinary ones, repeated.

The person who reads one page of Quran every single day for a year has read more than the person who read for three hours every day of Ramadan and nothing since. Consistency is not the consolation prize. It is the whole game.

Motivation is a feeling, but consistency is a system. For the rest of this month's Majlis Monthly, we’re building your 'Low-Season Infrastructure' together—including the non-negotiable checklist and the environmental hacks that make showing up easy. Join the circle to access the roadmap.

Subscribe now

Read more

In Part I we followed the footsteps of our ancestors from West Africa through the Caribbean and to the so called New World. By now the Civil War has ended slavery and Black people in America are trying to make a living.

Before we start here's an important note about the lyrics in the songs. I deliberately used lyrics as a tool of storytelling. That's why the words in the songs will not sound like an authentic song that would have been payed on the radio. But rather my goal is to show you an archetype of every genre and let the lyrics complement the music.

7. Blues

The previous chapters have been building up to the Blues, like a slow and steady culmination. What's special about the Blues is it's conversational character despite being played by only one person. It's what happens when you strip away the community and there's nothing left but one man and his guitar. The Blues is all about solitude and the companionship of a guitar. The musician cries out and then let's his guitar reply. It's a fascinating adaptation of the original call and response structure that we've been seeing throughout this musical journey.

8. Jazz

Alongside the Blues the Jazz was another new genre that developed. It was a lot more polished and not as raw as the other musical styles. Like the original drum from Africa was wearing a suit now. Through the blending in of more western style instruments that were known from orchestras the Jazz became very unique and distinctive having fans all over the world up to this day.

9. Soul

Up until this point soulful singing had been limited to church. Soul began when singers like Aretha Franklin and other decided to take their voices to the studio too. To the more traditional and conservative people it was like an affront. But the musicians insisted that the emotions you feel when you talk to God are the same emotions you feel when you are heartbroken.

What stands out here are the female artists. It's the story of the strong woman. And that's no coincidence. Because Black people had been stripped of the community, their men removed as leaders and protectors. So finding that community balance again was a struggle. The result is the archetype of the strong Black woman that we all know so well.

*This song is dedicated to my dear sister and to all strong Black women -me included- who are still standing, still choosing love, still choosing softness.

10. R&B

The natural next step was to mix the beat with the Blues and its soulful singing: the birth of the Rhythm and Blues. This genre has touched so many people and continues to move and inspire people all over the world. While there are many sub- branches of RnB that have evolved over time, I'm sharing a piece in the original old school style that is so dear to me.

*I'm dedicating this song to who I know loves this music too and shares my love and admiration for the beautiful and talented Ms. Lauryn Hill.

11. Raggae

This chapter is close to my heart. The story of Raggae is the story of remembering our roots and never forgetting where we came from. It's the memory and love of Africa for which the word “Zion” is used in Reggae music and the Rastafari tradition. This is also where the UK comes into play because there's a huge Jamaican community living in the UK today which is strongly influencing the film and music industry.

12. Hip Hop

The most popular musical genre in the world today! What a journey from Africa all the way to the rest of the world. Technically Hip Hop is isolating the beat from an RnB song, putting it on repeat in an endless loop and performing lyrics to it in that distinctive rhythmic speaking. This style is actually very close to the original West African griot tradition of calling or singing to the community and speaking directly to them. This is were the journey returns to its source: a story, a beat and the community.

13. The Synthesis

Chapter 13 is very special. It's the synthesis of the complete journey from beginning to end - all voices and genres blended with each other. It's very powerful and uplifting.

I've saved this special track for those of you who are true fans of what I'm sharing here. The Synthesis track is available for download for a small fee of €3.99 - along with 10 bonus tracks that I haven't shared here. It's the complete album for those of you who would like to listen offline and would like to have the full spectrum of the songs. I've saved some of the best songs for the full album only. So if you liked what you saw here you will definitely love the bonus tracks on the full album.

You can directly purchase and download from here:

The River: Full Album

14. The Closing

Now, this journey wouldn't be complete without this one final chapter. Everybody knows the story of the Diaspora as it is told from the perspective of the people sold into slavery. But what about those who were left behind back home in Africa? They experienced the story too. They went through the unbearable pain of watching their loved ones get torn away and never knowing what became of them. Their pain is real and I want them to feel seen too.

Another aspect that's closely related to this is the conscious effort some countries like Ghana and others have made to welcome the descendants of slaves home. They have special government programs of giving citizenship to the descendants of the victims of the transatlantic slave trade, which is an extremely loving and nurturing gesture which shows how much this means to them even today.

So this final song is about welcoming us (yes, us! 🥹) home. The song is in a special musical tradition of Ghana and Togo that is especially used for welcoming someone home after a long journey and the words are in the Twi language of Ghana.

*I'm dedicating this song to my brother - may we heal.

Let this final song soothe your heart and welcome you home.

Home to Africa.

Home to the motherland. 🖤

Thank you for reading and listening all the way up to here. I hope you've enjoyed this musical journey as much as I have. Listen as much as you like. You can always download too if you choose to purchase the full album. And please do share with the people you know - you know, the ones who would love to listen to something like this.

I'm so grateful you were part of this journey.

And remember: Africa is never far away. Africa is every breath…

Subscribe now

In this mini series we're going on a special journey together. We're tracing the steps our ancestors took on their way from freedom to slavery to healing. This is very personal to Black people and I know that you're gonna feel all kinds of emotions as you listen to these songs, but this is part of the journey and part of the healing. I truly hope this is as meaningful to you as it is to me.

These are the stops we are taking on the journey, beautifully arranged into 14 unique chapters:

THE RIVER

A Musical Journey Through the African Diaspora

1. West African Roots

2. Islamic Devotional

3. The Caribbean Bridge

4. Spirituals

5. Work Songs & Field Hollers

6. Gospel

7. Blues

8. Jazz

9. Soul

10. R&B

11. Reggae

12. Hip Hop

13. The Synthesis

14. The Closing

1. West African Roots

The journey begins in West Africa. Everything starts with a beat. The Djembe drum 🪘 and the Kora, a stringed instrument 🪕 that is played with your hands. What stands out is the distinct style of the call and response in the vocals - something deeply rooted in African tradition. We will see this call and response dynamic like a common thread throughout this journey. The mood of the music and singing back then was proud and alive. This was when our ancestors’ world was still intact and unshattered.

2. Islamic Devotional

It is a largely overlooked fact that among the victims of the transatlantic slave trade were also many Muslims. Their numbers are estimated to up to 30%. The Muslims of West Africa were historically strongly connected to North Africa and it's distinct musical traditions which in turn were influenced by the Arabic musical tradition. Their devotional songs sound very North African and the way they use their voice is very similar to the Adhan - the Islamic call to prayer. Still underlying you'll hear the heavy beat that carries every African song.

3. The Caribbean Bridge

By now our ancestors have been enslaved. They have been taken far away from home on ships, sold on markets and forced to do heavy labor. And what do you do to soothe an aching heart that is homesick? You make music. And your music will naturally be influenced by the existing musical traditions of your new home. That is the birth of Calypso. Bamboo percussion and the Banjo are very common for this musical style.

The islands were predominately ruled by the French and Spanish who were less strict about the use of instruments and making music for the slaves. That's why we hear a kind of joyful, resilient mood in their music. There were still joyful moments and there was still hope. And rememberance. The rememberance of home. The memory of Africa in every melody.

4. Spirituals

Large numbers of new slaves were moved through the islands and into the American mainland. On the mainland the situation was very different. Drums and all musical instruments were prohibited for slaves. Speaking their native language was prohibited. Siblings or parents and their kids were separated and moved to plantations that were far apart. The community was deliberately broken.

Still they persevered. They sang, even though their songs at this point were full of sorrow. They used the stomping of their feet and the clapping of their hands as replacement for the missing drums. And the distinct feature of these spiritual songs was the coded language. Their songs appeared innocent. But hidden in the words were instructions for navigation for those who were willing to take the risk and flee.

I've been walking through this valley low - cross the valley

The river is always near - stay close to the river

The morning is coming - wait until the morning for help from the Underground Railroad

5. Work Songs and Field Hollers

For the field workers the field is where they spent most of their day. Hard labor, endless work and the burden of being enslaved. Singing of course was the coping mechanism to somehow make the unbearable bearable. With no instruments whatsoever available they retreated to using their feet and tools for creating a beat. Notice the call and response structure that's still present in these songs. What's fascinating is that your can take a traditional work song from Mali and compare it to a Mississippi field holler and they will be almost identical in structure. The singing is how they remembered.

And somewhere inside that crying and bending of the voice the Blues is about to be born.

6. Gospel

Though not their original faith, Christianity and the community aspect of church is what provided a form of solace. After the Civil War and emancipation Black churches exploded with new energy. That's the hopeful and vibrant energy of the gospel songs. And notice that the call and response is still present.

I HOPE YOU'VE ENJOYED THIS FIRST PART OF THE JOURNEY. FEEL FREE TO LISTEN AND SHARE AND STAY TUNED FOR PART TWO WHERE WE CONTINUE THIS JOURNEY THROUGH THE BLUES, THE SOUL, HIP HOP AND MORE.

Subscribe now

Editor's Note: I'm so excited for you to be here for the second issue of the Majlis Monthly! This month (Muharram) marks the beginning of the new year in the Islamic calendar. So this issue is all about finding direction. I truly hope you benefit from the content I have prepared for you. May Allah bless your new year in all the unexpected ways!

The Deep Dive

Are some of you guys millennials like myself? If you are then surely you too remember that New Year's Eve that marked the beginning of the new millennium. Oh the excitement ahead of that night. It was like the whole world was buzzing with anticipation. I even remember that there were wild stories circling online about the whole world ending on that day or all of the computer systems crashing. Well, I don't need to tell you that the world actually didn't end. And to be honest, nothing was much different on that 1st of January 2000. Life just continued. We all just continued. And even if many people made special new year's resolutions, by the time a few days had passed and they were back to normal, it was just that. Everybody was back to normal. And I was just me - the same version of me, just in a different year.

Back then I realized that New Years actually don't feel particularly new at all.

When New Years Don't Feel New

There is a particular kind of disappointment that comes with beginnings.

You expected to feel something. A shift, a clarity, a quiet sense of this is it, this is the moment everything changes. Instead, the day arrives and you feel mostly the same. The same worries. The same unfinished things. The same you, just with a new date on your phone.

If Muharram has ever passed you by without leaving a mark, you are not alone. Many of us were never taught what this month actually carries – what story lives inside it, and why that story might be exactly what we need right now.

Because Muharram is not just a date on the Islamic calendar. It is a monument to one of the most uncertain, courageous, and quietly transformative moments in Islamic history.

And it has something important to say to anyone who is standing at a threshold, not quite sure what comes next.

The Story We Should Tell More Often

In the year 622 CE, the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ left Mecca.

Not in triumph. Not with a clear roadmap of what would follow. He left under cover of darkness, pursued, uncertain, moving away from the city he loved – the city of his birth, his family, the land that held every familiar thing – toward a place that was not yet home.

The hijra, as we call it, was not a victory march. It was a leap into the unknown, taken with trust rather than certainty.

What is often overlooked is the texture of that journey. The fear was real. The loss was real. Abu Bakr رضي الله عنه wept in the cave of Thawr – not from weakness, but from the weight of the moment. And the Prophet ﷺ responded with one of the most grounding statements in all of seerah: "Do not grieve. Indeed, Allah is with us." (9:40)

Not do not feel. Not be stronger. Simply: you are not alone in this.

The Islamic new year is named after that moment. Not after a conquest, not after a revelation, but after the act of leaving something behind and moving forward anyway – without knowing exactly what forward would look like.

This is the energy Muharram carries. Not the energy of a clean slate. The energy of a courageous step taken in uncertainty.

A Chapter Is Not a Fresh Start

We have been sold a particular idea of new beginnings – that they require a clean break. A blank page. The complete erasure of what came before.

But that is not how chapters work.

A new chapter does not pretend the previous one did not happen. It carries the characters, the unresolved tensions, the lessons still being learned. What changes is the frame. The title. The direction the story is now moving in.

This is where the Islamic concept of niyyah – intention – becomes important.

Niyyah is not about changing your circumstances. It is about changing your orientation within them. The Prophet ﷺ said: "Actions are only by intentions, and every person will have only what they intended." (Bukhari)

The same life, approached with a different intention, becomes a different life.

You do not need everything to be resolved before your new chapter begins. You do not need to have figured out the ending. You just need to name where you are going – and mean it.

What Psychology Says About New Beginnings

Here is something worth knowing: the feeling that a new period carries special possibility is not just wishful thinking. It is backed by research.

Behavioral psychologists call it the "fresh start effect." Studies show that people are significantly more likely to pursue goals and change behavior following temporal landmarks – new years, birthdays, the first day of a month, even a Monday. These moments create a psychological separation between the "old self" and the self we are stepping into now.

The brain uses milestones as identity markers. *Before this, I was the kind of person who.. and starting now, I am the kind of person who...*

This is not self-deception. It is how human beings are neurologically wired to change – in chapters, not in gradual continuous slopes.

The danger, however, is waiting. Waiting for the right moment, the right energy, the right level of readiness. The fresh start effect works precisely because we use the moment intentionally, not because the moment itself carries magic.

Muharram is a given moment. A culturally and spiritually charged one. The question is whether we let it pass, or whether we step into it with intention.

The 'Fresh Start Effect' is a powerful tool, but it only works if you have a structure to hold your new intention. Below, we walk through the step-by-step process for naming your chapter and the one 'Identity Marker' that changes everything. Unlock the full issue by upgrading to start your year with us.

Subscribe now

Read more

Editor's Note: This is the very first issue of the Majlis Monthly, a monthly magazine for Muslims living in non-Muslim societies. In this magazine and the subscriber community we are aligned to the divine rhythm. Every month we dive deep into a topic that’s related to the current time of year according to the Islamic Calendar and we learn how that relates to our journey as humans with our hopes, fears, struggles and all. This month’s issue is all about sacrificing and letting go - the theme of Eid al Adha. You’ll also find The Spotlight and The Shared Table in every issue. Sections where I highlight a post from another Substack writer and a recipe that I liked. As a small gift from me personally, every issue contains a unique phone wallpaper with an affirmation and a Dua designed by me that you can download.

The Deep Dive

I still remember the panic when it hit me. Me, a single mom hustling, trying to keep everything together, showing up and doing my best day after day. And then one day I was invited to a meeting with my manager and two other coworkers at my job. Something felt off. All of them had sad faces. I tried to joke around a little before the meeting started but their faces barely smiled. I remember thinking, what the heck is going on?

And then they broke the news to me: they had to let me go, terminate my work contract because there were financial issues within the company. And I was thinking: Wait... What? I tried to keep my composure, said words of understanding, told them I knew that they didn’t want to do this but had no other choice. But after the meeting ended the panic hit me with full force. What in the world was I supposed to do now?? I was a single mom! Hello?! I shouldn’t be the one that gets laid off. I felt utterly and completely helpless and scared.

In that office, I felt like I had been dropped in the middle of a desert I didn’t choose. And that’s when I realized we’ve been telling the story of sacrifice all wrong.

When Letting Go Is Not a Choice

Most of us think of letting go as something we decide to do.

We read the articles. We journal about it. We make the conscious choice to release the job, the relationship, the version of ourselves we thought we would be by now.

But sometimes, letting go is not a decision. It is something that happens to you.

You don’t choose it. You don’t feel ready for it. And no amount of personal development content quite prepares you for the specific ache of having something taken from your hands before you were done holding it.

This is the kind of letting go that Eid al-Adha is really about.

Hajar’s Story – The One We Don’t Tell Enough

We know the story of Ibrahim’s sacrifice. The knife, the ram, the profound test of faith.

But there is another story woven into the fabric of this sacred season – one that belongs entirely to a woman, and one that deserves to be told in full.

Hajar was left alone.

Not metaphorically. Literally. In the desert, with her infant son Ismail, no shelter, no water, no community, no map. Ibrahim had received a divine command, and he followed it – and she watched him walk away.

What is remarkable about Hajar is not that she felt no fear. It is that she acted in spite of it.

She ran. Between the hills of Safa and Marwa, seven times, searching desperately for water. She did not sit and wait for a miracle. She moved, she tried, she exhausted every option available to her. She was terrified and she kept going anyway.

And at the peak of her distress – when she had done everything humanly possible and it still was not enough – the earth split open beneath her son’s feet.

Zamzam. Water from nothing. A spring that still flows today, over four thousand years later.

The solution did not arrive before the fear. It arrived through it.

What Allah Does With Our Distress

There is a pattern here worth naming clearly.

Allah did not spare Hajar the difficulty. He did not prevent the loneliness, the panic, the desperate running. He allowed her to feel the full weight of her situation – and then, at the moment of her greatest need, He opened a door she could not have opened herself.

This is not cruelty. This is the architecture of transformation.

The Quran reminds us: “Indeed, with hardship comes ease.” (94:5) Not after. With. The ease is already present inside the hardship, waiting to become visible.

If you are in a season of forced release right now – a relationship that ended, a plan that collapsed, an identity you are grieving – this is not a sign that you have been forgotten. It may be the precise moment before the door opens.

And if you feel overwhelmed by it? If you feel scared, or angry, or like you are failing at the very thing you are supposed to be “trusting Allah” about?

That is not weakness. That is what it feels like to be human inside something that is bigger than you. Hajar ran seven times. She didn’t walk calmly. She ran.

You are allowed to run.

What Is Actually Happening in Your Brain

Here is what makes Hajar’s story even more powerful when you understand the neuroscience behind it.

When you are forced to let go of something that matters – a person, a plan, a sense of security – your brain registers it as a threat. The amygdala fires. Your body floods with cortisol, the primary stress hormone, preparing you for danger. Your thoughts narrow. Your chest tightens. Sleep becomes difficult. You replay scenarios on a loop.

This is not anxiety as a character flaw. This is your nervous system doing exactly what it was designed to do.

The problem is that modern life gives us very few tools for completing the stress cycle. We suppress the fear. We distract ourselves. We perform okayness. And the cortisol stays trapped in the body, unprocessed.

