CHAPTER 3: CHAOS.

**"Love is the light by which the soul recognizes itself in another. 

The thread, unseen, yet unbreakable, binds hearts across distance and time."**

There are no chance meetings in this life. 

Every soul that crosses our path does so by Allah's design, a bond forged not just in this world, but across veils we no longer remember. 

Some enter to soften us. Some to teach. Some to break us open. 

And a rare few come to return us to ourselves. 

These meetings are not random. 

They are karmic echoes, threads of qadr (destiny) woven from the past, stitched into the now, for the sake of who we must become. 

And when love is real, when it is written, it rarely enters gently. 

It confronts. 

It humbles the nafs. 

It calls the ego to die. 

Because true spiritual love is not about possession. 

It is surrender. 

It teaches tawakkul, a trust that stretches far beyond the self. 

It asks you to let go of timelines. Of expectations. 

To believe in Allah's mercy even when the path goes quiet. 

And that ache in the chest? That restlessness when their name stirs in your soul? 

That is not confusion. 

That is your ego losing its grip. 

That is your soul recognizing a mirror it has waited lifetimes to find. 

This is not loss. 

This is unveiling. 

Because when ego dies, what remains is ḥaqq (Truth). 

A love that tastes like worship. 

A union that echoes beyond this life, into the unseen. Timeless, rooted, divine. 

_______.

Far beyond the painted borders of their parent nation, tucked forty kilometers east, sat the sister city of Marhaba. A town that moved not only by sun and season, but by memory. Its heritage hummed through moonlit wrestling bouts, rail station gossip, and the rhythmic lilt of trains that stitched its spine to the world. The tracks were its ribs. The old roads, its veins.

Though separated from Nur Afiya by forests and winding hills, both towns shared a bond older than their maps admitted. Like siblings torn from one cosmic womb, their destinies still pulled at each other's edges.

It's said that when the soul begins to mature, the veil between realms thins.

Dreams become whispers. Then maps. Then commands.

And long before fate had a name, Aamina was just a girl in this sun-drenched city of Marhaba.

She wasn't the loudest, nor the most obedient, but something about her was rare, a softness with edges.

Her skin, warm like date syrup left in sun.

Her eyes, wide and often caught in wonder.

A presence that lingered after she left, like the final note of a beautiful song.

And she stood out, not for extravagance or flair, but because her soul carried a frequency many her age had not yet earned. Her body, too, matured faster than her peers. Hips fuller. Steps gentler. But she herself never understood it. She simply moved how she was raised, how she was wired. Not knowing that her inner work, the secret acts of kindness, the whispered dhikr, the lonely tears on prayer mats, were slowly collapsing the illusions of the physical, raising her into spiritual readiness.

The heavens had not forgotten.

_______.

Morning filtered through the gauzy curtains of her room, dust motes drifting like stray verses from a forgotten prayer.

The crackling voice of the television drifted through the room like a curse disguised as commentary.

"...news reaching us this morning: Mrs. Hadiza Aliyu, wife of well-known businessman Yakubu Aliyu, reportedly shot her husband to death last night inside his hotel room, after walking in on him with her younger sister."

Click.

The volume dropped halfway, muted by a hand pushing out from under a rumpled cotton duvet.

Aamina exhaled slowly, her eyes still shut.

" So this is how the day begins... murder, betrayal, and a family torn in two."

The light must've returned in the early hours. She'd forgotten to switch the TV off when the power holders seized it last night. Now it was speaking wickedness into her room like a second azaan. Except this one wasn't calling her to prayer. It was calling her to reality.

She didn't want to move. The bed, at least, didn't ask her to smile or pretend.

But the news voice continued anyway:

"Police say the woman was taken into custody shortly after the incident. However, in a shocking turn, her body was discovered in her cell earlier this morning. Cause of death remains unknown. Investigations are still..."

She tapped the remote again, harder this time. Mute.

Silence.

The fan spun lazily above her. The air was hot, indifferent.

A woman shoots her husband for cheating with her sister, then dies in custody before the sun even rises. What kind of Sunday is this?

Aamina sighed and turned over, the cotton sheet wrapping tighter around her legs.

The dream had been thick this time. Thicker than usual.

The man again. Same silhouette. Same silence.

Standing on that blurred riverbank. Always reaching. Always mouthing words she could never catch.

Amina's chest felt stretched thin, as if she had been crying inside the dream and her waking body had inherited the grief.

"Aamina! Are you still lying down? That tea is getting cold already!"

Her grandmother's voice cracked down the hallway like the snap of cane against ankle... startling, familiar, and laced with urgency. Jolting her back to present.

