They watched her pray like it was a crime.
Not her family—they were used to it. But the world outside. The professors who cleared their throats when she spread her prayer mat behind the library stacks. The classmates who made space, but never eye contact. The city itself, which smiled at her with the sharpness of teeth.
Aaliyah Zahra El-Hassan had learned to disappear in plain sight.
She rose from sujood slowly, her bones whispering things her mouth never could. Things like I'm tired and I don't belong here.
The prayer room was a repurposed closet with yellowing walls and flickering lights. But it was hers for those five stolen minutes between lectures. Hers and God's.
She folded her prayer mat gently, tucking it into her black canvas bag beside her copy of Les Misérables. She liked tragic stories. They made her feel less alone.
Outside, the winter air felt like judgment.
She walked past the tall glass buildings of Saint-Lorraine University, her steps careful, measured. She knew how to shrink without flinching. How to move without making sound.
Her life was a string of small silences:
Silence when her father read Qur'an aloud like a warning.
Silence when her mother burned her sister's lipstick in the sink.
Silence when a boy tried to touch her wrist in the library and called her "exotic" like it was a compliment.
She didn't scream. She never screamed.
Not yet.
That afternoon, she noticed them.
Two men across the courtyard, leaning against the iron railing like they belonged to a different story. One had a cigarette, fingers stained with ink or blood—she couldn't tell. The other was watching the snow fall like it offended him.
They didn't look like students.
They looked like trouble written in flesh and bone.
Aaliyah looked away.
She didn't know their names. Not then.
But one day, they would both say hers like a prayer and a curse.
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