Boy vs. Girl

  Boy vs Girl

  Bismillah

  Dedicated to all who work to inspire our youth

  With special thanks to Humayrah, Aaminah, Jannah, Sara, Sameer, Umm Abdur-Rahman,

  Umm Ruqeyah and Umm Junayd - this book is what it is because of you.

  Boy vs Girl copyright © Frances Lincoln Limited 2010

  Text copyright © Naima B Robert 2010

  First published in Great Britain in 2010 and in the USA in 2011 by

  Frances Lincoln Children’s Books, 4 Torriano Mews,

  Torriano Avenue, London NW5 2RZ

  www.franceslincoln.com

  All rights reserved

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electrical, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying. In the United Kingdom such licences are issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available on request

  ISBN: 978-1-84780-005-3

  Printed in the United Kingdom

  1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

  Boy vs Girl

  Na’ima B. Robert

  Chapter One

  Good Intentions

  Farhana stood in front of her full-length mirror and scrutinised her reflection. Her hair was loose, ready to be restrained in a regulation ponytail for school. But for now, it hung about her shoulders and down her back, straight, but not dead straight enough to be the height of fashion. Nothing a pair of ceramic straighteners wouldn’t fix, though. All the hot Asian girls wore their hair dead straight nowadays – curls were so out.

  She peered at her skin, smooth, the colour of a latte, with a hint of mocha. With her green eyes framed by long, dark eyelashes and full lips, guys often compared her to Aishwara Rai, the famous Bollywood actress. As if. Guys will say anything to get what they want.

  Her school uniform sat loosely on her tall frame and skimmed her curves, just the way her mum liked it. No jumper bought two sizes too small for her, no skirts hitched up above the knee. Her version of the school uniform was just modest enough - what a decent Pakistani girl should look like, as Ummerji would say.

  But as she adjusted her waistband her eyes flickered upwards, towards the white piece of fabric that was perched on the corner of the mirror. In the back of her mind, she could hear her Auntie Najma’s voice: ‘The hijab is a protection, Farhana, not an oppression. Your body, the beauty you’ve been blessed with, are your private property, not to be seen by just anyone. You’re worth so much more than that.’

  Farhana swallowed hard and reached for the hijab. She imagined herself folding it into a neat triangle, the edges precisely matched, lifting it over her head and bringing the two sides together under her chin, taking a pin and pinning it closed, drawing the two ends over her shoulders. Farhana in hijab. Did she dare?

  But then she heard her mother’s voice: ‘Dressing modestly is enough – so many people go to extremes these days. Just look at your Auntie Najma! You don’t need all this hijab, jilbab, niqab nonsense. For a start, it’s not our culture and, while we are living here, we should try to blend in, not stand out. It gives the wrong impression, that Muslim women are oppressed. As long as you have faith in your heart, that’s all you need.’

  And she saw too, with absolute clarity, the shock on Shazia’s face, the horror on Robina’s, the weird looks from the other girls at school, the smirks from the guys down the town centre.

  And then there was Malik. What would he say?

  She shook her head. Of course she didn’t dare. Not yet. Not today.

  “Farhana! Faraz!” Her mother’s voice came from downstairs. “Hurry up, you’ll be late!”

  Farhana grabbed her bag and scooped her books off her desk. She’d pack them properly later. “Coming, Ummerji!” she called down.

  * * *

  In his room across the hall, Farhana’s twin brother Faraz was also getting ready for school. Born six minutes after his sister, he was later than her in most other things too. He had not yet put on his school shirt, and was standing in front of the mirror in a vest and school trousers. He had already spiked his hair with gel as he did every morning, after splashing cologne on to his neck and stubbly chin. He smiled inwardly when he thought of the beard that was trying to assert itself – he was a man already.

  He turned and looked again at his upper arm, smooth, brown and muscular. All that time at the gym last year had paid off: he wasn’t weedy any more. Then he thought of the needles, the blue ink, the stain that might soon appear there, and he winced.

  Could he really go through with it?