Aamina didn't respond. Not yet.

Because that voice came wrapped in too many expectations, most especially,The marriage offer. The shame of things never spoken.

She sat up, pressing her palms to her temples. Her heart thudded like something trapped in wood.

The dreams. The proposal. The ache that had followed Shittu's betrayal like fog after rainfall.

Everything inside her was shifting, peeling open. As if the soul beneath her skin was trying to step out.

She was tired.

Tired of smiling while spinning.

Tired of praying for clarity, only to wake with riddles.

Tired of holding light in one hand and expectation in the other.

So she stood. Washed. Prayed.

Deliberately. Slowly. Each movement drawn out like a plea.

She stayed long in sujood. Her forehead pressing into the mat as if the earth might answer her.

When she finished, she didn't rise immediately. Her body stilled, but her soul pulsed like something was being written into her.

Something unnamed.

Something ancient.

______.

She stepped into the hallway, where the air was cooler and the floor tiles kissed her feet like memory.

Sunlight spilled lazily through the open windows, catching the fine dust in golden halos.

Outside, the neighborhood stirred: distant sweeping sounds, a rickety tricycle bell, the hum of a neighbor's generator coughing into life. The day had begun, and with it, so had the performance.

Downstairs, the kitchen buzzed with quiet chaos.

Pap steamed in a clay pot, and the tang of fermented maize mingled with notes of lemongrass and perfumed shea butter.

Mama Zahra moved like a woman on a mission: wrapper tied tight, scarf tucked, arms elbow-deep in breakfast. Her presence filled the space the way spices filled the air, undeniable and defining.

"You finally woke. Come eat. The day is long," she said from the kitchen, without looking up.

Aamina nodded, but her body moved like mist. She sat at the dinning table. Picked at her food, her appetite blurred by the residue of sleep and spirit.

The clink of a spoon, the scrape of a pot, and the occasional mutter from her grandmother framed the silence between them.

Then, with a casualness that felt too timed:

"Oh, and your cousin Dauda called yesterday. He'll be visiting next week, inshaAllah."

Silence.

Aamina froze. Her spoon stilled mid-air.

Her mind did not.

Something behind her ribs tightened. Not fear, not at first. More like... the ghost of it. A shadow-flash memory she had tried to exile.

She looked down at her bowl, suddenly nauseous.

*Dauda*.

The cousin who used to enter rooms too quietly.

Who smiled like a secret.

Who once whispered stories no child should hear, then told her they were games.

Who had slipped in like night, and left her with something she could never name but always carried.

She swallowed... nothing.

Her grandmother's voice continued as if she hadn't just dropped a stone into still water.

"You haven't seen him in years. Maybe it's time you meet again."

...Maybe it's time.

The phrase crawled into her like poison wearing pearls.

Her tongue stuck to her teeth. Her mouth was full of cotton. No words came.

She looked up at the kitchen door where the voice was coming from, Mama Zahra was already tying a second wrapper, fussing with the old gas cooker.

The silence stretched. Darkened.

_________.

Aamina sat at the dining table, her bowl of pap untouched, her spoon idle in her hand. The air hung thick with scent and silence, fried plantain, fermented maize, lemongrass oil, and something older. Tension. Waiting.

Then came the knock.

...Knock-knock-knock.

It reverberated softly through the wooden walls, like a ripple waking something buried.

From the kitchen, Mama Zahra's voice lifted with unshakable certainty.

"Ah! That must be them."

Aamina blinked. "Who?"

"The Chief's people. I told you they'd be coming today. For the introduction."

Already, Mama Zahra was wiping her hands on a folded wrapper, her steps beginning to carry her out of the kitchen, toward the front of the house.

"No," Aamina whispered. "You didn't."

Mama Zahra paused in the dining room, just between table and doorway, adjusting the lace scarf at her neck. "Of course I did. Last week. When you said nothing, I assumed silence meant readiness."

Aamina stood, slowly, the chair legs whispering against the tiled floor. The distance between her and the front door felt longer than usual. Not more than a few meters, but lined with the weight of something irreversible.

"But I'm not ready," she said, voice tight. "I thought... it was still talk. Just ideas. Besides, I'm only Nineteen."

Mama Zahra kept moving, passing through the dining like a train keeping its schedule. Her movements were tidy. Fluid. Practiced.

"It's no longer talk," she said. "Chief Muhammad is serious. He came himself. That alone speaks volumes."

Aamina's fingers curled slightly on the edge of the table. "But Mama Zahra... I just ended things with Shittu. Four months is nothing. It still hurts."

