Flotilla features several characters. Learn more about some of them here.
Madeenah Family
The Flotilla story is told mainly from the perspective of the members of the Madeenah family, and in particular, the brother/sister siblings Ali & Aishah. They are a practicing Muslim family with a diverse, mixed background. Islamic religious rituals are very important to them and play an important part of their daily life.
Umar Madeenah
The head of the Madeenah household, Umar is an inventor and as well as a roboticist. His main inventions are in the form of non-humanoid robots that help with quality of life and around people’s households. He donated a lot of his inventions as he wished for his inventions to help people, but a lot of his technology was ultimately acquired under dubious circumstances by a large corporation that then used them exclusively for their own profits. His ethnic background has ancestors from both Europe and Asia.
Jameelah Madeenah
The lady of the Madeenah household, Jameelah studied computer engineering in college and this interest was inherited by her son, Ali. After marriage, she devoted herself to her family but also stays busy with myriad home businesses and community activities.
Ali Madeenah
Ali, due to growing up semi-spoiled as the eldest in his family and in a comfortable environment, tends to act immaturely for his age. However, in situations where he solely must take action to prevent something bad from happening, he steps up and behaves far more maturely, especially with regards to anything that may harm or affect his little sister Aishah. This is also reflected in how he treats Aishah, whom he teases and torments incessantly, but once he recognizes she truly needs something, he will do everything he can to ensure she gets it, even sacrificing his own well-being to do so.
Ali is somewhat small for his age and in comparison to his peers, and this remains a sore point for him. As a result, he is often assumed to be younger than he really is, which is another point that irritates him. This drives him to work to be fit in the hopes that this will somehow compensate for his naturally smaller size. He is also deeply into technology and robotics, and has an intuitive knack for dealing with computers and automated systems.
Ali is very bold when around people he is comfortable with, but rapidly becomes shy when around other people he does not know well or appear or act intimidating to him. He secretly wants to be intimidating as well, but does not truly desire to harm or hurt others.
Aishah Madeenah
Aishah, though younger than Ali, frequently acts more mature than him. She is cheerful, talkative, and also deceptively smart. Even in the future, people tend to underestimate bubbly girls like Aishah as being less intelligent than others, and this often turns into an advantage for Aishah which she has learned to take advantage of. She absolutely adores her older brother, despite his incessant teasing. Secretly, she loves it because it’s the main attention she gets from him and so she just plays-up being bothered by it because she knows that’s Ali’s main reason for continuing to tease her.
She has a natural talent for understanding languages, and she is a great communicator. She is also very adept at navigating social situations, something all the more obvious when with her brother who can appear clumsy and awkward around other people due to his natural shyness around strangers.
A sign of her true age comes in that she can get frustrated easily and tends to express this out loud, which often sounds like whining. She has difficulty keeping secrets and loves to share information, but she somewhat lacks wisdom as to when its appropriate to bring this up.
All of this is to say that Aishah is a precocious girl who knows how to use her talents and abilities to navigate a world that, despite many advances, remains unfair to little girls in many ways.