Giants in the Sky

“There are giants in the sky,” I whispered to my little cousin, tucking her in as I flipped to the next page of her book.

She blinked, eyes wide as her little fingers touched the image of the giant at the top of the beanstalk—little Jack climbing down as he tried to escape his crushing doom.

But the giants I was thinking of were not perched on beanstalks. In the distance, I heard the tense echoes of raised voices in the kitchen down the hallway, the conversation that has been hovering thick in the air since we landed at my uncle’s house yesterday. His shock and disappointment.

“This decision will break our family,” he said, his voice crescendoing down the hall.

A heaviness filled my chest like a stone. My cousin whimpered and I turned up the volume on the white noise machine, closing the book.

“Let’s not read this right now, okay? I have a better idea.”

My cousin nodded, with her big, midnight black eyes and eyelashes so long they held weight when she blinked (“butterfly wings,” my aunt called them). “What idea, Mimi baaji?”

“Let’s talk about Jannah.”

My cousin smiled and giggled as we whispered under the covers about endless rivers of honey, palaces made of diamonds, trees that stretch for miles, candy without limits, and winged horses for us to fly on.

In Jannah, there was no fear, no raised voices. Only sweetness that never ran out.

When her giggles quieted and as she closed her eyes, her breathing slowing, I stepped off the bed and tiptoed out of the room, softly closing the door. The TV hummed in the living room. My nana had fallen asleep on the couch, light flickering across his face. A documentary played on mountains, one he’s seen dozens of times.

I draped a blanket over him and moved toward the kitchen.

“…mountains are shaped slowly—by wind, by water, by ice…”

The calming, monotonous voice in the British accent was soft and measured, almost too calm for the hour. It seemed to echo throughout the house, woven with the voices in the kitchen, a clash and a symphony all in one.

“…even slow movement creates immense pressure, enough to lift entire mountain ranges.”

The image of Maamu’s face comes back in flashes, when he saw the navy blue cloth around my head, a beige one around my mother’s, when he picked us up from the airport yesterday.

“You’re not Arab. Where does it say that Muslim women must wear hijab? This is not from our family at all,” his voice bellowed.

“And to impose that on a child, she’s only thirteen, how could you do this?”

I heard my mother, a mountain of a woman herself, arguing back in response with verses from the Qur’an. My heart raced, a spark catching in my chest. The muffled voice from the TV in the other room coats the hallway in melancholy.

​I stepped into the kitchen and my breath caught in my throat, like the air around me became thin, burdensome, painful. The kitchen was a space usually reserved for the heavy, rich scents of my aunt’s cooking, but now it felt hollowed out by the heat of the argument. My heart was racing, a steady, burning thing rising within me like a peak breaking through clouds. My mother looked up, her eyes narrowing into two sharp ridges of warning: Do not speak. In this house, you did not defy the giants who stood before you. My chest felt weighted, the pressure of generations of “refinement” pressing against my ribs, but I spoke anyway.

“Maamu,” I said, my voice quieter than I expected, “it was my choice to wear the hijab.”

He turned towards me, and his eyes widened with shock and hurt. The niece he doted on, loved, and saw as his own daughter, had now defied the fabric of this family. He shook his head and left the room. My mother and I both stared at each other, bewildered, and hurt.

My nani, in the next room with my aunt, came into the kitchen. An elegant shawl was wrapped around her dainty shoulders, her midnight black hair pulled back in a neat, crisp bun pinned tightly against her head, her eyes sharp.

She turned to me. “You’re too young to make these decisions.”

“Nani,” I started. I moved to step toward her to try to reason with her, but my mother’s hand held onto my wrist. She didn’t look at me; her eyes remained fixed on the oak dining table as we let Nani continue.

“Ye parda hamaare parhe likhe khandaan ke liye nahi hain…” she stated: this hijab is not suited for our educated family.

