In Our Mad and Furious City

by Guy Gunaratne

  You see, my sons, the verses written along these walls? If you learn Arabic you can read this mosque like a book. But remember it is all written with belief, ah? Without belief all you have is art—but what art, nah?

  Irfan seemed uncomfortable in this foreign mosque. He was bored and burdened with pimples and gamey limbs. For my brother, at thirteen, my father’s talk of eternal art and attempt to inspire and nourish us with faith came too late. This was a memory that had all the simplicity of a photograph for me. Abba opening the world up with every story, and me and Irfan listening on, one enraptured, one indifferent. How distant all that seemed to me now.

  * * *

  Riaf had disappeared into the crowd. I watched my brother perform his dhikr while attending to my own prayers. Irfan rose at every verse with taut motion, ungraceful in his prayer. My head came down to the floor and I focused on his breath beside me. I wondered what he was praying for, the words he used when praying. My own were for Irfan and my mother. For Irfan I asked for a way out. For my mother some peace. The chanting diffused around us as the sound of shuffling feet carried off our submissions into heaven.

  Irfan stood up beside me. I saw that his knuckles wore a fresh, darkened bruise. I took ahold of his hand to see, but he refused me. I hadn’t time to ask where or how he had gotten it. Suddenly Riaf appeared, grabbing both of our arms. He began to lead us toward the side of the hall.

  Where we going? I asked.

  Told you, ennet. Imam wants to see you two.

  I took hold of Irfan’s hand and followed Riaf past the kitchen, where food was being steamed and prepared. We were weaving through Muhajiroun lines. I noticed the Muhaji standing against walls and doorways dressed in brown kameez and their usual black topi, doling out pamphlets huddled in their Puffa jackets, reciting. They were like docile and mannered watchdogs, herding others out as we passed into the library.

  Riaf led on, no trace now of the menace he had displayed in the Square, the proper prick I knew him to be. In mosque he was all pious duty and obedience. A group of Muhaji, who were standing by the door, suddenly fell silent as we approached.

  I felt something give way in my stomach as we approached the imam’s door. It was behind this door my brother and I used to sit after school waiting for Abba to finish his official mosque business. Darker themes ran through these corridors now. In my heart I knew that Abu Farouk’s rise came only after my father’s passing. Now we were in the hands of these people, possessed, it seemed, with a coarser kind of narrative than my father had wanted instilled in his sons.

  Sit there, said Riaf directing us toward a wooden pew by the noticeboard, then disappearing behind the office door. It was quieter back here, away from the hall, where food was being served. We sat together in silence for a moment. I realized Irfan and I had no claim to make here anymore, proper impotent now, our shared memories fading. Nevertheless I wanted to find some connection I could hold on to.

  You remember we used to sit here when we were kids? I ventured, whispering.

  I tried to sound weightless, as if the memory evoked a better feeling than it did. My brother didn’t answer me, consumed still by worry. The thought struck me that we barely knew each other now, our childhoods were so long ago. It was our parents who had taught us this silence. Abba was the pious father devoted to his work; Amma was subservient, neglected by him and ignored by us. We never sat together, elbow to elbow, like this. And it was only at moments of rupture, Abba’s death and my brother’s admissions, that we were reminded of what we’d lost. I suppose we all felt lonely, ennet, and left behind after Abba’s passing. There was nothing to hold us together now except our memories.

  I looked over at him. As we had grown apart, we had lost our ability to speak, to communicate, to love. But I had to try.

  I offered him my hand. I held it there in midair between us. Then slowly, my heart rising with it, I watched his own hand reach up and clasp mine. A charge gripped us both in front of my father’s door. I tightened my palm around his.

  He spoke.

  This imam, he said.

  His words tipped out of his mouth with such coldness. He started babbling then, repeating imam, imam, imam as if he couldn’t help himself. I searched his eyes. I looked down at my hand in his. He was in a worse way than I thought. Although I felt his skin, his warmth, and knew his face like my own, it was as if he were an apparition. Not my brother but the shape of him. What was he trying to say? I looked at the door in front of us. Abu Farouk, he was why we were here. Imam would tell us, he was saying, Farouk was the authority and father to us now. It was fear but also some desperate hope. I tried to calm him but I felt a creeping dread at knowing that the secret we tried to keep had come out. Whispers about Irfan, son of the former imam, visited by the police after his wife had run away to Pakistan. Such things would not be taken lightly. Something would have to be done.