Hajar did something instinctively that psychologists now recommend: she moved through the fear rather than around it. Physical movement, action, full emotional presence in the difficulty – these are the things that allow the nervous system to process and release.

When the solution finally appeared – when Zamzam sprang from the earth – her brain would have experienced a profound neurological shift. The sympathetic nervous system (fight-or-flight, high cortisol) giving way to the parasympathetic nervous system (rest and repair). A release of dopamine as the threat resolved and reward materialized. Followed by serotonin – the quiet, steady sense of wellbeing and safety returning.

That feeling of deep relief after a long period of fear and uncertainty? That is not just emotional. It is chemical. It is physical. It is your whole body exhaling.

And it cannot arrive until the fear has first been felt.

This is why we don’t just read—we practice. Inside our paid community, we hold bi-weekly Silent Sanctuary journaling sessions to move through these stress cycles together. We don’t just talk about the desert; we walk through it as a circle.

Subscribe now

It Is Not Enough to Read This

You can find this essay moving and still change nothing.

So let’s make it practical. This Eid season, instead of reading about release – practice it.

Step one: Identify the thing.

What is the one situation in your life right now that you are holding too tightly? The outcome you are trying to control, the fear you are refusing to fully feel, the thing you have been quietly dreading? Name it. Write it down. Say it out loud if you can.

Step two: Let yourself feel it.

Not perform feeling it. Actually sit with the discomfort. This is where the healing happens – not in the resolution, but in the willingness to be present with the pain.

Work through it with:

Journaling – write without editing, let the fear speak

Dhikr – repetitive remembrance quiets the nervous system and anchors you in the present

Du’a – not a transaction, but an honest conversation. Tell Allah exactly what you are afraid of.

A trusted person – do not carry it alone. Hajar was alone in the desert. You do not have to be.

Step three: Watch for the door.

Not with desperate scanning. With open, grounded attention. Sometimes the answer comes loud. More often it comes quietly – a conversation, an opportunity, a shift in perspective that suddenly makes the next step clear.

A Simple Roadmap

📍 Name it – identify the specific fear or loss you are carrying

✍🏽 Feel it – journal, cry, pray, talk. Move through it, not around it

📿 Ground yourself – dhikr, du’a, movement, presence

👁️ Stay open – release the need to know how the door will open

🌿 Trust the pattern – Zamzam did not come before the running. It came after.

You Are Closer Than You Think

Hajar did not know, in the middle of her seventh run, that water was about to appear.

She just kept going.

If you are in the middle of your own version of that run right now – tired, uncertain, not sure how much longer you can keep moving – this is for you:

You are not lost. You are not forgotten. You are in the part of the story that comes just before.

Keep going. Quietly. Faithfully. One step at a time.

O Allah, in this blessed time, we ask You to heal our hearts from what burdens them, to open for us doors we could not yet see, and to place in what You have taken from us a goodness we could not have imagined. Ameen.

Did this reflection help you breathe a little easier today?

This essay is a sample of The Majlis Monthly—a space I created for Muslims who are tired of ‘performing okayness’ and are ready for real, grounded growth.

When you become a paid supporter of the Majlis, you aren’t just getting an email. You are joining a year-long journey aligned with the Divine Rhythm. Your subscription includes:

The Full Monthly Magazine: Deep dives like this one, plus crowdsourced recipes and reviews.

The Silent Sanctuary: Bi-weekly live journaling sessions. The live events are no cameras, no mics so we can all feel comfortable. Just show up as you are and bring your pen and notebook.

The Soul Note: A monthly downloadable phone wallpaper with a custom Dua and Affirmation.

The Chat: A private, safe space to connect with others who are on the same path.

Subscribe now

Let’s move through the 10 days of Dhul Hijjah and the coming year, not as individuals in a desert, but as a community at the spring.

The Spotlight

In this month’s Spotlight I want to share a note that’s so beautifully honest and real. It ties in perfectly with the month’s theme of sacrifice and letting go.

Abdifatah

At what point do you stop trying harder

When you understand that the best thing you could let happen was letting things be…

Read more

3 months ago · 7 likes · 7 comments · Abdifatah

The Shared Table

This month’s recipe is a quick dinner that’s super rich in taste and very quick to prepare!

A Taste of Sazon

Lebanese Spiced Sticky Garlic Thighs

Lately, most of what I’ve been sharing with you has required clearing your Saturday and committing a couple of hours to something special. And I love that for us. But I’ve been sitting on this recipe in particular for a while, testing it quietly on weeknights, and finally sharing it…

Read more

4 months ago · 77 likes · Henna Sharee

The Soul Note

This holy season of Hajj and Eid is all about sacrifice - often forced as we’ve discussed earlier. The following Dua and Affirmation are designed to help us be present with the loss while staying open for the next step.

The Dua:

O Allah, in this blessed time, we ask You to heal our hearts from what burdens them, to open for us doors we could not yet see, and to place in what You have taken from us a goodness we could not have imagined. Ameen.

The Affirmation:

I am safe to feel loss and I am safe to receive what comes next.

Grab your wallpaper here:

💡Tip: Long-press the image to save it to your phone.

Have you enjoyed this issue of the Majlis Monthly? This is the first issue which is a free sample. Moving forward we will publish issues for every month of the Islamic Year which are available to paying subscribers. We are striving to align our rhythm to the divine rhythm of Allah while being in community with each other.

I’d love to welcome you for the upcoming June issue, which is all about Muharram - the Islamic New Year - and how that relates to us as Muslims living in non-Muslim societies.

But for now, check out the subscriber chat, where we are having daily discussions during these 10 days leading up to Eid. I’d love to connect with you in the chat. See you there!

Rashid balances the tray with the black tea down the hallway, while behind him the kitchen clock ticks, always running ten minutes late. Munira waits at the window, a crumpled tissue in her hand, which—against all reason—she keeps smoothing out and crushing again.

He sets the tray down, so carefully, as though any noise could tip something over. He looks at her hands, the tissue, the way she once again hides her gaze from him.

“I’m sorry,” he finally says. The words are so rough-edged they’re almost funny; he grins a little, as if he’d caught himself stumbling. Munira exhales—so softly he only notices it by the slight trembling of her shoulder. Her gaze stays fixed on the street, where the rain paints small mirrors on the asphalt.

“I was thinking today,” she says, without turning to him. “That for a long time we couldn’t really argue. Maybe it’s because we’re both afraid of hurting each other.”

“Or ourselves,” Rashid says, takes a sip of tea and feels the bitter sweetness coat his tongue. It’s the old pattern: every withdrawal a silent call for peace, every silence a shield against his own inadequacy.

Munira laughs briefly, a sound that comes more from her throat than her belly. “You’re the only person who stays polite even after a fight.”

“Being polite helps no one when you should be honest.” He sets the glass down, shifts it by millimeters into a precise line with the saucer. “I don’t want you to think you’re too much. You’re not too much.” For the first time, he seeks her gaze, feeling his way forward as if eye contact were an invisible threshold both of them have to cross.

She nods, the tissue between her fingers a white flag. “And I don’t want you to keep hiding. Not from me, not from yourself.”

A brief moment in which everything is out in the open; then the silence closes around them again. But this time, it’s not a cold silence, but a warm one—like a shared coat they wrap around themselves.

Rashid reaches for the second glass, offers it to her. “Peace?” he asks, and this time it sounds like a real offer, not a concession.

Munira takes the glass, their fingers touch at the rim. It’s not a grand gesture, only a quiet promise. They both drink, the tea steaming between them and tracing little currents through the air.

“How do the Bedouins say it again?” Rashid muses aloud, tilting his head thoughtfully. “The first glass of tea is bitter, like life. The second sweet, like love,”—he throws her a meaningful, mischievous look—“And the third gentle, like death,” Munira finishes the proverb.

Munira laughs so loudly she almost spills her tea. It feels wonderfully liberating. And she knows that something has shifted—not much, maybe just a single degree. But enough for the next morning to taste different.

Subscribe now

Munira can see nothing but her own reflection, blurred in the bathroom light, making her look like a ghost—and that’s how she feels too, translucent, somehow not quite there. The apartment is quiet, Rashid somewhere in the living room, the sounds from the TV long faded. Only the humming of the refrigerator keeps her company.

She lets the water run into the kettle, feels the coldness in her fingertips. It’s that short, leaden moment after an argument, when anything seems possible but nothing becomes tangible. Her gaze falls on the phone, lying motionless on the kitchen table, as if it were waiting with her. She knows she has to talk. She also knows Rashid won’t come to her on his own. So she takes a deep breath, counts to three in her head, and steps back into the living room.

He’s still sitting on the floor beside the coffee table, knees pulled up, chin resting on his hands. As Munira approaches, he doesn’t lift his head, but she feels him listening to her footsteps. It saddens her that things have come to this. Even sadder is how much her heart had already expected his retreat.

“Do you have a moment?” she asks, almost whispering, and sits down on the sofa, half a meter away. She forces herself not to reach for his hand right away. Rashid barely nods; his hands are trembling slightly, something she’s never noticed before.

In her head, thoughts run like a bad YouTube video on double speed: Don’t say the wrong thing. Don’t say anything that pushes him further away.

“I don’t know how we keep ending up at this topic,” she finally begins, and her voice sounds more fragile than she wants. “As a child, I was always afraid someone would just not be there anymore, you know? That happened a few times for us. Aunts, uncles, then my dad for a few months…” She laughs briefly, but it sounds wrong, so she lets it go. “I’m used to having to cling if someone is important to me.”

Rashid slowly lifts his gaze, meets hers with a mixture of exhaustion and something like shame. “I know that,” he says softly. “And I understand that I make it hard for you.” He falls silent, as if he has to pull out the next words one by one from a drawer where they’re stuck. “When we argue, it feels like… like I’ve done everything wrong. Like I have to protect myself because otherwise… because maybe you’ll see I’m not who you thought I was.”

Munira furrows her brow. She wants to contradict him, to immediately say that’s not true, but she forces herself to wait. That’s new: listening instead of rescuing.

“You’re better than I thought,” she finally says. “I’m just always afraid I’ll screw it up if I want too much closeness. And then that’s exactly what I do.”

They both realize they’re circling the same issues. The light from the floor lamp casts a shadow between them, like a trench. Munira sighs, this time very quietly.

“Maybe we just need to be honest about when we’re afraid,” she suggests. “Even if it feels stupid or childish.”

Rashid nods, and his face relaxes just a little. “I think I never learned that,” he admits. “But I’ll try.”

For a few seconds, neither of them speaks. Then Munira leans forward, carefully lays her hand on his. Rashid returns the gesture hesitantly, as if he has to remember how it works.

In that moment, when they both admit that they’re really just small, hurt children in bodies that are too big, everything feels light for a heartbeat. Munira smiles—and this time, for a moment, it stays unbroken.

The water boils, the kettle clicks with its last bit of strength, and Munira stands up, wanting to make tea to keep her trembling hands busy. As she goes to the kitchen, she feels Rashid’s gaze on her back; she knows he expects her to come back, but right now she needs this second to sort through her own thoughts. The tea tin is full of her favorite tea, the one Mama sent her.

She pours the water, watches as the color slowly seeps into the glass, and thinks about the last time they sat so peacefully side by side. It was the day after the move, when they both sat exhausted on the living room floor, among unpacked boxes, and their future still looked like a blank calendar before them. Back then she was afraid it was too good to last. Now she fears it never had enough substance. Maybe that was the mistake: to believe relationships are something you set up once and then they just stay.

With two glasses she returns to the living room. Rashid takes his without a word, drinks the first sip pensively. Munira watches him run his left hand over the leather strap of his bracelet, a gesture he always makes when he’s overwhelmed. She sits down, lets the warmth of the teacup crawl into her fingers.

“I think sometimes I wish you would just get angry more often,” she says after a while. “Instead of withdrawing and dealing with everything on your own.”

Rashid doesn’t answer right away. He looks at his knees, pressed so neatly together as if he wants to apologize for them. “I’m afraid I’d lose you if I did,” he says quietly. “That it would all fall apart.” A quiet laugh, dry. “You don’t really realize how childish it is until you say it out loud.”

“I’m afraid when you don’t say anything at all,” Munira counters, and as she speaks, she feels the lump in her throat slowly soften. “That’s when my imagination drives me crazy. And I just want to know what’s going on inside you.” She laughs, this time honestly, a bit embarrassed by her own directness. “Maybe we really are like those two magnets, you know? Always either attracting or repelling each other, never in between.”

They reach their limits, but at least now they can talk about it. Munira takes a sip, barely tastes the strong tea. It doesn’t matter. She looks at Rashid’s face, the tiredness in his eyes, and also finds something tender, vulnerable there. A moment in which she remembers why she wanted all of this.

“So what do we do now?” she asks, and it sounds less like despair than a real question.

Rashid leans back, closes his eyes for a moment. “Maybe… go for a run together tomorrow? Clear our heads.” He opens his eyes, tries to smile. “And maybe fight sometimes, if we need to.”

That is what Munira needed. No big promise, no false happy ending. Just the prospect of a tiny movement forward. She leans back into the sofa, pulls her legs up, and gently extends her pinky finger to Rashid. After a brief hesitation, he hooks his around hers.

For the rest of the evening they hardly speak, but it’s enough. The humming of the fridge, the ticking of the clock, and in between a new, quieter closeness. Not a new beginning, but maybe a small, good continuation.

Subscribe now

Munira stuffs the last coriander leaves between the dumplings before snapping the lid of the plastic container shut. Her hands smell like leek and fresh parsley, the skin beneath her fingernails stained green. She sets the Tupperware next to the others on the counter and nudges the stack into place with the back of her hand. A glance at the clock: 6:47 p.m. Rashid finishes work at seven, and she wanted to have dinner plated long ago, but the dough was too sticky and the filling too wet, and now her hopes are hanging on the idea that Rashid will be delighted when he sees the freshly steamed manti. Maybe this time he’ll stay in the kitchen longer, maybe they’ll really talk, like they did in the beginning, back when time didn’t drip so sluggishly through the days.

She wipes her hands on the old apron, turns on the water, rubs her fingertips together as if she could wash away her tiredness that way. Voices from the hallway: first muffled, then clattering, as if someone had kicked the coat rack. Suddenly, she’s wide awake. She turns off the faucet, listens. Footsteps, then that brief moment when the apartment door isn’t quite closed and a cool draft wafts in from the stairwell. Rashid’s voice, deeper than usual, with an undertone she can’t immediately decipher. He speaks in short sentences, almost rushed. Munira dries her hands and stands with her back to the door, as if she could steer the upcoming conversation by her posture.

“Salam, I’m home,” calls Rashid from the hallway. Munira hears him take off his shoes, the clack of the laces against the edge of the shoe rack, then a brief hesitation. He steps into the kitchen, still wearing the coat he usually takes off immediately. Munira only sees out of the corner of her eye how he hides his hands in his pockets. She turns just far enough not to confront him, but not to turn away either.

“Manti?” His voice now almost sounds normal, but Munira senses a crack, as if someone had left a fine cut in the wallpaper. She nods, pushes the Tupperware demonstratively onto the dining table, as if that were all that mattered today.

“Go ahead and sit down,” she says, trying to sound nonchalant. “I’ll get the yogurt.” She opens the fridge, grabs the jar. Her hand trembling, though she’s forcing herself to stay calm. Rashid takes off his coat, hangs it over the back of a chair, but doesn’t sit, instead leaning against the counter. For a moment, they are silent while Munira pours yogurt into a bowl. Only the gurgling and the muffled noises from the neighbor’s apartment fill the silence.

“It was a lot today,” Rashid finally says, still not taking his eyes off the kitchen clock. “They called a spontaneous team meeting. Went until seven.” He clears his throat, scratches his forearm, as if searching for an answer there. Munira slides the bowl toward him, sets the bread beside it, everything neat in a row.

“I know,” she says, though she doesn’t know. Though she’d hoped he would say more, maybe even ask how her day was, what’s on her mind. But Rashid only taps at the bowl with his index finger, as if testing whether the yogurt is really there.

“I still have to prepare something for tomorrow,” he says then, quietly, almost apologetically. “Just quickly. After that, I’ll sit with you.”

Munira nods, even though that “quickly” sounds like a promise already collapsing on itself. She doesn’t look up as he leaves the kitchen, only the soft click of the office door marking his retreat. She remains standing, stares at the manti in the container, at the green stripe of parsley she’d cut in especially for him. Her stomach tightens, not from hunger, but from some other dark mass she doesn’t want to name.

She sits alone at the table, spoons out manti for herself, mixes the yogurt in carefully. Outside, an ambulance drives by, the blue lights throwing flickering shadows into the kitchen. Munira puts down her fork, folds her hands in her lap. It’s strangely quiet. Only her breathing, the faint hum of the refrigerator.

She counts to twenty in her head, then gets up, goes to the window, opens it a crack. The air outside smells of wet asphalt and cold November night. Munira leans her forehead against the window, feels the chill. For a moment, everything is clear: her, the kitchen, the street below. Nothing moves, not even the light.

Behind her, from the office, she hears Rashid typing quietly. Munira closes the window, turns around and imagines sitting with him in another kitchen, somewhere where the light is warmer, where conversations don’t always circle around things that can’t be said.

Her phone vibrates on the windowsill. Munira startles when she hears the familiar Telegram chime, as if she’s been caught in a forbidden act. She stares at the display, showing Rashid’s name. A single, new message tone; she can’t remember the last time he wrote her from one room to another.

“Sorry,” it says. “Almost done. Let’s go for a walk later?” An emoji: the okay sign Rashid sometimes uses when conversations don’t go anywhere. Munira reads the message three times, as if she could decipher a code between the lines.

She types a reply, deletes it, types again. “No worries. I’ll shower in a bit.” Sends it. As she puts down the phone, she feels hollow, more transparent than the kitchen window.

The shower roars as Munira undresses. The bathroom light is harsh and cold, the tiles clammy under her feet. She turns the water as hot as she can stand and stands under the stream, holding her hands over her head like a roof. The heat burns her skin, but she stays, counts the seconds until she feels like she’s back in her body. Under the shower, she thinks of her father, how the house used to smell of aftershave and dough on Friday mornings, how he used to make her laugh by turning every mishap into a little anecdote. She can’t remember exactly when she stopped taking this closeness for granted. In truth, her relationship with Baba was similar to that with her husband. Baba was warm and often funny, but at heart, unreachable.

