Narrator’s Name: Unknown, Still
XI. Friday and a Gun
Hint/Confession: I am the day of it all. But I darken as I go.
It was Friday and it was un-weekly for a Friday to be so perilously long. At least that was what it seemed to Jameel when he found his father at home and awake and right in front of him. It was past midnight when Jameel entered his father’s house – Jameel’s old home.
“Boy, come here,” said Alhaji Shatima. Jameel closed the entrance door and walked toward his father thus, closing the huge physical distance between him and his father but not the emotional one. Theirs is a relationship fostered with broken words, unhealed time, strained feelings all strewn about like shards and like stars —unformed, cluttered. Always with parts of broken whole parts apart —so parts and parts apart.
“Pour me a glass of whiskey,” Alhaji Shatima said, sitting in his minibar which was situated at the center of his huge mansion. Alhaji Shatima was tall and dark. He was also tall and dark with words and action; he gets what he wants when he wants it. And what he wanted at that time was for his son to help him get intoxicated by pouring him a glass of whiskey. Instead of pouring him a glass, Jameel moved the bottle closer to his father without pouring it as requested and then turned to leave.
“Have a drink with me, Jay,” Alhaji Shatima said. Nobody called him Jay except his father. Nobody called him that because Jameel made sure anybody who did wouldn’t want to do it again. Well, except his father. But then Jameel never called him father. He called him sir or Alhaji Shatima.
“I don’t drink, sir,”
“Funny. Yet you smoke.”
“Unfortunately,” Jameel said.
“Have a drink with me. I wasn’t asking,” Alhaji said looking directly at his son for the first time since the conversation started. For the first time in months. “Don’t disappoint me again.”
“I’ll make a trade, sir,” Jameel said. You don’t say no to Alhaji Shatima but, like business, you can make a negotiation if you think you’re smart enough. “I’ll do anything else you want me to do except drinking.” Jameel, at different and multiple points of his life was guilty of many bad things but not getting intoxicated. He particularly hated intoxicant probably because he knew what it did to his parents. He was a child when it happened but he still remembers the ugliness of it.
“You’d do anything I want, he says? Fool. If that were the case you wouldn’t have left home just so that you can live in that small hut you call an apartment. The money, the car I gave you, the family business – you wouldn’t have thrown them all away. You wouldn’t have dropped out of law school. What is it that you want? Just look at your cousin, Abubakar? A responsible man, he is. I’m proud of him and so is his father. You are here telling me you’d do whatever it is I want. That’s right, you will, young man,” Alhaji said and then paused to gulp his drink then poured another round.
“Do you know why I’m a successful businessman?” Alhaji said, dipping his index finger into his drink and stirring the drink. “Because I have answered my question. I have answered my question. ” This was like a mantra and Jameel has heard it over and over again. Alhaji Shatima believed everybody has a unique question to answer. And one must answer that question to be successful in this world. And only the wise will themselves to find the answer. Most people don’t even know that there exists a question let alone search for the answer or answers to the question. Alhaji likes to think of the question as the question of being – the question of life.
Alhaji Shatima continued, “Life is like an arithmetic problem and in solving it, you also solve the problem within yourself. Of fear, of hesitation, of lack of confidence, of getting distracted, of failure. And they keep coming in different forms. You answer and then you repeat until you’re sure of your answer as much as you were consumed with the question it posed. I have solved it.” Alhaji refilled his glass. “So here, drink. Right now, this is what I want from you. Quit playing around and wasting your potential, Jameel Shatima.”
This wasn’t the first time they have had this discussion but it’d be the last. No, that wasn’t the last. The last time would happen some days later and it would be ugly.
“Here, take it,” Alhaji repeated offering his son the drink. The dim light was strong enough to expose the conviction of Jameel and the anger on Alhaji Shatima’s face. This story I’m narrating, and in the way I know it, the second to the last time conviction and anger met, Alhaji Shatima lost his soul-mate, and young Jameel lost a mother. After that, the last time these two emotions met somebody died and Abba was charged with murder and incarcerated in Dihaara.
