Girl Fighter

Part 1: Girl - Chapter 1

ONE MONTH TO FIGHT NIGHT: THURSDAY 20TH MAY 2010

It was peak hour in the evening, late May, after a bad spring in London. Aliyah cycled westward along the Albert Embankment towards Battersea. Normally, it would be warm enough to dispense with a cycling jacket, yet winter clung to England. The dirty rainwater made for poor riding conditions; mud sprayed over Aliyah's legs as she pedalled. The cars were jammed bumper to bumper along the narrow streets of South London. It gave Aliyah smug satisfaction to effortlessly cruise by the vehicles. Yet she was anxious to get to Battersea for her Mixed Martial Arts training. She had hoped to visit the bike shop around the corner from the park for a quick inspection on her gears before the class at six, but a four o'clock meeting took longer than expected and she only managed to get away from her Southbank office after five thirty.

As Aliyah manoeuvred around each car trying to knock her over, she swore silently at every faceless vehicle, wondering how many were swearing back. The mutual, unspoken hatred between cyclists and motorists in London had once almost caused Aliyah to assault a driver when he opened the door a second before she skirted by his car. She had seen too many dooring tragedies, fuelling anxiety every time she rode past a parked car. With each near miss she would explode into an unladylike swearing fit.

Aliyah wished she could get a grip on her anger; she wondered why her world was plagued with rage. Earlier that day she had joined her team of software engineers to discuss their plan for the major project deployment tomorrow. During the meeting, she'd wanted to pounce on Jeremy, one of her colleagues, and give him a whack on his stupid thick head after he openly criticised her work.

"Aliyah, I don't know what languages you speak at home, but please don't be putting these fancy lingos into our programmes."

Jeremy's words replayed over and over and she imagined witty rebuttals. Her teammates, all of them men and on average over a decade older, had laughed at his remarks. Jeremy often made snipes about her trying to leave office at five on the dot so she could get to training. Initially, she thought he was sore about her not putting in the overtime, but he also added comments about how a girl should not be involved in violent sports.

It had been a stressful few months at work, made worse when she had to balance her overtime with training for her debut MMA tournament, a mere four weeks away. Both were equally important, but work paid the bills.

As she approached Battersea Park Road, Aliyah started mentally preparing for the two-hour session that night. A wave of tedium swept over her. For the past two weeks she had been training three times a week and running an average of twenty kilometres in addition to fight classes. The training was only going to intensify. Between work and training any precious time left was badly needed for housework and recovery. Aliyah felt tired and hungry, which made her more short-fused. She knew from previous kickboxing fight experiences that the fatigue would get worse. Each morning she would wake to aches and often struggle through the day, craving food. In spite of the exercise she was doing each day, Aliyah was mindful of how easy it was to gain weight and the disastrous consequence should she exceed the limit of her weight class before her tournament.

It was six pm and she was metres from the gym. She wondered if she rode past a delicious waft of aromatic spiced lamb or if her growling stomach had conjured her vision of a magnificent dinner spread. Either way it'd be hours before she would to sink her teeth into food. Aliyah let out a sigh and locked her bike against a cast iron lamppost, glancing across the street at a bicycle store. A tall, thin man with dark brown hair walked to the door and flipped the sign from 'Open' to 'Closed' in a hurried motion. John, the owner of the shop. Despite her anxiousness to arrive on time, Aliyah paused and reflexively gazed at John until he disappeared into the store. Momentarily, she wanted to abandon the stress of training and go out for dinner with him. Then she realised they had never had a meal together before and it would be strange to ask. She snapped back into reality resignedly, stuffed the keys into her pocket and sprinted toward the gym.