“Thanks,” I said, “for earlier. Quoting the Prophet was very smart.”
“Baiting a wounded lion was not very smart though,” he said, but he said it without judgment. Fahd was one of those men who was surprisingly gentle. At seventeen, he was as tall as my father, which meant that he towered over most people. In fact, with his wide shoulders and thick neck, with his square face and high brow, he looked like a younger version of Abu.
Except that he never raised his voice and was more interested in science than in war. He was smart and always knew the right thing to say, like he had done with our father earlier, but he never cut anyone with his words.
“What?” Fahd asked, smiling at me as he sat across from me, folding his legs underneath himself.
“I was just thinking about how much I like you.”
His smile widened. “Come on, eat.”
I reached for the bread and uncovered the plate. Timman ou keema. I think that is what it was supposed to be anyway. To say that the minced meat was hopelessly charred would have been…generous, but I was feeling pretty generous toward my brother just then.
“Go on,” he said.
I took a deep breath and took a bite.
I managed to swallow it.
Fahd was looking at me, obviously trying to gauge my reaction.
“Have you heard the saying ‘When the mother dies, the house dies’?” I asked him, knowing full well that he had. When he nodded, I said, “Do you think that’s because they all starve?”
“It isn’t that bad.”
“I really shouldn’t complain.”
“You really shouldn’t,” Fahd said. His smile faded as he regarded me. “You know that we’re going to be fine, right? We’ll be okay.”
I know you’ve been running the water in the bathroom when you can’t help crying, I almost told him, so no one will hear your sobs. He was trying to be strong though and I let him be what he thought he needed to be.
“I know,” I said. “We’ll be fine.”
ANVAR
In California, I met Zuha Shah. She was pretty, but she wasn’t the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. There was something about her, however, that demanded and captured my attention. I was always aware of her presence, always conscious of where her slender form was in a room, always listening for her voice, always looking for her flashy, swift, capricious smile.
I spent days trying to think of clever things to say to her but, as sometimes happens with fourteen-year-old boys around fourteen-year-old girls, when the chance to speak came, I promptly forgot all the topics of conversation I had so meticulously mapped out.
I was more aware of myself when Zuha was around. I was aware of the awkward, lanky nature of my frame and the fact that my voice had not quite broken. For the first time in my life, I worried about how my hair looked and how my outfits were put together.
Being young is easy until you begin to worry about the opinions of other people.
On a humid summer afternoon, I found myself alone with Zuha in her parents’ living room. Everyone else was in the backyard, attempting to barbecue burgers. The smoky smell of overcooked, heavily spiced beef patties and charcoal filled the house. Zuha was curled up on a black leather couch, her gaze fixed on a book, her heart-shaped face partially veiled by her rich brown hair.
I sat across from her, pretending to be enchanted by the soulless, hotel-lobby-caliber art decorating the Shah home. Every few minutes, I let out a dramatic sigh, and then glanced over at Zuha, wondering when she would ask me what was wrong.
She kept reading as if I didn’t exist. I allowed myself one final, defeated, deep breath and started to rise from my chair, when I realized that her sublime eyes, lined with kohl, were fixed on me.
I hovered in place, caught between standing and sitting. Why wasn’t she saying anything? I should say something. But what? My chest tightened. Her gaze, which I had so desired a moment ago, was heavy with crushing expectation.
I glanced over the room, searching for something to talk about. Love the artificial flowers on the mantel. Did you pick them yourself? No, that was stupid. Had I always been stupid? Seemed like something I would remember.
The cover of the book in her hands caught my eye and I let myself collapse back into the chair. “Harry Potter? Isn’t that for little kids?”
Zuha flicked her hair over her shoulder and fixed me with a withering glare that nearly wilted my soul. “What are you reading these days?”
I shrugged. I’d never actually read a novel. I’d been to our neighborhood library in Karachi, the Shalimar Library. It hadn’t been what you would call highbrow; doubling as a Bollywood movie rental store, it stocked only Archie Comics and Mills & Boons.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?” She adopted a horrid fresh-off-the-boat Indian accent. “Isn’t that for…like, morons?”
My face felt warm. “I don’t sound like that.”
“No.” Zuha set her book aside and leaned forward a little, offering me a small, conciliatory smile. “You don’t. I’m sorry. You don’t like to read, huh?”
“Never tried it.”
“How’s that possible?”
“All I’ve ever had are textbooks.”
She stared, eyes wide. “Really? Your parents don’t buy you books?”
My mother was very much a woman of one book and my father didn’t care to read anything but newspapers. I shrugged.
Zuha leapt to her feet. “Come with me.”
I followed her as she bounded up a flight of stairs. Her blue jeans looked so good. Had Shaitan himself dropped by to whisper filthy, scandalous desires to my agitated heart? I knew the right thing to do, the Muslim thing to do, was to avert my eyes. There was no way in hell I was going to do that.