  The door opened and we let go our hands and stood.

  Riaf nodded at us to step inside.

  Familiar dust settled as we entered Abba’s former office. I smelled my father’s scent, sweet milk and varnish. Saw the familiar short wooden shelves of leather spines, heavy books, the parquet floorboards, worn down now after years of leaden feet.

  Abu Farouk was behind the desk, his beard dyed red with henna. His chin was stuffed under some thin little bandage as he sat, pen in hand, like some moldering sage. He had not looked up. Behind his hunched turban hung a colossal fabric with the many names of Allah written in flowing Arabic glyphs. The carpet was drawn up either side of the far wall, transforming the room into some mad fakiri tent-house. This new imam was sat in my father’s chair, I saw. It made every familiar thing in the room assume betrayal.

  Sit, came his voice.

  His face was scarred, his nose discolored, and his dark eyes were set behind thin spectacles as if they’d been pecked from ball bearings. He was wearing a turban with his ears tucked under the lower fold. He was a pauper to me, this Farouk. Seemed small behind his imposing wooden desk. Unworthy of the mantle.

  This thing see? Abu Farouk said and looked at me. I have a terrible pain in my teeth. My molar come off. He gestured with a dry hand to the stained bandage cradling his jaw, waving to show his misery.

  I sat with my palms under my thighs while he stared at my brother like he was disgusted by his sight.

  Irfan. Boy. How are you?

  I’m okay.

  I glanced over my shoulder at Riaf, who was hovering by the door with his arms behind his back like some muted shadow-carved djinn. I caught Abu Farouk gesture to Riaf to leave. The door shut, the key turned, and the imam held my eyes.

  Yusuf. Keeping care of Amma?

  I moved to speak, then couldn’t, then did.

  Try to, I said, my voice strained and small.

  She is very unstable now, you know? With all this.

  He leaned back in his chair cupping his thin wrists. I looked away.

  You both know Uncle Imran, no? Uncle Imran, who is lawyer, will help with Irfan’s legal issues, okay?

  Thank you, I said.

  Abu Farouk picked his glasses off and held them with his forefingers and thumb inspecting papers on his desk. He wouldn’t look at Irfan, speaking about him but addressing me.

  We will not help with the costs, the legal fees. You must pay Uncle Imran, but he will do it. Your father left you money, no?

  His eyes flicked up at me for some recognition. I looked down and directed all my anger at the space between the desk and the floor.

  This is all very bad for mosque, you understand?

  He let out a mulching sound with his mouth. I could see him begin to get flustered and impatient. I watched him. He seemed to retract into his seat.

  You Irfan! You forget the Sunna. You cannot see the circle of kuffar that surrounds this mosque? Surrounding us? You think now is the time for this? Do you think now that I must deal with you also? These disgusting things that you have done?

  I glanced at my brother, who sat
unmoved.

  Shameful things! Do you think you are alone when you do such things boy? Do you think you are ever alone? Allah is almighty! Allah sees all that you do!

  I glanced again at Irfan who would not or could not move. I was angry for him. I couldn’t help but grip my knees, flinching as an animal would while taking a beating. I held Abu Farouk’s gaze now, directing all my anger, my anguish, my hardness at him. But nothing seemed to penetrate. He went on speaking of my father in his room, stripping every memory with his words. My fists clenched, my nails digging into my palms. Yet I couldn’t say a word, I sat powerless.

  Abu Farouk’s ring finger rose as he went on, pointing just above our heads. He was snarling now, spitting as he spoke.

  This is what happens when you bathe among nonbelievers. The infidel does not believe what you believe, you understand? That is their abyss. Their filth. In Irfan you can see this, this heresy. This is the result of your father’s ways. You cannot see that? When he was alive he wanted us to live side by side. Abide by our way and same time, theirs. But this is bid’ah. You cannot be both.

