It had been a few weeks since she'd visited home and Lutfiyah knew that her father would be anxious just as she knew that he would not phone and tell her so.
"Hello Tina. How are you? How's Ally?"
The nineteen-year-old Spanish girl looked up from her mail inspection and smiled as Lutfiyah made her way to their building door.
"Hey Ms Fiyah. She's good and I'm good. Thanks for the casserole last night. I don't know when we last ate such good food. It's so crazy with all our studying and we cannot wait for Spring break. It seems like it's ages away."
Lutfiyah nodded in sympathy. "Less than a month now, Tina. You girls hang in there. I'm going to visit my dad so you just leave the dish outside my door. I'll pick it up when I get home tonight. Tell Ally I said hello, okay? Have a good day. Bye."
The brunette nodded with a smile and lifted a hand in greeting before collecting her mail and turning towards the stairs. The lifts, unsurprisingly, were still out of order.
Lutfiyah called for May who had been wandering the lobby like the busy bee that she was and together they walked out and headed for the tube.
# # #
"Assalamualaikum Papa, I'm home!"
Lutfiyah locked the door behind her and frowned as she noticed the state that the house was in. Setting May on her feet, she watched as her little girl ran in search of her grandfather. Lutfiyah let her be and instead started to collect the rubbish lying all over the floor. She wrinkled her nose in disgust when she noticed the pizza boxes and cans of Doctor Pepper lying around.
"Papa! All this junk food is really unhealthy for you."
She stepped into the lounge and groaned as she saw that it was worse than the entry hall and kitchen combined. And that was saying something since it was obvious that the dishes hadn't seen soap and water in days.
She found May poking at her father's potbelly as he lay on the couch, giggling every time it jiggled.
"Papa."
The old man groaned and lifted himself off the cushions, scooping his granddaughter into his hands and nuzzling her stomach, much to her delight.
"Assalamualaikum Papa. When last did you shower?"
Her father frowned, his thick brows meeting in displeasure. "Did you come here to lecture me or spend some time with me?"
Lutfiyah sighed and bent down to pick up more dirt, grunting when she noticed the dust under the couch.
"Did you fire Loretta?" she asked, referring to the cleaning lady who was supposed to come once a week.
"Can't fire someone who doesn't come to work."
Somehow she doubted that that had been Loretta's choice. She threw the remaining dirt into the dustbin bag that she had grabbed from the kitchen and then went to fetch her daughter.
"May, Papa has to go and take a bath. You are clean but he is not so you can't play with him."
Turning to her father, she glared at him until he relented and headed for the room.
"I'm the parent here you know!" he called out, slamming the door behind him.
"I love you too!" she said in reply. She grinned, setting her daughter down again and headed to the broom cupboard.
"May, can you please take my phone and tell it to call Loretta."
May squealed in excitement and grabbed her mother's phone, lifting the screen to her mouth.
"Phone Loletta."
She giggled as the phone replied back that it was phoning Loretta.
Hearing its ring, Lutfiyah took the phone and lifted it to her ear.
"Hello, Loretta speaking."
"Hello Loretta, it's Lutfiyah Abbas. I'm phoning to find out what my father has done that has caused you not to come to work."
The elderly lady huffed out a laugh. "He refuses to open the door when I come, Ms Abbas."
Lutfiyah groaned. "Okay, well I shall leave a key with the neighbour then. Please feel free to collect it from Mr Jacob every Wednesday. My father is just stubborn and likes his privacy. But don't mind him."
The lady agreed and Lutfiyah hung up, placing her phone to the side as she began to clean out the house.
By the time she was done with half of the house, her father came out of the room.
"That was a long shower. Were you washing out a week's worth of grime?"
Her father smiled and folded his arms. "Don't be mean, daughter dear. I cleaned out the bathroom and room so you wouldn't have to do it."
"Oh. Jazakallah then. Do you want something to eat?"
"Just tea for me."
Lutfiyah nodded and smiled as she heard her father chase after her daughter. He just got lonely sometimes and he was bored more often than not. He refused to let her move back to look after him and she understood why. She was closer to her office from her own flat and her father's neighbourhood was not very child-friendly. Adding to that, she didn't want to put the burden of looking after a child on her father's head.
Setting the water to boil, she started on the dishes, rolling her eyes as she realized that there were no clean mugs or plates. The cupboards were practically empty and she was glad that she had done some shopping before she came.
"Papa! I bought some groceries for you."