When Zuha walked into her room, my step faltered. I’d never been in a girl’s room before, and Zuha probably hadn’t known she’d invite anyone into her private sanctum today. If her room was anything like mine, it would be a mess. I might see a bra lying around. Ya Allah, please let there be a bra lying around.
“Come on.” Zuha waved for me to enter.
Her room was a lot less pink than I’d imagined a girl’s room would be. No stuffed animals and, sadly, no stray underwear to be seen anywhere. The air smelled of peaches or nectarines, and the curtains were pulled back to let the day’s warm sunshine filter in. The double bed was neatly made. I was careful not to look at it for more than an instant. I didn’t want her thinking that I was thinking of her on the bed or, worse, of us on the bed together.
My father had once given me the “birds and the bees” talk. It had been brief. He’d asked me if I was studying biology in school.
“I am, Dad.”
“All of it?”
“Yes?”
He’d nodded, apparently satisfied that his work in this regard was done. Despite my father’s casual parenting in this area, I knew things. I had internet access. I knew what beds were for, and I was sure that Zuha knew what they were for as well.
Aside from the bed, the most noticeable thing in the room was the massive oak shelf that ran the entire length of the far wall. It overflowed with books of every description. I’d never seen anything like it before. I stepped up to it and, without realizing what I was doing, I ran my fingers over a section that housed classics bound in soft leather, their spines glittering with golden lettering. When I finally looked away, I saw Zuha studying me.
“Well?” she asked.
“Beautiful. The books. I meant the books. The books. Your books are beautiful.”
Zuha flashed a brilliant smile that gripped me like exposed, live electric wiring. “I know.” She walked over to stand near me. She was closer than she had ever been before. Parched, I would’ve asked for a glass of water, if it hadn’t meant she would step away.
Reaching past m
e to pluck a book off the shelf, she smelled as sweet as caramel and white roses. As she handed over the volume she had selected, her manner was nearly reverent. “The first Harry Potter. It isn’t for little kids. Well, it’s a little for kids but…Will you trust me and read it?”
I did. She could have asked me for anything and I couldn’t have refused her request.
When I was done, we talked about the book. I finally had something to say I knew she was interested in hearing. Then she lent me another book and another one after that. Our conversations, most of them on the phone, were hours long and, though initially focused on books, slowly came to be about everything. We became friends, though I pretended to barely know her when my parents were around. My mother was of the opinion that Islam prohibited intercourse between the sexes, in every sense of the word. Her view of the world would simply not allow her to believe that I could be just friends with Zuha Shah, or any girl for that matter, without serious moral peril.
Rather than enduring endless Bariah Faris lectures about my friendship with Zuha, I chose to keep it a secret. What my family didn’t know, after all, couldn’t hurt me.
* * *
—
“You were reading. Again?” Naani Jaan asked. Her voice was thin and marred by the static of a bad connection, but the suspicion in it came through just fine.
I sat up in bed, setting aside Tolkien for a minute, and pressed the phone to my ear a little harder to hear her better. “You don’t believe me?”
“I don’t need to believe you,” my grandmother said. “Your father was talking my ear off about how you’re finally taking an interest in your studies.”
“I’m not reading for school. I’m just reading for fun.”
“And there is no other reason?”
“Does there have to be another reason?”
“There doesn’t have to be,” Naani conceded, “but there usually is when young men make drastic changes to the way they live their lives. For the last few months, every time I’ve called, you’ve been reading something or other.” I started to protest but she cut me off. “You. Who never met a book before. Now, we don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, but something is most certainly going on.”
I definitely did not want to talk about it. Not that there was anything to talk about.
“Nothing is going on,” I said.
“Fine.” Naani harrumphed. “So, how is California?”
I looked outside my bedroom window. When my father had said we were moving to San Francisco, he’d been exaggerating quite a bit. We had moved to Fremont, the suburbiest suburbia in history. It was a very horizontal city, with a lot fewer people than there were in Karachi. The streets were quieter and cleaner, and the weather was nicer, but life was, surprisingly, not all that different.
In a way I’d been in training to become an American all my life. I spoke the language, and I knew all the cultural touch points—the movies other kids spoke about, the video games they played, the sports they followed, the music they listened to—none of it was foreign to me. I belonged here as much as I belonged anywhere, even if I didn’t know many people or needed to print directions off MapQuest to get anywhere.
There was no culture shock—though I may have gawked a little at the first short skirt I saw…and maybe the second one too—because even though I’d never stepped foot on U.S. soil, I knew this place. I’d seen it on screens my entire life.
“It’s nice. Dad’s been trying to find a good desi restaurant.”
Getting used to the food was the hardest part of the move. Everything tasted a little off. White bread was too sweet, and the frozen naan from Indian stores smelled like stale masalas. Fruits and vegetables were dull, like mere approximations of what they were supposed to be, maybe because the soil was different, or maybe it was the water.
