Halaa And Gaafar [Hansel And Gretel] – A Short Story

“Have taqwa (fear) of Allah wherever you may be, and follow up a bad deed with a good deed which will wipe it out, and behave well towards the people.”

– The Prophet Muhammad

[Hadith 18 of Al-Nawawi]

***

[This Islamic short story is an adaptation of “Hansel and Gretel” by the Brothers Grimm]

Halaa

My name is Halaa, and my brother, Gaafar, is an ahmaq. But sometimes—only sometimes—he can be very clever. Want to know how?

Well, you might have to wait a little. Just like our mother did on the day of our birth—but for only a minute. When I came out, she was so happy that she could give us the boy and girl names she picked out. Back when we were smaller than secrets, and she hadn’t known she would be delivering two babies at once.

It was a good thing that she had us both, because she died shortly after we were born. The other bedouins living around us came up with more superstitions and rumors than we could count. Sometimes, they would make me cry from how mean their words could be. But Gaafar told me that when people have empty brains, they often have overflowing mouths too.

One day, he dared to tell them that if their gods really hated us, and they were oh-so-powerful and vengeful about getting rid of us, then they would’ve killed us as well as our mother. Who knew when the day would come for those gods to kill them too?

They left us alone after that.

Except for one of them, who caught Baba’s eye. He and Mama had been the only Muslims—it was easier to be in the desert with pagans than to be in cities with pagans—and soon enough, Baba wanted to marry. I admit, even Gaafar and I wanted a mother again.

Soon after their wedding, the two of us began to notice that she shared our cleverness. Not in a useful way, though. My brother and I were foragers. As Baba got older, he would send us with our falcon to find food, and he would remain behind to cook and preserve it. She eventually learned to do the same, and Father returned to the craft he’d picked up in Giza: fur trading.

Then the month of Safar came, and our reserves dried up.

So our stepmother suggested that we eat one of our camels next. I was so stunned and hurt that I began to cry. Gaafar saw me and approached her directly, saying, “If we do that, we might have our bellies full now, but they’ll be empty again later!”

But she had one thing that we didn’t: patience. Over and over again, she would bring up the topic to my father. He gave in, selling its fur for money, slaughtering it for meat, and milking it just one last time. 

It didn’t last the full month. The barakah was gone long before the camel’s remnants disappeared.

So we had to forage longer and longer. Gaafar would carry everything we found, and I would direct our falcon where to land.

“Why not develop their skills farther in the desert?” I heard her telling him. “Give them some rations, a few clothes, and the falcon. They’re wise children, and if you expect them to live here—you ought to make them spend more time foraging. I have faith in them.”

I would start to cry, and Gaafar would protest, eventually telling our stepmother that she was only a mother in name. That seemed to break Baba for good, and one morning, we all went riding in the Sahara. I’d heard her and Baba whispering furiously, and I knew what was coming.

But Gaafar told me that Allah wouldn’t leave us alone, even as we walked across the dunes. Our stepmother rode the camel, and I was in charge of looking around for anything our falcon might catch. Gaafar would turn and look back at our tent, over and over again, until she called him out for it.

“Gaafar, why do you keep looking back and pausing?! You’re delaying us!”

“Ya Ummi,” he replied sweetly, “I just wanted to say salaam to our camel.”

“Salaam can be said with our mouths, and not gestured with our entire bodies. Come along.”

So he obeyed. We set up a fire when the stars began to show up. I began to nod off, even though I didn’t want to. Gaafar let me put my head in his lap, and he put his own on the ground. I think he was trying too hard to be a man.

Baba and our stepmother were gone by the time dawn broke. And I broke, too.

 —

Gaafar, meanwhile, was laughing at me! “What did I just tell you? Did your tears clog up your ears?”

“You didn’t just tell me. You told me hours ago.”

“You know what I mean. Anyway, let’s go.”

“What do you mean, go? Straight into a lion’s mouth? Into our graves?”

“No, you big crybaby…to follow the trail I laid out!”

A trail of stones to follow [PC: John Doyle (unsplash)

And as we walked, our falcon found so many animals for us to carry with us. Four houbry, which was the best—Baba wouldn’t waste any time at all with their feathers.

It being a desert, it wasn’t hard to see when we were close to our tent again. So we couldn’t really surprise our father, as we stuck out like the pyramids across the landscape.

Our stepmother was surprised, though. I could tell by the way her smile was so forced, like everything else about her. She made a meal for us with rice and olive oil, but she didn’t seem to enjoy it.

Our stepmother noticed however that I had gotten better at falconry. I caught hares, which our father made pelts and rugs out of. The other bedouins couldn’t get enough of them. Winter was coming, and they were trying to keep themselves warm. For a while, my stepmother was silent and our bellies were full.