  Things he had heard since childhood, in madressah, in conversations between his father and the brothers at the mosque, flew through his mind: tattoos, haram, forbidden in Islam. ‘There is to be no change in the creation of Allah …’ Wasn’t that what his Auntie Najma had said? He bit his lip.

  Then he remembered Skrooz’s voice, smooth as honey, with an edge as sharp as a switchblade. ‘All the lads have it, Fraz. This symbol is powerful, blud, it commands respect, wherever you go. But not everyone can get it, y’know. You have to earn it, see? And you…’ He had pointed at him, nodding his head, looking at him sideways. ‘You’re well on your way, son, well on your way. Just a few more little errands for me and you’ll wear the badge too.’

  Faraz felt his heart expand in his chest. It felt good to see the sly looks of respect that came his way nowadays. Maybe one tattoo was worth it? Just the one…

  He heard his mother calling him and he shouted down to her. “I’m there, Ummerji, I’m there!”

  He grabbed the clean, pressed school shirt that his mother had hung up for him the night before and shrugged it on. A clean shirt was as far as he would go to appease his mother – she could forget the tie though. Only losers wore ties at his school.

  Another call from downstairs and he bolted out of the door.

  * * *

  “I spoke to Imam Shakir last night,” said the twins’ father, Mahmood, as he peered at the morning paper over his breakfast.

  “Did he say when he thought Ramzan would be?” Their mother, Uzma, was lifting fried eggs on to two plates, supervising the toaster, waiting for the kettle to boil.

  “He reckons next Monday,” answered Mahmood, sipping his hot, sweet tea, “but they will wait to hear the news from Pakistan before announcing it.”

  “D’you think we’ll start fasting with everyone else in the UK this year, Dad?” Farhana poured herself a glass of juice and sat down.

  “Ah, get us a drink, sis,” Faraz said over his shoulder as he sat programming his iPod.

  “Sure, lazybones,” she said, scowling good-naturedly. Why did he always have to be waited on? Honestly, men!

  Uzma, the twins’ mother, gazed fondly at this exchange between her two children. Farhana and Faraz had been born after six years of marriage - a lifetime in her mother’s eyes - and there had been no more children after that. This certainly wasn’t what she had imagined when she had first made that trip over from Karachi as a new bride, all those years ago.

  Alhamdulillah, her parents had chosen well: Mahmood, her cousin, was a good man, she couldn’t fault him and, all in all, she was content. She had a girl and a boy and they were good kids, respectful and well-behaved. She didn’t worry about them going off the rails and doing anything crazy, like some of her friends’ children… Even Pakistanis weren’t safe from the corruption that filled the media, it seemed.

  She shuddered slightly when she remembered the riots that had taken place a few years earlier, riots that had spilled over into her life when a gang of youths had l
ooted their little newsagent’s shop. She remembered thanking God that her Faraz wasn’t old enough to be involved. He had still been an awkward lad in glasses at the time. Not that she ever worried about him getting into that sort of thing. Not her Faraz. He had always been the soft one, the tender one, the one who came to give you a hug for no reason, who could cry over a beautiful recitation of the Qur’an.

  Farhana was the tough one, the brainy one, who wanted reasons and explanations for everything. Uzma knew that it was meant to be the other way round but she couldn’t deny their true characters, any more than their father could accept that Faraz was not a macho sportsman like he had been. She poured her husband another cup of tea and turned her thoughts to Ramadan.

  “Well, it depends, Farhana,” Mahmood was saying. “The mosque will want to follow Pakistan, as they always have, so we’ll just do what they do.”

  Farhana was always baffled by the debates about the start of Ramadan – about whether the moon had been sighted or not, and by whom, and in which country. It seemed simple enough: if the new moon was seen, the new month in the lunar calendar had begun: time to start fasting. It didn’t stop people arguing about it, though….

  She bit into her toast thoughtfully. In a few days, they wouldn’t be eating at this time. The kitchen would be clean and silent, no plates or cups on the table, no sizzling frying pan. That would all have been cleared away after sehri, the meal they ate before dawn, while it was still dark. It would only come to life again in the afternoon, when they started to prepare the food before iftar, the evening meal to break their fast, at sunset.