Worst of all, the tea was atrocious. Fortunately, Mrs. Shah had hooked Ma up with a Tetley smuggling operation local aunties ran with a network of relatives and friends who snuck orange pekoe across the border from Canada. Demand was high and the supply chain unreliable, so what little of the good stuff we got was reserved for grown-ups.
“I trust your sweet potato of a father will find something to his liking soon,” Naani said dismissively. “Tell me about the girl.”
“What girl?”
“Anvar.”
“Naani Jaan. You said we didn’t have to talk about it.”
“I lied. I do that sometimes. I don’t see why you can’t tell me. You know I won’t tell anyone,” my grandmother assured me. “I just need to know.”
“Why?”
“So that I will know more than everyone else, of course.”
I shook my head.
“So there is a girl?” Naani prompted into the silence.
“Maybe.”
“Does she have a name?”
“No,” I said with a laugh.
“She already sounds like a very strange young woman,” Naani said. “I approve of strange young women. Just don’t do anything stupid.”
“Me? I would never.”
* * *
—
Oddly enough, Ma had the easiest time finding her place in California. Her hijab attracted other Muslim women of a similar age into her orbit like a beacon. Without saying anything at all, Bariah Faris managed to tell the world what her values were and found like-minded individuals eager for new society. Within a few months, she was a regular at the parties and religious halaqas that the really quite secure housewives of Fremont hosted every other week.
Aamir should’ve had trouble fitting in at college, with his pants above his ankles and his wispy beard untouched by a razor of any kind, but he found a niche with the Muslim Students Association at Berkeley.
It was Imtiaz Faris who had the hardest time finding his place in the States. He didn’t feel like he could go to the mosque and talk to people there about music or classic Hollywood movies. So he sulked his way through the playdates Ma set up for him with the husbands of her new acquaintances. I heard him sigh a lot through discussions about stock markets, old cricket matches and theological conundrums, none of which he had any interest in.
I was the beneficiary—victim, really—of his loneliness. He dragged me out on long walks through quiet neighborhoods adjoining our own. During these tame excursions, he spoke at length about all kinds of things, telling me stories from his childhood on some nights and reviewing for me in detail Bollywood blockbusters on others.
“I don’t understand why everything has to be so…”
“What?” I asked.
“There is no variety in the life here. It is all planned. Look at these houses. They’re all the same. A couple of facades that they build over and over again. Everywhere you go, there is a Target, a Wal-Mart, a McDonald’s. Everywhere there is First Street and Main Street. Some of the most imaginative people in the world, Americans, and still their world is so same to same.”
He did have a point. Karachi didn’t feel this manufactured. Almost all homes, especially in older neighborhoods, looked different. There were no big chain stores to speak of, so depending on where you went to shop, you’d have a different experience.
We had McDonald’s and Pizza Hut but only one location of each in one of the largest cities in the world. It was a little weird to see the same golden arches at every other freeway exit.
“People like familiar things, I guess.”
“It isn’t familiar to me,” my father said. “It makes me miss home. All this order. I’m not used to it.”
“Ma likes it.”
“Of course Bariah likes it,” he grumbled. “This is probably what she thinks paradise is like. Every road has street signs and all the trains run on time and there are no gunshots anywhere to be heard.”
I grinned. “It sounds horrible when you put it like that.”
“You know what I mean. Now come on. Let’s go farther down this way. Maybe we’ll find something new.”
We didn’t find anything new that night. It was several months, in fact, before he spotted A Pretty Good Ice Cream Parlor. Actually, he heard it before he saw it because the mournful guitar notes coming from the little shop clashed hopelessly with the jaunty Bollywood song he’d been humming.
“What’s that?” he asked, looking around. Then, without waiting for an answer, he began following the music, drawn to it like a child of Hamelin.
A bell tinkled overhead as we walked into a cramped store with a very old man sitting behind a display of rather limited ice cream flavors.
“Come in, please,” the man said with a quick smile, urging us forward with a wave of his hand. Grabbing a cane, he struggled to his feet. “Always nice to see new faces. Now we have a few fun flavors this week, and—”
My father held up a hand, stopping him midsentence, and then pointed up, like he was pointing to God. The shopkeeper frowned and looked at me for an explanation.
“The music,” I said softly, trying to squeeze as much of an apology as I could into my tone.
That earned us a wide grin. “Of course,” the man said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world for someone to wander into his business just to listen to what the radio was playing.
I stepped up to the display and was struggling to choose between Ginger Lemon Snaps and Dark Chocolate, when the song that had caught my dad’s attention ended. He let out a great big sigh, then with a sheepish shrug said, “Sorry.”
“I understand,” the storekeeper said, “I really do. I’m Good.”
“I also am fine,” Dad said.
“No, that’s my name. Joseph Good.”
Dad held out a hand. “What was that?”
“That,” Joseph said, “was Johnson. You never heard Blind Willie Johnson? ‘Dark Was the Night’?”
“Never.”
“Then you haven’t lived, have you? What kind of music do you listen to?”
The Bad Muslim Discount Page 5