When Aminah and Kulthum arrived to take Asiya to visit her parents, Yusuf placed his hands around Asiya's face, pulled her into him and leaned his head against hers.

She closed her eyes while Yusuf kept his open.

Yusuf's eyes tenderly traced the faint contours of Asiya's skin as he studied her.

It seemed his nose would fit perfectly into the curve just above the bridge of Asiya's nose, right in between her eyebrows. Still, Yusuf was scared to test that theory because their feelings towards each other felt mismatched.

They remained in that position for a few minutes, foreheads touching as though their thoughts were being passed through the barriers of their skin, bodies unmoving as they absorbed and understood the words their lips couldn't say.

"Hello!" Kulthum honked from the car. "Did you call me to be a taxi driver or to watch a movie that looks like it's about to be rated R?"

The couple smiled at Kulthum's comment before breaking away from each other.

"I love you," Yusuf said as he squeezed Asiya's hand.

Asiya gave Yusuf's hand a squeeze back. "I know."

"I'll be back," Yusuf said as he walked her to the car.

"I know."

Yusuf opened Asiya's car door. "I'm going to fix this."

Asiya released Yusuf's hand and slid into the car.

Yusuf leaned over her in the doorway. He looked at Asiya with hopeful eyes and waited for her to say I know, to tell him that she was confident in him, that she believed him and believed in him, but she didn't, so Yusuf closed the car door and watched Asiya wave goodbye through the back window.

Once Kulthum's white vehicle was a speck in his view, Yusuf jogged into his car and drove straight to his mother's house.

Talking to his mother was relatively easy.

The conversation they had weeks ago after Yusuf announced his intentions to marry Asiya and the ones they had been having in between had loosened Yusuf's lips and unblocked his mother's ears.

Hannah nodded eagerly and agreed that sort of treatment wasn't right, and she promised to help Yusuf achieve his goal of stopping aunt Hina's actions and interference.

Now it was his aunt's turn.

His feelings were fuel because the car's speed steadily increased the closer he got to aunt Hina's house. Yusuf unannouncedly wove between lanes, aggressively overtook drivers ignoring their frustrated finger symbols and narrowly skimmed past orange lights.

When Yusuf arrived at his aunt's house, his memory of the journey there was blurry.

He stomped up the walkway before knocking harshly on the door. He waited, and when no one answered, he knocked harder, causing his knuckles to vibrate.

After the third knock, the door opened.

"Sarah?"

"Hey. Salam." Sarah moved her hand, giving Yusuf a small wave. "Auntie isn't here right now. She just popped to the corner shop to get some stuff for today's event."

"What a coincidence," Yusuf drawled sarcastically.

"What are you doing here?" he questioned, baffled that his overprotective, selfish aunt had left someone that wasn't family unattended in her home.

Sarah folded her arms and flicked her head backwards, causing her hair to whip over her shoulder as she leaned against the doorframe.

"I'm helping auntie...You know we're meeting with Rahimah's fiancé's family, right? Rahimah?" Sarah shook her head in disappointed disbelief. "Rahimah...your cousin? Today's her dua-e-khair Yusuf."

Yusuf pursed his lips and stopped his eyes from rolling around in their sockets. "She's my cousin. A member of my family. Of course, I know today is her dua-e-khair."

Yusuf chewed on his tongue as Sarah stared at him unconvinced.

Since he hit puberty, Yusuf had distanced himself from his external female family members. This distance wasn't achieved without protest, but Yusuf had remained firm in his decision to form Islamic boundaries, and he had no intentions of marrying any of his cousins.

But distance walked alongside forgetfulness, so Yusuf had forgotten about Rahimah's event and failed to notice his mum's glittery outfit and powdered stiff face when he visited her.

"Okay...well, like I said, auntie isn't here right now."

"Right, I'll wait out here then," Yusuf said before sitting on the concrete steps leading to the house.

He held back his shivers as bolts of cold shot through him and rippled through his body.

"Don't you want to wait inside?" Sarah asked.

Yusuf's back was now facing her.

"I'm fine here," he replied curtly.

"Well, if you don't want to wait inside, you can at least wait in the garden. So people don't talk," Sarah said.

This time Yusuf did roll his eyes. It was a stupid but valid point. Gossip grew from the plainest acts in this area.

What will the aunties across the road think?

