Sideed
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Abandoned Pursuits
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"Are you ready for Eid?"

I looked up from organizing the shoes in the closet--a banal task Hoyo ordered me to do after she almost tripped over one of my sneakers. Again.

Then I looked behind me, seeing her drink the last of her coffee in the kitchen before it would be time for Fajr. I knew she had to go to work after an hour, so she always drank coffee for Suhoor-- the time where those fasting in Ramadan would eat a quick meal before fasting began for the day.

This whole month I hadn't thought about Eid. I knew many people who would prepare their outfit a month in advance and spend the days counting down until Eid, and there would be people who just put some things together on Eid, but I didn't know where I was on that spectrum.

"Kind of, I guess," I said. I preferred to be honest with her. If I was, I found that an honest, but intriguing answer would create discussion.

"I'm sorry that we can't go anywhere fun," she said, and I felt guilty right away. "But you know I have to work, and my feet won't cooperate with me."

I stood up, mostly finished with the shoes, and went to go finish the rest of my already soggy cereal.

"Ayaan?"

"It's nothing," I told her. "Habaryar Amino's daughters invited me to watch a movie with them, so you don't have to do anything."

She gave me a half smile. "If only we lived in Somalia, Ayaan. They would close all the schools for that day. People, they would put on their best clothes, they'd go out with their family, and their friends. . . " She continued speaking, and I saw stars in her eyes and heard longing in her voice.

But I didn't feel that longing, and in the absence of that longing, I felt guilt.

"But here? You don't find that here," she said. "Everybody. . . they're just, yacni," she struggled to find the right words in Finnish. Because there were certain Somali words I didn't know. "Closed, separated," she finally said.

And she wasn't exactly wrong.

If there were Muslims living in an area, the ones of the same nations or tribes would greet each other if they were strangers. They would sit closest together in a mosque. It reminded me of that saying: birds of a feather flock together.

Sometimes I wondered if some of us chose nationalism over our faith. As if we couldn't have both pride in our homelands, but also in our religion.

"Wa aamusantahay," she told me.

You're being rather quiet.

"I'm just tired," I said. "I didn't sleep again."

That was when an alarm went off on my watch, signaling the time for Fajr.

Another day of fasting began.

/\/\/\/\

I used to have a safe haven at the library, until I met Leo and Alena. Once they found out that I had some sort of capability in tutoring, I was hounded considerably by their requests to help them in math and Finnish literature.

"This is factorable," I said, taking a quick break from helping Alena to check at Leo's answer on his math sheet.

"What? No it's not, I checked!"

I pointed out the error in his thinking on his work, and he immediately shut up.

"Why are there so many medical textbooks on the table?" Alena asked. By now, I knew she wanted to get off topic because I knew she hated reading.

"They're mine," I said. "I want to go into the medical field."

"Do you want to go into the medical field or be the medical field?" Leo asked, looking at the amount of books I had laying on the table, on my chair which I had abandoned to kneel by him and Alena, and in my bookbag.

Alena laughed, but I looked directly at Leo and said, "Both," with a straight face. I saw his Adam's apple slide up, then down as he swallowed and he looked back at his assignment.

"I don't even know what I want to be," Alena said. "I jump from profession to profession."

"In due time, you'll figure it out," I said, erasing an answer on her answer sheet.

"Why are you doing that?"

"You'll get points taken off if you keep giving different versions of the same answer," I explained. "Your instructor is going to notice."

"I don't care," said Alena. "I don't like him anyway."

"My mother once burned my hand because I burned something cooking on the stove," I spoke. "I burned it because I didn't care either. I don't like beans. She yelled at me, and I stayed silent anyway because I should've cared."

Alena just stared at me, mouth agape. "But doesn't that hu--"

"--It hurt," I agreed. "But so does apathy."

We worked in fragmented silence for the rest of the break. Alena got a call from one of her friends that needed attention, and she had to leave quickly, leaving just me and Leo.

The break time was almost over, so I started cleaning up some of the papery mess we had created in our study circle. Leo helped, but not as much as I would have liked him to.

"Ayan--"

"--Ayaan," I corrected him. He was fully capable of pronouncing my name, and I wouldn't let his lazy mouth get in the way of that.

"Sorry." He said it as if the word would erase any mistake he'd made. Then Leo started to stack textbooks on top of another, just as I had finished doing the same thing. We both walked with our books to the shelves we retrieved them from and started to put them back in their respective places. Leo had only three books to put away, so once he had finished, he just leaned against the bookshelf, watching the window behind us.

It was a nice view.

There was something about winter-- something calming, that, while it was a frigid time of its own, it was also a calming time. It was delicate, and clean. But the most noticeable thing for me was just how quiet it was. It matched the environment at home.

