Abu Fahd was still talking. I tried to focus on what he was saying.
“Sorry, what?”
“We have no passports or visas. No certificates of birth.”
“You’re illegal immigrants.”
“Yes,” he said. “From Mexico.”
“Mexico?”
“I’m from Iraq. I lived in Afghanistan during the Soviet jihad and then in Pakistan for a while. Then we came to Mexico and made our way here.”
“Wow. That’s incredible. Maybe they should build a wall.”
“The three of us came through a tunnel.”
“Brilliant. Wait. The three of you?”
“Myself, Safwa and Qais Badami. I want to know if there is a way to change that, to make us legal, because everywhere in the news, they say if the Republicans win, they’re going to come after people like us. They’ll build a wall, ban Muslims, throw us out of the country.”
“That’s not going to happen. Have some faith in Americans.”
Abu Fahd’s little smile was slow and pained, like that of an old man struggling to stand after falling to the ground. “I have not found that to be wise.”
“Fair enough. Then let me say that for any kind of mass deportation to happen here, the government would have to come find you and everyone else who is out of status. We’re talking about federal agents rounding up millions of people across the country. They don’t have the time or resources for that.”
“So, you are saying it is not possible.”
“I’m saying I would be surprised if it happens. Very surprised.”
“That is not as reassuring as you might think it sounds.”
That too was fair.
“Is there a way for Safwa to become legal? It doesn’t matter for me. I have grown old walking the face of this world. If they throw me out, I will find some other place to die.”
I leaned forward, my elbows resting on my thighs. “If Azza married an American citizen—”
“I promised her to Qais.”
“I understand. I’m just saying that, from a purely legal perspective, it might be best for her to break that particular promise.”
“Impossible,” Abu Fahd snapped, eyes wide. “What kind of man—what kind of Muslim—breaks a promise? Is your word, your honor, not iron?”
I sighed. Obviously, Abu Fahd had never heard of the theory of efficient breach.
“Look, I’m not an immigration lawyer. I can ask my friends if there is any potential relief to be had. Maybe some kind of refugee program or some other application process I am unaware of—”
“No,” he said, rising to his feet. “No one else can know of this.”
“I wouldn’t disclose your name or identity.”
He hesitated, then shook his head. “I am satisfied with the answers you have given me.”
“I wish I had better news for you.”
“It is as Allah wills,” the large man replied with a shrug. “That has to be sufficient for me.”
“It has never been sufficient for me.”
The older man looked at me with an expression that reeked of pity. “I can tell. That is why I fear that when the Day of Judgment comes, I will not find you in the Garden.”
* * *
—
I don’t remember the punch. There was a knock on the door seconds after Abu Fahd left, so I assumed there was something else he wanted to ask me. I simply said, “It’s open.” The next thing I remember, albeit vaguely, is falling. Then I was lying there, on the gray linoleum floor, with Aamir peering down at me.
“Hit you harder than I thought.” My brother waved his hand in front of my face. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
I held up a finger of my own.
“You’re fine.” Aamir reluctantly held out a hand to help me up. “And you deserved it.”
Groaning, I got to my feet. The tiger from earlier had multiplied. Now there was a litter of feral cats in my head and everything felt scattered, blurred by pain and disorientation. Aamir held out a can of beer.
“It’s the only cold thing you have here. Hold it against your left eye.”
I took the can and popped it open. “Thanks.”
“Astaghfirullah.”
“Right.” I took a sip and let out an exaggerated sigh of satisfaction. “Totally.”
“You’re going to hell for that.”
“I’m hearing that a lot today.”
“From Abu Fahd?”
I nodded. Aamir had probably seen him leaving, and most likely knew the man from the mosque. It didn’t matter just then. Walking to the couch, I draped myself over it. “She told you then?”
He sat down across from me and placed a hand on his head in a way that made him appear very tired. The anger that had driven him to strike me was gone, and it had left him deflated. “That you slept with my fiancée. Yes. She told me.”
“I’m not sure if this helps but I would like to say, in my defense, that she wasn’t your anything back then.”
“What was she to you, exactly?”
I stared out the nearest window and said nothing. It wasn’t much of a view, but it was San Francisco. I loved this city because it reminded me of my childhood, of where I grew up. It vacillated between extremes, like Karachi, except in an entirely different way. In Karachi, politics had been unpredictable and volatile. In San Francisco, nature was. The weather here was capricious and whimsical. The chaos felt familiar. It felt like home.
Aamir’s presence felt like home too. Even though I often didn’t like him very much, he was part of where I belonged in the world and that was something.
“I should’ve told you.”
“You think?”
“I can’t explain myself if that’s why you are here.”
“I came here to punch you in the face.”
I raised my drink to him. “Cheers then. Mission accomplished.”
Aamir shook his head.
“It felt like it was her secret to tell,” I said. “I felt like I couldn’t say anything. Does that make sense?”
