Our Space

Chapter 1

Sami wasn't an orphan, but sometimes he thought it would have been better to have been one. Imagine having memories of your parents' love! Instead, what Sami had was both parents, alive and well. Only, he felt that as much as they tried, both couldn't bring themselves to really care about him.

No, he wasn't being a rebellious teen thinking the world was against him. He was no longer even a teen. It was the painful truth. Neither of his parents truly wanted anything to do with him.

His father? Well, let's just say he was never around, nor did he want to be. Sami didn't really blame him as even he found it incredibly difficult to be around his mum. All he ever heard from her were complaints about one thing or another. However, with his father taking every opportunity to be at least a country away from his mother, Sami might as well not even have had a father. And it's not like his father would phone him on Eid or send a gift.

Sometimes Sami wondered if his father had a heart to love him or if he ever bothered to think of him. But these feeling were pushed away, to be left in the past. Now that Sami was older, he found himself caring less and less. His father was practically a stranger to him and whenever they did speak, which was rare, Sami found himself growing nervous and wanting to end the conversation as soon as it started.

And his mother? How many things had he heard about a mother's love? Too many. And how many of those things had he experienced? Possibly only a handful of cherished memories. He supposed she was a good mother. She used to cook for him and cleaned him when he was young. But that's as far as it went. Sami felt as if his presence made his mother scowl. Whenever he used to try and speak to her, she seemed bothered and told him to be quiet. She was always stressed, perhaps because his father was never home. And perhaps for that reason, neither was she. Sami remembered how he used to come home with his friends parents, while all the other children were picked up by their own parents. Sami used to watch them when he walked half the journey alone because he lived further away from the school than his friend.

He'd come home to an empty house. His mother, as usual, gone to a friends' house to complain about her life. He scavenged the kitchen for something to eat before playing a video game to pass the time.

Then there was his sister. There was just over a nine year age gap between them. From Sami's earliest memories, he remembered how his sister wanted to rebel against anything and everything. Being in her teens, she cared more about what her schoolmates would think of her than her younger brother. Seeing that her mum wouldn't be there when she came home, she found opportunities to stay out late. Sami rarely saw his sister either.

Now, years later, his mum told him he had to stand on his own two feet and practically kicked him out of the house, saying her years of rest were finally here. His father was still a workaholic, or at least that's what Sami assumed. And his sister was doing odd jobs while living at home, yet scarcely being at home.

So how was it that Sami came to be the practising young man, aspiring to be a psychologist and hopefully fixing his own mind on the way?

It was his old religious neighbour who lived three doors away, a man left alone by his children. Almost like the reverse situation Sami was finding himself in. After kicking a football into his garden (one of Sami's achievements as a child, to kick a ball so far) and jumping over the walls to retrieve it, Sami found himself face to face with this kind man and an unlikely friendship was made between them.

From then on, when the old man would catch sight of Sami, he'd invite him around and teach him some Qur'an and tell him about the beauty of Islam. Unfortunately he was a man nearing the end of his life. He was old and fragile, barely being able to walk down the road without assistance. Sami sometimes felt he was the only one who truly cared for him. Uncle Ahsan was what Sami called him, although he was far too old to be only an uncle. Although it was inevitable, the pain and grief was almost unbearable when at the young age of twelve, Sami lost his Uncle Ahsan. But he never lost his wise words.