Safiah's Smile (6 page)

She closed her eyes that evening and saw
Safiah’s chocolate-brown eyes staring deeply into her own. Those
eyes that raged with loss, blazed with regret. With Safiah’s words,
she could almost feel her brother’s presence, his strength and his
courage.

Two young girls with entirely different
backgrounds, completely separate stories, yet virtually identical
hearts. Malia slept soundly that evening, her mind at peace, and
her slumber no longer haunted by her nightmares.

–
Chapter 5 –

The Eagle Café was the most exclusive dining
hall on campus. One humid Sunday evening, Malia decided to spend
the six dollars and fifty cents in her wallet on their grilled
hamburgers and crinkle-crisp French fries. After spending an entire
morning and afternoon bicycling through the winding paths of the
Washington University campus, Malia’s stomach screamed for
sustenance. Surviving solely on microwavable dinner packages,
toaster strudel, and boxes of Cheerios for the past several weeks,
Malia craved for a well-cooked meal.

Searching the restaurant for a friendly
face, Malia noticed a girl named Alice who she met in Greek
Mythology 101 with loose blonde locks that reached her waist and a
brunette named Amber with untamed curls and deep blue eyes from
Organic Chemistry. The sea of jubilant teenagers laughed riotously
at Amber’s comments. Amber had apparently been relating hilarious
tales from her crushingly humiliating high school years that sent a
stroke of contagious laughter throughout the entire table.

“And that’s why,” Amber concluded, “I will
never
show my face at the Burger King in my hometown again.
Ever.” The throng of students roared with laughter. Malia grimaced
at their carefree behavior, and turned towards the corner of the
dining hall. A dark shadow lingered heavily over the table she
selected, concealing it.

It was conveniently empty.

Gracefully lifting a fry to her lips, she
heard a thin voice from behind and the fry fluttered from her
fingers to the paper plate.

“Malia?”

Safiah. The Muslim girl.

Malia slowly spun around, somewhat soothed
by Safiah’s calming presence.

“Safiah. Would you like to join me?” she
asked out of common courtesy.

Safiah smiled and crept timidly to the seat
opposite Malia. She glanced curiously at the large
James Madison
Jaguars
logo printed on the front of Malia’s shirt in vibrant
yellow ink. Malia’s hair was knotted in a messy bun, and for once
her eyes appeared clean. There were no smudges of stray water
stains on them. She had a small plate of potato fries and tomato
ketchup on the side along with a medium-sized sesame hamburger.
Safiah looked down at her own plate. A large salad coated with a
thin layer of honey dressing. In her two years as an American
citizen, Safiah still remained unaccustomed to the peculiar concept
of fast-food. She lightly nibbled on her lettuce in her olive dress
and black headscarf in content.

Malia unintentionally noticed that once
Safiah entered the restaurant, the Eagle Café’s many customers
mostly huddled towards the right-end of the cafeteria. Safiah
seemed unhindered.

“Does it bother you much?” Malia bravely
inquired.

“Does what bother me?” Safiah appeared
sincerely oblivious. Malia immediately regretted her question.

She placed her fork lightly on her folded
napkin. “The people. It’s almost like….” She wished desperately
that she were anywhere else. Anywhere but here. Sitting in the
corner of the Eagle Café with Safiah. “Like they are avoiding you.
Because you are… you’re….”

“Different,” Safiah finished her
sentence.

Malia blushed, wiping the bangs from her
eyes. “Yes.” she blushed. “But not in a bad way,” she quickly
added. “I mean, it must be hard.”

“I’m used to it,” Safiah explained.
“Anyways, it’s understandable, isn’t it? The distance they keep.
The fear they have. With everything that’s happened….” her voice
trailed off. “It’s understandable,” she explained. Her lips were
slightly twisted, her eyes pained.

Admiration swept over Malia as intensely as
a tidal wave. “How can you say that?” she whispered in disbelief.
“It’s unfair,” she declared. “How can you say that it’s right to
treat you like this?” she sputtered. “Like you’re some kind of…
some kind of….”