When she comes out of the bathroom, she hears Rashid’s voice on the phone. He’s speaking English, quietly, with the businesslike precision he always uses for work. Munira goes into her room, pulls on sweatpants, sits by the window. The street looks deserted; only the streetlight draws a pale semicircle on the asphalt. She sees Rashid’s reflection in the kitchen window, shoulders narrow and rounded, as if he’s carrying something heavy on his back.

Munira takes her phone, scrolls through old chats with her girlfriends. No one writing tonight. She thinks of Farah, how at their last café meet-up she went to the bathroom three times to fix her facade before saying anything personal. Or of Mama, who likes to comment on everything with emoticons but never talks about her own marriage. Munira wants to write to someone, types a message to Farah: “Are you awake?” She doesn’t send it.

Instead, she opens YouTube, plays a video on “Active Listening in Relationships.” The presenter talks about nonverbal cues, the importance of communicating your needs without blame, about “I-messages” and “empathetic validation.” Munira listens as if she’s hearing a foreign language she’ll never be quite at home in.

Suddenly Rashid stands in the doorway. He’s wearing a fresh shirt and still smells of aftershave. Munira puts her phone away, tries to collect herself for the walk together. He smiles—a shy, distant smile, like a polite apology.

Outside, it’s cold, damp fog lying on the car roofs. They walk side by side in silence, past the yellow garbage bins and the bare trees of the side street. Munira waits for a conversation to begin, as if she could send a signal through the silence that would reach Rashid.

“Those things were tasty,” Rashid says at some point, meaning the manti. He looks straight ahead, as if he won’t allow contradiction. “You did the herbs differently this time?”

Munira nods. “More parsley. Less onion.” She doesn’t know why she says it; it sounds like a foreign language in her own mouth.

They keep walking, their steps in sync, as if they’d unconsciously agreed on a pattern. By the little playground, Rashid stops, looks at the swing slowly swaying in the wind. “I know I’m often lost in thought,” he suddenly says, without looking at her. “Sometimes I think I’m not doing any of this well enough.”

Munira feels her heart racing, without knowing if it’s from the cold or from what Rashid just confessed.

“Me neither,” she says, and even she is surprised at how honest it sounds. They walk the last few meters in silence before arriving home.

In the apartment, Rashid closes the door, stands there looking at her for a moment. “Shall we go out to eat tomorrow? Properly, out?” His voice sounds bright, a friendly attempt. Munira doesn’t know the answer, but she nods before she even thinks about it.

Later, when they’re lying in bed, back to back, the whole apartment is full of unspoken questions. But Munira notices that breathing is easier, as if she’s opened the windows wide for the first time in weeks.

In the morning, Munira wakes before the alarm, a nervous buzzing in her chest. Not from anticipation, but because the next day feels like an obstacle course. The sun hasn’t risen yet, but the sky over the courtyard already glimmers a dull pink behind the rooftops. The smell of coffee hangs in the hallway, which Rashid must have put on somewhere between showering and getting dressed. She peels herself out of bed, heads barefoot in pajamas to the kitchen, where Rashid, already dressed, stands with his back to her, tamping espresso.

He turns only halfway, his shirt un-ironed, hair still damp. “Morning.” He sounds as if he spent the night practicing a neutral tone. He holds out the big coffee mug, handle toward her. As she grabs it, their fingers touch briefly. An absurd heat, as if she were nineteen again.

“Thanks.” She drinks the coffee black and hot, the bitter taste tightening her cheeks. Rashid taps his thumb on his phone, scrolling through unread emails. “The conference call is at half past nine. Afterwards, I could pick you up?”

Munira knows he means her appointment; she’d seen the reminder in his calendar when she was looking for the shopping list last week. “I’ll drive myself,” she says, too quickly and too loudly. Rashid looks up, searching her face for a pattern. “If you want,” he says, with a shrug that ends the conversation. They both stop talking before the pause gets too long.

He leaves the apartment, the front door key clacking on the hallway shelf. Munira watches him go until the apartment is quiet again, as if nobody had ever lived there.

In the bathroom, she looks at her reflection. Her left mouth corner always hangs a little lower, a leftover from childhood when she strained her jaw coughing. Munira pulls the skin under her eyes tight, practices a smile that doesn’t look tired. She wonders if it even matters today, how she looks. The appointment she must be on time for is a consultation with a potential client. She’s not on top form, but there’s no escaping it.

The drive to the office is so mechanically familiar that Munira barely notices steering through the gray morning soup. The streets are empty, the traffic lights change sluggishly. She turns on the radio, but switches it off again after the third round of commercials—even strangers’ voices hurt this morning. She parks as if she’s not really present, tucks the folder with the contracts under her arm, and takes the five flights of stairs in heels to beat the tiredness from her legs. Her calves are burning as she opens the glass door to the co-working office.

Inside, it smells of coffee, printer heat, and cheap cleaning fluid. A man with a bun and an apple-pattern sweater stares at her from the co-working space. Next to him sits a woman with a gray pixie cut, stirring muesli in tiny circles. Munira gives a brief smile, says “Good morning” loudly, as if she has no fear of standing out. Her workplace is by the window, as always. The view: a wall, a little sky, a glittering flat roof. She turns on her laptop, clicks through emails, her thoughts jumping: to Rashid, whether he’s having a better day, to Baba, whom she hasn’t written to in weeks, to the manti she’d saved from yesterday for today.

At 9:55, she’s the first one in the meeting room. She’s stacking the documents when her counterpart enters: Ms. Slimani, gray suit, thin silver chain. Her handshake is firm, her gaze assessing. Munira stumbles after the first three sentences. She realizes she saved the contact name wrong: it’s not Nadia but Nura. The conversation still goes surprisingly smoothly. Nura Slimani speaks with a professionalism Munira admires and finds intimidating. She reviews the key points, asks two questions Munira answers far too briefly. Then, on the third topic, Nura leans back, taps the pen on the table.

“What I wanted to ask beforehand,” she begins, and Munira suspects what’s coming: the question about her own motivation, authenticity, or view of teamwork. She knows the clichés, has canned answers ready.

But Nura asks: “How long have you been married, Mrs. Sayed?”

For a moment Munira is sure she misheard. “Why?” she answers, maybe too sharply. Her voice sounds as if she’s swallowed a splinter.

Nura smiles. “Just curious. We work a lot with expats, and it’s often couples who have to find their dynamic first.” She says it like a colleague, not a boss.

Munira feels her heart flutter, as if someone has pressed a reset button. The question sounds harmless—a small talk bridge—but Munira feels the ground beneath her chair thin out. “A few months,” she wants to say, the way everyone would, but the word gets stuck in her throat, blocked by half-sentences left unsaid at home.

She gives a thin smile, folds her hands under the table. “About two years. Not that long.” Her voice stays calm—a success she immediately questions. Because Nura tilts her head as if she’s already known what Munira hasn’t said.

“That’s an exciting time,” Nura says, and the emphasis on “exciting” sounds like a double meaning. “If you ever want to talk about your experiences in a few weeks—coffee is on the house.” Then she steers the conversation back to business, to project details, dates, and deadlines. Munira hears herself answer as if she’s someone else, somewhere behind glass. After twenty minutes, the conversation is over, an exchange of polite compliments that leaves her almost numb.

She leaves the building, folder under her arm, heels feeling like straitjackets. It’s drizzling, a fine film on skin and hair, and Munira feels as if she’s slowly dissolving. In the parking lot, she grabs her phone, types Rashid a message: “Went okay. On my way now.” She waits for an answer, but the display remains silent.

In the car, she lets the engine run, the fan humming against the fogging windows. She leans her head back, closes her eyes, imagines herself calling Nura Slimani after the meeting, thanking her, maybe accepting the coffee invitation. In her imagination, the conversation flows easily, they laugh, talk about teamwork and the limits of personal questions in a business context. Munira wonders how to turn her uncertainty into routine, how she could manage not just to function, but to stay real doing it. She used to be so much better at all this. What’s wrong with her? Is it the new city? The many strangers, the big gap her best friend and her parents have left in her heart and that she feels every day? Or is it because she’s married now?

At home, she kicks her shoes aside, throws the folder on the kitchen table. The apartment is untouched; Rashid won’t be home until evening. Munira opens the fridge, sees yesterday’s leftovers, takes out the container of manti. She eats standing up, straight from the bowl, the yogurt on top lumpy. Tasteless, but chewing calms her.

Doing the dishes, she grabs her phone, impulsively calls Farah. On the third ring, she picks up, her voice sleepy, as if she’d just fallen out of a dream.

“Everything okay?” Farah asks.

Munira says, “I just need an ear for a minute.”

Farah laughs, that inimitable bright laugh. “How many minutes did you book?”

A moment later, she’s sitting on the kitchen bench, phone propped against a glass bottle, Farah in a pink fleece jacket, her hair in a messy ponytail. “I’m having a really bad day,” Munira says, before Farah can finish the question. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I feel like I’m improvising all the time, every second.”

Farah makes a sympathetic snort, as only she can. “Welcome to the club. Yesterday I called my boss ‘ma’am’ and she asked if I was having a stroke.”

Munira has to laugh, shakes her head, and feels a tiny crack appear in the heaviness. “But at least you’re yourself. Me… sometimes when I talk to Rashid, it feels like I’m giving a TV interview. I’m afraid I’ll reveal something about myself that will disappoint him.” She pokes the empty manti bowl with her spoon. “Yesterday I watched a video on couple communication for an hour, and by the end, I felt like filing for divorce.”

Farah is silent a moment, taps on her screen. “Do you think he notices?”

Munira pulls her knees to her chest, presses her chin against them. “Sometimes. Or maybe I’m imagining it? Yesterday on our walk, he suddenly said something like, ‘I know, I’m not doing any of this well enough,’ and I didn’t even know what ‘all this’ meant.”

“That’s a start—that he’s talking about it at all.”

Munira feels her neck tense. “It never feels like a start. Everything always gets stuck between the sentences. It’s the same with my parents. I wanted to call Baba just to hear how he’s doing, but I wouldn’t even know what to say.”

Farah turns her webcam, shows her balcony for a few seconds: a rusty bike, two shriveled herb pots. “You know what you should do? Just say everything. Really, without thinking. Write it down, say it out loud, but don’t hold it back. If you want, we can practice. I’ll listen.”

She winks, the screen freezes for a moment.

Munira taps on the table, counts the tiles. She can’t think of where to start, so she says, “Sometimes I feel like I used to be braver. That today I double-check everything, every email, every word. And I’m afraid it’ll stay like this forever.”

Farah nods, props her chin in her hand. “It won’t. You just have to get used to things not always going smoothly again.”

Munira leans back, closes her eyes. “I think I really have to call Baba. Otherwise things will always stay the way they are now.”

Farah wrinkles her nose. “Then call him. Now. I’ll wait on the line.”

The thought makes Munira nervous, but also strangely light. As if Farah had recognized the importance of the moment and lent it a bit of significance. She hangs up before she can change her mind, scrolls through her contacts to find Baba’s number. Her thumb hovers over the green receiver—so many memories of Sunday afternoons from her childhood, when they sat together by the phone, calling uncles or aunts, because Mama always said: ‘Family only holds if you water it like a tree.’

The first dial tone sounds much too loud. After the third, Baba picks up, a calm “Salam alaikum ya binty” with the timbre of tea and an old couch. Warmth spreads through her chest when Baba calls her “binty”—my daughter.

She doesn’t know what to talk about, so after the obligatory questions about his and Mama’s health, she asks about the tomatoes in his garden. He talks for a long time, tells her about yellow leaves and new varieties he wants to try in April. Munira listens, feels how the fine cracks in their conversation bring back old patterns.

“And you?” Baba finally asks. “How are things with Rashid?”

Munira presses her fingernail into her palm. “We’re trying. I think we’re both not very good at talking about it when things get tough.” She hears her own confession and is startled for a moment, as if she’d peeled the wallpaper off the wall.

Baba snorts, not unkindly. “Nobody’s good at it. Your mother always says, you learn the most when you don’t know what to do anymore.”

They are silent together, while outside someone wheels the garbage can to the curb. From Baba’s receiver comes a quiet scraping sound, as if he’s moving a chair.

“Are you coming for Eid?” he suddenly asks, with a hesitation she rarely hears from him. He means the Islamic festival at the end of Ramadan, still a few months away. He seems to be looking forward to it and hoping she’ll come home. They all still have to learn this family-at-a-distance thing.

“I don’t know if we’ll manage.” She doesn’t want to decline outright, but she knows it’ll be difficult if the festival falls on a weekday. “I’ll let you know ahead of time. Promise.”

They talk about trivial things for a while longer, the conversation fades out like a song after the chorus. When she hangs up, she feels empty, but also a little tidier. Maybe because she didn’t hold back her words. Maybe just because Farah was right: nothing stays as it is.

Munira spends the rest of the day trying to work, but she barely gets anything done. Her thoughts keep drifting, landing on Rashid, on the things she still needs to say.

When Rashid comes home in the evening, it smells of burnt plastic. He finds Munira in the kitchen, the toaster open, charred bread crumbs on the board. She’s crouched on the floor as if she’s lost something. Rashid says nothing, puts down his bag, and starts sorting the mail. Electric bill, flyers. He feels a dull pressure in his head, a hint of annoyance, but no desire to start the uncomfortable conversation that’s undoubtedly waiting for them.

“Did you see my message?” Munira gets up, her hands still crumbly. She sounds like she’s trying to plaster over the emptiness between them.

“I did. Sounds good,” says Rashid. “Congrats.” He notices how heavy each word is as it crosses the room.

She looks at him as if she’s expecting more. He feels her gaze. The expectation stretches through the hallway; she doesn’t look at him, she pierces him.

“Do you have to work again tonight?” she asks after a while. A little too casually.

He shrugs, turns to the desk in the living room. “A few emails, that’s all.”

“You’re always so quick at the computer, hardly home and you’re on it.” She says it quietly, but the remark hangs in the air like a splinter. He doesn’t turn around, acts as if he didn’t hear.

“If you’d rather talk, just say so,” he finally says, without looking up.

She leans against the door, folds her arms. “I don’t always want to have to ask.”

Now he does look at her. She seems smaller than she did this morning, as if she’s folded in on herself. “What does that mean?”

“You come home and act like you’re here alone. I can leave you alone if you’d rather.”

He notices his breathing getting faster. “I just got home from work, Munira. I just need a moment—”

She interrupts him. “You always need a moment. You’ve needed a moment for three months.” Her face is open now, raw. “I just want to know if you’re still in this at all.”

His first reflex is defense. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

She takes a step toward him, speaking faster now. “That every day I have to guess what you’re thinking. That you swallow everything and then act like everything’s fine. Do you think that’s not exhausting?”

Rashid stands up, the words burning on his tongue. “You overthink every little thing, Munira. You analyze everything, every look, every half-sentence.”

She snorts, as if she’s been waiting for that answer. “Because you never say what’s going on! I have to start somewhere.”

“There’s not always something to say. Some things you just have to bear.”

She laughs, short and harsh. “You got that from your father, didn’t you?”

He’s silent for a moment, as if she’s just hit a sore spot. He thinks of his father, the silence at the kitchen table, like a locked room between them. Munira is now standing directly in front of him, her voice is quieter than before, but firmer.

“I don’t want us to become like that. I don’t want an everyday life where everyone fights for themselves and we’re only a team when it comes to taking out the trash.”

Rashid feels the pounding in his temple. He tries not to look at her, afraid his face might give everything away. There’s a pressure in his chest, as if someone had wrapped a tight bandage around it. He doesn’t know what to say without making everything worse.

“I’m working on it,” he finally says. The words taste like chalk. “I know that sometimes I—”

She doesn’t interrupt him, but she waits. He can hardly stand the expectation in her gaze.

“I don’t know how to do this, Munira. The talking. I never saw it at home. It was always… quiet. Or loud, but not like this.” He wrings his hands, notices how they’re trembling. “I don’t want you to think I… that I don’t want you anymore. I’m just scared of what will happen if we say all these things out loud.”

She doesn’t reply at first. Then she sits on a kitchen chair, pulls her knees up, wraps her arms around her legs. “I called Baba today,” she says, as if that had anything to do with what was just said. “He asked if we’re coming for Eid. I didn’t say yes right away.”

Rashid stays leaning against the wall. “Don’t you want to?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know. I don’t even know how I’m supposed to get up tomorrow. I’m tired.”

They both stop talking, and suddenly the silence no longer feels threatening, but like a pause they need. Rashid sits down across from her, the chair creaks under his weight. He doesn’t say anything else, but that’s okay this time.

After a while, Munira gets up and starts wiping the burnt crumbs from the table with a damp cloth. It’s as if she’s trying to scrub the conversation away, but maybe also what lies between them. Rashid helps without her asking. They work side by side, wordlessly, their movements synchronized like two hands that are just getting used to each other again.

When they’re finished, Munira stands there, staring into the empty space above the sink. Her voice is hoarse when she says, “I’m afraid, Rashid. That we’ll become like our parents one day. That we’ll wear each other down.”

He sets down the dish soap and puts a hand on her shoulder, hesitantly, as if she’s made of glass. “We don’t have to. Really, we don’t.”

She turns to face him, and for a moment, there’s that closeness again that so often slips away from them. They just stand there, both too tired for further analysis. He feels her trembling slightly, maybe from hunger or from all the unspoken things.

“I’ll get us something to eat,” says Rashid, and she nods, as if that’s what she’s been waiting for. Softly she adds, “Will you hold me?” He pulls her into his arms without hesitation, kisses the top of her head, and when he softly says “Ya Ghaliya,” she exhales slowly and relaxes.

Later, as they sit together on the sofa, burger wrappers on their knees, the hot water bottle between them, they talk about trivial things: the new neighbors with the screaming child, the tense relationship between the seagulls in the parking lot and the stray cats. Rashid asks if Farah still lives with her auntie, and Munira tells him that Farah now has a balcony of her own, from which she can watch the whole street. Rashid imagines Farah laughing on the balcony and can’t help but smile a little himself.

The mood is light again, but underneath it lingers a remnant of what just moved them. Munira leans against him, the fabric of her sweater tingling on his skin. He feels that she’s there—truly there, not just a function of their shared routine.

