Before We Knew

Fragments of Focus

Sidro rested her chin on her palm, her pen tapping quietly against her notebook. The classroom buzzed with low murmurs and the occasional shuffle of chairs, but her mind wasn’t on the board or the lesson. It was on the clock, ticking its way toward the end of the period.

Beside her, Ruhi scribbled neatly, her notes lined with precision.

“You’re really paying attention?” Sidro whispered, tilting slightly toward her.

Ruhi didn’t look up. “Trying.”

Sidro sighed. “Sometimes I wonder how your brain stays so focused. Mine’s currently planning three possible career paths and which flavor of ice cream I’m getting after school.”

Ruhi smiled faintly. “You’re allowed to have options.”

“And chaos,” Sidro muttered. Then, a bit more softly, “You ever think about what happens after all this?”

Ruhi blinked, surprised by the shift in tone.

Sidro didn’t meet her gaze, instead tracing the rim of her notebook with her nail. “Like… what if we all just scatter after graduation? What if everything changes?”

Ruhi finally looked up, thoughtful. “Change doesn’t mean we lose everything. Some things stay. If they’re meant to.”

It wasn’t a deep philosophical answer. But Sidro nodded like it meant something anyway.

Across the room, Irfan was pretending to take notes, but his notebook had a comic strip forming in the margins. Stick figures—one of them clearly wearing Sidro’s giant earrings, the other tripping over a scarf that looked suspiciously like Ruhi’s.

“Don’t think I don’t see that,” Sidro warned him.

He grinned shamelessly. “Art is pain.”

“You’re pain,” she shot back.

Mr. Graham cleared his throat, and all three sat up a little straighter.

When class ended, they filed out together, the hallway filled with the familiar shuffle of shoes and lockers slamming shut. Junaid joined them just outside the classroom, slipping into step with the group as if he’d always been there.

“What’s up?” Irfan asked, tossing a mock punch toward his shoulder.

Junaid dodged it easily. “Nothing much. Just heading to the lab early.”

“You always head somewhere early,” Sidro muttered. “What, are you secretly eighty?”

Junaid gave a rare smile. “Routine helps.”

They walked in easy rhythm through the hall. No one said it aloud, but these were the moments that made everything feel a little more real. Not the grades. Not the announcements over the speakers. Just… this. Friends teasing each other. Small silences. Big questions wrapped in casual words.

As they passed the courtyard windows, Ruhi slowed for a moment. Outside, frost still clung to the grass in patches—remnants of a season not quite ready to let go.

Inside her, something echoed that.

Junaid didn’t speak much on the way to the science wing. Irfan kept the jokes coming, Sidro rolled her eyes, and Ruhi stayed mostly quiet—her gaze sometimes drifting to the sky as if reading it for answers.

But Junaid noticed things.

He noticed the way Sidro’s voice always lifted when Ruhi was distracted—like she was trying to anchor her back to the moment. He noticed Irfan’s chaos was a cover for his restlessness, his need to be heard, to belong.

And he noticed Ruhi.

Not in the loud, dramatic way people talked about crushes or feelings. No, it was more like… awareness. She had a kind of presence that didn’t demand space but still filled it. Calm, purposeful. Like someone who prayed before acting, who thought before speaking.

That stuck with him more than he expected.

They reached the lab, and Junaid split off from the group. He had said he wanted to set up early—and he did. But also… he needed quiet.

As he arranged the wires for the new water circuit diagram, his thoughts wandered.

He’d been working harder lately—applying to science competitions, cleaning up his grades, helping the juniors. Not for show, but because time felt like it was tightening around him. Everyone was quietly moving toward something—some goal, some future.

He wasn’t sure what his looked like yet.

But he knew one thing: whatever came, he wanted to meet it with intention. With ihsaan.

A light knock on the table snapped him back. He looked up to see Ruhi at the other end of the lab bench, her scarf slightly askew from the wind, cheeks still touched by the cold.

“I brought the extra tubing from the back cabinet,” she said.

“Thanks,” he replied, offering a small nod.

There wasn’t much else said. She handed it over, turned, and rejoined Sidro and Irfan, who were now bickering about something involving soda cans and “controlled explosions.”

Junaid let the faint smile tug at his lips.

Sometimes, it was enough to just be present. To notice, to reflect, to keep going.

And even if his thoughts occasionally drifted—toward Ruhi, toward the uncertainty of the future—he trusted that what was meant would find its way.

For now, he returned to the wires. Steady

hands. Steady heart.

A few minutes later, Sidro plopped down beside Ruhi with her tray, dramatically placing a single bread roll on her plate. “Tell me why they’ve given us one bread roll like we’re rationing during a war.”

Ruhi blinked. “Maybe because you skipped breakfast again?”

Sidro gasped. “How dare you speak the truth like that.”

Just then, Irfan appeared, balancing his tray like he was walking a tightrope. “I got two bread rolls,” he announced proudly.

Sidro stared. “How?”

“I made eye contact with the lunch lady and told her I had low blood sugar,” he said, biting into one like it was a victory prize.

Ruhi and Junaid both stifled a laugh.

“You’re a menace,” Sidro muttered, stealing one anyway.

For a moment, the four of them sat around the same table—different, yet comfortable. No one was trying too hard. No one needed to.

Junaid leaned back slightly, letting the conversation swirl around him. Maybe he didn’t have everything figured out. Maybe he didn’t need to.

And somewhere between the quiet moments and stolen bread rolls, he felt it again—that calm. That sense of barakah in the ordinary.