Aamir shrugged his wide, responsible shoulders. “Doesn’t matter, I guess. You did what you did. What I want to know is what am I supposed to do now?”
“I don’t know.”
He got to his feet, looked around the cramped apartment, as if trying to decide which direction to pace in, then sat down again. “We already had this big party. Everyone knows we’re engaged. Wedding invitations have gone out. What will people say if we have to cancel it?”
“I wouldn’t worry about that.”
“No,” he said, his tone venomous, “you wouldn’t. I’m serious. Tell me what to do. Every time the two of you are together, I’m going to wonder what she is thinking. Every time she is with me, I’ll wonder if…I can’t do it. You really messed me up.”
Wincing, I sat up straight. I didn’t want to be casual when I said what I wanted to say to him. I wanted him to know that I was serious. Certain to look him in the eye, I spoke more earnestly than I ever had in my life. “I really am sorry, for what it is worth.”
He held my gaze for a moment, then looked away. “This isn’t supposed to happen to me. I do everything right. Always. I resist temptation. Then you come along with whatever the heck it is that you do. It’s like you’re hacking my laptop again.”
“It was hardly hacking. And will you let that go already?”
“You put porn on my computer, Anvar, and framed me for it.”
“Yeah but…that was like one time.”
“All you ever think about is yourself. You wanted to go to prom, so you…” He trailed off and I could almost see a piece of the puzzle of my past fall into place for him. “It was Zuha. You went to prom with Zuha.”
I nodded.
He sighed and collapsed back in
to his chair, rubbing his eyes with the palms of his hands. “What happened?”
“We danced. Mostly.”
“Not with prom. I meant with Zuha. What happened between you two?”
“You want details?”
“No. I really don’t.”
“It didn’t work out. She heard a lecture by some famous imam, some Hamza Younis or something—”
“Sheikh Hamza Yusuf. How can you not know who he is? The man is an ocean of knowledge. How can you be a Muslim in California and not know who Hamza Yusuf is?”
“Whatever. She thought he was the bee’s knees. She heard more and more of his lectures and became more and more religious. Started praying regularly and, you know, us Muslims are not big on the fornication.”
“You don’t say.”
“She repented from all of it. Repented from me.”
Aamir snorted in a fair imitation of our mother’s favorite expression of contempt. “Mom’s still asking for forgiveness for you too.”
“That was that. Then after I went to law school—”
“Wait. You two dated through college?”
“The first two years, yeah.”
He counted off the numbers on the squares of his fingers, trying to do that math.
“Ten years,” I told him. “We dated a decade ago.”
“How did none of us know?” When I shrugged, he sighed, defeated. “I don’t understand. Why did she say yes when Ma asked her family about me?”
“You should ask her that.”
“I did. I want to know what she told you,” Aamir said.
“When we talked about it, it wasn’t…We just argued, okay, and I didn’t get to her reasons. Aside from spite, I guess. What did she tell you?”
He stared down at his hands. It took me a moment to realize he was looking at his ring. “She was angry that you let it happen. That you thought so little of your time together that you’d let Ma propose for me.”
“I guess she didn’t know this family doesn’t tell me anything.”
“You never ask. There was also all this pressure from her parents. She isn’t twenty-five anymore, and she’s turned down everyone they’ve introduced her to. She couldn’t come up with a good reason to say no to me. She couldn’t tell them about you. She says she’s sorry.”
“I’m sorry too,” I said again.
There was a long silence, then Aamir grimaced, got to his feet and started clearing up the bottles and cans that were lying around. “This place is a mess.”
“Leave it. I’ll get to it.”
“No. You won’t.”
Okay, so he was right about that.
“You haven’t answered my question,” he said. “What should I do?”
“Stop asking me that. I don’t know. I can tell you that, despite the fact that…Despite this situation and whatever blame falls to her for it, Zuha is one of the most beautiful souls I’ve ever known. I wouldn’t let her go.”
“Except you did.”
“She didn’t want me anymore, Aamir. I didn’t have a choice.”
He shook his head. “Naani Jaan was right about you.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, more sharply than I had a right to just then.
“She said you play checkers without courage. But it’s true about everything you do. You never stand up and fight for what you want or believe in.”
“That’s not true.”
“Really? What kind of law do you practice again?”
“That’s different,” I snapped.
“No, Anvar. Think about your life. Think about how you went to prom—”
“Come on.”
“Why’d you go all the way to Boston? It makes sense now. You ran away after breaking up with Zuha, right? It’s your nature. Remember that goat you liked so much?”
“Mikey.”
“I was ready to do it for you, to argue that you were too young. I was waiting for you to tell Dad you didn’t want to kill Mikey. But you didn’t stand up. You never do. That’s the real reason you didn’t tell me about Zuha. You’re a coward.”
I managed, somehow, to keep from telling him to shut up. I’d hurt him, and he was lashing out. But there wasn’t much more of this I could take. “You should leave,” I told him quietly, “before this gets worse.”