Later still, as they lie side by side in bed under the thin sheet, Munira asks into the darkness, “Do you think it will ever get easier?”

Rashid doesn’t know. He says, “I think we just have to get used to it never being easy.”

She laughs softly. Then she lays her hand on his arm, and this time no more words are needed. They just lie there until they both fall asleep, the hum of the streetlight outside the window lulling them into a calm that demands no more answers.

Subscribe now

The sound of her own steps on the hallway tiles is the first thing Munira notices when she comes home. She puts down her bag, rolls her shoulders, shrugs her jacket off her arms—all in those slow, concentrated movements she thought she’d unlearned, but which return to her limbs after days like this. She glances at her phone display, but it shows nothing except the time. Almost exactly four o’clock—Rashid should have been home long ago, unless some emergency meeting has upended everything today.

The table still stands exactly as it did this morning: two glasses, the napkin heart, next to it a bit of raspberry jam left on the porcelain. Munira sits down in her spot, pulls her phone closer, looks at the cracked corner of the glass, and wonders if she could mend the cracks if only she’s gentle enough. Her fingers tap over the display, with no goal, no message.

She opens the chat with Rashid. Over the last messages floats a silence that feels like the moment before the first word in a meeting: highly charged, undecided. “Arrived safely,” is there, sent by her at half past eight. He replied with “Great, see you later!” Below that, nothing more.

Munira looks at the empty text field. She types:

“Are you still at the office?”

Then deletes it again. Sounds like the mother she never wants to be.

She types:

“Do you want to go for a walk this evening? I’m in the mood for fresh air and vanilla croissants.”

She reads it three times before she wants to press send, but then selects it all and deletes it again. Too needy.

Another attempt:

“Let’s just have a nice evening together today.”

She stares at the phone as if the device could pick up her mood. She imagines Rashid often sitting in front of his laptop, in sweatpants, with glasses, his hair still a bit damp from the shower, the screen full of little windows and blinking notifications. He is a person who can’t switch off, who always thinks in work. She knows that she sometimes loves that about him. Not so much today.

Munira types: “Let me know when you have a break. I’m looking forward to you :)” She sends it off, and immediately regrets the emoji, but it’s too late.

She puts the phone on the table, next to the open notebook, and drums a sort of Morse code with her fingers. She tries not to pay attention to how often she checks the screen, but it feels like a tiny eternity until the phone buzzes.

A message from Rashid, just a short ping, but that’s enough to make her pulse quicken.

“Sorry, I’m deep in it right now. I’ll text soon! Love you.”

The “Love you” is like a band-aid on a cut that bleeds longer than it should. Munira feels everything tighten in her chest, a mixture of relief and an emptiness that remains.

She types a reply: “No stress, I’ll wait.” Then her thumb hovers over the send button. She reads the line, erases it. Instead, she closes the notebook, shoves the phone aside, as if she could push her thoughts away along with it.

For a moment she wonders if she should write again. Maybe something like “I miss you,” but that’s dangerous, could smell of neediness, of insecurity. She doesn’t want to be the woman who waits for messages like for an IV at the dentist. She wants to stay relaxed, cool, to be enough for herself.

Her fingers still wander back to the display. She types:

“You’ve got this.”

And deletes it again immediately. Then nothing is left.

She gets up, walks a few steps into the kitchen, fills a glass of water, staring out the cloudy windows at the courtyard. Down below, there’s a stroller, next to it three bikes that all look exactly the same. The world outside works by rules that don’t demand attention.

The phone stays silent.

Munira leans against the fridge, breathes in and out slowly. Then she smiles, just for herself, and says out loud in the room: “Patience is like hot tea.” It sounds silly, but that doesn’t matter. She puts down the glass, sits back at the table, retrieves the phone and reads the old messages again. The emoji from earlier already feels like a relic, a fossil from a previous state.

She puts the phone away for good, opens the notebook, and starts writing lists: things she wants to get done tomorrow, recipes for the week, topics for the next meeting. The silence fills the room, and her handwriting becomes clearer, her lines straighter. She decides not to push today.

Outside, it’s slowly getting dark. The fridge light is still on, and the phone lies motionless beside it, as if both had declared a kind of truce.

The lights of dusk still lie over the living room as Munira sits a moment longer on the sofa, listening into the darkness of the hallway. From the office, a rectangle of blue brightness glimmers, in which Rashid moves as if he were just another shadow among the stacks of files and monitors.

It’s half past six when Munira decides to do something nice for him. She knows how he likes his coffee—strong espresso, half a cup, no sugar, but a little bit of cinnamon. She grinds the beans by hand, because he loves the aroma so much, pours them carefully into the portafilter and listens as the machine’s motor hesitates before the brown gold runs into the cup. Her index finger circles the rim, so as not to destroy the crema.

She takes a small note from the drawer, folds it in half, scribbles a simple heart with a ballpoint pen and underneath: “For you. Munira.” She places the cup on a saucer, lays the note next to it, arranges both on the tray as if preparing an art object for an exhibition.

On the way to the office she hesitates briefly in the hallway. The carpet muffles her steps, but she feels her heart beating all the way into her fingertips as she knocks on the door. A muffled “Yeah?” comes from inside, then she opens it.

Rashid is sitting in front of three screens, his back slightly hunched, his face split into two halves by bluish light. To his right, papers are stacked, to his left, two empty tea cups. His gaze is fixed on an Excel table, and in the small lower right corner, new notifications are constantly blinking.

“I thought you might need some energy,” says Munira, and her voice sounds surprisingly steady. She sets the tray next to the keyboard, careful not to move a single file.

Rashid turns his head, and for a moment their eyes meet. Then he puts on a grateful smile—warm, but distracted. “Perfect timing, honestly. That’s really… worth gold right now.”

He lifts the cup, sips it, reading the note. But his eyes never quite leave the screen. “Thanks, Nira. Really good.” At the same moment, the phone rings, a vibration right on the desk, and Rashid grabs it almost automatically.

“Sorry, gotta take this,” he mumbles, and answers the call. “Yes, hello. Uh-huh. I’m on it… I’ll have the numbers ready soon…”

Munira stands in the doorway, still holding the tray. She watches Rashid pinch the phone between his shoulder and ear, his fingers continuing to dance over the keyboard, and how with every second he sinks deeper into the conversation. His back turns slightly away from her; the signal is clear.

She stands there another moment, wrestling with the impulse to touch him, ask a question, do something. But she doesn’t want to disturb, doesn’t want to be more of a burden. So she quietly turns around and goes back to the kitchen. Behind her, Rashid’s voice continues, loud, excited, in a language she doesn’t quite understand, since he likes to switch to Arabic when he’s stressed.

In the kitchen, everything is in perfect order—the countertop wiped, dishes stacked, the fridge gleaming. Munira opens it anyway and sorts the containers, arranges the milk by expiration date, wipes over the surfaces with a cloth. She feels her movements growing more tense, faster and more precise, as if she were a machine.

Every now and then she glances toward the hallway. Rashid’s voice grows loud again, then soft. She hears him laughing, then negotiating in short, clipped sentences. It’s as if he’s broadcasting from another world.

Munira pours milk into a pot, even though she knows she doesn’t need it, and stirs it around. The heat rises slowly, everything bubbles, but Munira feels frozen, as if her body were held in a rigid frame. She turns off the stove, watches the milk stop bubbling.

“Am I too much?” she thinks, “Am I expecting too much?” She tries to tell herself it’s normal to work evenings. That everyone does it, especially at the end of the month. All the more so when you’re starting your own business. That closeness doesn’t always come from talking, sometimes shared silence is enough.

But still, there’s this little pain that won’t go away, no matter how often she tells herself it’s okay. She feels it in her jaw when she presses her teeth together too tightly, in her fingertips when she spins a spoon around the rim of the pot for too long.

She lets herself fall onto one of the kitchen chairs, pushes the phone back and forth in front of her. She could text Farah or Mama, make fun of everything, just blow off steam. But she knows she won’t do it. Because she doesn’t want to be the one who complains, not the one who spreads her marriage out like an oversized coat.

She hears Rashid’s voice grow louder again. “Give me ten minutes, then I’m done,” he eventually calls into the hallway. Munira doesn’t answer. She closes her eyes for a moment and imagines what it would be like to just sit with him on the sofa, feet touching, a bit of TV light on the carpet. No big words, no balancing act, just that little piece of everyday life.

When she opens her eyes, the room is still tidy, the air smells of coffee and a little of longing. She takes the notebook that’s always on the kitchen counter and writes a word in it: “Contentment.” She circles it as if she could nail it down.

Then she takes the glass of water, drinks it in two big gulps, and puts it in the dishwasher—even though it’s the only glass in there. She smiles, a crooked but genuine smile, and thinks: Maybe it’s a gift, to be satisfied with less. Or at least to make it look that way.

From outside, the sound of a car drifts in, a dull, calming rolling. Munira feels her heartbeat slow, as if the rattling could sort out the silence inside her.

She runs the back of her hand along the table edge, then stays seated there a moment, while Rashid’s voice continues in the background, sometimes louder, sometimes softer, like a radio station she never quite turns off.

The living room is bathed in warm light. The little rug lies exactly parallel to the TV stand, and Munira has arranged the pillows so that they look like a field of compliments: cinnamon, ochre, a splash of mustard yellow in the corner. On the coffee table stands a tray with pistachios, dried apricots, and the suspiciously American caramel popcorn Rashid secretly loves but would never buy himself. The remote, a thin rectangle of plastic, waits next to the laptop, where the movie’s opening credits are already running silently.

Munira checks the stove clock: 20:03. Rashid’s voice hasn’t been heard from the office in ten minutes. She straightens the hem of her shirt, closes and reopens the laptop, just to make sure the internet connection holds. Then she leans her elbows on her knees and thinks about how to word tonight’s arrangement so it doesn’t sound like a request.

When Rashid appears in the doorway, his eyes are red from the screen light. He’s wearing a faded-print T-shirt he usually only uses for sleeping. Munira is glad to see it; it means he’s at least left the workday behind, outwardly.

“Are you hungry?” she asks, “I made pistachios and popcorn. And the movie we missed last time.”

Rashid pulls up a corner of his mouth. “Sounds like a wellness program.” He plops down onto the sofa, slips off his slippers and puts his feet on the table—a reflex from student days that only rarely comes out these days. But in the next moment he already grabs the phone, unlocks it, and types at a speed that soaks up all attention.

Munira smiles and moves the tray closer to him. “You can finish what you need to,” she says, trying to sound unobtrusive. “I’ve got time.”

Rashid types a while longer, sends a last message, and then puts the phone face-down on the table. “I’ll be all yours in a minute, just one more email,” he says, and maybe this time he means it. Then he grabs a handful of popcorn, tosses it into his mouth, and chews, eyes on the silent movie credits.

Munira waits for the phone display to stay dark, then starts the movie. The music washes softly through the room, and for a moment, it’s almost like before: They sit side by side, their knees touching, the light flickers, and the scent of caramel settles over the tiredness.

But after fifteen minutes, Rashid picks up his phone again, reads a message, and sighs. “Sorry, it’s the colleague from Asia, they’re doing shift change now. Just one sentence, I swear.”

Munira nods, but her hands are steadier than necessary. She looks at the screen, follows the scene, but her thoughts keep drifting, landing on Rashid’s face with every beep. She considers whether to tell him that she wants more presence, more than this divided in-between. But she doesn’t want to be the one who piles up expectations. Doesn’t want to be the one who “makes trouble.”

She waits for a moment that could serve as an opener. When the main character in the movie cracks a joke, she laughs extra loud, hoping Rashid will join in. But he only smiles politely, types a response, then rubs his forehead with his fingers, as if he needed to rub away a headache.

After half an hour the snacks are barely touched, Rashid is still sitting at the far edge of the sofa. Munira pulls up her legs, wraps her arms around her knees. “Do you have to get up early tomorrow?” she asks, to fill the silence.

“Yeah, unfortunately. The call’s at eight. Can you wake me if I oversleep again?” He sounds grateful, but also tired, as if he’d long forgotten what a new beginning feels like.

Munira nods, looks back at the screen. She waits to see if Rashid will ask how her day was, if he wants to know why she put so much effort into tonight. But nothing comes.

In her head, the carousel of thoughts starts spinning: Is it so wrong to wish that someone would put work aside in the evening? Is it asking too much for a hand to rest on hers for ten minutes, without her having to beg for it?

The final scene of the movie plays as Rashid sits up. “I’m off to bed,” he says, “otherwise I’ll be totally groggy tomorrow.”

“I’ll be right there,” Munira says. She stays sitting on the sofa until the credits are over. Then she turns the remote in her hands, again and again, until the plastic edge gets warm.

In the kitchen she gathers up the tray, sorts the pistachio shells and popcorn bags, all in silent, practiced motions. The light reflects on the countertop, she sees herself in it, chin thrust forward, lips pressed tightly together.

She considers texting Farah: “Got any tips for alone-togetherness?” But she shakes off the thought, just leaves the phone where it is. She doesn’t want to pour her heart out, she doesn’t want to complain. She just wants, for a moment, to feel that she’s not standing in the kitchen empty-handed.

When she turns off the light, she goes back into the living room, gives the sofa one last look. The blanket is neatly folded, no trace of a space that was just shared. She wonders if Rashid even noticed how much anticipation she’d put into this evening.

In the bedroom, Rashid lies on his side, his back to her, his face half pressed into the pillow. She slips quietly under the blanket, leaves a gap of a few centimeters between them. She wonders if she should bridge the gap, put a hand on his arm, touch him. But she doesn’t. Instead, she turns onto her back, stares at the ceiling, counts the seconds until she falls asleep.

Maybe, she thinks, marriage is like a long movie night: Sometimes you laugh, sometimes you’re silent, and most of the time you wait for someone else to reach out first.

Munira blinks into the darkness, hears Rashid’s regular breathing. She holds her breath, just for a moment, as if that might stop everything from going on as before.

But life doesn’t pause. Not even in the silence between two people who love each other and yet sometimes lie side by side like strangers.

Subscribe now

The sky outside is overcast, the room wrapped in a layer of gray, as Munira glides out of sleep. The first thing she perceives is the weight of Rashid’s arm, lying heavily across her waist, and his calm, deep breathing right behind her ear. She feels around for her phone with her hand, lifts it slowly until it lights up like a spaceship in the dark room. 05:35. Time to get up for prayer. Excited clarity fills her head.

Carefully, almost guiltily, she slides Rashid’s arm off herself and rolls over the edge of the bed. With every muscle she tries not to move the mattress, as if a tremor might wake him and destroy the fragile ritual she has planned for this morning. She lets her feet glide onto the cool floor, waits briefly to see if he stirs, but Rashid remains motionless in his cocoon of blanket and shadow.

In the corner she feels for the small folded prayer rug, spreads it out, faces east. Still half asleep, her breath feels strange, but the familiar murmuring of the sura orders time. After the prayer, she ties her hair back and slips on a simple, light shirt, which gives her a milky sheen in the light of dawn. Munira checks her reflection in the mirror, takes in the shadows under her eyes, which are more pronounced today, and tells herself that it will be a beautiful day.

In the kitchen, everything is quiet; the only living thing is the soft pulsing of the refrigerator seal, breathing in the rhythm of the house. Munira opens the window a crack so that the sounds from outside can air out her thoughts. She sets the espresso maker on the stove, grinds fresh beans, letting her palm rest heavily on the grinder. The smell of coffee awakens an anticipation that travels through her whole body.

The countertop is a stage: bread, eggs, fresh raspberries, and a small bag of pistachios from Rashid’s childhood. With the precision of a watchmaker, she cracks the eggs, separates the white, lets it swirl in a glass bowl. As she measures the ingredients, her gaze keeps returning to the narrow kitchen window, where the sky now shows a fluid stripe of blue.

She lays out the plates, one for Rashid, one for herself, arranges the glasses so their edges mirror each other. Each piece of cutlery lies on the table like a statement; nothing is left to chance. She even arranges the fruit with geometric clarity, a mandarin in slices that look like tiny suns. Her hands work calmly, but inside, nervousness shimmers through: Today, it should be a breakfast that remains—not just one that fills.

Again and again, she looks at the clock on the oven, now showing 06:17. She should slowly wake Rashid so he doesn’t miss the prayer. Time stretches, fills with quiet sounds: the rustle of the bread bag, the fine noises she makes as she sets up. She thinks about how Rashid said last night: “Breakfast together tomorrow? I can make it before my meeting.” His glance had been brief, but the promise electrified her. Part of her believes that such small things could put the world back in order if you just tend to them persistently.

Shortly before half past six, she places a vase with a single rose on the table, angling the stem so it points toward Rashid’s seat. She sets out two coffee cups, warms them with hot water. In the haze above the stove, the lamp flickers; Munira senses how anticipation and doubt chase each other.

The quiet buzzing of a phone tears through the silence. At first, she thinks it’s hers, but then she hears Rashid’s voice from the bedroom, muffled through the door. She can only catch sentence fragments: “Yes, understood... right away, five minutes... no, I’m already awake.” His tone is deeper than usual, something in his way of speaking makes her hand pause.

Rashid appears in the doorway, already in a shirt, the top button open, the tie half-knotted and crooked. His hair still clings damp from the shower to his head. In his left hand the phone, in his right an attaché case that looks almost too big for a man who usually carries everything in his head.

“Salam,” he says, with that cautious smile that always precedes bad news. He stands for a moment, the phone wedged between chin and shoulder, then types another message.

Munira turns to him, pours coffee that bubbles with tiny blisters in the pot. She takes the cup, hands it to him with both hands, like a peace offering.

“I even bought your favorite jam,” she says, almost lightly. She points to the jar of orange marmalade he always ate as a child. “And fruit salad, because you’ll need lots of energy today.”

Rashid looks at the table set, the carefully placed cutlery, the folded fabric napkin in the shape of a heart next to his plate. He smiles, but his eyes are not with her. “This looks great, honestly,” he says. “But I have to go soon. The client from Bahrain, you know.”

He takes a spoon from the table, scoops a raspberry into his mouth, but chews so quickly it’s as if he wants to abbreviate the ritual. “Sorry, Nira. Could you make me a coffee to go?”

