The Garden of My Imaan (15 page)

My grandmothers were waiting for our return with big smiles on their faces and hugs at the ready.

“Where’s our
Eidi
?” Zayd asked, too eager for gift time—his favorite part of the holiday—to be polite.

Amma and Badi Amma put golden envelopes in our hands. We ripped them open and found crisp dollar bills— twenty-one for each of us—for our college fund.

OCD went straight up to my room; she hobbled back down the stairs a little while later. “Come here,” she called. “Juldi, juldi!”

“Yes, Choti Dahdi, what do you want?” I sighed, bracing myself to run another errand for her. Lately she’d been wearing Zayd and me down with shouted commands:
Bring this from
my
room! Take that to
my
room! Put this in
my
room
!

But OCD grinned broadly. “I don’t vhaant,” she said. “I geeve.” She thrust our Eidi in our hands—seven folded dollar bills. She cupped my chin in her hand, brought her fingers to her lips, and kissed them with a big
um-mah
! Then she did the same to Zayd.

I felt guilty for thinking bad thoughts about her, so I ran to the kitchen to bring her a glass of water. “Here is some
vhaater
for you, Choti Dahdi.”

Then it was time to open the pile of presents from our parents. I didn’t get designer jeans or an iPod or anything like that, but I did get a new cell phone, some jewelry, and a gift card to my favorite store. My very own cell phone! I couldn’t wait to show Winnie.

Amma had everything under control for our Eid party. The plates and forks were lined up, the food had been spooned into large dishes, and the
sheer khorma
shimmied in a large bowl. Zayd and I asked for a little taste, but Mom shook her head. “It’s the only dessert,” she said. “I don’t want it eaten up before the party starts.”

The guests arrived in spurts and I ran back and forth carrying all the coats and scarves upstairs. Each time someone came to the door, exuberant cries of “Eid Mubarak!” rang out. Everyone was thankful for a successful month of fasting. We had been good Muslims and upstanding citizens; we had curbed anger and temptation, read from the holy Quran, and given help to the poor by sending money to India. Now we were ready to celebrate!

I stuck close by Amma’s side, helping with the food first and then with the heavily spiced milky teas we served after dinner. When it was time for dessert, I offered to take the sheer khorma to the table.

“Don’t trip,” Amma cautioned. “Go very, very slowly, one step at a time.”

“Geez, Amma,” I said. “I’m doing fine. Stop worrying so much.”

At that precise moment, Zayd charged up and bumped my elbow. “Watch out!” I cried. The sheer khorma sloshed about in the bowl.

“Careful,” Amma called. “Don’t spill, don’t spill!”

“I’m not going to!” I shuffled forward, one cautious step at a time. “Why does everyone make such a big deal about things around here! Sheesh!” I made my way to the destination and set the bowl down carefully.

Zayd crept up to the bowl and peered in. “Uh-oh!” He scrunched up his nose. “There’s a bug in the sheer khorma!”

“What? Are you sure?”

“Yup,” he insisted. “I can see it.”

“It’s a raisin, you idiot!”

“No way! Raisins don’t have wings.”

I looked again. What if my brother was right?

Amma came running, armed with a wooden spoon. “Where is this bug?” she hissed.

“There it is … see?”

“It’s not a bug, mad boy!” Amma said. “It’s a raisin.”

“It does look like a bug,” I said.

“Raisin or bug, I am going to scoop it out,” Amma announced.

“Ewww,” I said.

“Ewww, nothing,” snapped Amma. “This is a lot of sheer khorma and it’s our only dessert.” She dipped the spoon into the bowl and lifted the bug out.

Choti Dahdi hurried in. “Aii, vhaat happened?”

“Nothing, Aunt,” Amma said. “It’s just that the children think this is a bug.”

“Show me, show me!” Choti Dahdi put her nose an inch away from the spoon.

“What do you think?” Amma asked.

“Go, go! This is no bug. It’s a fat raisin!” She lifted the bug/raisin off the spoon and popped it in her mouth. “Silly, silly children!”

“Ewww!” Zayd and I cried at the same time.

OCD smacked her lips in delight. “All is vhell,” she declared. “All is vhell.”

Zayd’s such an idiot!

Campaign Highs

T
he Glen Meadow student council campaign was firmly underway. With only a few more days left to get out the vote, everyone scurried about, trying to get things done.

Josh didn’t seem worried. He sauntered down the hallway, cool as a cucumber, shaking hands and giving thumbs-up as though the election was already neatly wrapped up and tucked away in his hip pocket.

Winnie and I put up my posters. Madison, Leah, and Carly followed behind making sure the spacing was even. We had worked very hard on the slogans.

Juliana strutted like a peacock. Her life-sized posters showed her in a perfect X-shaped cheerleader leap, hair flying and pompoms shaking.

Marwa kept to herself. Sometimes I saw her in quiet conversations with kids, but she wasn’t making a lot of noise like the rest of us. Her posters weren’t that great either. I guess she didn’t have a campaign manager like Winnie giving her good advice. But mostly I suspected her hijab was getting in the way.

When Juliana started handing out friendship bracelets and baseball cards, I got really worried. An alarming number of kids were sporting the bracelets now and the boys were already trading cards.

“Is she allowed to do that?” I asked Winnie.

“I don’t think there are any rules against it,” Winnie said. “But this makes me nervous. You should bring something in as quickly as possible.”

