The Twins and their big brothers

                          

When there are rather large families gatherings, aunties like to give teenage girls their babies to hold while they sit and chat and discuss why Mrs M. is wearing a neon green outfit. They consider these teenagers as the ones with free time and think that they should look after their bundles of joy while they take some much needed time off. I am, on the other hand, adverse to such policy. I do not profess that I do not like or care for children, but I truly believe that when a person decides to have children [of course Allah Almighty blesses you with children, but when you’ve gotten married, you’ve decided] they should and must look after them. Thus, I have become a sort of rebel. When I go out, and ladies have their cooing babies in their laps, I am more liable to say, ‘ooh cute baby’ from a safe distance. When the mothers launch their babies at me, I hide behind my mother. Cowardly, I know.

And then, as they say in fairy tales, the twins arrived. My cousin is twenty-fours old; she has two boys, of the advanced ages of four and three and decided that they did not keep her busy enough. So, she prayed for twin girls and was blessed by the Almighty. ‘You’d have to come and look after them’ she’d told me and I wanted to laugh and say, I’m so very busy with my course work, it will be Ramadhan, I have to read taraweeh, when I fast I feel like a lizard and of course, that I cannot handle babies. However, when she was told that she was having boys rather than angelic girls in skinny jeans with ruffled shirts [trust me, that is how babies dress nowadays], my dear grandma gave me a look, that said: “You’d just better be there.’ I felt kind of miffed for a while, but as Ramadhan approached, I thought, Ramadhan is sacrificing what we love so that we may get closer to the Almighty. Here was an opportunity where I would be sacrificing my time and my leisure, to help those in need, and that was the essence of Ramadhan.

So, I worked through the night, finishing my work before I boarded my flight, and praying, please Almighty, give me good marks and let the kids be as good as I was when I was young [I’m sure I was rather perfectly behaved.] I left when the twins were mere three days old, when I arrived at the airport, I was greeted by my gorgeous nephews, who’d come loads of kiddie luggage: Ben Ten, Winnie the Pooh and Spider man. ‘She’s come to play with us’ they called excitedly to their dad, and I heaved a sigh of relief, playing with kids was certainly better than burping babies.  

When I got to their apartment, grandma told the boys ‘she’s not here to play with you, she’s here to look after the twins. ’ Man, throwing me in to the deep end and I had not even been there for an hour. Taking a deep breath, I bent down and untied the laces of Mujahid, the four year old  (by eid, when I’d tied and untied those laces approximately 5 thousand times, I was very intent on banning laces when I became president), while the three year old, Muwahhid, pulled my hand. “Come and see our brothers”, and I walked into the nursery, where two small creatures lay in their cot. They were absolutely tiny, with the longest fingers and scrunched up red faces. Suddenly, one of them let out a fierce shriek. Woah, I jumped back in surprise. I didn’t know what to do, I’m very scared of holding newborn babies and I’m always afraid I’ll drop them, especially with them having that fontanel in their heads and all.  ‘Um, Muwahhid’s calling me’ I said timidly, and walked, ran rather, right out of there. I hyperventilated, what had I gotten myself into, I should have sat at home sacrificing something else rather, if I could not get past the picking up, how was I going to do something much more important, like put its clothes on?! My phone beeped, and an sms from my mom appeared on the screen: Remember, everything you do for the Pleasure of Allah is an ibadah. I was sold.

The Big Boys: 

For the first week, my cousin had decided to stay in my aunt’s apartment which is a lavish place, with lustrous carpets, cream walls, posh paintings and ornate ornaments. It reminds of an Italian renaissance. As my aunt would often intone sadly, it was meant for my retirement. I would agree with that. Since there was no where to go, Mujahid and Muwahhid would have running competitions on the porcelain tiles, and the elderly people downstairs would come complaining about thunderstorms on the top of their heads. They also had a plastic cricket set, which, emulating the 20/20 games on tv, Mujahid would invariably end up hitting the ball for six, right onto my aunt’s precious vases. Oops. Some thoughtless person brought them an inflatable rugby set, which they blew up right in the lounge, and tried wrestling each other to death. Being small, they would stand on the coach, jumping up and down, and try to throw the ball through the posts, and yes, you guessed, oops again.