  Irfan was crying. His body limp and sunk into itself. I saw a strange relief pulse through him. These were the words Irfan had longed for it seemed, a great wash of venom from the imam that offered absolution for his guilt.

  Abu Farouk went on, accosting, preaching, sermonizing. His blood is your blood, evil breeds in a nest that has no discipline, virtue and goodness come only from Allah. Sitting upright now he placed his spectacles back onto his nose, pointing to the window.

  You do not see these thugs marching, shouting insults at our beliefs? Holding pictures of the Prophet, burning these pictures! Urinating on all that is ours? There is no place for this. Now it is a time to be hard, you understand? Your abba’s weakness is behind us. Look and see how his son has suffered. The only path now is the true path.

  He stopped and gathered himself. He switched his eyes to the cupboard by my side.

  Open the drawer and take out the things.

  I stood and walked over to the brown cupboard. I drew it open and saw several sets of neatly folded salwar kameez and topis. I instantly recognized them as the Muhaji dress worn by the young men of the new imam’s order. The old man directed me to pull out two identical sets. I slowly picked one up. The cloth was light, coarse, hand-stitched, and desert-made. I pulled out another for Irfan, pushed back the drawer, and moved them from my chest to my lap as I sat down.

  Immediately Irfan reached over and placed his hand on them. I looked at him. He was empty-eyed and numb. As he was about to take the kameez on top, a roughly stapled booklet fell out. I picked it up and saw that it showed an Arabic symbol, white against black, in blotched and rounded letters that I could not read. At the bottom it read in big shining letters an underlined passage attributed to a name, Shaykhul-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah.

  Abu Farouk spoke.

  Our Muslim brethren will soon be the whip hand in the East. They are building schools. A new generation.

  He went on then to talk of the West, Irfan’s corruption, and my own failure as a brother. He spoke of London as a city of darkness and impurity. He spoke of mosque, the Muhajiroun, and himself, of sanctuary, purity, and sublimity. My brother could still be saved, he said. Pulled back from the abyss.

  In this room, in this mosque, it was no longer our father who had hold of our fates. Abu Farouk, our imam, was our new authority now.

  After tomorrow you must make preparations. You will return to Pakistan. Your Mother Country. This has already been agreed with your amma. By grace of Allah you both will continue your education with your Muhajiroun brothers in Lahore from September, you understand? This is finish.

  Irfan and I got to our feet. The folded booklet fluttered from my lap to the floor again. I couldn’t think. I heard only the sound of the imam’s words as he spoke, I didn’t take in the meaning. I looked up and saw that the patch of dry blood from the bandage around his mouth seemed to have seeped and made a pool around his dyed red beard. A deep fear had seized me and kept me silent, obedient to him. There was no part of me that did not hate him. But I stood holding the two kameez nevertheless, shackled to my brother, as he was to Abu Farouk’s judgment. Irfan bent down then and picked up the black booklet. This was all he had now. The salvation of words deemed absolute.

  SHAME

  CAROLINE

  I’d spent the rest of the afternoon listening to music in my bedroom. I’d made such a bleeding show of it that morning. So the less of me the better, I thought. I’d brew alone instead, picking at my toe skin and staring at cover art until my head spun. But honestly, what would I do in London? I’d already had my fair share of culchie bastards in Belfast. Not that I was looking, mind you. I’d just got back home, I thought, and now they wanted to pack me off to live and finish school among the fucken enemy.

  I’d tried to flush the anger with a shower. I was folding my washed clothes and combing my hair when there was a knock at the door. I murmured a quiet come in.

  It was Damian. He had changed clothes and stood there in a fresh shirt looking at me with those dark-set eyes of his.

  You all right Carol? he said.

  I went on folding my clothes into squares for the opened drawer. Damian hung over me for a moment and then sat on the bed with his wrists between his knees.

  Ah come on, Carol, he said.

  What is it you want from me? I said.

  You sore at us, are you?

  No, I’m fine.

