The Bad Muslim Discount

by Syed M. Masood

  I tried to think of something clever to say but all I could think about was how her lip gloss seemed to shine in the dim light. “I like how you make me forget all my words.”

  She rolled her eyes, but I could tell she was pleased. “Whatever, Romeo. Let’s dance.”

  I hadn’t ever danced before but how hard could it be?

  With my most gallant smile, I began to move and promptly stepped on Zuha’s toes. She yelped, I hoped more in surprise than in pain, and I hurried to apologize, before stepping on her feet again.

  “Ow. Anvar, didn’t you learn how to dance?”

  “I was a little busy planning a covert mission against a brutal and oppressive regime.”

  “Fine. I’ll lead.”

  I shrugged. “Sure. You know how to dance then?”

  “Well…no.”

  We stood there, staring at each other, while everyone we knew twirled around us. After a moment, she began to giggle and then I started to laugh. We just held each other for the rest of the night, swaying clumsily in one place.

  It was the best time.

  When the last song ended, Zuha pulled away from me. I grabbed her girlish wrist. She looked back at me, surprise in her bright eyes.

  “Mistletoe,” I lied, pointing up at a garishly bright green streamer hanging overhead. Before she could say anything, before my own mind could protest my daring, I pulled her close and kissed her and kissed her and kissed her again.

  The raspberry and youth of those kisses have forever been fresh on my lips.

  “You should totally fall in love with me,” I told her as I walked her home.

  Her laughter echoed across the empty, dark street of the sleepy neighborhood. “That sounds like a bad idea.”

  “It’s not. It’s the best thing you’ll ever do.”

  * * *

  —

  A ghazal was playing when I got home. Haunting notes of an old song filtered out from an open window into the night’s pleasantly perfumed air, scented by Ma’s precious jasmines. It told me that my father, at the very least, was waiting up to discipline me. His discipline always came with a soundtrack. I paused at the front door. I recognized the song he had chosen, because I’d heard it before, many times. It was one of his favorites. Farida Khanum was singing “Aaj Jaane Ki Zid Na Karo.” She’d just gotten to the most beautiful lines, which mourned the fact that life is forever imprisoned by time.

  With a sigh, I let myself into the house. It looked like my father was waiting for me alone. I would be spared, therefore, the loud recriminations of my mother and the just, righteous fury of Aamir, at least for now. I’d get only Imtiaz Faris, a little less censored than usual.

  “There he is.” My father set aside the newspaper he was reading, headlined by the fall of Saddam Hussein’s Firdos Square statue in Iraq, and clapped his beefy hands together as I walked into the living room. “My bloody stupid clown prince.”

  “It’s crown prince, Dad.”

  “No, you small-brained monkey, it’s clown prince. You look like a stupid joke.”

  That was hard to dispute.

  “You went to the filthy dance, haan, to watch girls wiggle around half-naked?”

  “Yeah, Dad.” I rolled my eyes. “That’s what happens at prom.”

  “Abay, are you looking to die, Anvar? Show some respect. How come you’re always so damn smart, my little sweet donkey, except when you’re so goddamn bloody stupid that I can’t quite convince myself you’re my own child? No. Not another word. You hear me?” There was a long silence, then my father said, “Well? Answer my question. Did you go to the dance?”

  “You did say not another word, so—”

  My father grabbed a throw pillow with both hands and launched it at my head. I ducked unnecessarily. The soft projectile would’ve sailed over my head by a good meter or so anyway.

  I raised my arms in mock surrender. “Yes. I went to the dance.”

  “Did you go like a neutered goat or was it with a girl?”

  “A girl.”

  “Who?”

  “No one you know.”

  My father leaned forward on the couch to get a better angle from which to peer up the stairs. After making certain that my mother was not eavesdropping, in a quieter voice, he asked, “Did you have fun?”

  I grinned at him and whispered back, “It was kind of great.”

  In his normal voice, he said, “Doesn’t matter who it was. You’re grounded, you understand? Grounded from now until Israfil blows the horn and the world ends and the dead come back to life, so you can explain to your ancestors why you felt it necessary to heap this shame upon our family.”

  “That sounds fair.”

  “You will also apologize to your mother and to your brother. Aamir was very angry. And you don’t even know how hard it was to convince your mother not to throw his laptop into the dishwasher.”

  I nodded and my dad got to his feet.

  “I hope you regret what you’ve done.”

  I didn’t dare say anything out loud but I mouthed “no” at him. He smiled at me in response but whacked me upside the head just the same as he walked past me to go to bed.

  * * *

  —

  It was a month before my internet privileges were restored. During that time, despite my assurances that there was nothing objectionable on it, Ma took my desktop into a shop and asked them to format the hard drive twice in order to purify it of any potential filth I might have downloaded. When I was finally allowed to touch a keyboard again, I had to reinstall the operating system. It was an interminable process.

  Maybe it just felt that way because the study, redesigned to prevent the perusal of pornographic material, now made me uncomfortable. The décor in the small room had been redone. A massive poster of the Kaaba in Mecca, the black square at the center of the Islamic faith, was pinned to the wall over the monitor. From the opposite wall, the Prophet’s mosque in Medina, with its iconic green dome, peered over my shoulder to see what I was doing.