 If there is one condiment I hate with a deep vehemence, its ketchup. I cannot even bring it to the table. The boys, of course, absolutely adore it. They have it on their eggs and would even have it in their cereal. Telling myself that jihad took a lot of courage, I first picked the bottle up with a pair of tongs and proceeded to put it on the table. Yes, I congratulated myself, I would never touch it. And then, feed me, Muwahhid pleaded. He would not eat without ketchup, I knew, and as if plunging my hand into the lion’s mouth, I proceeded to dip his rice into the funny red stuff and put it into his smiling mouth. Whew. By the end, I was a ketchup pro, I could probably paint a Picasso with the squeezy bottle.

Feeding the boys took a lot of effort. They generally eat everything, but it takes a lot of imagination to get it into their mouths. The food became lions and clowns and soaring dinosaur birds. I would be on my hands and knees, crawling after them while they pretended to be cars, with a bowl of biryani in my hand, calling; fill up, fill up. That worked almost best. Once, when they didn’t want to eat an orange, I got a marker, and drew a face on its waxy skin, complete with boots and a snazzy cap. They called this ‘Dude Orange’ and proceeded with out inhibition to eat the poor dude’s head. Oh yes, lying to kids, telling them there absolutely is no potato when you’ve hidden it, works wonders. All the veggies go down a treat.    

There were new babies, and so there were lots of presents, which invariably included sweets. Since the newborns could not yet feast themselves on caramel and candy, the boys took great advantage of it. The minute they opened their eyes, they had a lollypop in each sticky hand.  When they were really high on sugar, they were like Hammy from Over the Hedge, fizzing round and round, driving me rather barmy. Ah, my illusion of thinking that it was going to be easy to play with kids. It takes up more time and energy to look after kids, than running a marathon [not that I’ve ever run a marathon, but you get my drift.} Once, when I was about to snap, I let them jump on the bed until they fell down with exhaustion. After that, I became their heroine, as the only adult who’d ever allowed them to jump on a bed until it squeaked scarily. They never stopped wanting to play, you could be passed out waiting for futoor, and the boys would be jumping up and down, ‘play cars, play cars, play cars!’ All I could do was smile and comply. And, on top of that, I could never get to race the BMW or the Ferrari, it was always the Golf for me. Talk about sacrificing.

Muwahhid is quite scared of numerous things, ranging from the pool, to insects, while his brother thinks he is a teenager. He wants to drive a car, go with his granddad to work and sleep at midnight. His logic, if I can do it, so can he. He cannot wait to be five, I’ve seen teenagers less excited to be sixteen. Of course, he can argue, like I’ve never seen a kid argue before, probably due to the fact that he is a firstborn. Poor kid, [poor firstborns: me] its’ not their fault their bossy, its’ a trait they pick to survive, otherwise they would probably end up retiring before their twenties. And so, being a normal kid, as you can quite imagine, he can be rather naughty. However, I made it quite clear that I was not there to teach the kids, but to have fun with them. They were my friends. I think, being quite a tomboy and having two younger brothers, the best thing to do with boys is to let them go wild, and I was quite surprised that my aunt had never done that. So, for the first week, I let them choose their own clothes and eat what they wanted for breakfast and say whatever they wanted. By the second week, I was so fed up, I enforced strict military duty. I think they enjoyed it even more.

If there was one thing I knew about children, was that they absolutely adored stories. I brought a bag full of children’s books, filled with delightfully bright pictures. They loved it. The most amazing aspect of the stories was that no matter how simple and silly, they never tired of them. I could read the same book, over and over, and each time I would find, had I put their own name ‘well, this is Mujahid and he went to the moon’ they revelled in the innocence of it all. One night, I decided to tell them the story of the Prophet Ýusuf (peace be upon him), Mujahid understood it quite well, Mashallah, and so, I told him the story every single night for 28 days. He asked his mom, quite crossly, just why they had not named the twins Yusuf and Binyamin. My cousin told me that stories were supposed to put kids to sleep, but my stories on the other hand, kept them awake. 


When I think back, I remember members of family thought I was going on a holiday ‘ooh, what a lovely break you will have' and I when I returned, I'm like, please if thats a holiday, I'm not going to be taking one again. And they all smirked, and said, when you have your own kids you wont be able to run away from them. Believe me, I'm seriously considering  that.

My synopsis of the big boys... and soon, of their Royal Highnesses, the Twins...