Chapter Text
At seven Jamil learns to pray. His mother teaches him, her face falling into plush carpet. Hands neat and square at the sides of her lowered head and nose squished into the ground as Jamil faintly tries to remember her movements: forehead connected to the carpet, the cool detachment on her face, a low muttering. She raises her head and beckons him to sit beside her, legs folded tightly around herself.
“Now do the same.” She says.
Jamil curls into the posture, legs shaking with nerves. His mother's coarse hands ease his face into the right position on the carpet. Jamil's face pushes against the carpet uncomfortably for a second, then two and three. His body is in the right position but he doesn't remember the words. Shyly, he looks up at his mother, cheeks reddening. He doesn't say anything but she knows. It's written on his face.
“Jamil…” She says, faux surprise thickening the lines on her forehead, across her mouth. Her bangles clatter as she reaches to smooth his flopping braids back to his neck, they were tickling his eyes.
He giggles. “I'm sorry?” He offers just in case his mother really is angry with him.
“Your words are the most important part of the prayer.” She begins, her hands weaving in and out of his hair like always. His shoulders droop and some anxiety leaves his body. “They ground you and bring you closer to God. Each letter elevates you in His eyes. That's why even if you place your arms—” she quickly grabs one of his wandering fingers that twisted at the hairs of the carpet—”where they should be for now. Your Dua—your wishes—will go unheard. So I'll go over it with you again. It's late but we can practice another day okay, Jamil?”
Jamil shakes his head furiously. He wanted this. Praying was for adults, grown up and sophisticated, and if he knew how to pray maybe his parents would lead him up to the beautiful chalk white steps of that estate and let him roam their garden; explore what his parents did when they disappeared into that house everyday. Without him. “I want to pray with you now!”
His mother raises a skeptical brow planting a rushed kiss on his face. “Jamil, hold on to your patience, and I will teach you—” But her attention is snapped up by the sky, dyed purplish blue like a sour moulding fruit. It's already past prayer time and Jamil doesn't notice the scratch in her placid expression. She kisses his cheek again before snatching her scarf and arranging her worn dress finely around her body, screwing her hijab across her face. “Jamil, your father will be back after me, take care of your sister.”
“Do you have to leave?” He asks helplessly. She kisses him again, then starts patting him down, releasing all the dirt and dust he'd accumulated from playing into the air. His mother looks at him—really looks at him for a moment more before saying words he'd come to anticipate and loathe in these stolen moments.
“I am going to the Asim Estate Jamil, love you.” The door closes softly. The carpet left a rumpled mess. The straggling yellow thread at its head is a shade darker and looser than before as Jamil plucks the threads idly, waiting.
Hours later, three firm raps hit the door and Jamil knows that's his father. Father limps inside, fatigue ridden, yet pulling Jamil into a lingering hug. Jamil can smell whispers of rich musk tangling with his clothes but it does nothing to mask the pungent smell of sweat and grime. Jamil holds on a second too long before he detaches from his father. His father is silent, but Jamil knows he is tired even if he doesn't say it.
“Jamil my boy,” huffs his father, weighted. They're together longer than usual. His father's favourite path after a long day is to the dinner table but his big hands are planted on Jamil's shoulders as if bracing for another hug. Jamil's heart swells in his chest at the break in routine. He's spent more time with his parents today than the whole week combined. “Your birthday is soon and you do not have many friends.” Jamil nods emptily, he spent more time waiting in the house with nothing but his younger sister's cries for company. But she was still a baby and he'd always wanted a sibling. His mother stayed home nearly all day today so he played a little outside but they didn't know him. Jamil faded into the background as another faceless teammate. Not friends. “No matter.” His father smiles widely, inviting if not for the tightness around his eyes. “You will have a friend, I promise it.”
Jamil had never thought about friends as severely as he did now, glowing at the thought. A promised friend is different from the other kids, unchanging and as sure as the seasons. Jamil finds that he wants it more than he realises. He doesn't notice the glassy wet shine to his father's eyes.
His father lets go of him then, routinely dragging his body to the dinner table, and the conversation is dismissed.