I paused in the middle of putting books away when I mentioned that Leo had said my name earlier, and I wondered if he needed something.

"Oh yeah," he said, and cleared his throat. "You asked me something. Before."

My lips turned into a small frown as I tried to remember what I asked, but nothing came to mind. "I don't remember asking you anything."

A small pause. "It was about what I wanted in life," he clarified.

The vague memory of me asking Leo what his life goal was came back to me, and that was when I nodded. "Yeah," I said. "I remember now. And you said money."

"Money, yeah," he said, and I saw him scratching the back of his head. We said money at the same time, but the ways we said it were different. He said it with a subtle lack of confidence.

It was quiet for a little bit, until I asked, "what about that?"

"Is it wrong, necessarily?"

Then I turned my head in his direction. "Why are you asking?"

"I just remember that you were quiet when I told you and Alena," he told me. "Did you think it was selfish?"

"After you gave me your reasons, no, I don't think so."

"Oh, all right."

I went back to putting the books away.

"Why did it matter that I was quiet?" I asked.

"People usually do that when they don't want to offend anyone," he said. I heard a smile in his voice. "I hope you weren't trying to be polite."

"Believe me, I wasn't," I said absentmindedly as I put the last book away. Then I heard a scoff from Leo.

"Thanks, Ayan," he said sarcastically.

"--Ayaan," I corrected him. "It's not that difficult."

"Sorry."

I went back to the table, and I heard his footsteps after me.

"So what are you after?" he asked me. "Your goal."

I rested the strap of my bookbag on my shoulder. "I want to become a doctor," was my answer.

Then I picked up my books to take home. The pursuit of excellence was something I kept to myself. An overarching goal amongst my other goals. It would have been unfortunate for me if I were to keep brandishing it around like some sort of trophy, because trophies are rewards on their own. The pursuit, was only a pursuit.

/\/\/\/\

I knocked on the door of Habaryar Amino only to see her eldest daughter Husna open it.

"You're not here to fold more sambusa again, are you?" she asked me with worry in her eyes, and I shook my head.

"Okay, cool. So why are you here then? Wanna come inside?"

I shook my head again. "I wanted to ask if the bakery business was going well," I said.

It was a while since I checked on my neighbors. Hoyo spent last evening telling me how important neighbors were, and how in Somalia there was such a sense of trust that you could just leave your doors wide open if you wanted.

"Pretty hard," she said. "Ahmed's still trying to get a job. It'll be hard to pay rent like this."

"Oh."

"Yeah, oh," Husna said. "You still are coming for Eid, though, right?"

"Yeah," I answered.

"Good," she said with a smile. "I know you won't back down on a promise."

I nodded promptly, marking the end of a stilted conversation. "So yeah," I said, wiggling my toes wildly in my shoes to cope with this slightly embarrassing talk. "Just wanted to check up on you is all."

"That's good, too," she said, starting to giggle a little bit.

"What's so funny?" I asked.

"You're so awkward," she said. "Relax."

I widened my eyes, mentally slapping myself for missing a huge detail I'd failed to notice after only a few minutes of speaking to her. 

"Your hair," I said.

She smiled and pulled a few locks over her shoulder. "Hoyo got it straightened for me," she answered for me. "I think it looks really good. My natural hair's just all over the place, and she said it's better straight."

I stayed quiet.

While there was nothing wrong with straightening hair, I didn't like what Habaryar Amino mentioned about Husna's hair being better if it was straightened. It reminded me of that skin cream she'd given me. It was as if she was trying to correct something about me.

I know God didn't make a mistake in making my skin dark.

"You look nice," I said, complimenting her. And she was; she looked beautiful.

"Thanks."

"Well I have to go, so take care."

"See ya," she said, and closed the door.

Once I got back home after that empty visit to Habaryar Amino's, I noticed nobody was home, but everything was in place as usual. The laptop was charging on the dining table, the kettle was washed, and a clean mug sat on the counter. The curtains were opened, giving view unto another snowy day that brightened up our living room.

I opened the drawer in the kitchen which held a lot of junk and papers. It's where Hoyo used to store nail clippers, but then I started putting dull pencils in there, and soon the useful "trash" started to accumulate. It was the first place I checked if I lost anything.

Except, I didn't lose something this time.

I took out the skin lightening cream, and stared at it for several moments. Those moments turned into about fifteen minutes that I ended up sitting against the cabinet, pondering and staring at the cream. I saw the before and after picture of this girl on the front. 

In the "before" portion of the image, she had a small smile, and dark brown hair just a few shades darker than her normal skin. In the 'after' portion, her smile was more radiant, and she looked like she was glowing. Her happiness clearly due to her now lighter skin. Something in me was suggesting that they edited the second photo more than they needed to.

But, she did look a little better, didn't she?