“It doesn’t matter,” Safiah pressed. “Here,
let me try to explain it to you.” Malia wondered what color
Safiah’s hair was under the scarf. She imagined a rich, wavy black,
or maybe a deep honey brown.

“Alright,” she consented.

“In my History of the Holocaust course, we
are reading Anne Frank. I think there is this one quote that
describes what I am feeling. How I must feel. Or else I’ll just
whither away and become a cynic. One moment.” Safiah reached into
her multi-colored suede beaded bag and returned with a diary filled
with various notes and drawings. Malia saw a picture of a bird,
flying solitarily from its nest. She saw a sketch of a young woman
resembling Safiah. A young toddler was by her side, clutching the
older girl’s hand dearly. Beside that picture was a sketch of two
girls. One slightly taller than the other, yet both were adults.
Two Muslim sisters.

Malia quickly turned away.

“‘It's a wonder I haven't
abandoned all my ideals,’” Safiah recited, perfectly enunciating
each syllable. “‘They seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling
to them because I still believe,’” Malia could see the admiration
in Safiah’s eyes, the near idolatry, “‘in spite of everything, that
people are truly good at heart.’”

They both paused, contemplating.
After several minutes, Safiah broke the silence. “It’s true,” she
reflected.

“That may be so,” Malia finally
spoke after several minutes of quiet consideration. “At the core,
every person in this room may have a good heart,” she looked
around, eyeing a pair of college freshmen shake hands respectfully
and introduce themselves. A sophmore girl spilled the contents of
her purse in the center of the hall, and a stranger stooped to help
gather the missing lipstick, drivers license, and spare cash. “But
it doesn’t mean they’re always right,” she concluded.

Safiah persisted. “They’re afraid,”
she sympathized. “It’s only natural.”

“Prejudice is not natural. It’s
immoral,” she fought. Safiah was smiling. “Safiah, I’m sorry,” she
relented. “I just don’t understand. My life is so much simpler than
yours, and yet I can never seem to find strength to have faith in
what’s meant to be.” The sketch of Safiah and her deceased sister
lingered in her mind. She saw a group of stereotypical jocks
staring at Safiah. The boy with the backwards baseball cap and
Lakers jersey whispered something to the lean blonde girl in the
magenta tank top and black skinny jeans. “You seem so sure.”

“
I have no choice,” she
explained. “What I must contend with here in America is almost
nothing in comparison to the horros waiting for me in Afghanistan.”
Malia shrunk in understanding and humiliation.
Why did I have to bring this up?
she thought.
I barely know
this girl. I know nothing of her life. And I have the audacity to
offend her like this.
“There is a war there,
Malia. But, you already knew that.”

Visions of her brother in a
soldier’s uniform carrying a weapon, sprinting through the
trenches, shooting a man. She could not bare to consider what he
and Danny were confronting as she sat here in the cafeteria,
enjoying a simple fast-food meal with Safiah.
If only I could be a fly on the wall.
The pain of not knowing suffocated her
mind.

“I can only appreciate the gift of
safety that America has provided me and my family,” Safiah
explained. Malia’s eyes were glassy. Safiah knew her focus was
currently directed elsewhere. A place less welcoming. “Malia,” she
whispered. Her senses returned to reality. “You have to have faith
in a better tomorrow.”

Malia sighed. “For weeks, I
would lie awake at night. Listening to my own breathing,” she
closed her eyes. “I would wonder if they were still breathing on
the other end of all this.” She opened her eyes and smiled. “I
never really believed.” She looked at Safiah. Her eyes projected
pain. The pain of her relatives still residing in Afghanistan. And
the pain of her sister. Only an infant. One of the injustices of
the world. Along with so many others. Like Beth’s mother.
They were all
unecessary
, Malia thought.
It just takes courage to fight them, to
prevent it from happening to someone else
.
She thought of Danny and her brother. “But part of me does
now.”

Her cell phone vibrated gently in
her pocket. Her home phone number. Either her mother or father. “I
should probably take this,” she stood and gathered her belongings.
“Thanks for the chat,” Malia smiled and strolled out of the Eagle
Café, leaving Safiah to munch on her Romaine lettuce in
silence.