My elders always used this phrase, parhe likke khandaan, that we are a family of intellectuals and philosophers, our lineage stretching back to royalty and the Mughals. As children, we always felt uncomfortable as they shared these tales, but for them, especially my grandmother, they carried our history with esteem, a lens with which they saw the world. Nani would relay, despite our awkward glances and uncomfortable smiles, that her grandmother raised actual elephants in their familial courtyard, and not an inch of her skin was left uncovered in gold (or so we were told).

Then, a shadow of sadness would fall over her face when she talked about how the world shifted: the political trauma of colonization and the Partition that became a crushing weight, a heat that changed the very foundation of our family.

Nani’s mother had to sell much of their ancestral gold after her husband passed away; her children studied their textbooks under the dim glow of street lights when there was load-shedding at home, until they were sent overseas to study in prestigious institutions.

Gold was melted into currency for survival, safe passage, education, and protection. What once adorned became what was instead spent, after years of intense heat and pressure formed by tears and struggles.

But the pride and honor remained.

Fragments of the gold are still woven in the bones of the elders who walk with an unspoken weight of regality, an air of something grand that I cannot put into words. Many of the men in our family carry the title “Shah,” and the elders turn away any rishta that does not meet their quiet measure of honor (something that has begun to feel like a kind of inheritance we are still learning how to loosen).

Nani’s maamu and my great-grandfather, Maulana Mahmood Azam Farooqui (may Allah SWT be pleased with him), fought to bring religiosity back to the forefront of our family, and the nation. He was a giant of his time in Pakistan, being a senior leader in Jamaat-e-Islami, a government Minister, and a close friend of Maulana Maududi. Yet, after his passing, that vibrant identity of faith seemed to follow him into the earth, becoming something quiet and buried—cultural, like a cloak taken out for special occasions. Faith became something for the heart, private and tucked away in the quiet of our homes and only whispered between the threads of the prayer mat.

After his passing, to wear the hijab full-time was a jarring display, a catastrophic degradation, a notion that you’ve stepped out of the carefully woven fabric of generations of those who embraced modernity and wealth, education and refinement. And to be visually religious somehow marks you as an other, someone who falls from the ranks.

When I visited Pakistan, the maasis chuckled at my hijab as they dusted Nani’s furniture made of Italian upholstery, saying, “Baaji, this is what we wear, not you…” I offered a polite smile, but something in me stayed firm. I pinned my hijab tighter while standing on the balcony, a stubborn peak rising, with the sounds of children playing cricket in the street echoing below.

The monotonous voice from the TV continued, interrupting my thoughts. The volume was lowered, probably by Maamu.

“…metamorphic rocks are formed when existing rocks are subjected to intense heat and pressure, changing their mineral structure without melting…”

My nani’s disappointment continued and pools of tears formed under my mother’s eyes. Nani paused her scolding and poured some tea, adding a few drops of Carnation evaporated milk, a carefully levelled teaspoon of sugar, and then set the teacup in front of my mother—carefully and gently, without a word. She paused briefly before walking out of the kitchen and down the hallway.

I watched my mother gaze at my grandmother’s back as she left, a look of longing in her eyes. She had once been the daughter who glistened like gold, chasing the approval of giants down the hallway. Now, she sought refuge in the One who transcends the skies.

“Allah changes hearts,” my mom whispered, pulling the teacup close to her face and taking a small sip. She set the cup down and looked at me, “Go, get some sleep.”

I nodded and kissed her cheek before turning away, giving her the quiet she needed to steady her breath, as I walked down the hall towards the living room.

“…mountains are never truly still; they are always rising or eroding. What looks permanent is actually in motion beneath the surface. Even the strongest mountains are shaped by both force and gentleness.”

“Nana, time to go to bed,” I whispered, turning off the TV.

“Ok betiyya, let me just do my wudu and finish reading Isha.” Next to him, the Qur’an was open, his notes in the margins next to the ayah he last read:

“For indeed, there are stones from which rivers burst forth, and there are some of them that split open and water comes out, and there are some of them that fall down for fear of Allah. And Allah is not unaware of what you do.”
—Surah Al-Baqarah (2:74)

I smiled briefly and made my way to my room. What stones lay within me, yearning to burst? Are there crevices in my heart that are hard like stones?

