Chapter 3 – Breakfast

The morning drama quota now close to being fulfilled, the actors of the Madeenah family, especially the younger ones, were a little more calm. Umar was in his study preparing for a presentation he was going to make at an assembly of leaders later in the day. Meanwhile, Jameelah was making her own preparations, no less important – namely, pancakes, naan, and roti canai.

She was fond of combining the cuisines from her mixed heritage which drew from the different parts of the Eastern world, including the Indian subcontinent as well as southeast Asia. Though she was born in the West, she made a strong effort to preserve traditional aspects of her parents and ancestors culture as she wanted her children to have an awareness of such things. Today’s theme was “flat”, hence, three types of flat foods were on the menu along with the sauces and curry common to them.

Ali, his feet now mostly dry and also slightly mummified due to the excessive amount of bandages he used, entered the breakfast nook first. His eyes lit up when he saw what was on the table. “R-r-r-r-r-ooootiiiiii!” he exclaimed. “Awesome! I knew I smelled something good!”

“Make sure to say bismillaah before you eat, Ali,” his mother reminded him. A muffled, “’millah” could be heard between audible masticationsThe process of chewing. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mastication#English.

“Alhamdulillaah, breakfast smells so good, Ummi"My mother" in Arabic More,” Aishah proclaimed as she entered next. She sat opposite Ali and also partook in the delights of their multicultural breakfast.

Both Ali and Aishah had their holocoms with them, their eyes skimming and scrolling through their content with a swiftness that only youth could pull off. Ali emitted a new kind of sound suddenly, then started choking. Jameelah raced to the table only to find, while coughing, he was pointing emphatically at his holocom. Of course, since it was pointed at his eyes, only he could see what was showing. “Ali, what is it???” his mother exclaimed. Ali pawed around the table looking for something, then grasped once he found it – a glass of water. He chugged it down, and then said squeezed out, breathlessly, “Abee is going to speak to the leaders today?!?”

“Don’t you remember, Ali?” Aishah interjected. “They announced this event at school two weeks ago. Abee is going to be speaking along with some government officials and even some business people.”

“It’s not just business people, Shushu,” Umar said, referring to his daughter by his (and her!) favorite nickname. “These are the leaders of some of the biggest companies in the world. And I’m not just speaking with them, but actually, I’m going to be presenting my ideas about sustainable development, especially with regards to growing our own foods.”

“Oh, that’s going to be so boring, Abee.” Ali’s voice had already mostly returned, the food finally finding its way down the right throaty passage. “I already know the stuff you’re going to say,” he switched into a somewhat unflattering impression of his father he liked to do, which consisted of an exaggerated, soft speech evoking someone frolicking lazily through a meadow. “We have to become one with the world, we have to take care of the Earth like its our baby. Remember, children, we only have one Earth.” By this point, Ali had so much gotten into his impression, he was quite literally frolicking, but around the kitchen at this point. “We have to fluff the trees, groom the sheep, comb the grass…” As usually, in his attempts to mock his father, he mixed-up metaphors and examples without realizing it. Before he could finish, he had already erupted in laughter, and soon he was coughing again – apparently, not all of the roti canai had left his mouth and in his excitement he inhaled some more.

Umar tried to hide his schadenfreudeMalicious enjoyment derived from observing someone else's misfortune. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/schadenfreude at this ironic conclusion, but his smirk was too obvious as he exchanged glances with his wife. “Actually, Ali, as you so….colorfully…explained, while we do have only one Earth, we are well into colonizing other planets in the Solar System. And if we aren’t careful, we’re going to ruin them just as we’ve ruined Earth.”

“But it’s not so bad. I just saw on the holocom that Envirocron announced their newest CO2 scrubbers – they’re almost twice as good as their first ones!” Ali was referring to one of the largest companies, Envirocron, which created and marketed a large number of devices aimed at providing technological solutions to environmental issues.

“That’s actually something I’ll be talking about, Ali.” Umar responded. Ali smiled, apparently reading into that something that Umar’s continuing smirk belied.