3 Chapter 3

Hisham felt a pang in his heart. But he didn't react as she had expected. He just stood there clutching Maryam in his arms as if he had lost his words. Then he paced across the room carefully through the glass scattered floor and handed her to his wife.

"Take them to their room." He told her, and she saw hurt in his dark eyes. Afra took both children by their hands and led them out of the door towards their room. "Stay here and play something" She instructed them. Then she went back to her room and closed the door behind her.

Maryam went to the bed and sat there on the edge. "What are they talking now?" She asked Thasneem, who was still standing where her mother had left her, looking at the doorway as if she wanted to get back to her parent's room.

"I don't know." She said, still staring at the doorway. "But I think they are talking about us."

"I think so too," Maryam said, stretching her legs. "But we can't go there. Mama told us to stay here."

"I know, "Thasneem said turning towards her, looking cautious. "But they are talking about us!. What if Auntie Sulaiha tells Mama and Dada about our Kitty? We hid Kitty in her room when Mama told us to send her outside, remember?"

"Yes, but she doesn't know about that, right?" Maryam asked her, widening her brown eyes. "Kitty was asleep in the box when we kept it under her bed last night. So Kitty wouldn't have made any noises. I'm sure of it!"

"But what if she had found the box while she was searching for her slippers or something?" Thasneem asked her, "Wait, was she wearing her slippers when we last saw her?"

"Oh... Yes!" Maryam remembered. "Well, we kept the box there 'cause we thought Mama won't look for Kitty under Auntie Sulaiha's bed. But, what do we do now?? Should we get the box from under her bed and hide it somewhere else?"

"It's no good hiding the box somewhere else now if Auntie had already seen Kitty," Thasneem said with a slight frown. "We'll just go and apologise to her before she starts to blame us for that."

So they both raced back to their parent's room and came to a stop near the closed door. "I think she is still here." Said Maryam. "I didn't see her in her room when we came past it."

"Yes, I think I heard her voice inside." Said, Thasneem.

"Shall I open the door?" Maryam asked as she touched the doorknob nervously.

"No, we better wait until she comes out," Thasneem suggested.

So they remained behind the door waiting for their aunt and caught some of their conversations now and then.

"Yes, she is ours!" They heard their mother's furious voice and leaned closer to the door involuntarily. "I have fed her ever since she was born. So she is ours, and you have no right to talk like that!"

"Are they  talking about our Kitty?" Maryam asked her sister. "I think so." She replied. "Mama has given milk and meat to our Kitty ever since she was born."

"I talked with Fahadh last week." They heard their aunt's voice. "And he said that I can take her if you are willing to give her to me."

"Why does she wants our kitten anyway?." Thasneem asked Maryam with a frown.

"Maybe she likes cats." She told her.

"Well, I'm not willing to give her to you or anyone!" They heard their father said firmly and exchanged smiles.

"You can't handle them both at once." They heard Sulaiha. "So give her to me, and I'll grow her up as a better person."

"I didn't know that we have two kittens," Maryam said with confusion.

"Me neither." Said Thasneem with raised eyebrows. "And she mistook our Kitty to become a better person! Do you know what this means?"

"What?" Maryam asked eagerly.

"I think Auntie has gone mad," Thasneem whispered into her ear and Maryam laughed trying not to sound loud.

"Listen Sulai, there are somethings that you need to understand." They heard Hisham saying. "You can't buy everything with your money. There are some gifts only Allah can give us."

"Did Allah give her as a gift to you?"  Sulaiha's voice burst out with rage. "You would have never said that if Fahadh had given her to me! Nobody would have ever said anything like that to me if she had been mine!

Both sisters exchanged confused looks. "Is that Uncle Fahadh who gave our Kitty to us?" Maryam asked.

"I don't know." Thasneem said with confusion, "But the first time we found her in our garden, didn't we?"

"Yes, we did," said Maryam, "Maybe, Uncle Fahadh left her there without telling us."

"I'm sorry, Sulai." They heard their father apologising after a while. "But I can't give her to you. She is my own."

"I didn't know that Dada likes Kitty this much," Thasneem said with a smile. "Me too." Added Maryam.

"I hate you for this!" They heard their aunt saying spite fully.

With that, the door suddenly flew open, and both of them unexpectedly bumped into frustrated Sulaiha.

"What are you two doing here?" She asked them furiously.

"We_ we_ we've been....." Maryam staggered to get the words out of her mouth, while Thasneem just stood there staring at her furious aunt as if she had lost her tongue.

"Have you been listening to us?" Sulaiha asked them with much dislike. "No!" Thasneem responded quickly, finding her tongue again. "We've been waiting for you."

Sulaiha was taken by surprise. "You've been waiting for me?" She asked them, softening a little. "But what on earth for?"

"To apologise to you." Said Maryam. "Apologise for what?" Sulaiha asked, narrowing her arch brows at them. "For hiding our Kitty under your bed," Thasneem said innocently.

"What?" Sulaiha asked them with great shock. "Is there a cat under my bed?"