“Mom? Is that you?” Malia sat on a
vacant park bench. She was alone in the campus garden, surrounded
by weeds and wilting flowers. It was still daylight, though the sun
was beginning to set slowly into the depths of the earth.

“Mom, I can’t hear what you’re
saying. Why are you muffling your words?” She touched a finger to
her ear to block nature’s quiet but distinct noises – a bird softly
chirping, a bee vexingly buzzing.

She heard the word
missing
on the
other end of the line. Missing?

“Did you lose your car keys
again?” Malia inquired. “I’m sure they just fell in the street vent
outside the house again. Remember what we did last time? Just get a
stick, put some double-stick tape on it, and slide it through.
Piece of cake,” she assured.

More muffling.

Her brother’s name.

“Mom, I can’t understand you?” Her
heart began to race. She sensed the strange behavior on her
mother’s end and the two words – missing and Sam – had some odd
connection to one another. But her mind refused to make sense of
it. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t.

Her mother eventually regained her
composure.

Something was missing. But it
wasn’t just the keys to her mother’s old Honda Civic.

No, it was something much more
valuable.

Her brother.

“Mom, I don’t understanding, how
can Sam be missing in action? I don’t believe you. Why are you
saying this?”

Her mother was silent. Waiting for
the wrath, the disbelief to pass. The inevitable denial. “How can
the other soldiers, his generals, how can they not know where he
is? He’s either alive or… or… he’s not.”

Her mother tried uselessly to
explain.

“But he can’t just be gone. People
don’t just disappear.”

More explaining.

“Well, yes, I know that they do.
But not like this. Not when so many people care about them.” The
wave of skepticism passed. The truth began to settle into Malia’s
mind like a sour flavored candy on the tongue and she accepted
it.

Her mother had to go. Relatives
needed comforting, needed explanations, had questions. And they
assumed her mother knew the answers.

A light pink pigment filled the
previously blue sky, and the orange sun blazed less and less
vividly as the hours passed. Malia lay feebly on the wooden park
bench, staring desperately at the stunning shades of purple and
pink painted artistically around the puffs of white clouds. The
blending shades spiraled in her mind.

One of the clouds resembled a
heart, she thought, shattered into two separate halves. Another a
lion, racing to devour its prey. Another a bird, soaring to its
nest to care for its young. She analyzed the clouds painstakingly,
until fatigue overpowered her and she allowed herself to enter a
harmonious sleep. A sleep not of nightmares. A sleep not of dreams.
But a sleep of sheer nothingness. An empty mind to complement an
empty soul.

Hours passed. Still, Malia sat
cradling herself to sleep beneath the silver moon. In her mind, she
saw visions. Visions of bliss. Of a distant happiness. Golden
memories etched into her mind. Memories that shined ever so
brightly due to the dim prospect of their return.

She and Sam entering the
double-doors of James Madison Elementary together on their first
day of kindergarten. They both had been terrified for this sudden
change in their lives – from the freedom of children to the
structured confinement of students. They clung to each other those
first few days of school, anxious to separate from the
familiarities of their youth. But one day, Sam sat just a few desks
further from Malia. And Malia asked a girl with choppy blonde
pigtails to sit with her at lunchtime. Eventually, they branched
out into their own. Yet in their hearts, they always remained those
two frightened five year-olds in spirit.

The seventh grade. A chunky
boy and his exclusive club of followers had tormented Malia and her
friends for weeks on end. Stealing their backpacks, sending prank
phone messages, and circulating displeasing rumors. Malia
especially despised the rumors.

“You’d better leave my sister and
her friends alone, Joey.” Sam’s pudgy twelve-year old face tried to
frighten the husky bully, Joseph Gandalini, in earnest sentiment.
Danny was by his side, laughing his face off at his best friend’s
meager attempt at intimidation.

After consoling Danny for his
failure to defend his little sister, Danny shoved Joey against the
locker and muttered something threateningly in his ear that Malia
couldn’t decipher. Joseph Gandalini never bothered Malia and her
friends again.

Her brother’s face was as red as
the Fuji apple she had crunched on for lunch for that day. “It’s
the thought that counts, Sam,” she comforted him.