A week passed, and even those staples became spare. Instead of meat and eggs, we ate beans, and even then, they were seasoned only with water and salt. More and more animals would be going into hibernation. My father even talked of going back into the city, at least temporarily.

Our tent was humble. Towards the front of the tent was our dining “room,” with a few cushions and other cooking needs. In the back, Baba had divided two rooms with an extra sheet. Gaafar and I slept on one side, and he and our stepmother on the other.

“How about one last hunt for the twins?” our stepmother asked Baba one night, thinking us asleep. “You saw how capable they are. Then we’ll go to the city to live.”

“No,” our father said. “Their Islam will be stronger here.”

“Their Islam will be stronger wherever they are alive,” she countered. “Putting them so far away again, so close to death, will allow them to put faith in Allah and find His Provisions.”

I had to muffle my sobs into my pillow. How could she use such backward logic on my poor father? And how could he believe it?

Gaafar was immune to her magic. I could already see him rising, but our stepmother saw his shadow by the candlelight on their side. She shushed our protesting father and came to our side.

“Hungry?” she asked innocently. Gaafar froze. I didn’t move, pretending to be asleep. I heard some rustling, and when I opened my eyes, I smelled some stale pita in his hands.

“No rocks, this time,” he whispered to me.

—

Morning came, and I said nothing. I knew what he was doing. And our stepmother did, too. Desperately, he began sprinkling the pieces of bread across the desert. I’d turn back and look at them, praying that they stay safely untouched by the birds and the wind.

“Allah will not leave us alone,” I told him.

I heard him smiling, despite the dark. “So you do listen.”

It was the last thing I remembered before fajr crept upon us. I was glad that my brother was the one leading us in salah, because I was crying too much to do it for myself. I couldn’t hear him after we finished, but I knew he was asking for the same thing I was praying for: a miracle.

We folded our mats and wandered around our camp. We spent hours and hours looking for a single crumb, but nothing could be found. Desperate, I even pleaded with our falcon to give us a bird’s-eye view of where we could go.

When our falcon returned, he was screeching and flapping his wings. At this point, even Gaafar was frantic.

“What’s he saying, Halaa?!”

“I don’t know! Does it look like I speak falcon?!”

“That’s kind of your job, isn’t it?!”

Our falcon raised his wings and begged us to follow. We looked at each other and said alhamdulillah—maybe he’d found our tent after all.

What we found was so much better. Right in front of our eyes was an oasis. There was a pond, and ancient ruins. But these ruins were breathtaking—they were made of food! There were small dunes of rice, littered with nuts and topped with pieces of meat. Chickens, hares, sheep, and goats were grazing all around the oasis, but the best part was the ruins themselves. They were blocks of basbousa, stacked coconut cakes on top of each other, and syrup was running down each step.

When we approached it, eyes wide, I thought… Maybe my brother isn’t so bad.

And he wasn’t. 

It was the witch who was.

Gaafar 

My name is Gaafar, and my sister, Halaa, is a crybaby. But sometimes—only sometimes—she can be brave, too. Let me tell you how.

Baba told us that when we were born, Halaa took her time coming out. It was almost like she was shy or afraid. She grew up like that too; so careful and cautious. Ya Lahwi. Shouldn’t life be lived?

Even if we weren’t boy and girl, you could tell us apart as we got older. She didn’t like attention. She’d get the falcon to do the work for her, but then give me the dead animal to carry. She’d be too upset otherwise. Good thing we were bedouins and tried not to eat a lot of meat anyway!

But she got good at it, masha’Allah. So good that I didn’t mind carrying all the animals for her. She was feeding me, and taking care of our whole family—including that woman we called “stepmother.” (Although I’d call her something else if it were up to me).

Anyway, a lot of other things happened until one of the most amazing events of our lives. Our “stepmother” convinced our father to drop us off in the desert, and when we tried to find our way back, we ended up finding a palace of basbousa. So really, who was losing?

Food and sweets aplenty![PC: Encal Media (unsplash)]

Next thing you know, a woman came out of the palace (of course someone had to live there, I mean, who wouldn’t?!) and invited us to come inside. Being the older brother, I quickly said yes. I was looking out after my younger sister—and myself, too!

“Use your brains, ahmaq, not your belly!” Halaa hissed. I told her I was thinking with my brains… and maybe just a little bit with my belly. Then her belly started talking! When we entered the basbousa palace, we found plates of steaming ful mudames, koshari with more ingredients than I could count, and best of all: Umm Ali, right at the center. I wished I could’ve replaced my current “ummi” with that instead. It was a lot sweeter than she’d ever been to us.

I can’t remember when we last had so heavy a meal, and Eid had been only a few months ago. Halaa and I had to take a qaylulah right away. If I had to guess, she was dreaming of the same thing I was: What were we going to have for lunch, if breakfast had been this good?

Turns out, the woman was thinking the same thing. Only, for her, the answer was… me!