  Farhana smiled. She was looking forward to Ramadan this year. Something inside her said that this year would be different from all the others.

  I’m going to make a change, she thought to herself, and her smile broadened.

  Faraz, too, had Ramadan on his mind. He had tried to fast last year but there was too much going on, too many distractions. He had given up halfway through, although his parents didn’t know. It was easy enough to get a bite to eat down the town centre where his parents rarely ventured – there weren’t too many Asians there and the shops stayed open all day.

  But this year, he planned to do it properly. He was sixteen, after all. He didn’t need the stubbly chin to remind him that he was a man now, at least according to their faith. Time to fix up.

  Chapter 2

  Inspired

  There was no rest for anyone on Saturday. Even the twins didn’t get to have their traditional lie-in. Ummerji was in their rooms, opening the curtains with a flourish, before 9:30am.

  “Come on, up, you two,” she said briskly. “Ramzan’s coming - we’ve got lots to do!”

  First, there was the house to get in order: cleaning, dusting, airing the mattresses, dealing with all the laundry. That was Ummerji and Farhana’s job. Then Ummerji sent Dad and Faraz out to the market with a long list and strict instructions to come straight home.

  Several hours later, the newly scrubbed kitchen cupboards groaned under the weight of family-sized tins of ghee, lentils, garam flour, sugar, honey, dates from Madinah, bottles of Zamzam water that a neighbour had brought from Makkah, fruit juice, mango powder, new packets of turmeric, chilli, coriander, cumin and Ummerji’s homemade chaat and garam masala.

  How ironic, thought Farhana, as she watched her father and brother drag in the bags of shopping, it’s meant to be a month of fasting but we think about food more than ever.

  Later that day, when Ummerji and Dad had gone out to take some shopping over to his mum’s, Naneeji’s, house to save her a trip out in the rain, their father’s youngest sister, Auntie Najma, came over.

  Faraz raced to the door when he heard the bell from up in his room. Auntie Najma stood on the doorstep, a vision in black in the pouring rain. Her umbrella kept the rain off but it couldn’t stop her jilbab, her long black cloak, soaking up the water from the garden path. Her face was covered with a niqab, a face veil, her hands with black gloves.

  No one seeing Auntie Najma on the street would have any clue that she preferred to wear her kurta tunics with faded blue jeans, or that she had a tiny diamond nose ring and a weakness for gourmet sandwiches and designer handbags. A few words exchanged in a shop or on the bus would not betray her First Class degree or love of world literature and Impressionist art. To passers-by, she was just another woman in purdah, a common enough sight in their part of town, an unwelcome oddity in the town centre and the suburbs.

  But Faraz and Farhana had long since ceased to be surprised by their aunt’s outward appearance, even though the whole family had been shocked by how changed she had been when she had come back from university in London. Auntie Najma, once so wild and out of control, had come back all Islamic. The change had been a real shock.

  “I can’t stand it when people take things to extremes…” Ummerji would often say. But extreme or not, Auntie Najma was by far the twins’ favourite relative and, as far as they were concerned, she was welcome any time.

  “Faraz!” Auntie Najma said warmly. “Asalaamu alaikum! Where’ve you been, man? I thought you were going to come and see us last weekend.” Her gravelly voice was unmistakable.

  “Wa alaikum salaam, Auntie,” Faraz replied, his face breaking into a smile. He opened the door and stepped aside for her to walk past him into the hallway. “Dad wanted me to help him in the shop, y’know?”

  Once inside, Auntie Najma flipped up her niqab and gave him another big smile, pulling off her gloves. “How are you, love?”

  “Fine, Auntie, I’m good.”

  “Alhamdulillah, that’s great…”

  “Auntie Naj!” Farhana had heard her aunt’s voice from upstairs and ran down to greet her.