For a moment, Munira’s hands freeze in motion as if dipped in honey. The small spoon in her right hand rests at a perfect 45-degree angle over the rim of the cup, her left supports on the edge of the table. She smiles, but this time it doesn’t reach her eyes.

“Of course,” she says. “I’ll make you a fresh one.”

As she takes the to-go cup from the cupboard, she hears Rashid dictating further into his phone: “Will be there in ten, max fifteen minutes... Yes, I’m bringing everything.” His gaze brushes her, and for a tiny moment it seems like he wants to say something else, but then there’s just busyness again.

Munira screws the lid onto the cup, adds a cookie, and hands the package to Rashid, who takes it like a baton. He steps up to her, brushes her shoulder lightly, kisses her at her hairline, where yesterday he’d made a joke about her vanilla-scented shampoo.

“I’ll make it up to you, promise,” he says, and he’s already on his way to the door, whirls once more in the hallway, calls, “Love you!” and then the door closes more softly than it sounds.

The room draws back, as if the light is stepping outside. Munira is left with the two plates and the perfectly parallel glasses. She twirls the spoon a few times between her fingers, looks at the warm coffee steaming like the heart of a machine now running idle.

She sits at the table, folds her hands in front of her, closes her eyes for a moment. The sounds of the house get louder: The fridge ticks, the heating pipes sing, outside the first tram of the day rumbles by.

She could get angry now, scatter the setting, pour out the jam, throw the cutlery at the walls. Instead, she readjusts the rose, pushes it a little closer to Rashid’s empty seat, as if she could balance out the coldness with it.

The oven clock moves to 06:38, and Munira thinks of how her mother used to say: “If you’re waiting for something to happen, that’s already part of the story.” She takes a bite of bread, barely tastes the butter, and imagines Rashid sitting on the train, maybe thinking of her after all for a moment.

The table before her remains as exact as she arranged it. Everything in the room is in perfect order, and yet it feels as if a note is missing that only she hears.

The time after Rashid’s departure is the hardest: the moment when the ringing of the door still reverberates, as if a second, muted heartbeat is lingering in the hallway. Munira sits at the table, directly across from the empty space Rashid has left. The chair is pushed up straight, the heart-shaped napkin still beside it, as if it just missed him.

The steam above Rashid’s coffee cup forms little ghosts that dissolve in the chill air. Her own coffee is almost cold already, but she still takes a sip, holding the cup with both hands so her fingers don’t freeze. Every now and then she adjusts the cutlery at her place, aligns the edge of the plate, though no one else will come. She does it out of habit, perhaps also out of defiance: If nothing else remains, at least she can control the setting.

The apartment is too quiet. Without Rashid’s sounds—the tapping on his phone, his soft humming, the whir of the razor in the bathroom—the day lacks a sense of rhythm. Munira grabs the bread again, breaks off a piece, chews without really tasting it and without jam. She wonders if she’s expecting too much: a breakfast, a conversation, maybe fifteen minutes of truly feeling married.

She picks up her phone, checks the messages—nothing from Rashid, just a reminder in her calendar that she has a virtual meeting at nine. She puts the phone down again, not without briefly considering sending a message. “Safe travels!” or “Don’t forget to eat.” But she doesn’t want to sound like a mother, doesn’t want to be controlling. Munira chooses silence, as if that were the better way to show love.

She looks at the table, at the pattern of the tablecloth ending exactly under her elbow. Yesterday, she’d steamed out the cloth so there were no creases. Now she wonders why she keeps doing it: preparing things as if the world depended on it staying together.

Her thoughts run in circles, like little spinning tops that never come to rest. Maybe she should give Rashid more time. Maybe it’s too soon to demand that a shared life really be shared. She thinks of her parents, how her father was always already gone in the morning, her mother made breakfast in silence. She used to hate it, now she understands it better. Some closeness is born only from repeated distance.

She lays knife and fork side by side, wipes her thumb along the table’s edge. The apartment remains strangely expectant, as if someone might walk through the door at any moment and make up for everything. But the minutes grow longer, the noises outside louder.

After half an hour, Munira gets up, stacks the plates carefully, collects Rashid’s cup too, pours the remaining coffee down the drain. She packs the leftover breakfast into a Tupperware container, writes “For Dodo” on it with a marker, even though she knows it will likely remain untouched until evening.

The movements are automatic, like a ritual: bread into the bag, eggs into a small container, raspberries separate so they don’t get mushy. Munira feels her stomach tighten, but she forces herself to keep going, as if she could suppress the quiet, simmering feeling of disappointment with order and care.

The glasses clink in the sink as she washes them. She does everything by hand, even though the dishwasher is empty and ready. The sound of water calms her, a monotonous, unhurried rush. Maybe also because she saw her mother stand at the sink all her life. She looks at her hands, how they turn the cups, the light in the ceramic rim. Everything she touches stays clean.

At the end, she wipes the table one more time, straightens the chairs exactly at the edge, as if an inspection were imminent. She leaves the heart-shaped napkin next to Rashid’s seat, a small act of defiance. Then she takes a last look at the vase: The rose is perfectly open, not a single spot on the petals.

For a moment, Munira leans against the counter, sees herself reflected in the window. She takes a deep breath, searches for a mistake, finds none. Maybe that’s it: You can do everything right and still end up alone.

The phone rings a few minutes later. She recognizes Rashid’s number, but doesn’t answer right away. She imagines him in a hectic lobby, coffee in hand, his thoughts already on the next appointment. She waits until the second ring before picking up, to mark the right distance.

“Hey,” he says. “Are you already on your way to the office?”

“Not yet,” she answers. “I tidied up, I’ll leave soon.”

“Sorry about this morning,” says Rashid, and this time it sounds almost sincere. “We’ll make up for it, okay?”

Munira smiles, even though he can’t see it. “Yes, sure. It’s fine.”

A short moment of silence on the other end, then: “See you tonight. Love you.”

She hangs up, leans her forehead against the cool window frame. The street outside is already busy; the day has simply rolled over her.

The kitchen is now neutral again, without any trace of festivity. Munira knows that this too is a kind of victory: that she allows no disorder, neither in the rooms nor in herself. She grabs her bag and her laptop, slips on her shoes and leaves the apartment as quietly as she entered the morning.

In the stairwell, it smells like someone else’s breakfast. She pauses for a moment, listens to voices from other apartments. Then she closes the door softly behind her and steps into a new day, ready to postpone every expectation until later.

Subscribe now

It’s not quite dark outside yet, but in the kitchen window the warm light that accompanies Munira as she works is already reflecting. Her shadow dances with each of her movements on the wall, every time she arranges the strips of pepper precisely next to the row of carrots on the cutting board or stirs the spoon in the pot. She has a playlist of only soft songs playing, songs that don’t fill the room but merely envelop it—like the vanilla aroma that swells with the steam from the open oven.

She knows the recipe for the lentil soup by heart, yet she sticks to the printout with her mother’s notes, which is now stuck to the tile backsplash next to the stove. “With patience, but with heart,” Mama wrote underneath in her spidery handwriting, and Munira catches herself smiling every time her gaze passes over it.

In the corner of the room stands the table for two. Munira moves the chairs to the edge, straightens the lines of the placemats as if they were an invitation to conversation. She lines up the glasses exactly parallel to each other, her movements slow, almost ceremonial. Now and then she glances at the clock on the oven and then again toward the hallway, as if she could anticipate Rashid’s footsteps.

She knows he’ll be here soon—she read the GPS message when he left the subway—but still, every moment in which she paces back and forth alone between table and stove feels like stretched time. So she doesn’t end up staring at her phone again, she begins chopping the parsley, which should actually come later. Her fingers glide nimbly over the green, and yet a tiny cut remains on her thumb, barely visible but sharp enough to make her take notice.

When Rashid finally unlocks the door, everything in the hallway stands still for a moment: the jacket in his hand, his gaze on the phone that pings again, this time louder. He mumbles a short “Salam,” takes off his shoes and at the same time taps with his thumb on the display. Munira takes note of it, but lets the soup keep simmering as if she hasn’t noticed.

Rashid puts his briefcase against the wall and comes into the kitchen, still with the phone to his ear, leaning against the countertop. His eyes stay on the screen, his brow slightly furrowed, like always when he’s concentrating. Munira turns down the heat and ladles a small test portion into a cup.

“Would you like to taste?” she asks, making an effort to keep her voice soft.

He nods mechanically, thumb still scrolling. Munira holds out the cup to him; he takes it, sips briefly, puts it back down.

“Tastes great. Thanks,” he says, without looking up.

Munira wants to reply, but Rashid is already typing a message and sends it before she can get a word out. The pot bubbles quietly, and Munira stirs slowly, just so there isn’t another pause.

“How was your day?” she tries again, this time quieter.

Rashid answers without looking at her: “Really busy, lots of calls. I’ll tell you later, okay?” The “okay” sounds like the counterpart to a door left ajar—not really a no, but nothing’s really open either.

Munira leans back against the counter. She watches Rashid’s reflexes, how he keeps glancing at his phone, even though there hasn’t been a new message for minutes. His presence does fill the room, yet between them remains a strip of air that neither words nor smells can bridge.

She sets the table, folds the napkins one time too many, because her hands don’t know what to do. Again and again her gaze wanders to Rashid, who stands in the corner of the room with his phone as if it were a second heart.

When she’s finished, she takes her seat and waits to see if he’ll come over to her. But he stays standing, his brow deep in the world behind the display again. Munira smooths the placemat in front of her and glances into the windowpane, where she catches a sliver of her face in the evening light. She tries a smile, but it looks as if someone had pasted a note on it: “with patience, but with heart.”

The minutes melt into each other, while outside the light finally disappears and Rashid keeps typing messages, just at the edge of her field of vision.

Munira notices how brittle her voice sounds when she asks, “Do you want to eat soon or do you need another moment?” She knows that Rashid usually keeps working at home, but sometimes he takes time for her. On good days.

“Let’s do it later, okay?” he mumbles. The phone in his left hand, his right index finger tapping quickly at the display.

Munira takes the plates and sets them on the counter first, making no noise. She adjusts them by the millimeter. A habit that comes over her when she’s feeling unsure.

“Anything special at the office today?” she asks further, because the silence between them feels like a doorframe that’s too high, one you keep bumping into.

Rashid just shrugs without looking up. “Nothing major, just meetings. Everyone’s on my nerves, the deadline’s coming.” Then he does look at her, for a split second, and Munira thinks she sees a tiredness in his eyes that knots up her stomach.

She pushes the bread back and forth on the board. “I read a text from Farah today that was really interesting. About—” She breaks off, because the phone rings. An anonymous tone she can’t place, and Rashid answers immediately, his face suddenly all ears.

“Hi. Yeah, sure. I can now.” He leaves the kitchen, steps into the hallway, and quietly closes the bedroom door behind him.

For a moment Munira holds the wooden spoon mid-movement, as if she could hold her breath until he comes back. Then she stirs with sudden emphasis, causing small red splashes to hit the white tiles.

She sits down at the table, presses her lips together and stares into nothing. Her index finger drums on the fabric of the tablecloth, always in the same spot, until a small mark becomes visible. The voices from the bedroom are too quiet for words, but the pauses and short laughs are enough to fire up Munira’s imagination.

When Rashid returns, she has collected herself again. She smiles a neutral, polite smile, the kind she knows from meetings when the client is half an hour late and still acts like a king.

“Everything alright?” she asks, as gently as possible.

He stays in the doorway, one foot already pointed toward the study. “I just need to finish something real quick,” he says. “Sorry.” His eyes are honest but far away. He doesn’t wait for an answer, just disappears into his office, where he only almost closes the door.

Munira stays seated. She looks at the tablecloth, now with a tiny red spot. She rubs it with her thumb as if she could work it back into the pattern. Somewhere in the house a wire hums, then it’s quiet.

After a while she gets up, puts the bread back in the basket and the cutlery aside. The soup smells like home, but nobody serves it.

The hours have changed the room: outside, darkness presses against the windows, inside, the kitchen light reflects every movement twice, as if it were witnessing everything. Munira sits at the table, chin propped in her hand, her gaze fixed on the plate before her. The soup is only lukewarm now, the bread gone stale. Next to the plate lies the phone, untouched. She doesn’t want to check the time again, but her fingers tap the display anyway, as if she could rewind time with a gesture.

She draws circles in the soup with her spoon, but doesn’t eat. Now and then she listens toward the hallway, to see if Rashid will finally look up from his screen and come over to her. Then she straightens up, tries a “So, how’s it going?” in a tone that sounds unnatural. It remains a rehearsed fragment. She lets it dissolve in the air.

The next moment, she straightens a corner of the tablecloth, even though it’s already clean. Then she checks if the salt shaker is standing upright. A sharp pain shoots through her left hand—the little cut on her thumb. Munira unconsciously rubs at it until a drop of blood lands on the porcelain.

“Great,” she says quietly and dabs the spot with a napkin.

Her thoughts jump: Should she go get him? Just go into the office, touch his shoulder? But then she pictures him with that typical Dodo-smile saying, “I’ll be right there, I promise,” and five minutes later nothing’s changed. She bites her lip and thinks of how her father always said during Ramadan: “Patience is like hot tea—not everyone can drink it right away.” She wishes she were better at it.

A noise in the hallway, then Rashid actually appears—the right hand still on his phone, gaze fixed on a glowing rectangle. He heads directly for the table, but doesn’t sit down, just grabs a plate and ladles soup, saying nothing.

“Thanks,” he says in a half voice, and she can’t tell if he means the taste or the readiness of the meal.

Then he’s already gone again, back to his office, where behind the door the soft hum of his voice and the tapping on keys can be heard.

Munira waits another moment, stirs in the soup again, until she realizes she’s no longer hungry. She clears the dishes, puts them in the sink, washes them by hand, even though the machine is empty and there’s enough room. Every movement is calm, almost ceremonial.

When she’s finished, she leans against the counter and looks into the darkness of the living room. There’s a moment when she wonders if she wants too much. If other marriages look like this too—a lot of waiting, a lot unsaid. Maybe love is always a kind of stockpiling in the end.

Munira laughs at the thought, a quiet, resigned sound. She imagines waking Rashid tomorrow morning, how he blinks sleepily, how they then understand each other wordlessly. Maybe you have to let closeness rest like sourdough.

She wipes across the stove once, checks the pots, turns off all lights except the small one above the dining table. Then she stands there, hears the rush of water in the pipes and, far off, through the closed door, Rashid’s muffled voice.

Outside, the window gleams dark. Her reflection looks at her, head tilted slightly to the side, as if searching for an answer that always remains just outside the frame.

Subscribe now

In the coming weeks, I will be introducing a paid subscription to Mosaic. And before that happens, I want to explain what that means – and more importantly, what it does not mean.

What Will Always Be Free

The stories are not going anywhere.

Every chapter of Munira, and every future short story featuring the characters you have come to know, will remain completely free. Always. The fiction is the heart of this publication, and it belongs to everyone.

The Majlis Monthly long form posts that are starting soon will also remain partially free – you will always be able to read the reflection, the story, the framing. What goes behind the paywall is the second half: the practical section where we translate everything into your actual life. The journaling prompts, the step-by-step tools, the concrete action you can take today.

What the Paid Subscription Includes

For those who choose to upgrade, here is what you get:

Full issues of the Majlis Monthly – including the practical, actionable second half

The subscriber chat – with almost daily prompts tied to each essay topic, so the reflection doesn't stop when the reading does

Live sessions – where we come together in a shared space to journal, reflect, and simply be with the themes we are exploring. Together, in real time.

The Part I Most Want You to Understand

Here is the thing about paywalls that nobody talks about honestly: they exclude people.

And I have readers in countries where a monthly subscription – even a small one by Western standards – is genuinely out of reach. I see you. I am not willing to simply close the door on you.

So here is how I think about it:

Every paid subscription makes it possible for me to give free access to readers from countries with weaker currencies. When you subscribe, you are not just investing in your own growth. You are quietly holding the door open for someone else.

We either all win, or nobody wins.

This is not a guilt trip for those who can pay. It is an honest explanation of the ecosystem I am trying to build – one where the people who have the means carry a little of the weight for those who don't, and where no one is turned away simply because of where they were born.

Why I Am Doing This At All

Writing takes time. Research takes time. Showing up almost daily in the Notes, preparing live sessions, being present in the chat – this is work I do because I love it and because I believe in it.

But it is also work. And for it to be sustainable – for me to keep doing it at this level, and to grow – it needs to be able to support itself.

A paid subscription is not me valuing money over community. It is me choosing to build something that can last.

Thank You For Being Here

Whether you upgrade when the paywall goes up or not, I want you to know: the fact that you are reading this, that you have found something here in my publication that speaks to you – that already means everything.

Mosaic exists so that Muslims feel seen in their struggles, and find the courage to walk their own path, one step at a time. That mission does not change with a paywall.

If even one of you reads something here and thinks this was written for me – then this is already a success.

Jazakum Allahu Khairan for your trust. 🤍

Munira put a book back on the shelf, turned around, and found herself in Rashid’s arms, who was waving a too-small handyman tool. “No idea what this does,” he said. “But it does it thoroughly!” Laughter and sunlight danced through the room and over the last unpacked boxes. They collapsed onto the couch and listened to the sounds of their phones buzzing in sync with their dreams. She laughed quietly and squeezed his hand, while the moment felt like the gentle warmth of a newly discovered adventure.

“Soon you’ll be a professional interior designer,” she teased him, pointing at the remaining boxes. “All of this has to be unpacked before it becomes our new home decor.”

“I think the boxes have definite artistic value,” countered Rashid, putting the tool aside. “Minimalist and a bit chaotic. Exactly our style.”

Munira laughed. “Exactly my style. Officially, you don’t even live here, do you?” She stood up, tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and began to open another box.

“You’re strict!” Rashid followed her and together they sat down at the small kitchen table. “I guess I’ll have to make sure I earn this place.”

“Good,” she said with a broad grin, “then let’s get started right away!”

“How’s it going for you?” Rashid looked at her expectantly. “Any big new breakthroughs at the office?”

“Things are developing faster than I expected,” she admitted. “The center is going well, and we get more inquiries every day. I think people are talking about us.”