Then I questioned why that thought even came to me. I wasn't one to pay attention to these kinds of things, but I couldn't help but keep on thinking. All the films and advertisements I've seen usually had fairer actors and actresses, and they always seemed to be glowing. Was it necessarily a bad thing to want to look like that?

But soon, the thoughts turned into an action. I rolled up one of my sleeves to the elbow, and uncapped the product. It would just be an experiment. Nothing more than that.

So I rubbed some of the cream onto a small part of my forearm, replaying Habaryar Amino's words over and over. And I started to wonder, once again.

I wondered what kind of pursuit Habaryar Amino was in.

/\/\/\/\/\

The night was cold and quiet, but it didn't stop Leo and Alena from going to the store upon request of their mother. It didn't bother them much, considering the fact that they were out of baby formula for their baby sister and that she was a loud crier.

What did make the trip more uncomfortable than it needed to be was Alena.

"Did you really have to wear those?" Leo asked out of secondhand embarrassment. He looked at the Moomin slippers she was wearing, which were getting slightly damp from trekking through some of the snow. During the walk, Alena did make attempts in jumping from patch to patch of cement in search of drier land, but had failed for the most part.

The Moomins were a cartoon staple of any Finnish childhood. They were the central characters in books and in comic strips. Alena was one of the few that hadn't grown away from it.

"It doesn't matter," was all she said.

Once they arrived at the shop, Alena found the baby formula their mother used after only a few minutes of being in the almost empty facility. Instead of them paying and then leaving, Leo saw that her attention was directed towards the freezers.

"Leo! Look!" Alena exclaimed.

He followed her over, already frustrated with her antics, but stayed quiet. Leo was curious as to what piqued her attention.

She took out one of the boxes.

"Taikurimix jäätelöt," she said with awe.

"It's been a while since I've had one," he said.

"Yeah," she agreed. "I remember eating a lot of these during the summer holidays. If it wasn't raining outside I'd sit on my bike and I'd just eat these."

The ice cream bars have proved to stand the test of time, as they were already entranced by the nostalgia it brought.

"Weren't you trying to become a professional stunt bicyclist or something like that?" he asked.

Alena gave a small laugh, and the door of the freezer shut after she let go. She looked like she was nostalgic, staring into space as she spoke. A warm smile, and eyes that squinted slightly after a cringing memory.

She nodded. 

"I never got better," she said, and began to walk with Leo by her side.

"I think you should try it again sometime."

"And come back with all those bruises?" Alena sighed. "Äiti yelled for hours!"

Their mother had a short temper that could only be diffused through chastising the one who brought her to her boiling point. It was to be expected of someone like her.

"I remember that," Leo said before chuckling.

After purchasing the baby formula and ice cream, they were back on their way from the store. Leo and Alena entered the brisk, dark night which was lightened up by the street lights and snow.

"Except I kind of . . . miss it," she said softly.

"The yelling?"

"No! The biking. Remember I told you that I was going to be in the X Games in America?" she asked. Alena started doing small spins as she walked and talked. Her slippers made small squishing noises in some parts of the trampled snow. "How I was gonna fly through the air and-- and do cool tricks, and how I pretended that I was being interviewed for getting an award--"

"--You pretended to get interviewed?" Leo asked on the brink of laughter.

"Shut it," she snapped, hitting him with the bag. "And yes, I did. I practiced every response I could give."

"What happened though?"

Alena was quiet, and her walking speed slowed for a bit, but she kept up her steady pace with Leo.

"I just kind of drifted away," she said. "And it wasn't on purpose or anything. I just started focusing on other things. Not like I'll try again, either. I'm not like how I used to be."

"Ah."

Alena kicked some snow in front of her. "Sometimes I want to do it again," she said quietly. "So I can make the old me proud. I don't think you'd know what I mean by it."

"I think I do."

"Don't pretend," she said, and then scoffed. "You're the one who's had the same goal for years. Pursuit of money?"

Leo raised his eyebrows a little. "You're mad at me now, but let's see how mad you'll be when I finally pay off Äiti's debt," he said.

"That's not what you told Ayan--"

"--Ayaan," he corrected Alena by quoting Ayaan in an arid tone. "It's not that difficult."

He smirked to himself, proud of how much he sounded like her. But Alena only laughed at him, asking, "what was that?"

Leo let out a breathe that looked like smoke. "Nothing."

"It's not like she needs to know," he said. "And it's close enough-- what I told her. I want financial stability."

They continued on, walking like that in the cold night. It wasn't long after before they finally got home to go on with the rest of their nights.

He sat in his room with his pencil hovering over the empty space next to a practice question, lost in thought once again. Leo did remember what his sister said about wanting to make her past self proud by reviving a pursuit she originally abandoned. 

But he found it difficult to understand, and he let it stay that way.