Author's Preface
Noon settled over Halima with a weight she hadn't expected. She was starving, and the hunger had already tipped into something closer to weakness. Fasting under the desert's full sun turned out to be far harder than she'd imagined. She'd never fasted back on Earth — hadn't understood, back then, what it actually meant.
Yahya noticed how much she was struggling and asked, "Is it hard?"
She nodded, too worn out to speak.
"InshaAllah," he said gently, "the best rewards in Paradise are waiting for you, for this."
"Really?" She looked up at him, surprised.
"Really." He smiled. "Whatever your soul wants, it's there. You only have to think of something, and it's in front of you."
Halima laughed, and for a moment the exhaustion eased.
"Well, in that case, it's worth it."
He smiled back, but seeing her thoughts drift right back to food, he decided to give her something else to think about.
"Come on," he said. "Help me put together the zakat."
She remembered Zoraida's lessons on this pillar of Islam — how Allah had ordained that those with means share their wealth with those in need, purifying not only their possessions but their own hearts, cutting away greed and attachment to worldly things. Zakat wasn't charity in the ordinary sense. It was a reminder, woven into the very heart of their faith, that wealth came and went by God's will, and no one had the right to hoard it while others went hungry nearby.
They started going through his holdings together. As the future Seyid, Yahya kept considerable wealth stored in a tent next to their own — bolts of fine cloth, grain, stacks of animal hides, chests of gold and silver, and rare trade goods. Her husband was rich, richer than she'd fully grasped even after her occasional visits to that tent, glancing over the stores without quite taking them in. She'd never dreamed of anything close to this.
Zakat, she'd learned, was calculated as a small fixed share of what a person owned beyond their basic needs — usually reckoned each year on savings, livestock, gold and silver, or trade goods — and given to those without enough to get by. It wasn't a gift offered out of pity. It was owed, a due, as certain and necessary as any other obligation in the faith.
"Faris is handling the zakat distribution this year," Yahya said, catching her surprised look.
At the tent where Faris sat receiving donations, Halima noticed something she'd somehow missed before. A tall, solidly built man stood beside him, helping sort through the offerings — dark red hair, warm chocolate-brown skin, deep brown eyes. Something about him struck her as faintly familiar.
"That's Salim," Yahya said quietly, following her gaze. "Darim leads my personal guard. Salim leads Faris's."
She looked closer and realized what had caught her attention in the first place — Salim looked remarkably like Darim. Same shape to the face, same set to the eyes.
"They're cousins," Yahya added, noticing her confusion.
She glanced around at the rest of the settlement, taking in the crowd properly for the first time. They were an imposing people — even the women stood nearly six feet tall, while the men hovered close to two meters, making Halima feel remarkably small despite her own tall frame. Yet beneath their formidable stature, a striking harmony bound them: brown hair, skin spanning every shade of deep brown, bronze, and rich chocolate, and eyes ranging from dark amber to obsidian. Only Mansur, Yahya, and Faris stood apart — distinguished by silver hair and striking gold eyes that belonged to the ruling bloodline alone.
Yahya walked Halima back to Amina's tent, kissed her forehead, and left to see to his own business, leaving her to help her mother-in-law prepare iftar — the meal that would break their fast at sunset, the first food and water they'd taken since dawn.
They spent the rest of the day together, arranging sweet dates on brass platters, kneading dough for flatbread, filling jugs with cool, spiced fruit infusion. Halima kept glancing up at the sky, watching the sun crawl, agonizingly slow, toward the horizon.
When the moment finally came to break the fast, she could hardly believe she'd actually made it through the whole day without a drop of water, without a single bite of food. She'd never truly fasted on Earth — skipping a meal or two because work got in the way didn't count for anything, and she'd never understood, until now, the real weight of what fasting demanded.
The whole family gathered around the low table, and the moment the call to break the fast sounded, Halima reached, without thinking, for the biggest piece of flatbread, for the steaming plate of rice, hunger completely driving away her hesitation.
"Wait, child," Amina said softly, laying a hand over hers. "The Prophet taught us to start with something light — water, and a single date. Give your body time before you ask more of it."
Halima swallowed her impatience and reached for a date instead, taking a small bite and washing it down with water.
She watched the others from the corner of her eye — how calmly, almost casually, Mansur, Amina, Yahya, and Faris ate, none of them showing a trace of the desperate hunger that had gnawed at her all day.
Mansur caught her look and smiled warmly.
"It gets easier with time, daughter," he said. "The body learns. So does the soul."
Halima nodded, hoping with everything in her that he was right.