Mary was going crazy.
For an anonymous reason, Aaryan was ignoring her. It's been a week since he was not replying to her messages or calls and he wasn't even coming to the university. She doesn't remember Aaryan ever skipping the classes like this before. When Mary asked Raheel about him, he said he did not know anything.
All Aaryan told them was that she was busy with something at home and will come to the university from the coming week. Raheel guessed he might be busy writing a new song or coming up with a new melody because they were going to make Mary's debut as a member of ART soon. Mary was convinced. Maybe because she was aware of that stage when all you want is to lock yourself in a room and concentrate, she has been there so she understood
There was one more thing troubling her. Matthew was back. One week of her being able to breathe had ended. Matthew has been acting differently since yesterday when he came home. He was more furious than before. Something happened in the last week and it made him more dangerous. Yesterday, Matthew punched Mary just for talking in a loud voice in her room.
Mary didn't know what this was all about, but she started to get more careful around him, not even making a sound with her shoes. She was terrified to even breathe in her house. The silence, the notices and the walls were now engulfing her, and to her, Aaryan was the only way to escape this cruelty, but he was not there for her. Mary needed him, she needed him to hold and let her breathe freely for once.
She had no choice but to wait for him. She knew he would come back to her soon and all she needed was to keep herself conscious till the
Mary was in the kitchen drinking water.
'If it makes sense, then why don't we add it to our life?' She said those words too often now, especially while drinking water. Amara's way of drinking water made sense to her so she adopted it.
As Mary opened the cap of the bottle, she sat on the chair, and before drinking, she moved her eyes over the water, but then the dart turned into a shocking stare. Mary hurled the bottle away, and just then, a scorpion walked on the floor from the bottle. There was a deadly poisonous creature in her water. Mary screamed in terror, and her mother came running. "What-what happened?" She asked. Her eyes stretched wide, her mouth opened, trying to breathe. "There- there was a- a scorpion in the water," She said, pointing at the bottle on the floor. "Wh-what?" Her mother looked horrified. Her hands were shivering, and her eyes were unsteady. Mary was hardly trying to wrap her mind around what just happened when Matthew walked into the living room.
He appeared to be calm even after hearing the frightening scream of his sister. Matthew didn't care to even ask when he saw his mother and sister standing in fear
"Did you do it?" Mary asked, unfamiliar with her voice. Matthew didn't reply "Did-did you put that-that in your sister's bottle?" Serene asked and Matthew smirked. "She doesn't deserve to live, Mother" he replied simply with a smile.
Mary's feet stumbled, and she grabbed the pillar behind her to assist her in standing. "What?" Serene was already shivering, and now she seemed to have no control over herself. "Eve told me everything, Mary. You are driving yourself away from the truth–" Serene cut him off with a yell "WHY DID YOU DO IT-IT TO YOUR SIS-SISTER?" after the yell only her unsteady and sharp breaths were heard
"She is going to repeat father's mistake, Mother. I am just protecting her. If she dies right now, she will be saved, but if she decides to choose the path of our father, then she will end up in hell. I will save her, and if I have to kill her for it, I will kill her too." Everything he just said disappeared into thin air when she heard too. Mary suddenly found the strength to stand "What do you mean by killing me too? Whom else have you killed?" She asked, standing upright. Matthew wasn't saying anything. She looked at her mother, who was at the edge of falling.
"Whom. Else. Have. You. Killed. Matthew?" Mary screamed at that man and after a moment he replied "Our father chose the wrong path, too." Mary was too stunned to move. Her steps were frozen all over again. Saying that Matthew just walked out of the house.
Her breathing got so slow, her beats became so low, and she looked at her mother.
Serene was on the floor and she was shivering violently. "Mom," Mary called, but her mother didn't respond. She was having an attack. "Where is your medicine?" She yelled and still there was no response.
Mary ran to her mother's room and she found the pills on the table. She was not aware of her medication yet grabbing them she ran down so fast that one stumbling step could make her fall. She didn't care and ran as fast as she could and gave her the medicine.
After a while Serene was breathing normally.
But she was never.
The night was one of the worst nights she had. She couldn't sleep for a second. Mary just found the horrific truth about her father. Her father was murdered by his son. Matthew was sick. She knew it for years, but the thing she was never aware of was him being a murderer too. Matthew had killed their father, and the only mistake he made was to become a Muslim. Mary couldn't understand. Was the crime that big?
She was terrified of even breathing now because she was living with the murderer of her father. Mary was crying all night, her eyes were hurting, but the tears were not stopping, and then there was one more question disturbing her. Why did the Islamic way of drinking water save her life? As much as she knew, Islam wasn't the right way to live, but then how did it save her?
She spent the night crying, and the only thing she did was try to breathe. And in the morning she decided to find the truth. So,
•••
Mary entered Dr. Sarah's office after her lab was over. Aaryan was late, and they were unable to sit together, then, in the Genesis lab, he just took the corner seat. She found it odd but Mary was not thinking about it at all when she was in the office
"Good Afternoon, Mary" Dr. Sarah greeted with a smile "Good afternoon, Ma'am" Mary greeted back, walking forward "Take a seat" She said and Mary sat at the chair in front "Do you want to talk about something?" Dr. Sarah asked. Mary was there to ask questions and nothing else because she was sure that she never needed the help Dr. Sarah wanted to give
"I want to ask some questions"
"Of course" Dr. Sarah replied abruptly "It's actually about your religion" Mary knew that she was not allowed to ask questions and just like everyone else Dr. Sarah would shut her mouth. But the questions needed to be asked and if she didn't agree, Mary would have to convince her in any way "Okay," said the professor with actually an excited tune. Mary knew this would happen and she would have to pursue her– "What?"
