Despite her efforts, Yusuf noticed something was off with Asiya. The musical tone she had used to converse with his mother had sounded false and flat to him.

Something is very wrong, he thought as they drove back to their hotel.

Asiya's smile couldn't convince him otherwise. It was too precise and constructed like someone had painfully pulled back the strings that controlled her cheeks.

It wasn't her usual carefree grin that expanded and shrunk as conversation dipped and peaked. Asiya held her smile the entire night like she was waiting for permission to stop smiling.

When they were inside their hotel room, Yusuf's eyes followed Asiya's slightly lowered shoulders into the bathroom as she prepared for bed.

She hadn't spoken since they had checked in.

Yusuf knocked on the bathroom door before gently pushing down the handle and frowned. It was locked. The couple didn't usually lock the bathroom door when they used it.

"Asiya," Yusuf called out softly. "Are you okay?" He felt like he had been asking Asiya those three words a lot lately, and that scared him.

There was a short sniff in response before Asiya croaked out a yes.

Unconvinced, Yusuf wiggled the door handle up and down. "Asiya. Open the door."

Yusuf pressed himself against the door and braced his body, but his preparation for a fall was pointless because the door didn't open.

"Asiya." Yusuf knocked on the door with increased urgency. "Why are you avoiding me? Please, open the door."

Yusuf pressed his hands on either side of the door frame and leaned his forehead against the door. After a few painful minutes, Yusuf heard Asiya sigh, and she reluctantly unlocked the door.

Asiya gave Yusuf a smile.

It's false, he thought. Something was peeking through her pretence. "Asiya, please. What's going on? What's wrong?"

Asiya's smile slackened, unveiling some of her feelings. She looked scared, almost like she knew that once she opened her mouth, her voice would crack and give away the truth.

Yusuf knew that look because he had mastered a million different ways to mask it.

"Nothing is wrong. I'm fine." Asiya's sentence was short, but Yusuf could hear the spikes in her voice as she struggled to control it.

"How did you find tonight?" Yusuf purposely kept his palms pressed against the door frame so Asiya couldn't avoid his questions.

"It was okay."

"Just okay?" he pressed.

Asiya nodded while Yusuf shook his head.

Asiya exhaled defeatedly. "Your mum was sweet, but...your aunt...wasn't."

Yusuf's face darkened as Asiya told him everything that had happened. She spared no detail; eventually, he was swimming alongside Asiya in a sea of sorrow that her foes had thrown her into.

"She called me something too...I don't know what it means, though. Sounded like she said a bazar ant? Badtea ant?"

"A baazaari aurat?" Yusuf clarified.

"That's it," Asiya nodded. "I'm guessing it isn't nice by the look on your face. Shock."

"It doesn't matter, and it isn't true."

Yusuf lowered his arms, and Asiya quickly scurried out of his line of scrutiny. She walked over to the bed, threw back the sheets and swept a pillow over the covered mattress, dusting it.

The air felt thick. Asiya wasn't talking, but Yusuf could tell she had more to say by the way she was biting and peeling the skin off her lips, turning them into broken lumps like the body of a raspberry.

He cautiously unbuttoned the top buttons of his shirt, and with troubled eyes, he watched Asiya snap her bonnet over her hair and throw the extra pillows off the bed.

"I thought I could do this. Handle this...," Asiya finally said. "This feels too hard Yusuf," she whispered as she pulled the cover over herself and gathered it under her chin.

A balloon swelled inside Yusuf and pushed his lungs forward, sticking them against his chest and causing his breath to stagger. He could detect something in Asiya's voice, a threat. It was hidden in there, buried beneath her words.

"What does?"

"Being with you."

Asiya's words sliced through him like a knife.

"Asiya." Yusuf shuffled to her side of the bed and grabbed her hands, removing them from the protection of the duvet. "Asiya, you've made being with you so easy. Being with you, loving you, is one of the easiest things I've ever done."

"Then why haven't you done the same for me, Yusuf?"

As though Asiya's hands had been covered in stinging nettles, Yusuf dropped them. He cradled his hands up to his chest, protecting them from further injury.

"That isn't fair, Asiya. You can't blame me for my family's actions. I can't control what my family does."

"You can control what you do, though." Asiya's head nodded in his direction. "Who told them all those things, Yusuf? Who gave them a jar of problems to craft rumours from?"

Asiya's questions sounded more like conclusions. If they were questions, they were rhetorical. Her tone made it clear she had already settled on her answers.

"I didn't tell anyone anything about that," Yusuf said in a wounded voice.

"I'm not accusing you of that, Yusuf."

"It sounds like it."

The silence that followed Yusuf's statement felt like it was never-ending. The muted waves seemed to crash and travel over each other for hours while Yusuf and Asiya studied each other, unmoving.