This time was no last time or second to last. Alhaji Shatima threw the bottle of whiskey on the tiled floor and pushed his stool away. Jameel’s face broke with the shattering sound. Alhaji stood up ready to pound Jameel but settled for a slap. Alhaji Shatima slapped his son hard across his face. He raised his hand and delivered a second round, and a third, and a fourth then stopped. Alhaji Shatima looked at the shattered bottles and realized something. He probably realized that he had messed up and he hadn’t really answered his question. The question he believes everyone must answer – a concept his whole life revolved around. He turned to face his son intending to say something but the words didn’t come.
“Jameel… I just don’t want…” he started, then cleared his throat. “Clean this mess, will you?” Nothing surprises me, but I was a bit surprised when I found out that Alhaji Shatima said that. It sounded more like a request than an instruction. Alhaji Shatima was not one to request. And it made Jameel unsure whether the mess Alhaji was referring to is the broken glasses shattered on the floor or something else. Some mess he couldn’t clean by himself. In response, Jameel just walked past him and Alhaji let him.
Jameel went to his old room upstairs and found a covered tray of food by the door and he opened it. It was his favorite dish: Spaghetti. Inna was responsible for that. Inna was the housekeeper who has been working for Alhaji for more than a decade. She always cooked Jameel’s favorite every Friday and left it by the door even before Jameel ran away from home. When Jameel opened the covered meal, he smiled. He wanted to go and see Inna in the guest section of the house but he knew she had slept as the night was hours and minutes into being.
He unlocked his door, entered his room, and did what he always did every Friday for the past ten years: He got on his computer and he doesn’t get off it until dawn. I wish he was as honest with himself as he was in that period of time – alone in the night while his fingers toy with the keyboard for hours.
When he was finished eating his food, he rinsed the plate and then he took a piece of paper from his dusty cupboard and scribbled:
As always, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed every bite I took. No wonder you’re still my first love, Inna.
Then placed it on the tray beside the plate and took the tray outside his room and dropped it by the door. With a smile on his face, he sat on his chair and said to himself, “Jameel Shatima, let’s get to work.”
Outside, the night was dark and the only window lit with existence was Jameel’s. At this rate, Danladi, the security man at the gate of Alhaji Shatima’s mansion had stopped wondering what always kept Jameel awake at this time of the night. At this rate, after years of noting his boss’s son's weird habit of not sleeping every Friday night, Danladi found solace in the fact that that light was keeping him company in the silent night. Danladi wasn’t the only one who saw the light in Jameel’s room that night. So did Jameel’s cousin, Abubakar.
Abubakar, his wife, his beautiful daughter, his parents, and two siblings lived in the mansion next to Alhaji Shatima’s. Abubakar and his wife had just managed to put baby Safiyya back to sleep when he noticed the light in Jameel’s room. This part of fatherhood drove most men crazy but not Abubakar. Abubakar picked his phone and sent his cousin a text message.
Abubakar: Do you plan on sleeping anytime soon?
Jameel: Hey, Cozz. You still up? How are things?
Abubakar: You idiot! Do you have a problem with sleeping? Get some rest, man. Goodnight??
Jameel: Goodnight. Kiss baby Safiyya goodnight for me. I trust you’re enjoying fatherhood?
Abubakar: oh very! You should try it. Get yourself a lady and settle down. You know I want you to be happy. I already have a long list of ladies you can choose from.
Jameel: I’m sure you do.
Abubakar: Okay I don’t have a long list but I hope, for once, you’d get serious with one of these poor girls who throw themselves at you. Please stop breaking their hearts.
Jameel: You know I don’t subscribe to the idea of getting married early. It’s for old people, old man.
Abubakar: Should I tell Aamati and umma you said that?
Jameel: pleeease don’t! Okay Cozz, you’ve made your case. I’ll think about it.
Abubakar: Good. Talk to you soon?
Jameel: Yeah. We’ll meet at the masjid for fajr prayer.
Abubakar: Insha Allah. Good night and peace be unto you.
Jameel: Peace be unto you too.
***
Some hours ago before Jameel went to his old home, Friday wasn’t dark it had light-skinned hours on. And in that light-skinned, Umar came to Jameel’s apartment and found him with two dudes he had never seen. They were all around the same age as him: Twenty Five. The two were playing chess while Jameel was plainly rooting for the younger fella to win. When Jameel saw Umar he knew something was up.