He could already hear the chatter they would construct over nothing.

Oh, look at Yusuf sitting on the roadside like a street caller. His wife must've kicked him out. Hina did say they fight a lot. What will he do now? Look at him, out there in the cold, poor boy. They always come back home. Still, fully dressed but spreading his legs like that. How shameful. His mind mimicked the potential petty conversations.

Yusuf let out an exasperated sigh before standing up.

"I'll go through the back," he said before pushing open the rusty side gate.

Yusuf dusted his cheeks with his hands before tentatively sitting on an unstable-looking plastic chair. His lips fell apart as he recited dhikr and tried to ignore the biting cold seeping into his fingers and foaming in his lungs.

Thinking it was his aunt, his eyes temporarily moved to the back door when he heard the jittering sound of cutlery.

"I'm fine, thank you," Yusuf said before he cast his gaze back to the uncut grass and patches of weeds, rejecting Sarah before she had a chance to offer.

"It's cold, Yusuf," Sarah stated as she held a tray of steaming hot chai and biscuits. "I called your aunt. She knows you're here."

Yusuf heard Sarah shiver as the wind blew against her bare arms.

"I don't like serving people, but Auntie Hina asked me to do this."

Yusuf ignored Sarah's attempts to convince him to accept her tea and inwardly questioned her and his aunt's relationship.

The items on the tray weren't the result of a fancy, complicated recipe, but how Sarah had confidently commanded his aunt's kitchen and how his aunt had allowed her to was unnerving.

How often did Sarah come over for her to know where his aunt kept the tea leaves, the ladle, the pot and the dainty teacups with small flowers painted on them?

How many times had she watched his aunt attempt to control the stubborn induction hobs before she learnt how to twist them into action herself?

And why did his wife's childhood friend spend so much time with their family?

"I'm not cold," Yusuf lied smoothly.

The raven-haired woman ignored his statement.

Yusuf heard light clinks as Sarah placed the tray on the small garden table behind him. He listened to the chai burble through the kettle nose into a cup and felt the direction of the wind change as Sarah spun to face him.

Yusuf closed his eyes.

She won't...will she? Is she going to force it down my throat? No...Really? I've said I don't want tea.

When a powdery plum scent infiltrated Yusuf's senses, he panicked. With his eyes closed, he blindly aimed and chaotically whipped his arm outwards and waved it about, hoping to deter Sarah from coming closer to him.

"I said I'm fine!" Yusuf shouted as he accidentally knocked the delicate mug out of Sarah's hand.

The ceramic mug shattered as it connected with the ground, and Sarah let out a small shrill before scurrying into the house just as his aunt pattered out of it.

Yusuf's eyes were now wide open. With a face more twisted than an abandoned necklace, he watched his aunt lazily kick some broken pieces off the patio and onto the grass.

Aunt Hina placed her hands on her hips and tutted. "Yusuf, you shouldn't be so rude. The girl was only trying to serve you tea."

"I told her I didn't want tea."

A corner of aunt Hina's lips curled wickedly. "You should be nicer to people, Yusuf. We didn't raise you to act like this. Where are you learning this behaviour from? Be. Nice. To. Women. It also wouldn't hurt to be open too, especially if you're having problems with–"

"Stop." Yusuf's interruption launched through the air.

His anger had grown and mutated into a beast with multiple spitting heads. Yusuf sealed his eyes shut. He could feel it everywhere. It was tensing his muscles, pulsing behind his eyes, and warming his frozen, tight hands.

Yusuf inhaled shallowly, hoping his bursts of breath would bust through his anger and cause it to break apart like the mug.

He needed it to become smaller. He needed to calm down. He couldn't speak while angry. He didn't want to give his aunt more than she deserved.

Authubillahi mina shaytani rajeem.

Once he could mute his anger, Yusuf snapped his eyes open.

"You need to stop what you're doing. You're going to stop what you're doing. Your actions are wrong, haram and racist."

The grit in his voice surprised him. Yusuf was putting so much energy into controlling his emotions that he had expected his words to sound erratic and small.

"Allah! Astagfirullah!" Aunt Hina's hands flew to her chest dramatically. "Fear Allah Yusuf! and wash your mouth out with soap! How dare you! How dare you accuse me of such a thing!"