It was just last week my English teacher took me outside the class, hot tears pooling in my eyes when yet another classmate made a hurtful comment about my hijab, connecting it to the age-old lies and media narratives. It was nothing new, being one of the only Muslim students in the school, but this time, it stung, like a peg came loose inside and a dam burst. My teacher sat next to me on the bench outside her classroom, held my hand and whispered, “You’re so brave.”

Brave?

My mind collapsed in confusion. I didn’t feel brave. I was the girl who made herself unseen and amiable, who melted into the walls of the classroom with a book in her hands—friendly, but careful not to be seen too closely. How had my mere existence, this cloth that was a quiet choice, become something perceived as courage?

And if it was courage, was I strong enough to carry it? To hold both what it meant to me, and what it meant to everyone else?

And now, the hurt in my elders’ eyes, was that the cost of being so-called ‘brave’?

As I lay beneath the covers, I asked Allah for strength—for the fortitude of mountains, and the softness of streams that vein through the valleys. The comforting sound of Nana’s recitation echoed softly through the walls.

For days after that heated night, silence was a physical thing, a tectonic plate wedged between the dinner table and the prayer rug. We didn’t speak of the hijab again, but Maamu quietly observed. He watched the way I still helped my aunt with the dishes and made funny, unbearably cheesy jokes; the way I still kissed my grandparents and devoured novels and listened to his advice with awe; the way this fabric had not changed the niece he loved. It was a slow movement, centimeters at a time, but beneath the surface, the pressure of consistency was beginning to lift something old and heavy.

When Maamu dropped us off at the airport a week later, he bent down, this grand uncle of mine whom I adored, and hugged me. When he pulled back, his eyes were warm.

“Fi iman Allah,” he whispered, a goodbye whispered among all our elders before travel.

My cousin waved from the car, her other hand clutching the book we were reading nights before.

Who would have known that a few years later, that same little cousin waving at the window, who once blinked at Jack’s beanstalk, would stand in front of a mirror, carefully wrapping a cloth around her own head? Not out of fear of a “crushing doom,” but out of a quiet, steady love?

Who would have known that her small hands, the ones that once touched the paper giants in her book, would soften stones? That Maamu would not only accept her hijab, but quietly welcome it with dignity and open arms?

Who would have known that many of my other cousins would do the same, a cloth that was once foreign, now an armor and identity? And family members who once defied the existence of God due to their version of intellectual reform would come back to the faith? That they would once again find themselves returning to the masjid, standing shoulder to shoulder, foot to foot, in a prayer that finally reached the heights they’d been searching for all along? ​

​We often look for the monumental shift, the Jack-and-the-beanstalk miracle, but the most lasting changes are tectonic: a word spoken, a line crossed, a fabric wrapped, fearfully, but with a quiet conviction. ​Given time, even the smallest shifts can reshape the entire tapestry.

“You know,” my mother would tell me years later, long after my Nani had passed with the shahada on her lips, “Ami visited us when you three were small, and she was so naraaz by how we were living, by how little we prayed. Before she left she made du’aa for our hidayat.”

My mother chuckled softly, “Even if it wasn’t exactly how she pictured it,” she whispered, smoothening her hijab.

“I owe everything to her.”

That single du’aa planted a seed that made my mother curious about her faith, curious enough to go to the masjid, curious enough for her to read the Qur’an again, curious enough to attend halaqas, and yes, curious enough to eventually wear the hijab. It was my Nani’s single du’aa that shook the foundation of generations, a seed planted in land that was glistening but seemed barren, only to sprout in ways no one could have predicted.

There are giants in the skies, yes, but the real giants are the ones that rise quietly among us, those brave enough to lift their hands in prayer, plant the seeds, take the climb, and keep rising, even as the very ground beneath or the skies above, break asunder.

“​And He has cast into the earth firmly set mountains, lest it shift with you.”
— Surah An-Nahl (16:15)