All the Butterflies in Our Cage

Chapter 1

On a night most dark and silent, I kneeled against my bedroom window and searched for the moon above with soft eyes.

I remembered the words of my mother – my Amma – who once told me that the halo of moonlight was as infinite as Allah's love for us. She used to watch the moon as she prayed for my father using her tasbih, a string of beads with a lilac tassel used to keep count of prayers. Even thousands of kilometres away, she knew that my father, who sailed on treacherous seas as a navy officer, was watching the same moon. Allah, she said, used this moonlight to guide lost travellers back home through darkness in land and sea. And He created the stars that hung like lamps to adorn the nearest heaven so that our paths were always lit with hope.

But in the wake of the new lunar month, the moon hid her face from me. All the stars seemed to have fallen off the sky and left only a spiral of murky clouds. Looking at this blank canvas, I wondered if the moon had a requirement of her own – that maybe she could not guide lost travelers who broke their compass into two using their own hands. Hands that bled with the incisions of their own mistakes. Hands like mine.

Abruptly, I heard the sharp knock on our front door. We were expecting the arrival of our newest roommate, Leila, all the way from Gympie.

Fifteen sets of knocks later, I mustered the courage to walk into the living room and open the front door. On our doorstep covered with cracked leaves, a small girl gave me a wide half-moon smile. Her black eyes glittered with stardust; the simple on her left cheek was shaped like a crater. 'Asalaamailkum,' she greeted, a universal Arabic greeting that Muslims use to greet each other in the presence of Allah, our God, that meant may peace and mercy of Allah be upon you. 'Thank you for letting me stay here. Are you Sister Imaan?'

I shook my head.

'Oh! Then who would you be?'

I pointed to my mouth and then shook my finger.

She understood immediately. 'I see – you don't speak. No problem. Here,' she chirped, fishing her phone out of her pocket, 'type your responses here.' Her mouth waxed from a half-moon to a three-quarter moon.

There wasn't a passcode on her phone; her complete faith in the people around her was unnerving. I typed the word walikusalaam, meaning may peace and mercy of Allah be upon you too and fought a smile after noticing that even her phone was tuned to one-hundred-percent brightness.

Sufia, I typed.

'Oh, you're Sister Sufia! I honestly can't thank you enough for all of your emails – I wasn't prepared at all for all the different buses in Brisbane. Would've gotten myself completely lost if it weren't for you. And not to mention...'

She spoke to me with the vibrancy of a sister. Her cheerful face was the grinning full moon. I wondered if if she could still shine so brightly if she had known what I had done. My heart became heavy as I imagined her smile waning until it was swallowed up by the sky and that she, too, would hide her face from me.

What Leila didn't know was that the night of our first meeting started with a first of a different sort: I lied to my Amma for the first time.