Rashid nodded. “You’re doing fantastic work, word gets around.”

Munira smiled gratefully. “It just feels so right. And with you? Any exciting new developments?”

“A few interesting projects are just starting,” he said. “I can hardly believe my self-employment is taking off so quickly. Working from home suits me.”

“If you’re working here, then I want rent,” she teased him, giving him a playful tap on the shoulder. She pulled out her phone. “Shall we go through our schedules?”

Rashid pulled his phone from his pocket. “Oh dear, the calendar. So many things to consider. Above all... the big announcement.”

Munira sighed quietly. “Do you think there’s a better or worse way to tell them?” She frowned and searched for the right words.

“Not really,” Rashid admitted. “We can only do it our way and hope they respect our decision.”

“I’m worried they’ll take it as an affront,” said Munira. “Or that they’ll never accept it.”

“Or that they’ll just be surprised and end up thinking it’s pretty cool,” said Rashid encouragingly.

Munira smiled hesitantly. “Hopeful as always. So, what should our big reveal look like?”

“A big, dramatic party?” Rashid tilted his head. “Or maybe something more intimate?”

“How about a family dinner?” Munira suggested. “We invite everyone and then surprise them.”

Rashid leaned back and smiled. “I like that. Maybe even in a fancy restaurant, so no one can just get up and leave.”

Munira laughed. “Clever! And when should we do it?”

“The weekend after next?” Rashid picked up his phone again. “We can send them a message: ‘There’s a small family dinner where we’ll officially announce our marriage and move in together.’”

“And: ‘You are warmly invited!’” Munira added the last sentence and clapped her hands. “I can already see them all sitting there with their mouths open.”

Rashid grinned. “What do you think, how will they react?”

“That’s the big question.” Munira thought for a moment. “Maybe they’ll be shocked, but in the end they’ll accept it. They’ve gotten used to so much already.”

“Or we’ll trigger the biggest drama since the story of Romeo and Juliet,” Rashid winked at her.

Munira laughed. “At least poor Juliet didn’t have to sort through unpacked boxes.”

“Let’s not wait any longer,” Rashid said decisively. “We’re ready for this step.”

Munira nodded, her eyes sparkling with anticipation. “Then let’s do it.”

They sent the messages together, their hearts full of expectation and hope that this big step would be the start of a wonderful new chapter in their lives.

“And now I want to kiss my wife again…” Rashid whispered in her ear and pulled her onto the couch.

As predicted: chaos! And love! Munira and Rashid looked around and were pleased to see that the drama was turning into a successful evening. The fathers were eagerly debating who would pay the bill, the mothers resolved to cook themselves at the next celebration, and the small table in the corner was for gifts. A discreet sign with the inscription “No pans please” stood there. Everything mingled with conversations and the gentle clinking of dishes. They had truly arrived.

Munira and Rashid moved from table to table, a swirl of friendly hugs and warm congratulations accompanying them. “Never thought you were so sneaky, Nira,” said an older uncle, shaking his head as he winked at her.

A cousin pulled her aside. “Tell us honestly, how long have you been planning this?” Her eyes were curious, but her voice warm.

“Not as long as you might think,” Munira admitted. “But long enough to be sure it’s the right thing.”

Rashid laughed as a younger cousin hugged him. “Wow, Dodo, that’s a real bombshell! Never thought you’d go through with this.”

“We were a bit brave,” Rashid said, patting him on the shoulder. “But we’re glad you’re all here.”

They met again in the middle of the room, both a bit out of breath but overjoyed. “Couldn’t have gone better,” said Munira, leaning against him.

“A few surprised faces,” said Rashid. “But it seems they’re recovering quickly.”

“I thought so,” Munira replied, smiling. “They may not want to admit it, but they love surprises.”

Rashid nodded. “Especially those that come with a feast.”

They continued to mingle with the guests, enjoying the liveliness of the evening. It felt good to finally share this big thing with everyone and to feel the warm support.

At a nearby table they had just reached, Farah’s eyes sparkled with excitement. “You did it!” she called. “I knew it!”

Munira squeezed her hand. “Thank you for believing in us.”

“You think I’d miss this?” Farah grabbed her phone and snapped a photo. “I’m already thinking about the next surprise,” she said meaningfully.

Munira and Rashid sat down with her. “What does that mean?” Munira asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Oh, who knows,” laughed Farah, then read a new message on her phone. “Apparently, there’s even more big news!”

“Farah, what are you up to?” pressed Munira curiously, while Rashid watched grinning beside her.

Just at that moment, the door opened, and Ammar walked in. The warm look he shared with Farah left no doubt about the fresh connection between them. A smile spread across Munira’s face.

“So that’s what you call a surprise?” she asked Farah.

Farah laughed radiantly. “Someone has to keep up with you two!”

Munira and Rashid exchanged a quick, knowing glance and pulled Ammar over to them. “Nice to see you here, brother,” said Rashid, patting his friend on the back.

“I couldn’t miss it,” Ammar replied, looking at Farah.

Munira watched the sparkle in both their eyes and sensed that this was just the beginning of another wonderful story.

As the evening went on, they enjoyed the company of their loved ones and felt validated in their decision. The reactions of their families had dispelled all doubts, and the unexpected development with Farah and Ammar promised to make things even more interesting. Munira and Rashid ended the evening with a feeling of belonging and anticipation for what was yet to come.

Author’s Note: I want to thank you so much for reading along! I really hope you’ve enjoyed the ride and that maybe you’ve felt seen or have realized one or two things about life and your own struggles. Do make sure to become a subscriber, as the journey doesn’t end here. There’s a follow-up story about Munira and Rashid that will be published soon.

Also we are growing closer as a community here at Mosiac and I’ll be introducing new community features for subscribers. See you soon! 💚

Subscribe now

A gentle, amber-colored light filled the mosque hall and reflected in warm brown eyes and the golden trim of long coats and veils. Sweet aromas of dishes spread out on white tables mingled in the air and blended with the warm laughter of the guests. The rounded hum of voices filled the room as Rashid and Munira mingled among their families. From one family group to the next, they made acquaintances and received heartfelt congratulations, while familiar tensions dissolved into knowing smiles and the friendly clinking of cups and saucers.

Munira navigated through the crowd, surrounded by a swirl of shining silk and chiffon. “I’m so happy for you, Nira!” called out an older cousin, pulling her into a hug that smelled of rosewater and oud. Munira smiled, the warmth in her chest spreading as she answered, “Thank you, ya habibty. Your earrings are beautiful tonight!” Laughter bloomed around her, and Munira felt it spread as she moved to another group, her graceful presence leaving a trail of gentle chatter and happy glances.

On the other side of the room, Rashid approached her father with an outstretched hand and a respectful nod. “Uncle,” he began, his voice gentle but firm, “it is an honor, and I’m very happy to be part of your family tonight.” Her father’s eyes, sharp under thick brows, met Rashid’s gaze with a moment of hesitation. Then, as if touched by the genuine warmth of the evening, his face transformed into a cautious but warming smile. “Welcome, my son,” he said, accepting the handshake and the young man who accompanied it.

Laughter echoed as a group of children darted between the tables, their joy mirrored in the relaxed postures and light smiles of their parents. Munira’s aunt wagged her finger at them playfully, her gentle admonition turning into a quiet giggle. “They have more energy than all of us together!” someone joked, and a wave of amusement swept through the crowd. Munira watched the scene unfold, her heart becoming calm as she realized that the deeply rooted tensions she had feared were turning into genuine festivity.

In the midst of all the bustle, Farah and Aunt Aziza were the gentle conductors of this symphony. Farah’s lively laughter and enthusiastic gestures brought life into every circle she joined. “Look, Nira! They already look like brothers!” she called out, nodding to a group of men where Rashid was laughing with Munira’s uncles. Aziza, with her quiet authority and knowing smile, steered the conversations to pleasant depths, offering insightful remarks and watching contentedly as they continued to unfold.

Munira exchanged heartfelt compliments with family members and felt how the subtle tensions between different traditions dissolved into mutual respect. She thanked an older relative for coming, received blessings and wisdom in return, and felt the warmth of community wrap around her like a beloved shawl. On the other side of the room, Rashid’s laughter mingled with the voices of Munira’s uncles, his usual reserve melting into something light and genuine. Their booming agreement broke through the air, a sign of his growing acceptance into the family.

She took a moment to observe, stood still as the colors, sounds, and scents of the evening surrounded her. It felt like the culmination of years of hope and compromise, of steps taken both hesitantly and bravely. She saw Rashid meet her gaze from the other side of the room, his look full of shared understanding and commitment. In that brief exchange she knew that the life they were building was not just a possibility, but an unfolding reality.

The air grew warmer with the spicy aroma of tea as more conversations flowed around her. Laughter and the clinking of glasses marked the growing closeness, the crescendo of an evening that now felt more like a union of hearts than just families. Munira watched as Rashid returned to a circle of new relatives, his genuine smile a mirror of her own. In the gentle glow of lanterns and the soft music playing, the engagement party sang of love, acceptance, and a shared future.

As the evening drew to a close, Munira withdrew with Rashid to a quiet corner of the venue where the gentle glow of hanging lanterns cast delicate shadows. Away from the festive hustle, they found a moment of privacy and he pulled her into his arms. “Finally, we are husband and wife,” he whispered in Munira’s ear. “Officially Islamic and all,” he added mischievously.

Munira looked at him full of love and trust. He held her gaze for a long time, and she found endless affection, happiness, and also passion in his eyes. “Ya Ghaliya…” was all he managed to say with a husky voice before he kissed her tenderly, almost shyly.

Standing side by side, they lowered their voices as they exchanged plans for the upcoming move and their shared future. Rashid assured her, “We will overcome every challenge together.” Munira replied, “I want this life with you, the one we’re building, every bit of it.”

Their hands touched as they spoke of plans and hopes, affection evident in their words and gestures. Even in the calm of the moment, the sounds of the celebration reached them, mirroring both their joy and uncertainty. They talked about their excitement, but also about their concerns—how the families would continue to intertwine and how they would adjust to life together. Munira voiced her fears about reconciling family and their own identities. Rashid reassured her, saying, “We have great role models.”

A pleasant silence settled, filled with warmth and shared thoughts. Munira smiled and noted how different Rashid was from when she first met him—a sign of growth for them both. Rashid teased her about her early skepticism. They laughed about their journey, and Rashid said, “Who would have thought you’d be the love of my life?”

Munira felt grateful and loved, understood the depth of her commitment. They marveled at how everything was coming together. Rashid’s voice turned serious as he spoke about being a team in every way, and Munira’s hand found his. “I never want us to lose this closeness,” she said.

Their eyes met with a shared smile as Munira said, “Now let’s get through this move.” Rashid laughed and promised that they would make it. They lingered a moment before leaving the building hand in hand, the cool night air enveloped them, their steady steps signaling their readiness to embrace what was to come.

The living room resembled a battlefield of rejected tradition and rebellious emotions. The windows let in the afternoon sun, brightening the soft beige and gold tones of the oriental carpet. Munira stood with her arms crossed, enduring her father’s stern gaze, while Rashid beside her seemed to erect an invisible protective shield. Again, they stood here before their parents. It was nerve-wracking. The antique wooden chairs seemed to express their outrage that anyone dared to rebel in this room. Munira’s mother, at the center of the emotional arena, had placed her hand reassuringly on her daughter’s arm, as if to say she should be more compassionate. “This is our decision,” rang out defiantly from Munira. Her father crossed his arms as well, his eyebrows drawn together. “You must understand our concerns.”

The charged atmosphere became almost tangible as Rashid quietly but firmly interjected: “I’ve worked my whole life for this moment.” The round table before them, built for discussions like these, seemed to sink slowly under the weight of conflicting expectations. “You’re still young. You’ll see it differently later,” came sternly from Rashid’s father, but the uncertainty in his voice betrayed his facade. Munira answered immediately: “I will give up neither my heart nor my heritage.”

A tense moment of silence followed, broken only by the quiet ticking of the clock on the wall, as Rashid carefully put his arm around Munira’s shoulders. Their eyes met, a silent agreement. Munira’s mother sighed and said more gently: “Why the urge to decide everything here and now?” The echo of unrest filled the room, yet Munira sensed a slight yielding in the words.

Munira leaned forward, sought her father’s gaze, and explained with quiet determination: “I’ve thought about this for years. You taught me to fight for my dreams.” The gentle reproach in her voice hung in the air. The parents exchanged a meaningful look. The growing emotionality was reflected in a clenched fist and a gentle look, showing weighing and emerging understanding.

Rashid added: “It is also our tradition to choose our own partners, isn’t it?” This rhetorical question made Munira’s mother thoughtful, who now put her arm around her daughter. Rashid’s parents seemed to search for words for a moment before Rashid’s father replied energetically: “And it’s our tradition that the family isn’t simply presented with a fait accompli!” The last remark hung threateningly in the air.

The conversation became more heated as Munira and Rashid met the verbal salvos of their parents with calm and determination. The tensions between the generations became palpable. “If you really want to go with us, then don’t hide it behind modern excuses,” said Munira’s father. “And don’t think we lack foresight.” Munira called out desperately: “I wish you’d really listen to us!”

“We hear you, and what we hear is pure selfishness,” came Rashid’s mother’s harsh reply. Her voice softened as she saw her daughter-in-law’s disappointed look. “Do what you can’t leave,” she added resignedly. Rashid took Munira’s hand. “We have the same dream,” he said calmly. “The same goals. We’re already on our way.” His words testified to unshakable determination.

It seemed as if the table that separated them was growing ever larger. “Don’t destroy it before it’s even begun,” said Munira urgently. The room around her seemed to disappear as the feelings collided. Munira’s mother stroked her hair. “You’ve always been a rebellious child,” she said, almost lovingly, and Rashid noticed that the tensions were no longer quite so rigid.

Her eyes met those of Rashid’s father, who, worried but with a small glimmer of hope, replied: “We’ll give you six months. Then we’ll talk again.” Rashid saw the turmoil in Munira’s eyes and understood the compromise: time. His calm determination and Munira’s support gave the scene an almost peaceful note.

As the conversation became calmer, Munira nodded. “Thank you,” she said softly, the hope for a united future that included both heart and heritage shining in her eyes. Her determination was no less strong, but it became clear that she had found a way to reconcile her own wishes and her family’s expectations. Rashid saw the strength in her resolve, which only made his own plans more certain.

The quiet reproach in the parents’ voices was still audible, but more and more understanding mingled in. “We’ll see how serious you really are,” they said. But this time it didn’t sound like a threat, rather like a quiet but real hope that the path Munira and Rashid wanted to take might not meet resistance but acceptance.

In small gestures and the yielding of previously rigid fronts, the growing emotional investment became visible. Munira and Rashid left the arena as a unit, their families perhaps not in complete harmony, but at least ready not to block their relationship. Knowing that a first compromise had been reached, they decided to move forward with their plan.

Aziza glided into the emotionally charged room like a benevolent breeze and changed the atmosphere in an instant. The spaciousness of the living room suddenly seemed less oppressive; the conflicts had burst the circle of chairs. Munira and Rashid sat close together, caught up in the turbulent waves of their own convictions. Aziza’s calm voice cut clearly through the bubbling tension. “We come from a tradition that values unity,” she said with elegant authority. Her arrival was as unexpected as it was soothing. Aziza continued in a quiet but confident tone. The conversation shifted from verbal attacks to a more reflective tone as Rashid cheerfully agreed: “We can honor our path and still come together.”

Everyone listened to Aziza’s words. She stood with folded hands at the center of the gathering and looked each person firmly in the eyes. “Unity does not mean we think identically,” she added. The influence of her calm authority quickly became apparent. Munira and Rashid once again felt like part of a conversation, not opponents. “We’re not seeking permission,” Rashid said. “We’re asking for your blessing.” Munira nodded in agreement and squeezed Rashid’s hand.

A pause ensued. Munira’s mother hesitated, and her voice sounded less harsh as she said: “And you really believe you already know what your shared path will look like?” The shock of the parents slowly gave way to genuine interest. Munira took a deep breath and replied: “We know what we want. But we need you with us.” She hesitated, and it was Aziza who skillfully picked up on these small but significant uncertainties.

Aziza spoke emphatically: “You are more on the same path than you think. Have the courage to see the differences as enrichment.” The unexpected turn made the younger parents fall thoughtfully silent. Rashid added, quietly but convincingly: “I don’t want to work against our traditions, but with them.” His honesty was tangible. It became clear that their words and actions were imbued with determination and reverence for what had always been. The dynamic changed. It was now less a struggle and more a search for consensus. Aziza nodded as if to confirm that a change was underway.

Rashid’s parents looked at each other for a long time. Their expression shifted from stern skepticism to something softer. “And what does this compromise look like?” Rashid’s father finally asked. The tone was noticeably more conciliatory. A silver lining appeared on the horizon. The families moved toward each other like chess pieces in a strategic game. It was less of a battle and more of a cautious rapprochement.

Aziza smiled gently and gave everyone space to collect their thoughts. “An engagement party with the family?” she suggested. The questions seemed more answer than inquiry. Her way of speaking helped others to try a new, shared way of thinking. Munira looked at Rashid and nodded hopefully. It was a moment of almost tangible collective insight.

Munira was the first to find her voice again. “Yes! A traditional celebration! And then a wedding in the mosque,” she suggested, without the slightest uncertainty. It was like turning around a long and tough chess game. The clear prospect of a viable path. Relief seemed to leap from her to the others. Aziza withdrew, letting the families take the helm themselves.

The words had gained weight. No one stubbornly insisted on their point of view anymore. It was as if the family circle was a single movement of hope, of moving forward together. Aziza knew she had fulfilled her task when she saw a new spirit of agreement arise. Her gentle intervention had opened doors where previously there were only walls.

“This could be the beginning,” one of the mothers was heard to say quietly. A smile crossed Munira’s face, slowly dissolving the long pent-up tensions. Amidst this collective relief, a new possibility seemed to shine. Munira felt the firm grip of her own determination, supported by Rashid’s resolve.

Aziza’s gentle and at the same time powerful intervention had moved the family. Where there had previously been clear dividing lines, there was now room for dialogue and compromise. The shared future, which for a moment had seemed like a distant dream, was now within reach. The promise of a joint celebration, the striving for new horizons. They all stood at the beginning of a new chapter.