"It's not an accusation. It's a fact. You're racist!" Yusuf hissed. "What has Asiya done to you? Nothing! No one you mistreat ever has! And even if she had, that isn't an excuse!"

Yusuf watched his aunt's eyes darken and narrow. "Yusuf, don't speak to me like this–"

"You're racist," Yusuf repeated, confirming the truth for himself and uprooting the bulb where his aunt's actions stemmed from, leaving it standing between them, ugly and glaring.

They held their breaths and looked at each other, unblinking like cats sternly marking their territory. 

"Oh?" his aunt's brow pricked upwards. "You're suddenly so sure of everything now, are you? So who helped you come to this conclusion? Your wife?"

She didn't have to, Yusuf thought to himself, because he had heard snippets of his aunt's speech many times growing up.

Yusuf wanted to cry into his hands.

How could I have been so ignorant?

His aunt was a lost cause, and why had he expected anything from her?

He hadn't said anything meaningful to her since introducing her to Asiya. He hadn't shown her that her behaviour was wrong or wouldn't be tolerated.

He should've done that. He should've made those things clear from the beginning. Stepped up way before he had met Asiya, instead of allowing his family to continue to feel comfortable saying those things.

It wasn't enough to just not be racist. 

Actions speak louder than words. 

He couldn't rewrite the past, but he could help shape the future and do better, not only for Asiya. 

"I don't know everything," Yusuf said quietly.

He was done giving her allowances and chances. He also didn't need to see her and wouldn't allow Asiya to see her. He didn't want Asiya around that.

"But I know you're wrong, and I'm not your silent accomplice in this anymore."

With barely any defences left to lean on, Hina clasped her hands together and moved closer to Yusuf. "Yusuf, I love you," she expressed with desperate eyes.

Yusuf couldn't stop a small rip from pulling through his heart.

His aunt had been one of the few constants in his life growing up. After his father's death, she swooped in, swept up the pieces of his mother and helped Yusuf put her back together.

"You can't really believe I'm capable of hating someone that much. What has Asiya been telling you?"

Yusuf quickly sewed the split together with a shake of his head. 

"You're still going on about Asiya. This is you! It's all you!" he cried.

He couldn't merge the person standing before him, one that had spearheaded hate parades and created banners and witch-hunts with her words, with the same person who had acted so selflessly and looked after him.

That person had shown him unconditional love, but this person was showing him that she couldn't love unconditionally.

Does she even really love me? 

Or did his aunt only love parts of him and show him mercy by ignoring his other parts? Could that really be called mercy?

Love and that kind of hate couldn't exist in a person at the same time.

Both feelings burned in the same, small beating vessel. The heart didn't have enough space for both of them to coincide. The flames of those feelings would always fight for dominance, and one side would eventually bleed into the other and overpower it.

"Just stop. Stop this. If not for Asiya, for yourself," Yusuf warned. "Until my wife receives a full, sincere apology followed up with action, you can forget about hearing from us."

Yusuf didn't wait for aunt Hina to respond. He stepped back, rushed through the backdoors and ignored the eyes that followed him out of the house.

-

Author's Note: I don't know whether to hide or announce I'm back. 🤣.

Apologies, my holidays stretched on for much longer than I had planned. I missed y'all 🥹 and I hope you had a lovely summer! Did you get up to anything exciting?

I went to Asiya and Yusuf's honeymoon destination, and while I didn't tour the country as they did, I did explore Istanbul thoroughly 😁 and y'all Allahuma Barik, it did not disappoint!😩

I wrote this chapter before I went away, thinking I would be all prepped and ready for when I was back, and then I read it when I came back, and I swear I was reading a different language. 🤣. It needed an overhaul.

Also, I don't think I have many British readers, but writing this chapter reminded me of the tea video we got shown in primary and/or secondary school. Very important message.

Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed the chapter. What do we think? 🤨 Is this it? Is it over? 🤔

Jzk for all your kindness. InshAllah, see you all soon.

-

Chapter Glossary

Dua-E-Khair: Pre-wedding event. People typically gather to celebrate, pray and read Quran for the new couple.

Haram: Something that isn't allowed in Islam.

Authubillahi mina shaytani rajeem: Arabic phrase. It means I seek refuge in Allah (God) from the whisperings of shaytan (the devil).

Astagfirullah: Arabic term. It means I seek or ask for forgiveness from God.