"What's up there?" Hisham asked, coming towards them. "There's a CAT under my bed!" Sulaiha screamed, turning to look at him. "And what's more? These spoilt brats hid it there! Oh, my god! I don't know what more surprises you have for me in this house! I don't wanna stay here any longer to find out that. I'm gonna leave this place at once. I don't care what time it is now! These children are as bad as haunting ghosts."

"I'm sorry for all the disturbance caused by my kids," Hisham said distressfully. "But please don't leave at this early morning, sulai. It's still dark outside. Besides, where would you go at this time?"

"Oh, you don't have to be worried about me, little brother." Sulaiha snapped him. "I have enough money to stay in a hotel if I don't have anywhere else to go!"

With that, she strode towards her room and screamed when she saw the kitten coming out of the opened door lazily. It was bewildered by her sudden scream and began to run all over the house. And the two girls ran behind the kitten, trying to stop it from running.

Sulaiha ran away from them a little bit, afraid of the running kitten, and watched them run for a while. And then she went inside her room, muttering something angrily within her mouth, and slammed the door shut behind her.

Everything went still for a while after that, until they heard the athan, the call for the fajr prayer. Hisham inhaled and exhaled a deep breath and went inside his room. He set on the bed beside his wife and they both listened to the athan silently.

"I've never woken up in such a disastrous morning before," Hisham told her after the athan, feeling exhausted by the events. "Sulai is just over exaggerating. But I can't believe it, she is still fighting for Maryam even though she has no enough love for her. She just wants her to retain her social status because people say that she has everything except for a child."

"Well, we just can't give our child to her as if she were some toy," Afra said, taking his hand in hers. "We love her as much as we love Neem. And she loves us too. We've been her parents since her birth, and Neem has been her sister ever since then. We all belong together_ and Mu'aaz belongs with us too even if he is not here with us. We are a family."

"Yeah." Hisham gave her a sad smile. "I'm missing our little Mu'az too. I wish he's here with us..."

"It's okay," Afra said, petting him on the shoulder. "You know he is happy there. They are taking good care of him. And I don't think he knows about any of us. So he won't be worried."

"Yes, of cause." He nodded sadly. "What's bothering me is that he doesn't know about his real family. And he doesn't even know that he has a sister. The worst part of it is... they are both thinking that Fahad is their uncle, not their father. I'm not blaming them for it, because they don't know any of this."

"Well, we can't do anything about it now," Afra said, giving him a worried smile. "But we can ask Allah to do something about it. He knows everything better than we do. Now you should hurry up. It's time for you to go to the mosque."

"Yeah, I should go now." Hisham got up, and carefully made his way towards the door. "I think you've got some work here."

"Yes, I'll clean up this mess," she said with a smile and bid him goodbye.

He went out of the room, thinking of his troublesome kids, who had run away behind their kitten. 'I'll have to give them a quick lecture before I go to the mosque.' He thought and went to search for them.

He found them both in their bedroom, sitting on the bed with their little kitten in the middle. They were both running their hands through the kitten's bushy brown fur as if to comfort it.

"How many times do I have to tell you not to let that kitten on your bed?" He asked them in a Stern voice, and they both turned to look at him with alert.

Thasneem quickly took the kitten and kept it down on the floor obediently. It meowed, and slowly went under the table.

"And why did you keep that kitten under your aunt's bed?" He asked them strictly, and they both looked at each other for a moment.

"Because it was raining outside, last night," Thasneem said after awhile.

"And it was cold and dark in the garden." Maryam added, "So we couldn't leave her out there."

"But it wasn't raining under your bedroom roof, was it? He asked them with raised eyebrows. "And it's not cold and dark here. So why did you keep the kitten under your aunt's bed,  without keeping it beneath your own?  Did you want to play a game with her? Or did you want to scare her?"

"No, we didn't mean any of this!" Thasneem protested.

"Then why did you keep it there?" He asked her. "I know that you've already done a few damages to her, Neem. But I'm not asking about that. Just answer me for this one."

Thasneem turned faint red at this. She just kept looking at him with her wide dark eyes without saying anything.

"It was my idea to hide Kitty there," Maryam confessed after a moment, feeling pity for her sister. "Mama told us to send Kitty outside. But it was raining and dark out there. So I suggested to keep her under Auntie's bed. Because Mama doesn't go to her room much. I thought, she won't look for Kitty there."

"Well, there's nothing wrong in giving shelter to a living being," Hisham said, looking at her thoughtfully. "But first you should have explained to your Mama why you wanted to keep the kitten inside. I'm sure she would have let you keep it if you had told her that. So if you ever come up with this sort of ideas again, you should discuss it with a grown-up person before you decide it for yourself. Do you understand it?"

"Yes," Maryam said, nodding her head. "And I'm sorry about that."

"Alright, I forgive you this time." He said with a plain smile on his face. "But try not to make this kind of mistakes again. You two almost chased my big sister out of my house."

With that, he left the house and walked hurriedly towards the nearby mosque. A cool summer breeze embraced him as he walked, making him feel joyous and relieved, even though he had felt troubled and worried just before a few minutes.

And he was amazed when he realized that he wasn't feeling annoyed by his children's mischief. Instead, he always forgave them and even admired them for their childish errors. He let out a sigh. "They are just kids, they will be responsible when they grow up." He told himself as he reached the mosque.