“Jameel, we need to talk,” Umar said as he entered.
“Let’s talk in the room,” Jameel said standing up to welcome his old friend. “Boys, I’ll be back in a jiffy. Hey, Walid, checkmate in two moves.”
“What’s the matter, U.J?” Jameel asked Umar when they got to Jameel’s room.
“First of all, who are these people?”
“They are good people,” Jameel said smiling.
“I see. Jameel, look at the message. Look, what can you deduce?” Umar said pointing at his phone screen:
Take the job.
Find her words.
And I’ll tell you who kil her.
“What I see is that whoever sent this has a lot of time in his hand.”
“You mean like you.”
“Exactly like me. So maybe I sent it,”
“For the last time, Jameel Shatima, did you send this?”
“Umar, I did not send this.”
Umar stared at Jameel for a while. “Okay. Now, look at how R spelled ‘killed’. It’s incorrect. It’s missing a few letters.” Jameel took the phone from Umar’s hand.
“Maybe it’s just a typo.”
“That was my thought too. But I think they are initials. I think ‘kil’ stands for Kashimu Ibrahim Library. Why else would he care if I took a job in a library?”
Jameel was still deliberating telling his old friend about Saleem. “Does that mean he wasn’t telling you that Safiyya was killed?” Jameel asked.
“I don’t know.”
“And what about the ‘find her words’ part?”
“I think it means Safiyya wrote something and it’s in one of the books in the library.”
“You mean the millions of books in the library? Bro this is a wild goose chase and you know it. And you know as I do, Safiyya – may Allah bless her soul – died in a car accident. There’s nothing more to that.”
“Maybe,” Umar said and then he remembered the first message. I KNOW ABOUT THE GUN.
“Have you talked to Saleem about this?” Jameel said.
“No, not yet. I haven’t told umma either. It’ll only make them worry.”
“Umar, talk to Saleem,”
“You think he knows something?”
“Or just ignore it. Your choice,” Jameel said, evading Umar’s question. “Look, the thing about text messages is that they have to be received, then reacted to or responded to, in order to make any relevance or to give a burden of knowledge, and to tie the receiver – in this case you – to the sender – the mysterious R – in the context of the message sent. So there’s no way R knew you really got his message since you didn’t reply to it. Therefore, if he means business, he would try something fiercer and riskier and that’d likely expose him. Frankly, I think sending a text message is too weak a move. Though the anonymousness of it is a good touch. ”
“Sure. Except you’re forgetting something: I took the job. That was how I responded to R’s message so I’m sure R knows by now. And I took the job because I was curious.”
“No, not curious – that wasn’t it. You’re just keeping busy. Anyway, talk to Saleem; he might know something. You know he spends a lot of time in the library whenever he’s in town,” Jameel said refusing to tell his friend everything. As I said before, if only Jameel was as honest as he was on Friday nights when he was riding his keyboard with his fingers and his heart. But Jameel was Jameel and unprecedently so.
“Alright,” Umar said.
“It’s almost two p.m. I was just planning to cook something then prepare for the Friday prayer. Abubakar will be coming shortly to pick me up for the Friday prayer in the University masjid. I hope you are not planning on leaving soon?”
“You are cooking? I wouldn’t miss that for the world,” Umar said. It was no secret that Jameel was an excellent cook.
In the kitchen, Umar told Jameel about Maryam. Umar went to her home with Abubakar’s father, Shaykh Basheer Ibn Mukhtar to meet her father. Maryam’s father, Professor Siraj Muhammad, was a friend of Abba so the three talked about Abba. The professor asked Umar about his whereabouts for the past year and Umar told him a lie that even he won’t remember. The professor seemed to have bought Umar’s bogus story. Even Shaykh Basheer didn’t really know where his son’s friend had been the past ten months but he’s not the kind to ask.
Before we continue, I need to tell you a little about Shaykh Basheer Ibn Mukhtar. He was a younger brother to Alhaji Shatima and their relationship was similar to that of their children – Abubakar and Jameel. The Shaykh studied Hadith in the Islamic University of Madina, Saudi Arabia. And as it so happened, one of the Shaykh’s tutors was so fascinated by him that he gave the Shaykh his daughter’s hand in marriage. That was Abubakar’s mother, Aamati.