"Did you use my pension money? If you didn't, you can take your groceries and walk out that door, young lady."
She smiled in amusement. "I've learned my lesson. I used your pension. I left the rest in your safe."
"Good girl. Now tell me, how's your work going? Are you not depressed yet, listening to all those sad stories?"
Lutfiyah sighed. Even before she had started high school, she knew that she wanted to help people. When a few people had jokingly told her that she would make a great psychologist, she had realised that it was something she would love to do. It was ideal for her and she would get to work with children. After her incident, she had wanted to focus more on victims of abuse and despite her clients mostly being the company employees, as a pro bono project she was allowed to have a few abuse victims too. That was what her father had been referring to.
"Papa," she said, stretching the last vowel out a little. "You ask me this every time and I told you. My own psychologist taught me well. Yes of course some stories are more horrid than others but I know what they're feeling and I'm good at what I do. I know what an understanding voice can do to help someone through such things and...well. I don't know. Allah helps keep me sane."
She looked at her father and smiled at the pride that she saw in his eyes. He stood up and came towards her, pulling her into a bear hug. "I am so proud of you, Lutfi. You make a father's heart sing."
May, unable to handle affection that didn't include her, came running and joined the hug, grabbing onto her mother and grandfather's legs.
"And me?"
Lutfiyah's father laughed and bent down to scoop his granddaughter into his arms. "Of course you too, my sweet bunny. Now ask your mother where my tea is?"
# # #
Lutfiyah came home later than she expected to, yawning as she trudged up the stairs with her equally sleepy daughter. She frowned when she realized just how much work she still had to do, seeing as the company had recently requested she do group therapy once a week.
Conan, a company worth billions, employed her, and others like her, to make them look good. It was a company that did a lot of things to make themselves look good.
She was not, however, complaining. She got paid enough to support herself and her family and the benefits were great. Well except now she had to pay full rent but for that she was only grateful for her foresight to save.
The only problem was that working for a company meant following their orders and dealing with her patients how they saw fit. Mostly they left her to her own devices but sometimes they gave 'suggestions' that she had to give thought to. This was one of those times.
She patted her murmuring toddler a bit as May struggled and she silently cursed her landlord for not fixing the lifts. Finally reaching her floor, she almost fell back in shock when she realized that there was someone standing by her door.
Taking cautious steps forward, she almost screamed when the person turned.
Jaafar looked awful. His eyes had dark circles around them and they were bloodshot. His hair fell messily into his eyes and he looked like he was trembling. If it hadn't been for the absence of any odour, she would have thought that he had been drinking.
"Mr Abdullah! You scared the bajeezers out of me."
He stared at her and she felt slightly unnerved as she reached her door and he hadn't moved.
"Where were you?" he asked, his voice deep and husky, like it hadn't been used in a long time.
She lifted an incredulous brow. "Excuse me?"
"You've been missing the entire day. I know because your casserole dish has been outside since ten this morning."
She shook her head in shock. Was this man serious?
"I went to visit my father, even though that's none of your business. Much like you, he needs some taking care of and if I don't clean up his flat once in a while and feed him, he will self-destruct."
"Are you implying that I am on my way to self-destruction?"
She didn't look at him as she murmured, "If the shoe fits..."
"That is none of your concern," he said in reply, gritting his teeth.
She smiled in triumph. "Neither are my whereabouts but you demanded that. Now. I need to enter my flat so if you could please move?"
He grunted and moved out of her way, watching as she opened her door and walked in.
"Here."
She turned and sighed with effort as she juggled May and tried to take the casserole dish from him at the same time.
"Did you walk with her all the way upstairs?"
She walked into her kitchen and placed the dish down before returning back to the door and nodding. "Yes."
She waited as he just continued to look at her, as if searching for something.
Finally she sighed. "Mr Abdullah, what do you want?"
She didn't understand why he was still standing by her door. In fact, she didn't understand what he was doing there in the first place.
He looked at her again before looking down. "I don't know. Assalamualaikum Mrs Abbas."
She watched in puzzlement as he turned to go.
"Ms Abbas," she corrected, unable to help herself.
He stopped and turned back to her. "What?"
"Ms not Mrs. Abbas is my maiden name."
His gaze dropped to May before he nodded and turned away again. "Ms Abbas then." He paused before turning back. "I'm sorry for making you uncomfortable. I was worried. Sleep well."
She watched him enter his flat and stood there a minute after he had closed the door.
How peculiar.