Both families recognized at this moment that the proposal balanced heart and tradition. The question of how serious Munira and Rashid really were was no longer so weighty. There seemed to be a certainty that the chosen path no longer required detours. Munira and Rashid left the room with new momentum, accompanied by a chorus of encouraging looks.

In the dim light of familiar lamps, the emotional highs and lows of the day hung in the air. Before the night could turn peace into new chaos, Munira and Rashid felt that a decisive step had been taken. Both families sat together in the dining room, the words spoken before seemed to be settled. A certain reservation still lingered in the air, but the little rebel duo saw the emerging openness in their parents’ faces. A plan had been worked out, a compromise found. The roar of the intense debate faded. They all realized that they had gained more than they had lost.

Munira noticed that even the parents’ body language was relaxing. The scent of freshly brewed tea hung in the air, making the room feel even cosier. “Let’s do the preparations together,” Rashid suggested. His tone was clear and inviting. The fathers exchanged a glance that said more than their words. “Yes, we can do that,” they replied.

Munira and Rashid felt the gentle change. Not a full agreement yet, but steps in the right direction. The mothers leaned forward, clearly more open. Munira’s mother said: “There’s a lot to organize. But we’ll manage.” The fathers’ skepticism hadn’t disappeared, but their voices now sounded more like approval than doubt.

Munira smiled deep inside. It wasn’t a simple smile, but one that covered many months of uncertainty. “This is the beginning of a new chapter,” she said, looking at Rashid, who shared her determination. Aziza nodded as if to confirm that this insight was the true achievement. Her intervention had invigorated the dialogue.

The tension of the afternoon was still tangible, but had a different quality. “What do you think about December?” one of the mothers asked. It no longer sounded like a demand, but like a cautious suggestion. The follow-up negotiations were underway, but they no longer felt threatening. Munira knew she held the reins.

A feeling of peace spread, slowly but noticeably. Munira’s father patted Rashid lightly on the shoulder. “You really seem determined,” he said, almost approvingly. Munira saw that even this small hint of trust meant a lot to Rashid. He replied, “Both of us are.” The conviction in his words included the elders, too.

The engagement was no longer in question. It was not only planned, it had become reality. No one spoke loud agreement, but it was visible in the small gestures. It now came out in a kind of relieved exhalation. There were no more invisible barriers. Rashid realized that the parents’ blessing was a symbol of more than just a ceremony.

Aziza saw that the families were moving dynamically and with life. “Let’s build bridges, not walls,” she said quietly to Munira and Rashid, who sat side by side in a silent moment of harmony. The gathering moved from a place of defense to a space of dialogue and attention. You could almost feel the transformation in the house.

The initial reluctance gradually melted away, like snow in spring. Munira knew that they couldn’t solve all problems in one day. But it was a promising start. There was more that united them than what separated them. Rashid took her hand. They knew that they now had the freedom to shape their future as they wished.

The previously so persistent concerns seemed to vanish in the light of the new developments. What yesterday had seemed impossible was now tangible and doable. The burden of long persuasion fell from their shoulders. Munira and Rashid felt that they could fulfill not only their own goals but also the expectations of the families. Their determination was unbroken, and the emotional investment of all involved paid off. The future was no longer a vague hope, but a concrete direction approved by all. Munira was convinced that she could unite heart, heritage, and tradition. Rashid knew that together they could go far.

Before leaving the room, they embraced the parents, who this time showed more joy than reservations. Munira and Rashid left as an even stronger team. Their fears melted away like the last ice of winter. The dialogue, which had almost broken apart, had now taken on a supportive and stable form. Aziza watched them leave with a knowing smile.

Also feel free to get in touch with me via DM with any questions or concerns, or simply show me your own Substack! 💚

About page ⬅️ (click to see the full page)

The living room was an oasis of silence, the air warm and heavy. Munira and Rashid entered the room, surrounded by the deep brown tones of traditional furniture. Lamps cast soft light on their faces, in which hope and anxiety wrestled with each other. Munira stood upright, her hands trembling slightly. “We have decided to get married very soon and move in together,” she declared, her voice clear and firm. Rashid calmly added: “We want to build our life side by side.” For a long moment, the only sound was the crackle of tension as the families on the sofas exchanged mistrustful glances and the first shock leapt into narrowed eyes and furrowed brows.

It was Munira’s father who finally broke the silence with a growl: “That’s too fast—don’t you care what people will say?” His face was a mixture of anger and worry, his brow deeply furrowed. Rashid’s mother, who sat next to him with crossed arms, nodded in agreement. “Such an impulsive decision will inevitably cause problems and make people suspicious. Everyone will wonder why you insisted on such a hasty marriage. That casts a bad light on you. On all of us,” she said firmly. Her words hung heavily in the room, and another unpleasant silence spread.

Munira swallowed, her fingers trembling more as she intertwined them. The enormity of the reaction seemed to render her speechless for a moment. Rashid glanced at her, a quiet encouragement in his eyes, before he turned to the families. “We understand your concerns,” he began, his voice gentle but determined, “but we have thought long and hard about our decision.” His gaze wandered from one pair of narrowed eyes to the next as he spoke. “It is not careless.”

“Really?” Munira’s father raised an eyebrow, skepticism dripping from his question. “What about all the talk among people?” he asked, his tone sharp and challenging. “You won’t be here to answer the unpleasant questions!”

“People always talk, no matter what you do,” Munira replied, her voice steadier again, though a bit shaky. “We want to shape our life so that both of us can grow.” Her words sounded like the result of thoughtful planning, but Rashid’s mother’s incredulous snort showed that they were far from their goal.

Munira’s mother, who had been silent until now, gently placed her hand on her husband’s arm. “Maybe we should let them finish,” she said in a quiet, concerned voice. The remark caused a spark of hope to appear in Munira’s eyes, but the expression on her father’s face remained hard.

“It’s not just your lives that are affected,” he continued, his voice a bit louder and more determined. “Have you considered what this means for the rest of your family? For us?”

“We’re not even officially engaged yet,” Rashid’s father interjected, his tone casting a dark shadow over the peaceful scene. “Rushing everything can only bring chaos.”

“Exactly,” agreed Rashid’s mother, “It will be hard to put everything right again if it goes wrong.”

Munira and Rashid felt the sting of disapproval testing their resolve. They briefly looked at each other, a hint of sadness in their silent exchange. “We’re aware of these risks,” said Rashid, and although he tried to remain calm, there was a hint of urgency in his voice.

“It is reckless,” murmured Munira’s father, shaking his head. “Have you even thought about what you’re risking?”

“We’ve thought about it more than you think,” replied Munira, the intractability of the situation gnawing at her gentle tone. Her hands began to fidget with her clothes, as if trying to hold onto something that wouldn’t collapse under all the stares.

The conversation shifted to a more heated direction as the parents’ resistance became sharper with every word. “Reckless” and “unacceptable” echoed through the room like hammer blows. “A spontaneous urge,” someone accused them of, and it felt to Munira and Rashid as if each argument pushed them a bit further away from their families.

The air grew thicker as the families continued to exchange skeptical looks and the determination of the two young people was put to a hard test. The pressure grew, visible in folded arms, clenched fists, and rigid faces. Munira felt her throat tighten. Rashid’s gaze sought hers again, and for a brief, precious moment she found comfort there.

“We’re not against you,” Rashid tried again to build a bridge, “We just hope you understand that this is our path.” His tone became softer, but the emphasis remained as he spoke the last words.

It was Munira’s mother who finally sighed and began: “We want to understand you, but it feels like you’re not listening to us.”

The tension in the room was almost tangible, an insurmountable wall between the couple and their parents. Munira and Rashid stood side by side, but it was obvious that they were fighting against traditions that followed them like an oppressive shadow. Their voices, once strong and clear, grew weaker the longer the silence after the mother’s admonition lasted.

With the realization that this could only be the beginning of a long struggle, Munira and Rashid looked at each other once more before opening the door and letting the coolness of the hallway into the warm room. They left the room, leaving behind a heavy, uncertain tension that lay like an invisible band around the traditions their families tried to defend at all costs.

The atmosphere in the next room was cooler, almost like a secret refuge from the oppression in the living room. But here, feelings flickered more uncontrollably, more untamed. Rashid and Munira stood before their parents, faces flushed, hearts determined. “We’re not choosing haste over responsibility,” said Rashid, his firm resolve overriding the quiet uncertainty within him. Munira’s eyes shone with held-back tears as she added: “Our decision reflects who we are and what our priorities are.” The parent pairs standing opposite them raised their voices, packaging concerns in sharp words and letting their disappointment hang in the air.

“Reckless!” Munira’s father threw at them, his head bobbing in disbelief. “We don’t understand why you want to risk everything.” His voice was loud and determined, as if he wanted to have the last word.

“It’s as if you’ve completely lost your minds,” said Rashid’s mother, and the hardness in her words struck the two young people like an unexpected blow. “We expect more reason from you.” Her expression was firm and determined, and the relentlessness of her position was visible in every wrinkle of her brow.

The parents stood with folded arms as Munira and Rashid tried to further explain their arguments. “It feels impulsive,” Munira’s mother added, this time with a hint of vulnerability in her voice. “This isn’t what we expected of you.”

Munira fought back tears, her voice trembling slightly as she replied, “We’re not children anymore. We know what we’re doing.” Rashid stepped closer to her, his own voice intense: “It’s our decision, and we take responsibility for it.”

The dialogue escalated, voices drowned each other out as each side tried to make itself heard. “You don’t understand what this means for everyone,” Rashid’s father shouted, pointing at them as if to illustrate the magnitude of the problem.

“This isn’t the path we imagined,” sighed Munira’s mother, shaking her head in disbelief. “It feels like you don’t care about the community.” The words left their mark, like a cold stream that spread over people’s spirits.

Rashid took a deep breath, collected his thoughts before answering: “We value our community. But we also have to live our own lives.” His hands opened in a gesture of conciliation. Munira nodded beside him, tears now visibly running down her cheeks as she said, “It hurts us to disappoint you so much.”

But the parents responded with a determination that resembled a wall. “Such a decision is not acceptable to us,” said Rashid’s mother, her gaze firm and penetrating. “You’re letting yourselves be led by a desire that will bring nothing but trouble.”

Rashid and Munira felt how their arguments kept crashing against the unyielding resistance of their families. The air was filled with the drone of relentless reproaches. Munira wiped her face and tried to find her voice again. “We didn’t make this decision lightly,” she emphasized, her eyes seeking contact with those of her parents. “We made it out of love and conviction.”

“And you don’t even consider your families,” Munira’s father interjected, his anger uncontrolled. “You’re selfish and blind.”

The words hit hard, letting a thick layer of despair settle on the younger generation. Rashid looked up determinedly, his eyes sparkling with tension: “We also have to take care of ourselves, or we’ll lose ourselves.” His voice cracked slightly, and Munira squeezed his hand in a silent gesture of support.

“If you insist on going through with this, you’ll have to live with the consequences,” Rashid’s father called out, his voice a thunder impossible to miss. The attitude of the parents was more than just disappointment; it was a battle for control and understanding.

The tensions boiled over as everyone clung even more stubbornly to their positions. The disappointment, confusion and anger let words swirl around the room like a raging flood that left no clear thought.

Rashid and Munira stood close together, their emotional bond keeping them upright against the storms of the families. Munira’s voice was broken but determined as she said: “We’ll find a way, even if it looks hard right now.”

The parents threw looks at them that said more than a thousand words. There was an unbridgeable gap between the generations, and yet there was a hope in Munira’s last words that survived even in the face of such adversity.

A deafening bang echoed through the room as Rashid’s father hit the edge of the table. The silence that followed was overwhelming, as if someone had let the air out of an angry balloon. In that moment, Munira and Rashid exchanged one last determined look. They were not ready to give up yet, and the unspoken words lay between them like a silent vow.

The room remained cold and unforgiving as, following an invisible path, they opened the door and stepped outside.

Feel free to share this publication!

Share Mosaic - Muslim Storytelling

In the dusk of the café, the rain seemed like a second guest, scratching at the windows and pressing its cold, invisible face against the glass. Munira and Rashid sat in the soft glow of a table lamp, which became a stage for his serious question and her hesitant answer. The table before them was a patchwork of coffee stains and steaming cups. “I’ll come with you to the new city,” Rashid said, as the jazz music in the background struck a melancholic tone. “But we have to get married quickly.” His proposal hung in the air like thick fog. Munira drummed nervously with her fingers, her gaze wandering between the other tables. “I need time to think,” she answered, her words almost swallowed up by the ongoing rain and the conversations at the neighboring tables.

Rashid leaned forward, his shoulders slightly tense. “It’s the best solution, Nira,” he continued. “I can build my self-employment there and we’ll be together, without having to get through everything at a distance.” The cups clinked softly as a waiter passed the table, and Munira watched the steaming surface of her coffee as if an answer awaited her there. “It’s just,” she began and paused, “it’s all so sudden.” Rashid’s eyes were calm and steady, but there was a quiet plea in them. He took a sip of his coffee, as if to give himself courage with the hot drink.

“Nira,” he said, choosing his words carefully, “I love you. And I want us to get through this together. It’s not an easy decision, but we can do it.” His face was close to hers, the gentle features determined. Munira felt the warmth of his words, but also their weight. She trembled slightly and pulled her hand away from the table, only to then drum her fingers against the glass again.

“I had simply hoped,” she said slowly, “that I could first start the job and then see how things develop.” She heard how defensive it sounded, even in her own ears. The jazz music in the background shifted to a new piece, the tones melancholy and unobtrusive. Rashid took a deep breath, not taking his eyes off her.

“I don’t want us to risk this,” he replied with a patience that seemed almost unshakable. “If we wait, we might miss the chance. I want to be there for you, even if it means taking risks.” Munira saw the intensity of his feelings, in every small nod, in every wordless moment. And she saw the trust he placed in her, as a bridge that stretched between them and yet at the same time separated them.

“I don’t know if I’m ready to do everything at once,” she finally said, her voice barely more than a whisper. “It’s so much, Rashid. The decision overwhelms me.” The lamps in the café cast a warm, golden glow on her skin, while outside the rain continued like the ticking seconds of a clock.

Rashid reached out, almost touching her fingers, but then paused. “Maybe you need time to see that I’m serious,” he said, his tone full of confidence. “I support your goals. I understand that it’s difficult, but I won’t stand in your way.” His words echoed in her head, like the last note of a fading melody. He looked at her intently, every moment that passed full of meaning.

Munira swallowed hard, her throat dry from speaking, from not knowing. She looked outside, the windows like mirrors of her thoughts, blurry and wet. “I can’t promise that I’ll be able to decide right away,” she finally said. “But I promise to think about it. Seriously.” It was a weak light, a small signal, but it was the best she could give at that moment.

Rashid nodded slowly, taking her words like a compass showing him a direction without giving him a path. “Thank you,” he said quietly, a simple word, but filled with so much meaning. For a moment, time seemed to stand still, a brief pause in the noise of life, while the world around them continued relentlessly.

The conversation faded away in the last notes of a jazz tune, soon replaced by new chatter and the clatter of coffee cups. Munira looked at Rashid one last time that evening, with an expression that said everything and nothing at the same time. Her thoughts circled in her head like the steam above the hot coffee. The weight of the decision hung heavy in the air, accompanied by the steady drumming of the rain, which filled the night with a heavy, melancholy rhythm.

Munira stared expressionlessly at the clock, as if expecting each ticking second to bring a decision. Her apartment was bathed in warm light, but the thoughts gathering in her mind lay like shadows on her forehead. A cup of herbal tea steamed quietly in front of her, gradually losing its warmth, just as her confidence seemed to fade. Farah and Aunt Aziza came in and broke the silence with their empathetic words. “Listen to your heart,” advised Aziza, as if this simple prompt could sweep away all uncertainty. Munira kept her gaze on the tea, unable to feel the carefree energy the two exuded. Her hand fumbled for the scarf around her neck, as if she were trying to hold on to one last certainty.

“You don’t have to go through this madness alone,” said Farah with a broad smile that made her eyes sparkle. She pulled a chair close and sat right next to Munira. “Rashid sounds pretty serious. That’s good news, isn’t it?” Her voice was like a ray of sunshine breaking through the clouds. Aunt Aziza settled onto the sofa, her movements calm and relaxed. “It’s a big decision, Nira,” she added, her eyes sharp but full of compassion. “Take your time.”

Munira shrugged and sighed as she turned the cup between her hands. “It all happened so fast,” she said. Her voice trembled slightly. “I don’t know how to deal with it.” She told them about Rashid’s proposal, about the weight of his words and how lost she had felt, alone with the decision. “He wants us to get married right away and move in together,” she explained, struggling for words to express the chaos inside her.

Farah leaned back and gave Aunt Aziza a slight smile before looking back at Munira. “Maybe you don’t have to decide at all,” she said, winking as if she had a secret she wanted to keep to herself. “Career and love aren’t mutually exclusive, you know? Sometimes things find their way when you least expect them.” Her words were like fresh air in a stuffy room. Munira felt a spark of hope flare up inside her, but it quickly faded again.

“But how?” asked Munira, her eyes searching for answers in the faces of her two visitors. She tugged at her scarf as if it were a thread unraveling the web of her uncertainties. “It feels like I’m taking a huge step without knowing where I’ll land. What if it doesn’t work out?” Her voice was soft, almost lost. The determination from earlier began to fade.

Aunt Aziza folded her hands, the gesture soothing. “Trust that you’ll make the right choice,” she said with a certainty that underscored every word. “Your intuition will show you the way. Listen to your heart.” Munira saw how serious she was, how every wrinkle around her eyes spoke a chapter of experience. The lamp in the living room cast a soft glow over the three women, who were together searching for answers.

Munira lowered her gaze to the tea, now almost cold, and a heavy sigh escaped her. “I’m scared,” she admitted. “Afraid of making the wrong decision. Afraid I’m not ready for either the job or the relationship.” Her words came faster, as she struggled for breath, revealing her feelings. “It’s like I’m being torn in two different directions and standing still at the same time.” She felt overwhelmed by the possibilities, but also by the expectations she had of herself.