  Black-and-white pictures of my grandparents were taped to the computer tower, just above color photos of our family. On the bookshelf, a plastic bottle filled with water from Zamzam, a well sanctified by the feet of the Prophet Ishmael, sat in judgment of my online activities. Ma had even thought to change the nature of the very air in the room. A few slender sticks of agarwood smoldered on the windowsill, the musky, sweet fragrance of their smoke making it a little hard to breathe.

  I sat glaring at the Microsoft Windows 2000 symbol fluttering on my screen, willing it, without success, to take over my computer posthaste.

  The door to the study opened and Aamir marched in. He didn’t seem at all put out by changes in the surroundings. He’d probably helped plan them.

  He hadn’t spoken to me since the porn incident, so the fact that he walked up to me now, albeit with a pinched expression, like he had been munching on a bitter almond, was surprising. There was a carefully wrapped gift in his hand. I could tell it was a book, because you can always tell when it is a book. He handed it to me without ceremony and gruffly said, “For your graduation.”

  I tore into the packaging, which made him cringe. It was a battered, obviously used hardcover copy of The Remains of the Day. I flipped it open to a random page and the thick stench of strong tobacco wafted up from the pages.

  “Sorry. I got it online.” He offered me a sheepish grin. “It was supposed to be in better condition. Look at the front.”

  I opened the book gently to the title page. It was a first edition. A signed first edition. Kazuo Ishiguro himself had scrawled his name on the book in deep black ink. I gasped.

  “Aamir, this is my favorite book. He’s my favorite author.”

  “I know.”

  “How?”

  He shrugged. “It takes me a while, sometimes, to tune yo
u out when you’re talking.”

  I was still examining the book, careful not to stress its shaky, unreliable spine, when I saw an inscription in fresh ink and in Aamir’s sprawling, extravagant hand. It read: “He lived happily ever after.”

  A frenzy of shame clutched at my heart, not really for downloading porn onto his laptop, but because I had been too proud to apologize for it. “Thank you,” I said. I didn’t manage to say it as loudly as I wanted. “And I’m sorry for what I did.”

  Aamir heard me. He looked over my head, at the poster of the Grand Mosque, and perhaps it reminded him that forgiveness was a virtue because he reached over and mussed up my hair, like our father often did, and left me alone with the modest treasure he’d bestowed upon me.

  * * *

  —

  “So that strange young woman of yours finally got you into trouble, didn’t she?”

  I made desperate shushing sounds as I turned down the sound on the desktop’s speakers. The transition from phone calls to speaking to Naani Jaan over the internet was fraught with danger, but she didn’t seem to understand that. We no longer enjoyed the same privacy we once had. Sure, everyone saved money on long distance, but it also meant that anyone walking past could hear both sides of our conversations.

  Not being able to use the computer had meant no long chats with Naani Jaan, and that had been as much part of my punishment as anything else.

  “She didn’t twist my arm or anything.”

  “Twist your arm?” Naani asked. “Is that what young people are calling it nowadays?”

  “It is an expression.”

  “Yes, yes.” Naani paused to cough. “I was born under the British Raj. You think I don’t know about twisting arms? It was a joke, Anvar. You’re not the only act in town, you know.”

  “Sorry,” I said. I’d gotten into the habit of explaining things to my parents—Ma in particular—and it was a little hard to know when to stop. In their defense, the language they heard wasn’t consistent with the one they’d been taught. My mother didn’t, for example, understand how something being sick or wicked was positive. Being “the bomb” was a good thing but “bombing” something was bad. None of this was in accord with her experience.

  “Chalo, at least you aren’t denying her existence anymore. That’s progress. You remember what I told you before you left, yes? You’re being careful?”

  “I’m definitely being careful.”

  “It doesn’t sound like you’re being careful.”

  “I’m not very good at it.”

  Naani Jaan laughed and then was seized by a fit of coughing.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Fine, fine. Just need water. I’ll go get it soon. Before I do, you know, I heard all about your adventure from your brother—”

  I rolled my eyes. “Of course you did.”

  “And there is a part of the story I don’t understand.”

  “It’s not that complicated, Naani Jaan.”

  “Yes. I’m not saying it wasn’t a simpleton’s plan but what I don’t understand is this: What is porn?”

  SAFWA

  I don’t remember the first time the Americans went to war with Iraq, but I was born during that Desert Storm.

  Americans are so good at naming things.

  I don’t remember that war, but I do remember my mother telling me that I’d been born under the shadow of two flags. One red, white and black; the other red, white and blue. It was, she thought, a small difference.

  My father overheard her and laughed—he still knew how to laugh then—and said that it was a great difference indeed.

  If my mother had lived to see me turn twelve, when the Americans returned, I think she would’ve learned to agree with my father, but the cancer that robbed her of her life spared her the indignity of being wrong.