Was she allowed to ask questions now?
"Is this your first question?" Dr. Sarah, the most intimidating-looking professor in the university, made a joke, and no, Mary was not ready for it. "Can I?" She asked "Of course, you can" Mary was supposed to arrange the words of the question now because she was going to ask them
"Okay, so last time you told me how your father– how he beat you because you converted to Islam" Dr. Sarah nodded, not sure of what she was trying to say "So, why did you not leave Islam? I mean wasn't it hard to bear? Didn't it hurt you?" Three questions, all at once. The professor replied to all of them, "When you accept Islam by heart, there is nothing that can make you leave it. In the beginning, it was hard, and of course, what daughter won't feel hurt and absolutely broken while beaten up by her father?" Mary moved her head up and down, understanding some of her words, confused about the other
"Then why did you not leave it? Like you never considered it?" She asked the same question again. Mary was sure that she would not get an answer this time and Dr. Sarah would shut her off but she was wrong again
"Mary, Islam isn't a thing that you can leave and take whenever your heart desires. Trust me, my story is nothing" Either Mary had lost all of her senses or Dr. Sarah was playing a joke again because she heard Dr. Sarah labeling her heart-aching story as nothing. Unable to figure it out, she stared at the professor.
"In the beginning, when Islam started to spread across the Arabian peninsula, many people lost their lives just by saying a simple sentence, 'Allah is one.' The disbelievers of Makkah thought they would be able to stop Islam by torturing those who accepted it. They used the worst possible method to stop the emergence of this new religion. The family became enemies of each other. They were thirsty for the blood of Muslims, but you know, not a single person left Islam because of this torment. Instead, their faith became stronger than ever." Her heart was touched by this. Didn't her father, too, lose his life because of Islam?
This was the actual reason why she came to her office today. She wanted to know about the thing that made her father lose his life. But Mary was not supposed to think about it. She was not going to get distracted by them. "What is so great about Islam?" She aimed to ask it as mocking, but it came out as a curious question "You would need to study it then." There was no way Mary was going to do that.
"I can't." She said, straightforwardly, "Why?" There weren't many reasons coming to her mind, so she picked an obvious one "Because I can not study a religion that doesn't even believe in Jesus." Dr. Sarah laughed.
She must have heard her wrong or maybe lost her humor because she was smiling over something that wasn't even a joke. "If I don't believe in Jesus, I wouldn't be considered a Muslim." It was a lie. It had to be a lie, or how else was she going to believe? "What? Why? Why would you believe in Jesus" Her heart was startled by this discovery. Dr. Sarah drew a deep breath. "Because if I don't believe in any prophet, then I am not a Muslim. You know in The Holy Quran Allah Subhanu Wa Ta'ala, mentioned Jesus as—"
"JESUS IS MENTIONED IN QURAN?" She was blown away by this statement and never realized her scream. It was not hard but impossible to believe "Jesus is mentioned twenty-five times in the Quran." She was astounded, it defied all her understanding and beliefs. Something was wrong. This was crazy and she knew Dr. Sarah was lying now.
"Why would Jesus be mentioned in the Quran? Muslims don't believe that Jesus is God, so why is he in the Quran?" Dr. Sarah relaxed her arms and rested her head on the back of the chair as a sign that we are going to have a long conversation.
"You don't know anything, do you?" She asked, "No," Mary admitted, "Jesus (Peace be upon him) is a prophet in Islam by the name of Isa (A.S). We believe him as a slave of God, not as a god. He was sent to the people of Israel to teach them the message of the oneness of God. We believe in his miraculous birth by the Virgin Mary as well as the return of Jesus to this world to remove evil." Her brain stopped proceeding with words. Mary had never heard anything like this about Islam before. This was something similar to her belief "So you are saying that Muslims believe in some aspects of Christianity?" The professor nodded.
"Christianity is more similar to Islam than different. We believe in miracles performed by Jesus but he did it only by the will of God. We don't believe him as a god or a part of the Trinity. We don't believe that three makes one, it's just One, The Ever-Living and Everlasting." For an odd reason, her last words felt so powerful. Mary was confused about Trinity, and what Dr. Sarah said just made sense. God being one was the only explanation. Not three but one, and suddenly she felt the confusion was becoming clear— she was not supposed to think this way because it would be equivalent to questioning her beliefs, so she ignored it.
"And Crucifixion? What about the base of Christianity?" Asked Mary
"No, even saying that Jesus was slaughtered on the cross is highly disrespectful. According to Islam, Prophet Jesus (Peace Be Upon him) was not crucified and ascended to the heavens by God. Another person similar to him was slaughtered." Why was it all making sense? Why were all of her questions being answered? Mary was sure that her questions were not so polite to that religion but instead of getting angry like Matthew, Dr. Sarah was answering everything so calmly
"If you want to know Jesus, you would have to study Islam and especially The Quran"
Mary stood up on her words.
She knew the answer, "No!" She said, terrified. She had been distracted. Dr. Sarah was distracting her, and Mary could not keep on thinking like this "I would never touch it!" She yelled at the professor, "It's okay, as you like it," but Dr. Sarah was still calm.
Mary was so angry, and she was true to her words because Mary had vowed never to touch the Quran.