The House of Boxes

The night before the big move, Maryam's bedroom did not look like her bedroom any more.

Her books were in boxes. Her lamp was in a box. Even her duvet cover with the little silver moons on it had been folded away, and she lay under a borrowed blanket, staring at walls that suddenly looked very bare and very quiet.

Tomorrow a big van would come, and her family would drive three whole hours to a new town, a new house, a new school. Everyone kept saying how exciting it was. Maryam did not feel excited. She felt as if her stomach were full of buzzing bees.

What if I get lost in the new school? she thought. What if nobody wants to sit next to me at lunch? What if the new house never, ever feels like home?

The worries buzzed and buzzed until she could not lie still. She padded downstairs for a glass of water and found her mum in the kitchen, wrapping the last of the mugs in newspaper.

"Can't sleep?" Mum asked softly.

Maryam shook her head. "Everything's in boxes," she said. "It feels like my whole life is in boxes, and I don't know what's going to happen."

Mum put down the newspaper and opened her arms, and Maryam leaned in. For a while they just stood there in the quiet kitchen.

"Do you know what I do when my worries get loud?" Mum said at last. "I remind myself that we've done our part. We chose the house carefully. We packed carefully. We made du'a about it — remember? And now the part that's left over, the part we can't control… that part we hand to Allah. Like handing Him the heaviest box."

Maryam almost smiled. "The heaviest box."

"Allah says in the Quran that whoever puts their trust in Him — He is enough for them," Mum said. "It doesn't mean nothing new or strange will happen. It means you never carry it alone. Not for one single minute."

Maryam picked at the edge of the newspaper. "But I'm still worried. Does that mean I'm not trusting Allah properly?"

"No, love," Mum said. "Everyone feels worried sometimes. Trusting Allah is what you do with the worry."

Maryam went back to bed. The bees were still there, but quieter now. She whispered into the dark, "Ya Allah, I've packed my things and I've done my best. The rest is Yours. I trust You." And somewhere between one breath and the next, she fell asleep.

The next day was loud and busy — the van, the motorway, service-station sandwiches, her little brother asking "Are we there yet?" nineteen times. When they finally pulled up at the new house, rain was pattering on the windows, and everything smelled of cardboard and fresh paint.

That night, Maryam lay under her silver-moon duvet in a new room in a new town. It should have felt strange. But the rain on the roof sounded exactly like the rain at the old house. And when she looked out between the curtains, there was the moon — the very same moon she used to watch from her old window — hanging over the new street just as it had hung over the old one.

Of course, she thought. Allah sees me here, just as He saw me in my old room. He knew all about this street before I'd ever heard of it. He was looking after us the whole way.

She settled back under the covers and whispered, "I trust You, ya Allah," and slept better than she had in weeks.

There were still new things after that — a new school gate, a new form room, a teacher whose name she kept forgetting. Some mornings the bees came back, and each time, Maryam did her part: she packed her bag, she practised her salaam, she made her du'a. Then she handed over the heaviest box.

And little by little, the new things stopped being scary and started being hers. A girl called Tasneem saved her a seat at lunch. The new house began to smell of her mum's cooking instead of cardboard. And every night, the same moon shone in through her window. Maryam would pull her moon duvet up to her chin, whisper, "I trust You, ya Allah," and drift off to sleep, knowing that Allah was looking after her, just as He always had.