“It’s okay to feel overwhelmed,” said Farah, her voice gentle and compassionate. “There’s no right or wrong way, as long as it’s your own way.” She reached for Munira’s hand, her touch warm and encouraging. “You don’t have to decide today, and you don’t have to decide alone.” The certainty in Farah’s voice brought a hint of relief, as if she had taken a heavy burden from Munira’s shoulders for a moment.

Aunt Aziza nodded in agreement as she leaned back a little. “Maybe there’s a middle way,” she thought aloud, her voice thoughtful. “Accept the job offer. See how things develop while you’re there.” Her gaze was probing, but full of trust. “Take your time, and you’ll see whether you want to move together.”

The conversations swung back and forth between encouraging words and quiet contemplation. Munira could feel that her friends really understood her, that they weren’t trying to influence her decisions, but rather gave her the confidence she needed. The evening wore on, as the minutes slipped by unnoticed and the intensity of the dialogue gradually gave way to a calm resolution.

When eventually a brief silence filled the room, Munira no longer felt quite so lost. “I’ll try,” she said, this time more firmly. “I’ll accept the offer and see how things develop. With Rashid. And with the job.” The words hung in the air like a promise, both to herself and to the two women who watched her lovingly. Farah and Aunt Aziza exchanged a pleased glance before drawing Munira into a warm embrace.

When Farah and Aunt Aziza left the apartment, a moment of silence set in. She felt decided, but not final—sure that she could reconcile the relationship and career, yet knowing that the hardest part was still ahead of her. She looked one last time at the now cold cup and then at the door that had just closed. The faint click echoed in her head like a confirmation of the steps she would now take.

The scent of cumin and cardamom filled the dining room, while laughter interrupted the steady hum of conversation. Munira’s long, dark dress suited her perfectly and the elegant hijab framed her radiant face as she moved gracefully among the gathered family members, exchanging light smiles and playful words. The man at her side mirrored her warmth, his kind eyes and calm presence a reassuring anchor in the sea of voices. Parents and siblings swapped stories and steaming plates, the evening unfolded in an atmosphere of joy and shared anticipation.

“Noura, darling, you’re going to crush him soon!” Munira’s sister Maryam shook her head as she watched Rashid, surrounded by her laughing children, willingly playing “camel” with them.

“Don’t worry,” replied Rashid with a gentle smile, “I’m stronger than I look! But soon I’ll need something to eat as a little boost!”

Munira laughed as she moved around the table, soaking in the impressions. Her clothing, chic yet modest, underscored her elegance, and her movements were fluid and confident. Rashid now stood close by her, his presence calm and supportive as he spoke with his future parents-in-law.

“You’re doing well,” Munira whispered to Rashid as she stopped beside him.

“It’s all because of you,” he answered, his eyes shining with affection.

Munira’s and Rashid’s father Imran were talking to each other, exchanging playful jokes that couldn’t hide their satisfaction. “Remember, the real fun doesn’t start until after the wedding!”

“Wedding is no fun, my friend! But the children that come after—that’s the real challenge!”

“Fathers!” Munira protested playfully, “You’re worse than the boys!”

The room filled with relaxed laughter. The warmth of the gathering enveloped them both and reflected the joy that shone from the faces of all present.

Imran leaned back contentedly and watched the scene. “Who would have thought our two families would get along so well?”

Munira exchanged a glance with Rashid, a silent agreement that revealed their relief and happiness. She shook her head in amusement as she took the empty tea cups from the two fathers and placed them on the table.

The sounds of conversation never died down, and every now and then cutlery and plates clinked softly. Munira sat down and handed Rashid a steaming cup of tea, their eyes meeting in a moment full of emotion.

“And, Munira?” Rashid’s mother looked at her curiously. “Will you stay here?”

“Maybe,” she said with a smile. “Maybe we’ll just let the future surprise us.”

Munira took in the atmosphere, a deep feeling of connectedness that permeated every moment of the evening. It was more than just a meeting of families; it was a beginning, a celebration of something beautiful that lay ahead of them.

The evening continued as Rashid chatted with one of Munira’s cousins. “Rashid, how good are you at playing soccer?” he called.

“Not as good as you, I suppose,” Rashid said with a laugh, causing the boy to stand up proudly.

The parents watched them, visibly pleased with the connection between their children and the delicate bonds growing between the families. The younger children watched the couple curiously, giggling and whispering about what was to come.

“It was a wonderful evening,” Rashid finally said. “Thank you for the invitation.”

The fathers shook hands firmly, and Munira’s mother hugged Rashid warmly. “We are the lucky ones. You honored us with your visit.”

Munira felt overwhelmed with happiness and the tangible approval of both families. She met Rashid’s gaze, and a smile full of hope and promise passed between them.

Traffic interrupted the evening silence at intervals, while the phone vibrated constantly and danced on the table like an angry beetle. Munira let it ring once, twice, before finally stretching over the back of the chair and casting a fleeting glance at it. Three messages, one with a subject line that outpaced her curiosity: Job offer – Immediate answer required. She read on and moved restlessly around her small apartment, her steps muffled on the carpet. The urgency of the words—“Urgent,” “management,” “new city”—stood in stark contrast to the leisurely movement with which she placed the phone on the windowsill. Her fingers drummed softly beside it, and her eyes wandered to a framed family photo on the wall, just bright enough to make out the faces vaguely. Outside, darkness crept over the city skyline, mirroring the growing uncertainty within her.

Finally, Munira picked up the phone again, her movements hesitant as if she were holding a foreign artifact. The words of the message filled the screen: “Unique opportunity,” “immediate answer,” and “take over the management.” It was as if the sentences were waving red flags at her, stirring up a tumult of possibilities and fears. The scenarios whirled in her head like an unannounced storm. She let herself fall onto the sofa, holding the cushion thoughtfully in her arms, and let the possible consequences flit through her mind. A new counseling center, a new city, a new life. The weight of this idea pressed on her and let the questions inside her grow.

“And Rashid?” she whispered into the empty room, as if he were there to answer her. Her eyes remained on the family photo, now wrapped in the shadows of dusk.

The hesitation in her chest took shape, a familiar companion of her inner reflections. She put the phone aside and gazed out the window, the last rays of light fading as the city settled into calm.

The café was a bright spot of vibrancy as Munira approached Farah. From outside, she heard the muffled hum of conversations, a gentle contrast to the silent swirl of her thoughts. The bell above the door jingled softly as she entered and looked around.

“Over here!” Farah’s voice was like a warm blanket that for a moment made Munira forget the pressure of the job offer. She waved with her typical liveliness and a broad smile that bridged the room. Munira made her way past crowded tables where couples and friends sat bent over steaming cups. Her hands played nervously with the hem of her scarf, an unconscious gesture revealing her inner restlessness.

“You look thoughtful,” Farah remarked as Munira sat down, her eyes full of interest and compassion.

Munira took a deep breath, her thoughts competing to be heard first. “Something completely unexpected came up.”

Farah smiled knowingly, her fingers tapping playfully on the table. “A surprise that brings you joy, or one that gives you a headache?”

“A bit of both,” Munira admitted as she sipped her tea and inhaled its soothing aroma. “I got a job offer. A really good one.”

Farah’s eyebrows shot up, her enthusiasm infectious. “That sounds fantastic! And you don’t sound excited. What’s the catch?”

“It’s in another city. And they want an immediate answer.” Munira’s voice trembled slightly, the words heavy with the weight of her thoughts.

“Ah.” Farah leaned back, her gaze warm and penetrating. “What does Rashid say about it?”

Munira played with her spoon, absentmindedly stirring her tea. “I haven’t told him yet. I don’t know how to say it. Or if I even want to.”

Farah tilted her head and took Munira’s hands in hers. “What do you want, Nira? What do you really want?”

This question echoed in Munira’s thoughts; she could almost hear the reverberation. “I don’t know,” she admitted, her uncertainty showing in her eyes and her slightly hunched posture. “I’m afraid of disappointing him. My family…”

Farah let out a soft laugh, loving and lighthearted. “Don’t you think they’d be proud of you if you took this opportunity? Munira, you have to be careful not to forget yourself. Sometimes it’s about giving yourself permission to embrace the unknown.”

Munira regarded her friend, whose determination and wisdom resonated in every syllable. She remembered the last family gathering and how perfect everything had seemed. But did she really fit in? “And what if I regret it?”

“Then you’ll find a way to make it right again.” Farah’s answer came immediately, in a tone as clear as the bell that still rang softly in Munira’s ears. “Take your time, Munira—don’t rush anything.”

Munira smiled weakly and gratefully as she tasted the sweetness of the tea and Farah’s words slowly sank in. She felt the warmth of the surroundings settle over her, a soothing contrast to the faint chill of her indecision. The tension in her shoulders eased a bit, even though the uncertainty of the situation still occupied her thoughts.

The spoon clinked against the cup, an inattentive sound that broke the silence as Munira wrapped her hands around the cup to soothe her inner restlessness. They sat in a comforting silence that embraced the questions and hopes yet unspoken.

Farah laid a hand on Munira’s arm and almost whispered: “I believe in you.” These simple words carried more weight than the many messages crowding Munira’s screen that day.

Munira nodded as darkness gently draped itself over the city outside, leaving the sky tinged with a delicate pink. The vague outline of the future waited patiently to come into focus. Munira’s gaze wandered out into the growing night as she weighed the possibilities and consequences of her next step. Her uncertainty stood in stark contrast to her friend’s decisiveness, but the decision was ultimately hers. It was time to be brave.

Subscribe now

The apartment smelled of cardamom as Munira set the table with paper napkins. “Did you see that your tea isn’t finished yet?” Nadia asked with playful reproach, pushing the steaming glass toward Munira. Munira smiled, although she didn’t really feel like it. Her stomach twisted uncomfortably, and the voices from the street sounded like a chorus of doubts. “He says Rashid is coming by,” she finally said, eyeing her mother. Nadia just smiled mysteriously, as if she knew more than she wanted to reveal. “So your father is going all in?” she asked, while Munira leaned back with a theatrical sigh.

“He said Rashid should visit us as soon as possible,” Munira confirmed, rubbing her forehead. “I didn’t know what to say to that.” She reached for the tea glass and felt the pleasant warmth tingling in her fingers. Outside, cars passed by, and the gentle breeze made the curtains sway. Nadia sat down with a satisfied sigh. “You shouldn’t let it get to your head. If your father wants something, he means it seriously.” She sipped her tea thoughtfully and gave her daughter an amused look. Munira knew that she herself was much more nervous, and exactly that made her squirm in her chair now.

“But what made him suddenly go this far?” Munira took a sip of tea, felt the aromas unfold on her tongue, but could hardly form a clear thought. Her mother set her glass down noisily. “Maybe he’s simply realized that you’re old enough to make your own decisions,” Nadia suggested. Munira raised an eyebrow and looked at her mother doubtfully. “Or he realized that Rashid won’t give up.” This remark elicited an amused snort from Munira. “Maybe Ummi just gave him a proper push,” she said with a grin and watched as Nadia rearranged the napkins. As if they hadn’t already been perfectly arranged.

“What’s more important is what you think,” Nadia finally said, brushing a strand of hair from her face. Her voice was gentle and thoughtful. Munira knew they’d reached the point where the banter had to end and the seriousness begin. “How do you feel about all this?” Munira pushed her chair back a little and sighed. “Confused. Relieved. All at once.” She looked into her tea glass as if she might find answers there.

“Let’s think about what comes next.” Nadia now spoke with the calm of a mother who knew the field. “You have to let Rashid know. I assume you want to make the invitation in writing so nothing goes wrong?” Munira laughed a little bitterly as she picked up a notepad and pen. “Do you think it would be bad if I just texted him?” She jotted down a few words and then crossed them out again. Her thoughts felt like a jumble of notes on a whiteboard.

“A call would be more personal,” Nadia remarked. “Let’s set the details first, then you can tell him at your leisure.” She leaned back as if the answer were obvious. “When should the meeting be? Do you want me to be there?” Munira smiled weakly as she looked into her mother’s eyes. “I’d prefer that. You know how Baba can be sometimes.” She didn’t quite trust the whole thing yet. Nadia patted Munira’s hand, which was lying on the table. “I’ll be there, don’t worry.”

“So, when would be best?” asked Munira, as she continued doodling on the notepad. The sun wandered across the sky, and the shadows in the room slowly shifted. Nadia pulled the teapot closer and poured more for both of them. “I’d suggest Saturday. Or even Friday evening?” Munira wrote down both and then shook her head. “He probably doesn’t have time on either day. Maybe we should give him a few options.” She tore off a sheet and started anew.

Nadia got up to fetch some cookies from the tin that stood in a corner of the small kitchen. “Tell me about Rashid,” she suddenly said, without turning around. Munira looked up in surprise. “What do you want to know?” The old cookie tin rattled as Nadia set it on the table. “How do you think he’ll react?” Nadia asked. “Will it make him nervous?” Munira leaned back and tapped her lips with the pen. “He won’t have expected Baba to want to see him. But I think he’ll be happy. Or maybe even relieved?”

Nadia slid her daughter a cookie, as if to sweeten her statement. “Then tell him that. He’s probably been waiting for news too.” Munira looked at the crispy pastry as if she had to decide whether to bite into it. “You’re right,” she finally said. “I can’t just leave him hanging.” Her voice sounded a little steadier, and Nadia smiled.

“What are you going to write to him?” Nadia asked, pointing at the notepad. Munira bit her lip and looked again. “How about: ‘Rashid, my father has a surprise for you. Can you visit us this weekend?’” Nadia laughed, a hearty, warm laugh that filled the room. “I don’t know if ‘surprise’ is the right word,” she teased. “Maybe that sounds too much like a movie. How about: ‘My father would like to meet you. Can you come visit us?’” Munira nodded, wrote it down, and crossed out the previous message. How good it was that her mother was there to get her through this situation.

The afternoon sun bathed the kitchen in golden light, and Munira felt the warmth slowly filling her from within. “I’ll call him this afternoon,” she said firmly. Nadia winked at her. “I knew you’d do it right.” She handed her daughter the sugar, as if she knew she’d want this last sip of tea sweet.

Munira stared at the sheet of notes they had made and finally let it sink, satisfied. “I can’t believe we’re actually doing this,” she said, a mix of joy and disbelief in her voice. Nadia laid a hand on her shoulder and squeezed it gently. “About time, don’t you think?” she said softly. Munira smiled, and this time it felt real.

Munira watched an old man board the bus outside as she dialed Rashid’s number. She chewed thoughtfully on her lip, and her breath briefly fogged up the windowpane. Finally, Rashid’s voice sounded at the other end of the line. Munira paused for a moment, almost overwhelmed by actually reaching him.

She hesitated only briefly before blurting out, “Rashid, my father wants to meet you—he’s invited you to visit us.” Her heart was pounding like crazy as she waited for his response. There was an intake of breath at the other end, which seemed to last forever. Munira pressed the phone closer to her ear. Then, finally, his voice, calm but somehow different than usual. “Really? Your father?” The words sounded both astonished and curious, which gave Munira a spark of hope.

“Yes,” she replied, and her voice sounded brighter than she had expected. “He wants you to visit soon.” She looked down at her feet sinking into the carpet, unsure what to do with her free hand. It felt strange to say something like that. But in the moment she did, she felt lighter. Rashid laughed softly. “That’s... surprising. What made him change his mind?” His question didn’t come as a demand, but more like a childlike wonder.

“I think he sees that I’m serious,” Munira said, feeling a slight blush rise to her cheeks. “Maybe he just realized we can’t keep going in circles forever.” She tried to banish the uncertainty from her voice and noticed how freeing that felt. “And how do you feel about it?” Rashid’s tone was gentle, almost as if he was holding himself back a little. Munira thought for a moment before answering. “I’m nervous, but I’m also looking forward to it.” The confession brought a warm feeling with it, and she smiled despite her nerves.

“When should the meeting take place?” Rashid asked after a short moment. His curiosity was clear, and Munira heard a rustling as if he was jotting something down. She leaned against the wall and felt the cool surface on her back. “We thought of next weekend. But we’re flexible if another day is better for you.” Her voice sounded more confident now, and she was surprised at how much she longed for his answer.

Rashid seemed to think. “Where should it take place?” he then asked. “In my office or at your place?” Munira noticed the hesitation and quickly replied. “At our place. He wants to meet you in a more relaxed setting.” She heard another laugh, this time more heartfelt, and imagined him perhaps shaking his head a little, embarrassed.

“That almost sounds too good to be true,” Rashid eventually said, and she could hear the joy in his words. Munira felt her tension ease. “I’m glad you see it that way,” she said quietly. “I hope it’s not too much at once.”

“No, I’m looking forward to it,” Rashid assured her. “It’s just... sudden. But I’m really curious.” Munira could imagine his smile, and the image was like balm for her worries. She bit her lip briefly before answering. “Then let’s settle the details. I want it to suit you.”

“Next weekend sounds good,” Rashid said, and she heard him writing something down. “Just tell me when and where and I’ll be there.” His determination was calming, and Munira closed her eyes to take in the moment.

“Saturday afternoon? Or Friday evening, if you prefer?” Munira suggested, watching the shadows outside grow longer through the window. Rashid paused. “Saturday sounds perfect,” he said finally, and Munira felt an uncontrollable leap of joy in her chest. “Thank you, Munira. And your father too. It means a lot to me.”

“Me too,” Munira almost whispered, before correcting herself with a little laugh. “I mean, I’m really glad you’re coming.” She felt her cheeks glow, even though he couldn’t see her.

“I’ll be there,” Rashid confirmed with an assurance that did Munira a lot of good. “We’ll talk soon?” He sounded open and full of anticipation.

“Yes, talk to you then,” said Munira, trying to put the same lightness in her voice. “See you soon.” She hung up and stared at the phone in her hand for a moment. It felt as if someone had filled the room with new energy.

Munira sat down on the sofa and looked at the notepad that still lay on the coffee table. The letters blurred before her eyes as she replayed the conversation in her head. She could hardly believe it had really happened. A satisfied smile played around her lips, and the whole apartment now seemed to shine in a warmer light.

And somewhere Rashid stood in his apartment, grinning, saying over and over: Yes! Yes! Yes!, as he let himself fall onto his couch.

Read the next chapter here: