EACH OTHER

Rahim was helpless as he folded the clothes lost in what happened less than a week ago. The whirl of the washers and dryers lapses in the background. Buzzing into white noise as he replays it again. He was her husband, someone who was supposed to be able to fix anything, and he couldn’t this time. It was 3 am, and Lakendra, his wife, had miscarried their child at 7 months. In their home in the master bathroom, she was sobbing after the baby had cried once and gone silent. He had called 911 and tried to resuscitate their precious daughter Aishia, but couldn’t get her heart to start again. He held his wife, who held their daughter as he was making dua in silence, waiting for the urgent wail of the ambulance. They made it home after the burial of their angel, and his family came over and began to berate Lakendra. And the old unspoken grudge of marrying a black woman came back. He looked at the woman he loved. Tired and pale, holding back stale tears as she took it. He snapped. He couldn’t help her that night and save the baby, but he would fix this.

“Don’t you ever talk about the woman Allah brought to me like this ever again!” he growled through gritted teeth. Stunned, the aunties and uncles looked at him. They tried to argue back.

“Had you married your cousin back in Cholistan, your child might be alive” one protested. Rahim quickly raged back in defense of his beloved.

“Or been a boy” chided another.

“I married a good Muslim woman who happened to be BLACK! Say it! That’s the issue! She is BLACK!” he unleashed in a guttural fit. And swiftly kicked them out the house.

Lakendra tapped on his shoulder, breaking him out of his teary daze. He looked at her. The most precious woman who is now tired and almost frail. She had blamed herself for the miscarriage. He had been forcing her to eat. She smiled, and he kissed her hand. They folded clothes together. He broke down when he found a onesies in the clothes. She held him. She was taller than Rahim by almost a foot and he wasn’t a short man. His face was hidden in her orange abaya that glowed against her rich dark skin. Like a sunset painted on a night sky. Her hijab hung as he wept. This is the first time he cried in years and it had to be in a dusty laundromat in downtown Atlanta because when it rains it pours so their washer broke at home.

“I love you habibti, oh hayati you’re my everything,” he repeated over and over as he finally broke. “I just want us to be a family, and I want to protect you and make you as happy as you make me. I want to be worthy of being your husband,” he whined as he sank to the floor. She glided down beside him, now crying herself.

“But you do! And you are!” she said in her thick southern drawl sadden he thought anything different. “Rahim I love you,” she said gently into his ear. “And you don’t always have to fix everything. You are enough!” That made him sob even harder since he had never been enough for his strict family. This is why she was his everything. He always wondered what he did for Allah to bless him so heavily with such an amazing woman. But he knew one thing. His love for her was real as was hers for him and that’s all they needed. Each other.

Rachel Lauren Joyce Dowd is a Muslim writer born February 1, 1997, in Newberry, South Carolina. Raised in a diverse family and shaped by both love and loss, she has 3 brothers and carries the legacy of her late mother, late father, and her late grandparents, Col. Chaplin Lawrence Kelly and his wife, Joyce Edna Kelly. Her writing reflects faith, strength, and the journey of becoming.