A Muslim's Romantic Journey

Chapter 54.

Safia’s POV

I was going to be a mother. Was I ready for this? Was it all real? Yusuf was holding me and I buried my face into his chest. But we were both quite young. I was still in university and he hadn’t finished his training. Well if we were so young, why did we get married?

These questions were stupid. Yes, we were kind of young but I wanted to get married. I was completely ready for it. I knew life wasn’t going to be some sort of fairytale. I sometimes found myself rolling my eyes at people who were older than me talking about their expectations for marriage. I sometimes thought to myself, what if they were in my situation? The kind of people they were, they would have run a thousand miles!

I once went to a lecture and there were women from all ages. Before the lecture started, everyone was talking about marriage. I was around 18 at the time and there were a few girls much older than me. I think they were in their mid-twenties. They all spoke about how they wanted to live independently with their religious husband in a big spacious house. They expected him to be handsome and fit with different coloured eyes and a six pack. It was like they were describing some perfect character from an Islamic Wattpad novel.

Some of those women claimed they liked damaged bad boys! Their taste in guys reminded me of Javed. He wasn't damaged, but he did give off a bad boy vibe which I personally found quite unattractive.

Even at that age I thought to myself, no wonder they’re not married yet! Not that I had any right to judge. But I couldn’t help it. Judging was in the human nature. We had to use ration and reason to understand that things may not have been the way we perceived them. I understood then that not everything was about age. It was about a person’s mind. That’s when I was determined that I was ready.

Pulling back from Yusuf, I looked up at him. There wasn’t any regret. I wanted to get married and I did to someone who I loved with my whole heart. I didn’t care about where we lived and what we had. None of that mattered to me. We were happy.

And now there was going to be someone joining us in’sha’allah. I hoped everything went okay. It all happened by Allah’s will. He had a plan for us; I just had to trust Him.

“You and I are having a baby.” Yusuf said again.

“I know.” I smiled widely. “Imagine tiny little hands and feet.”

“And a cute little nose and chubby cheeks.”

“I hope it’s chubby. So chubby that it gets those cute dimples on its elbows and knees.” I said thinking of Zidan when he was a baby.

“Babies get dimples on their elbows and knees?” Yusuf asked.

“You really haven’t seen many babies have you?”

“There was Maryam but I was around 8 and I have to admit, I cared more about football than I did about her. That was until she was a toddler and started liking me.”

“Well I hope you don’t like football more than our children.”

“We’ll see.” He said, his eyes shining brighter than ever. Then they dimmed a little as he put his hand over my stomach. “I sometimes think about this but I don’t talk about it much. I’m not going to be able to play with my kids properly. I’ve always wanted to teach my son how to play football and run around in the park with my kids. You know, be like a friend or a fun dad. But I might not be able to do that. My ankle’s constantly sore and when I walk a little further than usual, it gets worse. Sometimes, much worse.”

“You’re worrying too much. When that time comes, we’ll see then. Let’s just pray that the time does come when our kids will be running around.”