  Damian pulled my arm away from the folding. He had a soft expression on his face, softer than he had in the morning when he looked as stern as the others. Where was that face when I’d needed him then, I wanted to ask, but didn’t.

  You sore at me?

  I pulled my arm away and brushed the clothes down. The cloth felt warm under my fingertips, and clean. I glanced above him at the corpus on the far wall, stared up at it, to avoid Damian’s eye line. Even Christ wanted a look in, I thought, peering down on the both of us. Underneath it all, I felt an awful sadness about Eily. It was a thin, threadlike sadness that pierced me every so often like a needle. It took everything in me not to cry in front of Damian. But I kept seeing her, imagining her pain was my own.

  I’m not sore at anyone except at Ma. I told her I don’t want to go, that I want to stay and do something about. It’s not as if you can help, anyway.

  I didn’t mean to put him down, but it was the truth since Da passed. It was Ma’s way or nothing. But then I looked at Damian and saw that something else was going on. They’d been talking about me again it seemed.

  But it’s not down to Ma, Carol. Or any of us. It’s your choice to make.

  I looked up at him then and saw something cold in his eyes.

  I felt the soles of my feet press into the floor like I was tempting the wooden boards to splinter my skin. Damian’s jaw rumbled under his beard, curled and thick on his neck. I could see he was wrestling with something. He took a deep breath.

  Put a long dress on. I’m taking you somewhere.

  He took the rest of the folded clothes from me, placed them in the drawer, and closed it. Before he left he turned.

  And look, I don’t want to catch you swearing in front of your mother again. That’ll be the end of that.

  He closed the door behind him.

  I stared back at myself in the mirror. My hair tangled in the comb. I followed the curve of my face, feeling no need to tease out the knots that had caught. I knew wherever Damian was going to take me it would not be a kind place. But this was me, I thought. And this was the world. A place where a girl like Eily could be taken and used, her body ruined by soldiers and then dumped like a broken doll. I wanted to strike at that world more than anything I’d ever wanted in my life.

  * * *

  I’d been to Albernay Hall many times before. This was when I was a wee girl, Da was still alive, and Ma still had the brown in her hair. The hall was at the end of a long corridor, I remember it, the forest of legs and t
he floor that felt sticky whenever I stepped on it. I’d hang on to my aunt Cathy’s sleeve most nights as my da was being jostled by people wanting to speak to him and take him aside. They all wanted Ma too. I remember wandering through the feet of all these people, whoever they were, holding scraps of papers, big black letters and square photographs of boys and girls, sons and daughters like. My da would always make the time to hear their stories. Later I’d realize these were stories of dead children and the missing.

  He would watch their eyes and he would listen. It was Da and this other man Emmet who were the important ones like. Da would be in black suit and gray tie and that Emmet with his sleeves rolled up. Da had a thin mustache, and his thick hair would get wet with sweat as he spoke. I used to pull a face because I’d see the way both of them would spit into those microphones. I’d watch the wires tangle about, spinning through the feet of the people sat in front of me and Aunt Cathy. All I really remembered were the shoes the audience wore and the sounds they made as they listened.

  All those memories rushed back to me now, as Damian led me through those big ugly doors. The place even smelled the same.

  Carol, d’you remember I used to distract you with toys and stories anytime you’d ask about what went on here? said Damian. I’d call you a moany pony and tell you to be quiet, if only that still worked, eh?

  He led me by the hand through a crowd. There were paintings of surly Irishmen hung along wood panels. We walked toward a small stage where a single microphone stood. Here’s me then, I thought. I’d asked to see this and here I was.

  It’s time, said Damian.

  I looked up at my brother as he took off his cap, his hair flat over his ears. He was looking around anxiously at the crowd with his lips drawn tight. Then a bell was rung. I looked around and there was a small woman wearing a black dress, her small hands around a school bell. The crowd began shuffling in. Some women were crying, others needed to be held upright by their fellars. I felt my hand being released from my brother’s warm grip. He started clapping with the rest of the crowd. I clapped too. I didn’t really know why, though it sounded somber and full of grief.