  Of course, if she had lived to see me turn twelve, she would’ve lived to see Fahd dying on the same bed that she had died on. She wouldn’t have cared about being wrong then. Nothing improves one’s perspective faster than a bit of death.

  I sat next to Fahd as he slept, holding his hand. I was supposed to be praying, but if I believed that praying for my brother would save his life, I would’ve been more like Abu, standing in salah for hours upon hours during the night, desperate tears streaming down my face, holy words silently dancing on my dry lips, until my feet swelled.

  I hadn’t knelt before Allah since Abu commanded me to stop grieving for my mother. I’d felt guilty about not praying then. When had that feeling gone away?

  Maybe when Fahd’s body had turned on itself. Dr. Yousef said that a series of small clots had formed inside Fahd, robbing his heart and kidneys of oxygen. He was breathing, but not getting enough air. He was on dialysis now, and damage I couldn’t see would end him soon.

  “A rare and lethal condition,” Dr. Yousef said, “but perhaps not rare enough.”

  Or maybe I stopped believing with the second coming of the Americans. How much of God’s power had these men taken for themselves? They rained fire from the sky, made the earth shake, and could spare life and take it whenever they desired, without consequence. They elevated those they liked to power and then took that power away when they wished. Their word was sent to everyone around the world, streamed from the heavens into every home through their electronic messengers, television and radio.

  All men are created equal.

  Except not really, because some men are created American. Other men are created rich. Some men are created American and rich and are still not content with the world they inherit, so they try to change it. They try to make it more to their liking by painting it with blood and flame.

  A rare and lethal condition, but perhaps not rare enough.

  God wouldn’t give up so much of his power to men, and certainly not to men such as these. At least, no God I would bow before.

  I sat with Fahd for around ten minutes, which was enough time to fool Abu, and then made my way to the kitchen. Abu was sitting at our small table, waiting for his dinner, his face buried in his hands.

  There wasn’t much to give him. I put a handful of olives on a plate, along with bread that had aged into a cracker and some hummus. I served his dessert, a couple of hard dates stuffed with almonds, at the same time, which made it seem like we had more food than we did.

  In the three years since Mama had passed, I’d become an adequate cook through trial and error and by looking up recipes on the internet, but there was nothing I could make if there was nothing to cook with. There hadn’t been much in the house since Abu lost his job. The factory he’d worked at once was rubble now.

  Duty done, I started to walk out of the kitchen when Abu said, “Sit with me, Safwa.”

  I hesitated, then did as he asked.

  He didn’t say anything for a while. He just stared at what little food I’d been able to give him without touching it. I glanced at the clock over his head, struggling not to fidget in my chair.

  Six and a half minutes passed before he spoke again.

  “I feel like we do not know each other’s minds, you and I.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. Where had that come from? It was true, but it had always been true. It had never seemed to bother him before.

  He nodded when he saw me struggling for an answer, as if that was exactly what he expected. “Have you eaten?”

  “Yes,” I lied.

  “People say that tragedy brings family together. We’ve had our share of tragedy, you and I.”

  “We have.”

  More silence.

  “It is a mother’s place to be the friend of her children. A father provides for them.” Abu picked at his bread. It snapped between his fingers. A small smile touched his lips. “I fear that Allah has not given me the capacity to be a mother to you…or much of a father, at least these days.”<
br />
  “It’s not your fault.”

  Abu let out a deep breath. “I will go out to look for work again tomorrow.”

  And I will probably return with nothing to show for it, he didn’t say, just like thousands upon thousands of others. I didn’t say that either because it would’ve been cruel. A small hope is better than no hope at all.

  “Where will you go?”

  With a pained twist of his lips, Abu said, “The Americans have work. People line up for it. I can clean their toilets and their floors for them if I am lucky.” I jumped as he pushed back from the table, getting to his feet with more speed than I was used to seeing him move with. “I can see no other way, Safwa. The world is closed to me. We must have money for Fahd’s treatment.”

  I nodded. Space in the hospital was dear, but Fahd needed regular dialysis treatments to live. If that meant cleaning up American shit, then it meant cleaning up American shit. Was Abu ashamed to do it or did he think that I’d be ashamed of him if he did?

  I watched him pace the length of his small kitchen, obviously agitated. “Okay,” I said. “That sounds good.”

  “Good?” Abu said, snarling more than speaking as he whirled to face me. “Good? There is no good in this, foolish girl. There is only what is.”

  If Fahd had been awake, he probably would have quoted the Prophet and said, “Wondrous is the affair of the Believer for there is good for him in every matter.” He wasn’t awake though, so Abu was stuck with me and I didn’t know the right things to say. I never have. He would have preferred it, I think, if I’d been the one with the rare blood disease, inhaling and exhaling and yet not really breathing at all.

  I tried to imagine what it must be like for Abu, having fought with the Americans for the freedom of Afghanistan, to now face the prospect of serving them as they invaded his own country. I could see in his dark eyes that it bothered him. It hurt his pride.

  I wanted to say something reassuring, but all I could offer him was my truth.

  “I’d do it in a heartbeat,” I said, “if you’d let me.”