For the first time, Yusuf couldn't tell what Asiya was thinking.

A part of him wished he knew, so he could say the right thing. But at the same time, he wondered if there was anything he could say that wouldn't cause Asiya to pull on the escape lever she was holding. 

"I'm sorry...it's just...marriage is supposed to be our safe space. It just doesn't feel safe right now. Do you feel safe?" Asiya gently challenged.

Yusuf's eyes glazed over as the wheels in his brain spun, trying to figure out how the little information he had shared could have slipped from his mother's lips and into his aunt's hands.

Mum, is someone there? Yusuf's mind flashed back to that night. I hardly mentioned Asiya that night.

"I understand...I feel violated too," Yusuf confessed as he realised just as his aunt had slunk out of the kitchen and into the living room to bully Asiya, she had probably been slithering around his mother at the time of the call.

His aunt had stolen the information, wrung it between her hands till it took the shape she wanted and passed it on to others.

"I'm sorry this has happened. I'm sorry it's my family putting you through this," Yusuf apologised.

"It's okay. I'm sorry for blaming you," Asiya said. "It's not your fault. I can't keep holding you responsible for others, their actions, and my feelings."

Asiya turned off the light, and Yusuf blinked as his surroundings and response were devoured by an unfriendly darkness. Asiya said it was okay, but her voice was unconvincing, still carrying flat, checked-out notes.

Yusuf used his hands to feel his way into the bed. Once he was lying next to Asiya, he searched for her hands, and when he found them, he placed them in his own.

Her hands felt foreign and cold, like everything that made her Asiya; her kindness, openness, and warmth had retreated from him the moment their skin touched.

He squeezed her hands like they were stress balls, hoping his remorse would travel through them and melt the ice that seemed to have settled.

While he had a black father, Yusuf was white-passing. He had never been treated like a black man, and his privilege had kept him protected and propped up for the majority of his life.

It didn't help that those things, like most things, weren't talked about in his home. At least not openly.

When he was younger, sometimes, after he had accompanied his dad to the supermarket and they had been followed around the store, his parents would talk behind closed doors, and blessed with the naivety of youth, Yusuf's curiosity never peaked enough for him to press his ear against it.

When he grew up, conversation stopped altogether.

His mum rarely said anything unless she was poked and prodded into making a passing comment by his aunt because if she didn't, she would be plucked apart by her family like bay leaves on a stem.

Sometimes it had felt like his mum was still trying to prove herself when they were home, so Yusuf had learnt to not say anything.

He knew he could never truly understand Asiya's experiences. They were unique. He could only empathise with, listen to, comfort, and stick up for her, protect, and defend  her. He felt like he hadn't been doing enough of that.

Trying to wasn't enough.

Yusuf being quiet felt just as bad as his aunt being loud. He didn't want his voice to overpower Asiya's. Still, he knew it was essential to help her feel safe and supported in their relationship and needed for change. 

He felt like he hadn't been doing enough of that. 

I have to do more, Yusuf thought to himself. Especially because the hate was only this close to Asiya and her home because he had involuntarily dragged it onto her doorstep.

However, he wouldn't dare admit to her that it was because of him, because she married him, that she was experiencing this, even though they both knew that was the case.

Asiya seemed to be teetering on a springboard. Her recent words had told Yusuf she was deciding if she should dive into the water below and allow the current to sweep her away from him.

Yusuf wouldn't admit it. He was scared that if he did, Asiya would lift her heels off the plank, throw her hands into the air and jump. Or worse, he would turn around and find that he had pushed her.

"You go ahead to your parents' house tomorrow," Yusuf instructed. "Text your sister to pick you up."

"Why? Where are you going to be?" Asiya asked.

"I'm going to be putting an end to this."

Yusuf made that statement with so much zeal, and he hoped Asiya believed him because even though she was lying right next to him, she had never felt further away.

He didn't sleep that night.

He counted every minute and every snore, tick, stir and breath that came from Asiya.

When she stopped breathing, as if her mind had realised she wasn't awake and forgotten where it was before it remembered, Yusuf didn't breathe either, and he would clench Asiya's limp hands so hard in his own to make sure she didn't drift away.

-

It was narrated that Tariq bin Shihab said: "Abu Sa'eed Al-Khudri heard the Prophet SAW say that The Prophet (saw) said: Whoever among you sees an evil and changes it with his hand, then he has done his duty. Whoever is unable to do that, but changes it with his tongue, then he has done his duty. Whoever is unable to do that, but changes it with his heart, then he has done his duty, and that is the weakest of Faith."

Abu sa'id al-Khudri also said he heard this. Grade sahih.