When the Shaykh came back from his study abroad, he cofounded Ofcon limited with his brother, Alhaji Shatima. Ofcon was all about the modern way of hide processing. The company produced things which ranged from leather shoes to leather car seats. Ofcon Limited was one of the biggest companies in the nation.
One thing that made Shaykh Basheer exceptional was his kindness and the way he was with people’s names. Shaykh Basheer was not one to forget people’s names or faces even though he was a man who met new people virtually every day. But that wasn’t the fascinating thing. It was how he calls your name as if your name meant the world to him; as if it is the origin of life and light that should be held firm.
If you tell him your name for the first time, he’d quote a verse in the Quran that has your name, or tell you its etymology or tell you something an extraordinary or a famous person in history who has the same name as yours did.
I know you still don’t know me but that was what Shaykh Basheer did in our first meeting: He put one hand on my shoulder and another on my chest, then recited a verse that has my name, sat me down, then said smiling, “what an elixir your name is!”
Moving on… When Umar told Shaykh Basheer about Abba’s wish regarding changing Umar’s marital status and that Abba wants him to go and ask for Professor Siraj’s daughter’s hand in marriage, Shaykh was very happy and told Umar that it meant a lot to him that he came to him. It was on that same day, Shaykh Basheer took Umar to Professor Siraj’s house.
And when Shaykh Basheer told Professor Siraj what Umar’s intention toward his daughter is, the professor was okay with it.
“Professor Siraj gave you the thumbs up?” Jameel asked while chopping onions and putting them into the boiling soup in front of him. The kitchen was quite small but it could contain two people; saliva-inducing soup, and the story of a new beginning.
“Yes,” Umar said smiling. “He called his daughter and we talked. I think it went smoothly.” At that juncture, when Umar spoke to Maryam, love wasn’t completely in play. Love would have been too early a word and too strong an appearance. But they got there not long after and when Umar fell for her he found her there –in their new construct of time – waiting, for she had long fallen. I think the reason why Umar fell for Maryam had something to do with her eyes and the kindness in them; the whiteness of the promises they made.
What a great feeling it is: to love and to be loved.
“Is that so?” Jameel told his friend who was now in another world. What a grave mistake people make by hiding in other worlds when there is but one, Jameel thought. All and everything exists in the context of being and not in hopes and dreaming that things that may or may not work. The truth is, Jameel dreaded relationships.
But Umar was in love and Jameel wasn’t done talking. “Don't get married,” Jameel said, casually as he stirred the soup with a ladle. “It's too early and you're too young. Plus marriage is but a failed institution that has made many believe they have a rock to build on. But the thing is it’s not a rock, it is rubbles – plastic rubbles. You pour water and the rubbles float to the surface; so quick like nothing was ever there. She's not as perfect as you think she is, and you are too messed up to be responsible for another soul. Both of you are lost in a dream and you need to wake up. This— relationship!? It is an unfathomable gamble that has mistakes written all over it. ”
“I'm not without my faults. And she's not without her perfections,” Umar said in response. “and to this next “mistake” I'm dying to make, I say this: the pleasure is all mine.”
“Alright. I tried,” Jameel shrugged but he wore a grin on his face. “One of the kindest things you can do to your heart is to not fall in love until you’re ready to settle down.”
“That’s the only thing you said that I agree with. I know I have my issues and I’m messed up but I think I’m ready,” Umar said. Because whenever he saw her all he wanted to do is collect the shrapnel of time, knit it with care so that he’d have a lifetime to give her; for all was in good time, and all was in good place.
At least, that was what he thought. If only life was that easy.
When Friday walked a few hours further and then into the night, it dropped Jameel at his father’s house where we left him a few pages ago; where his father, Alhaji Shatima, was still downstairs drinking himself into the night. Friday dropped Abubakar in bed next to his wife and his daughter, Noor, was in her little cradle. And the soft bed-sheet creases cut them into sleep and into dreams.
Friday dropped Umar at home with thoughts of his newfound love. And just when Umar had managed to fall asleep, it dropped an assassin at his bedside with a gun pointed at his forehead.
This was it – Life. In Umar’s case: death and what comes after.