“Mom could bake a batch of cupcakes,” I said.

“Tell her to make samosas. I love her samosas!”

“I don’t know … Kids might not like them …”

“You worry too much.”

“It won’t work anyway,” I said. “We’re not even allowed to bring food to share anymore.”

“Oh yeah!” Winnie growled. “I forgot. That rule sucks big time!”

“We need to do
something
, though,” I said. “Juliana’s killing us with all her handouts.”

“Let’s check our to-do list.” Winnie ran through each item. “‘Put up posters.’ We’ve done that. ‘Talk up the campaign during lunch.’ Check. Here’s one we haven’t tried yet. ‘Get proactive!’ Talk to Josh. He definitely holds the ticket to the boys’ block.”

My hands suddenly got clammy.

“Hold on!”

I couldn’t talk to Josh. How could I? I got tongue-tied when he even looked at me.

“You talk to him, Winnie. Please, please, please?”

The next morning Juliana stopped me in the hall. “You’re the one who did it!” she hissed.

I had no idea what she was talking about.

“Don’t act all innocent!” she screamed. “You pulled my best poster down! It was there by the front door yesterday and then today, poof, it’s gone!”

“I didn’t do it!” I protested. I
wouldn’t
. I’d be grounded for life if I ever did anything that backhanded and sneaky.

By ten o’clock, there was more bad news. Two of my posters were missing too.

“I bet Juliana’s getting back at you,” Winnie suggested.

“What should I do?”

“You should go to Mrs. Doyle, pronto!” Leah said.

“I can’t,” I said. “I don’t know for sure if it was Juliana. It could have been Austin. He’s the one who really hates me.”

We checked out Marwa’s posters, but they were all still there.

“I don’t know what she was thinking when she made these posters,” I said to Leah. “There’s not one thing in them about her.”

“Hi!” Marwa said. “What do you think of my posters?”

I hadn’t even noticed her standing nearby.

“Um … you can’t even see your name,” I pointed out. “And they’re all pretty small.”

“I think they’re kind of neat,” Leah said.

Madison nodded.

I turned to them in surprise. “Really?”

“Yup. It’s like they’re talking to me personally,” Madison said.

“They make kids feel important, you know?” Leah added.

“Thanks!” Marwa said. “Speaking of posters, I heard some disappeared today.”

“I bet it’s Austin,” I said. “He never liked me all that much, but now he really hates me.”

“Yeah, but he doesn’t hate Juliana,” Winnie said. “And her posters disappeared too. But Marwa’s are still up. Hmm … totally confusing!”

“I have a theory about the posters,” Marwa said. “I’m thinking that it might be the tape.”

“You mean the posters are falling off the wall?” I asked. “Yours seem to be fine.”

“Precisely.” Marwa smiled. “They’re much smaller than the others.”

“They need to be much
bigger
,” I said. “And more colorful too.”

“Her posters are teeny, but the message isn’t,” Winnie said.

“It’s not the tape,” I insisted. “It’s either Juliana or Austin or both of them.”

“I really,
really
like Marwa’s message,” Madison said.

“Yeah, me too,” added Leah.

Juliana’s friendship bracelets were a huge hit. I had to get proactive really fast!

Reluctantly, I went to look for Josh. I found him on the basketball court, in the middle of a game. He made three
baskets in a row—
bam … bam … bam
—with no effort at all. I stood on the sideline, trying to decide what I was going to say and how I was going to say it. Before I knew it, the recess bell rang. Josh threw the ball to Matt and walked off the court.

I took an extra big breath. “Er … hi.”

Josh looked at me blankly. “Hi.”

“Great game,” I said.

“Thanks.”

“I’m going to vote for you.”

“Cool.”

When I didn’t say anything more, he started to walk away.

“I’m running for class rep in Mrs. Doyle’s room.” My words came out in a breathless rush as I hurried to catch up with him.

“Cool,” he said again, without breaking a step.

I watched him go.
Stupid, stupid, stupid
! I said to myself.

But then he stopped and turned around, squinting at me.

Maybe he wanted to ask me to help him with his campaign or something like that. I sucked in my breath and waited for him to speak.

“What’s your name again?” he called.

“A … Aliya.”

“Right!” He strode away without a look back at me.

He hadn’t even known my name.

More posters were missing the following week.

Mr. Belotti walked by, carrying a tall stack of brown paper towel packages.

“Good morning, Mr. Belotti,” I said. “I was wondering … have you seen … do you know anything about my posters? We had stuck them up in the halls and they, um … seem to be missing.”

“Oh, they were yours, were they?” He glowered at me. “You kids should know better than to use such cheap tape.”

“Huh?”

“You need stronger tape for the posters, kiddo. They fell down and made a mess of the hallway. I had to throw some of them out.”

“Did you have to get rid of them?” I protested. “We worked very hard to make them.”

“Not my job to pick up after you, kiddo,” Mr. Belotti growled.

Marwa was right! It was the tape. Amma’s old roll of tape from the basement wasn’t strong enough to hold my posters up. But defective tape didn’t explain Juliana’s missing poster.

“Maybe her designer tape was old too!” Winnie said when I told her what Mr. Belotti had said.

“I guess her posters were so big that no tape could hold them up,” I said.

“Yeah,” Winnie chuckled. “As big as her head.”