—

The witch woke me up and tossed me in a cell deep within the ruins. I was her prisoner now, not her guest. This time, I was the crybaby, asking for her to have mercy on me and my sister. The woman just laughed at me. I could finally tell, now, that she was actually a ghoul.

The monster got Halaa, and told her to make me more food. I could hear more of the conversation—something about fattening me up, and then eating me, and that Halaa would be next. Halaa cried, but this time, I understood how she felt.

Halaa brought me whatever she was able to make, and I had to stuff myself as the woman waited for me to gain weight. She was blind, the way she bossed Halaa around for every little thing. And she’d double-check whatever Halaa said. If my sister said she added salt, the woman would taste-test it. And when it came to seeing how fat I’d gotten, she’d tell me to stick out my finger for her to measure.

On a whim, I handed her a bone from the maqluba, and that only made her angrier. Though I was putting on the pounds, she couldn’t tell.

A week passed, and my clothes hardly fit anymore. The monstrous ghoul decided that she’d eat me no matter what, and told Halaa to heat up the oven in preparation. So Halaa obeyed, much to my surprise, instead of begging for my -or her- life.

I heard her begging, instead, from Allah . “Please do not leave us, Ya Allah!” Over and over again, she repeated her du’a, and the wicked woman mocked her. I remembered how I’d speak to my “stepmother” at home, and I wondered if the two could potentially be one and the same person. 

It’s funny (and by that I mean, not funny at all) what you think about when you’re going to be eaten.

Halaa went to work, turning me into a meal. She took out the biggest pot I’ve ever seen in my life, filled it with water, and prepared firewood to get the water boiling. I gulped. I always imagined having a more heroic death than bamia did, but what could I do?

Watch. And hear Halaa crying. 

“I-I’m ready,” she sobbed.

“You may be, but he’s not!” the ghoul called. “The boy’s meaty now. We need something like bread to soak up all the juice once he’s cooked.”

“But I h-haven’t b-baked br-br-bread before.”

“It’s your lucky day, girl. I already have.” The ghoul cackled. “Oven’s ready. Come on, now, just shove it in!

She already had the oven ready; she just needed Halaa to set the dough on the slab and push it inside so that the flames wouldn’t devour it before she could.

“B-But I’ve n-never wor-wor-worked with an o-o-ven!” Halaa sobbed. “We always bought the bread instead! I don’t even know if it’s hot enough!”

“Foolish girl!” the ghoul snapped. “All you have to do is this—”

The ghoul approached the open oven and knelt forward. Quick as a flash, Halaa inhaled deeply with a whoosh of air, recited the istiadha, and shoved the ghoul inside with all the strength she had. The keys to the cell clattered to the ground and Halaa grabbed them as fast as she could.

“You did it!” I beamed, hugging her as soon as she’d freed me.

“Yeah, thanks for nothing,” she teased. “I’m glad you’re alive.”

“Me too. I can’t wait to tell Baba all about how brave you were.”

“Both of us,” she said. “What you did with the chicken bone was clever!”

“Let’s see if I can be clever in other ways too. I’ve still got to get us home somehow.”

“Gaafar! Didn’t you see—”

“Uh, no, I’ve been in a prison—” 

“There’s jewels everywhere! This ghoul must have imprisoned bandits and other bedouins before, and took all their riches before she ate them.”

“Well, at least she has good taste. Jewels would bust your teeth.”

Halaa wasn’t joking—there was enough to keep us fed for months. We loaded our bags with as much as we could carry, and we looked all around for other things we could take. There was dried fruit, jerky, jugs of oil, sacks of rice, and other edible items we didn’t even know the names of. Best of all were the camels roaming throughout the oasis. They seemed just as happy as we were to finally be free. The chickens, hares, sheep, and goats followed us too.

Our falcon was overjoyed, too. As soon as I’d been captured, Halaa told him to find a route home and to return as soon as he could. Getting Baba to come wouldn’t have helped, she explained, although I wouldn’t have minded that our “stepmother” took my place in the prison cell.

By the time we made it home, I couldn’t even apologize for my thoughts. Baba took us in two weak arms, weeping, saying that she had died from starvation after we were gone. I felt nothing but pity. She made her entire life about survival. In doing so, she had been the one who didn’t survive.

We nursed Baba back to health—Halaa, thankfully, had become an amazing cook as well as a falconer—and I tended to our new animal friends. I didn’t mind. It was a lot of carrying—jugs of milk, cartons of eggs, and when I had to, their limbs for Halaa to cook.

It was a hard life, out in the desert—but we lived happily ever after. (Or so I’d like to think. It’s hard to write that so definitively while we’re still living. But I have to end this story somehow! Alhamdulillah, it ends with the words of a story—and not a recipe).

Related:

– The Little Muslimah – A Short Story – MuslimMatters.org

– Bismillah, The Beast [Part I] – A Short Story – MuslimMatters.org