On Jamil’s birthday, only two months later, his wish is granted. His mother, father and Najma—tucked against his mother's chest—lead him up the grand white steps. A whole class of children could fit on one thick step, and it takes being hefted like a sack of rice by his father to make it to the gates of the house. The square outer walls are unspoiled, tall as trees, but the house protrudes into the air anyways, as if to touch the lowest heaven.
His father exchanges a few hushed words with another portly man whose gaze slides off them and into nothing, sighing he grunts in reply and peels the iron gates back.
Jamil's eyes are eventually captured when the mouth of the house opens up to them, revealing the castle-like structure. It's not one but two separate houses conjoined into one, with pictures of beasts and stout nosed monkeys pressed onto the fine brick. The stone animal faces are large and gaping. Each sliced on every sparkling coloured wall, some flaxen and others a flushed golden bronze. All their dulled eyes latch onto him, fixedly, jostling their amused wiry brows, the hard smile of a cobra winking in the sun, watching him. It's only magic, Jamil reminds himself, and a pretty magic that he only recognises from governors buildings.
A woman emerges from a wooden door large enough to fit a tiger on the left, adorned with gold bangles and beads, thick layered gold necklaces sheathed in a pale wooden lining. Her face is clear and smooth although she looks around his mother's age, at the sight of heir compact nuclear family she grins, brown eyes wrinkling to reveal arrays of faint smile lines, the prints of crows feet.
“Hafsa, Ahmed,” she greets swiftly, “and Jamil. You're here to meet your new friend today.” She smiles again, sickly sweet but it's aimless. Jamil doesn't realise it's not for him but smiles back anyways, toothy and unstructured. His mother nods, but her hand shifts against his back warningly. He lets his head fall when the pretty lady speaks again, in a fluttery up and down manner, while hurrying to re enter the large door. Slithering through quiet brassy halls and shut off rooms and long decadent corridors and fragrant noisy kitchens.
“I've heard a lot about you, Jamil Viper. Very good things. You know how to read and write far beyond your age. You know magic and I know—” she turns into a spacious corridor filled with bouncing laughter. Kids. Maybe future friends. “—that it's your birthday today.”
They open another spacious ornate room and the only difference is the man and boy sitting together in auspicious silence. The man has greyish hair, a long scholarly beard, similarly greyed but his eyes are a deep ruby; each feature betrays his age and he doesn't bother to look up from the sprawling finely printed documents surrounding him. The boy is the spitting image of him.
Jamil tries to find his mother's hand but can't. He looks ahead instead but he can't focus on the prickly ornaments or the pale lustrous furniture or the red pile carpet. The man doesn’t look up from his papers but he feels eyes on him. It's the boy, grinning at him.
“Dad,” He shouts. “Is that my new friend?”
Jamil watches this boy for a second and relaxes, like a promise come true his father had brought him to his soon to be friend. He has similarly bloody eyes but is smaller than Jamil, an easy grin stretches across his face upon catching his eye again.
“No,” the man grunts, his papers lashing in the silence. The lady had stopped talking a long while ago, Jamil realises, “this young Viper is your assistant, your companion, your bodyguard, your protector, your tutor, your retainer. As it always has been.”
Jamil doesn't have the time to stew in confusion. His hopes don't shatter, but unfairly crush into a deformed lump, dark and paper-thin, right beside his feet. The boy looks upset for a moment.
“We humbly accept your mercy.” His parents chant. Najma is thrown squarely into his arms in a bundle, sleep-warm as they bow– heads tossed onto the cold stone floors. Crumpling into something infinitesimal, preordained. The Asims tower above their thin bodies, tucked into a prayer-like position. It's dreadfully silent. No whispered words of praise or god as their faces smear into obscurity. It's silent and the words don't matter. Two blood red eyes fix on him. The standing Viper. He panics for a moment then, mimicking his mother, Jamil slowly folds himself into two, his head ghosting the pure white stone.
Still he can feel the pressure of a gaze. He lifts his head a little higher stupidly, and catches it. The boy's eyes chain him. There's pity smothered in his wide eyes.
“Dad, can you let them stand now?”
-
They leave the Asim estate like fleeing mice. Jamil doesn't get much else for his birthday.