  The two of them hugged and Auntie Najma laughed. “All right, all right, easy!” Then she turned to Faraz. “Are you two free for a couple of hours? I wanted you to come and help me with a few Ramadan preparations…”

  The twins looked at each other.

  “I guess so,” said Farhana. “Ummerji and Dad have gone to Naneeji’s with some groceries.”

  “Well, just call and find out if it’s OK, in case there’s something else she wants you to do at home… I know what the weekend before Ramadan can be like!”

  Farhana ran off to the living room to call her mother.

  Faraz started putting on his trainers, hunting for his jacket. “Faraz,” said Auntie Najma, “have you got any jackets you don’t wear any more?”

  “Ummm, I don’t think so…”

  “What about that one there?” Auntie Najma pointed to a jacket with a red hood. “I remember you wearing that last year – there’s no way you can fit into it now!”

  Faraz smiled and blushed. He had grown a lot since last year. After a few minutes, he had unearthed several coats and jackets that he had outgrown.

  “What d’you need them for anyway, Auntie?” he asked as he pushed them into a big shopping bag.

  “Well, the weather’s starting to change, and there are quite a few people who would be glad of a Faraz Ahmed cast-off.”

  By the time they left the house, they had three carrier bags full of warm clothes and shoes. Auntie Najma packed them in the boot of her little Mini.

  Farhana smiled at the sight: this woman in black, covered from head to foot, at the wheel of a bright red Mini Cooper. What did the neighbours make of that?

  The three of them chatted easily as they drove slowly along the rainy Saturday high street. Outside the car windows, it was as if the sights, sounds and smells of downtown Karachi had followed the immigrants who had come over in the fifties and had clung on, in spite of the concrete buildings and English weather.

  The damp streets were packed with shoppers picking up supplies for the weeks ahead. Beards, skull caps, headscarves, dupattas, burqas, shalwar kamees, mixed and mingled and created a vivid roadside display. Saris and shalwar kameez vied for window space, a competition between the traditional styles and the latest Asian designer looks. Impossibly bright gol
d jewellery glittered in the jewellery shop windows, fake versions adorning shoes, evening bags and shop mannequins. The fruit’n’veg stalls boasted their finest South Asian vegetables – mooli, karela, okra, red chillies – and fruit by the box or the kilo: plump, fragrant mangoes, hairy coconuts, sapodilla.

  In other shops, darkened places whose spicy, dusty odour tickled the nose, there were sacks of rice, grains, lentils and dried coriander, tubs of ground cumin, golden turmeric, and cardamom pods. The halal butchers had people queuing up outside and, all the while, the delivery vans kept coming.

  Practically everyone here was Asian. Once in a while, you might see an old white man or woman, walking a dog or pulling a trolley, but they were a rarity, like relics from a bygone age. This was the closest you could get to Pakistan without a plane ticket.

  But Auntie Najma didn’t stop. They carried on driving until they’d left their neighbourhood behind them and were heading towards the other side of town.

  “Where are we going, Auntie?” Farhana asked at last.

  “Well,” Auntie Najma replied, “I’ve started volunteering at a women’s homeless shelter twice a week, and I promised someone I would be there today.”

  The twins looked at each other. Homeless shelter? Auntie Najma caught their shared look and smiled.

  “Relax!” she said. “I’m not going to make you wash all the dishes in the soup kitchen or anything! I won’t be long at all. You guys don’t even have to come out – although you can if you like… and, who knows, you might benefit from it.…”

  After parking the car, Auntie Najma asked the twins to help her with the bags. As it was a women’s shelter, Faraz took the bags as far as the door, then waited outside. Auntie Najma signed in, then went to the common room.

  Farhana looked around warily, not wanting to stare, but curious about this place and its inhabitants. Some of the women looked at her suspiciously, others stared past her, uninterested.

  Auntie Najma, niqab up, walked towards a young lady with more piercings than Farhana could count. Through the fuzz of shaved hair that was growing back, she could see a large tattoo on the woman’s scalp. Farhana shivered involuntarily and was about to go when her aunt, all smiles, called her over.