He dropped the last can he’d picked up and it clattered onto the floor. “I have one more question.”
“What?”
“Do you still have feelings for her?”
I held his gaze but didn’t give him an answer.
Still, he nodded, like he heard the truth I couldn’t bring myself to voice.
AZZA
When I got back from class, Abu was still awake. His face was pale. He looked older than he usually did, like the years had suddenly overtaken him. I took off my coat and greeted him. He replied in a tired voice.
“You should sleep,” I told him. “You’ve got to be at work again soon.”
And I have to write, I didn’t tell him. He could, of course, never know what I had planned. He couldn’t know that I was filling pages upon pages with half lies and incomplete truths.
“Qais managed to get the birthday present you wanted—”
“He found a gun?” I couldn’t keep excitement out of my voice.
Abu didn’t notice. “He came by with it and…I am afraid I have made him very angry with me.”
I went to sit with him. “What happened?”
“There is a lawyer here that I met. Anvar Faris.”
For a short moment, my heart started to race but then I remembered that Abu was not angry with me. If he’d found out the truth about Anvar, and what I did with Anvar, then we wouldn’t be sitting here like this. That secret of mine was safe.
“Hafeez Bhatti was saying good things about him, so I went. I told him everything. I thought only to get some advice about…” Abu waved his hands around, trying to pull the word he was searching for out of the air. “Our situation with not being here legally. I thought maybe there was something to be done. When I told Qais of this, he got very upset, started screaming. He doesn’t trust this lawyer with our secret. Doesn’t trust anyone. He says it was a foolish thing to do.”
“Who cares if he’s upset? He shouldn’t have raised his voice to you.”
“I’ve never seen him this way before,” Abu said. “Like he was barely in control of himself. When you marry him, my child, this side of him will cause you pain. I’d thought maybe he would make you happy, but after seeing his fury today…” Abu shook his head. “It will be your life’s work to make sure he doesn’t ever get upset.”
I should’ve kept silent. Instead, I spoke. “Why?”
He frowned. “What?”
“After seeing what he really is, why would you still force me to marry him?”
Something in Abu’s face shifted. I saw the tiredness of his eyes become confusion and then anger. “Force you? I asked you if you wanted to marry him. Did I not ask you? Have you forgotten?”
“No,” I whispered. “You never did.”
“Lies!” Abu said, the volume of his voice making me cringe. “You will marry him. I gave my word.”
“But I didn’t,” I said, trying to speak as gently as I could. “I was silent.”
Abu’s manner was not gentle. “What is silence if not agreement? And you accepted his bride price, did you not?”
“I wanted what he could give us,” I said. “I never wanted him.”
Abu looked at me as if I were a stranger. “Immoral,” he hissed. “Depraved. You are saying that you promised to marry a man for this?” He looked at the close walls surrounding us. “How are you better than a woman who sells herself?”
I closed my eyes, wondering how much harsher his words would be if he knew the whole truth.
“In the end,” he whispered, “you turn out to be no less filthy than your mother.”
“What? Abu—”
He slapped me hard across my face with the back of his hand.
I stared at him. He stared back. It seemed for a moment that we were equally dazed. He hadn’t raised his hand to me in so long, I’d started to hope it would never happen again.
“No,” Abu said. He said it in the way a man begs for something. “Don’t call me that. If you do not understand honor, you are no child of mine. After everything I have done for you, your blood still belongs to Yousef Ganni.”
The world shifted.
It was as if a veil that childhood had draped over memories of my own past was yanked off. I saw what was obvious for the first time.
Mama.
She had been more than the weak, broken, dying flower I’d known.
She had dared to seek happiness in the world, and she’d betrayed Abu to do it. It seemed impossible, given what I knew of her. I guess I hadn’t really known her at all.
“I should’ve thrown you out when you were born. I should have killed your mother when I found out the truth,” he said. “But I just pretended not to know. I loved her too much. This is the result. Only dishonor and misery comes from weakness.”
“Abu—”
He hit me again.
“Don’t make me do this, Safwa. Say you will marry Qais and I’ll forgive you. Please. I’ll be able to pretend again.”
I should’ve said what he wanted to hear.
But I didn’t.
I kept silent and he kept hitting me, until I wasn’t able to talk anymore, and Abu was a fountain of tears.
ANVAR
The next morning, I had sixteen missed calls from my mother. I ignored them all. I tried to drown myself in my work, but the lingering pain from Aamir’s strike kept me from focusing. The only thing I had to look forward to was a possible visit from Azza, but her father wouldn’t go to work for hours.
My phone rang again, this time a call from an unknown number. It was possible that my mother either had purchased a new phone or was borrowing one from someone to trick me into speaking to her. Those were both things she would do. However, since it was much more probable that a client was calling, I answered. It was Qais Badami.
The Bad Muslim Discount Page 24