Mama Zahra reached the archway of the parlor but paused before pulling the curtain aside.

"And what did that love bring you?" she asked, without turning around. "You chased butterflies and got stung. I will not let you stumble twice."

Aamina's voice came softer now. "But love is more than a mistake... and more than this."

Mama Zahra turned to face her, her eyes not cruel, but unbending.

"What do you even know about love?" she said. "Love is what silenced you. Made you wait. Made you ache. This... this man, he came with clarity. With purpose. With a name and a plan."

"But he's married." The words spilled from Aamina before she could soften them.

Mama Zahra did not flinch. "Yes. He has two children. But he is stable. He is young, respected, wealthy. He sees you."

Aamina lowered her gaze. "But I don't see him. Not like that."

"Then open your eyes," Mama Zahra said. "This is not about poetry. This is about protection."

Aamina's voice dropped even further. "Did you tell Baba?"

"I did," Mama Zahra said. "He agrees. He said, 'If the man fears Allah, then let it be.'"

"And my mother?"

Silence.

Mama Zahra looked away, briefly. "No. I didn't. Her voice... would complicate the moment."

"But she's my mother."

"Your father is your wali. That's what matters. He knows what's best."

Aamina didn't argue. She only nodded once, slowly. "Then I will obey. But if I marry him... it won't come from my heart."

Mama Zahra said nothing.

She turned to look Aamina, then back toward the door and took one more step, hand already reaching for the curtain that divided them from the world beyond.

...Then came the second knock.

Louder. Sharper. Unexpected.

Amina's breath caught in her chest, but when the door opened...

It wasn't Chief Muhammad.

It was the tailor's boy, scrawny and sweating, holding out a folded wrapper in a plastic bag.

"Good morning, From Mama Hajara," he muttered, not meeting with the grandma's eyes.

Mama Zahra smiled, "tell her I'll send a good part of the beef." accepted the bag, and closed the door gently.

But the disruption had done nothing.

The plan had already shown its face.

Mama Zahra didn't even comment. She turned back toward the parlor, humming now. A tune Aamina didn't recognize.

She placed the parcel on the table beside her bowl of pap. Light blue wrapper, threaded with silver. A bride's fabric by default, not desire. Before heading back to the kitchen.

Aamina stared at it, then up the staircase. Her room waited. Her bed waited. The oud from last night's tahajjud still lingered faintly in the air.

'Maybe this will erase the ghosts', she told herself.

...The ache of waiting for a love she could feel in dreams but never name aloud.

Maybe if she played the role long enough, her soul would stop pointing elsewhere.

________.

Aamina remained seated long after the sound of Mama Zahra's humming faded into the kitchen wall.

The dining room felt colder now, though the windows were still open, and the sun outside had warmed the walls. The morning had moved on without her. Life was moving in its casual rhythm.

But not for her.

The pale blue lace wrapper lay beside her bowl like a flag planted in foreign soil. She didn't reach for it.

*Was this what obedience looked like?

To sit still while the story unfolded without her input?

To nod, and breathe, and not scream, because your wali said "yes" before your heart could speak?

She stood, quietly. Moved to the window. Watched.

Beside her fence, her grandma's hibiscus bush shook softly in the breeze. A cat slipped through a gap in the fence. Nothing strange. Nothing sacred. Just Marhaba.

But her chest tightened anyway.

Because something felt... off.

Not wrong, not exactly. Just out of alignment, like a prayer recited too quickly or a song played in the wrong key. A slant in the fabric of things.

*Was it a divine design unfolding?

Or the result of one woman's certainty, delivered too early?

The wrapper; soft blue, with silver embroidery, sat quietly beside her cold pap.

Not a wedding gift.

But it might as well have been.

She looked at it for a long time, the way one looks at a road sign after already choosing the turn.

*Maybe this is the escape,* she thought.

From Shittu.

From Dauda's shadow.

From being stuck between silence and suspicion.

Maybe if she stepped into this marriage, followed the script, the pain would go quiet.

...But maybe not.

And for a moment, it felt impossible to tell if the next chapter in her life was being written by the Divine...

she smiled.

Not from joy.

But from muscle memory.

Is this just Destiny being Destiny?

She didn't know anymore.

And she didn't dare ask aloud. Not when her silence had already been mistaken for permission.

So she closed her eyes briefly.

Not to dream.

But to breathe.

To survive the next hour.

Was it divine timing? Or just chaos wrapped in culture?

She didn't know.

And neither would the reader.

"Ya Rabb," she whispered, "if this is my test, give me the strength to survive it."