Dad sounds exasperated, his voice carrying. “You can’t expect them to listen to you all the time, habibti.” Knowing Aunt Bila, this conversation has gone on for some time.
“Wallahi, I know, Muhammad,” my aunt says, and she switches into Arabic. They do this, switch indiscriminately between Arabic, Circassian, and English, even when there are no English speakers nearby.
I always assumed they spoke Arabic because they knew it better.
Maybe they speak it because they’ll lose it if they don’t.
I hear my cousin Asad’s name and realize my aunt is complaining about Houri’s younger brother. He’s seventeen years old and a bit of a troublemaker in the family: sneaking out, drinking, making bawdy comments at inappropriate times, and generally getting in trouble. His behavior is even more noticeable because he’s a fraternal twin, and his brother Amir is a perfect Muslim gentleman: has a kind word for everybody, helpful to Aunt Bila and Teta, thoughtful, dependable, and devout.
My dad says something else in Arabic, then he switches into English. “You can’t be so hard on him—you know how it is with children. And in any case, you have to let them grow. They need to make their own mistakes.”
It’s funny hearing my dad be levelheaded with other people. I’m still afraid to tell him I’m becoming religious, because I know he won’t extend the same courtesy to me. Maybe I’m being dramatic, but I think he’ll be furious when he finds out.
Dad comes back into the room, handing the phone to Teta.
“Ya habibti, Mama!” Aunt Bila says in her distinctive high-pitched voice.
The two of them go back and forth, switching from Arabic to Circassian. The language started dying out after the Circassians were forced from their homeland. Even my cousins who are fluent in Arabic don’t speak much Circassian—it’s only the older generation in our family who still does.
Yet another example of assimilation erasing little bits of home.
My great-grandparents learned Arabic.
My dad learned English.
And I’ve learned nothing.
“Is that Alia?” Aunt Bila says, switching into English as she sees me next to Teta. “How are you, ya rouhi?”
“Hi, Amto! I’m good. How are you?”
“Wallahi, missing you, ya rouhi. I wish I were there with you!”
We chat about the weather in Dallas, her bad hip, and my upcoming midterm exams. By the time Mom and Dad have finished cleaning the kitchen, we’re on to my university hopes, with Aunt Bila encouraging me to keep studying “computers.” Suddenly, she switches gears.
“Houri told me you’ve been praying, mashallah.”
I freeze, feeling under the microscope. My father is sitting across the room, head down and pen to paper as he tweaks upcoming lectures. Whenever possible, he’s analog.
“Mmm?” I say quietly, noncommittal.
“Wallahi, God will provide good things, ya Alia. I’m so proud of you. You know I didn’t even start praying until I was forty!” She laughs.
“Oh?” I wish my dad would leave the room so I could have a real conversation with my aunt.
“Does your school have any Muslims?” she asks.
“A few.”
“Are they your friends?”
“Sure.” I don’t want to get into it in front of my dad.
“I’m proud of you, ya rouhi,” she repeats. “You got there on your own. God will provide for you twice as much.”
“Thanks, Amto.”
“People have these ideas about Muslims,” she says, oblivious to the fact I don’t want to continue this conversation with my father around. Her normally sunny face looks downcast, her voice dejected.
My father puts down his stack of papers and walks into the kitchen with his coffee cup. Alone at last.
“What do you mean, Amto?” I ask. “What ideas?”
“The women are oppressed, the men are monsters. I am not a second-class citizen! The Qur’an uplifts women, not oppresses them!”
I’ve heard my aunt go off on this line of reasoning before, but I give her the space and respect, nodding as if to say, Go on.
“Before Islam, women were treated horribly. The Qur’an allowed women property, the Qur’an provided for inheritances, it gave women legal status, it allowed them the right to vote, and it encouraged their education. Here in the US, women couldn’t vote until last century. Muslim women have had that right for centuries! Wallahi, if people just knew Muslims are like them. We are the same. Maybe there wouldn’t be so much fear and hatred.”
I want to reach through the phone screen and hug her. “I love you, Amto,” I say.
My dad walks back into the room with a fresh cup of coffee, and I feel self-conscious again. I change the subject, asking how Houri is doing and complimenting my aunt on her new haircut.
When we hang up the phone, Dad looks over at me, curious. “What was all that?”
“All what?”
“Aunt Bila, talking about praying and that nonsense.”
“Uh, she’s confused,” I lie. “Teta asked me to pray with her, that’s all.”
My dad nods, mollified.
Later that night, after I give my parents and Teta hugs and kisses, I retreat upstairs to my room. I shoot Wells a good-night text, even though I don’t plan to go to sleep for ages, and I reach into my closet, pulling out my copy of the Qur’an.
Despite going to study group and meeting with the MSA, I’m still not serious enough about my studies. I’m not praying five times a day, and definitely not at the prescribed times. I’m dating Wells, which is obviously haram. And I’m lying to my dad on the regular.
Things need to change.
Allie 2.0.
I open the Qur’an, running my hand over the pages. It’s such a beautiful, miraculous book. I’m realizing it doesn’t matter to me if it’s the perfect, unchanging word of Allah or a giant game of Telephone or pieced together by men with political agendas or nuanced, gray, and somewhere in between.
When I read it, I feel connected. I feel calm. I’m part of something bigger than myself.
I flip open the cover and lose myself into the wee hours.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
It’s the smell that makes it feel like home.
The sizzling onions, the pungent garlic, the spices—the sumac and allspice and cumin and turmeric—all of it brings the comfort and safety of my childhood rushing back.
Of all the members of my family, Teta is unquestionably the cooking master. Her specialty is spiced meats: rolled in flour and fried, sautéed with umpteen different herbs, baked in a colorful vegetable and blanketed in oil and salt.
It would be tragic to be a Middle Eastern vegetarian. I don’t know how Houri does it.
On the days Teta is visiting, I come straight home from school—no lingering in the parking lot with Wells, no trips to the mall with Dua and the girls. I find myself wanting to spend time with her.
And despite the fact we can barely talk to each other, somehow, we understand.
“Ta’ali,” she says, opening her arms toward me, and I come.
“A’ateeny hadtha,” she says, pointing at the bowl full of green squash waiting to be cored, and I hand them to her.
“Am I doing it right?” I ask her, as I plunge the long, thin corer into the squash, scraping out the insides and dumping them into a bowl, the vegetables expelling their guts as if they’re secrets waiting to be spilled. She glances at my squash and shakes her head.
“Laa. A’afeel hadtha,” she says, grabbing the squash and the corer from me and showing me how to slice it—thin, thinner, thinnest.
For the most part, cooking doesn’t require talking, which is why I think we love doing it together. It’s rhythmic and productive, our assembly line of food.
I mix the rice and the spices and the beef together, while Teta expertly cores the squash one by one, a flick of her wrist and a tug of her arm and, voilà, they’re ready. (As opposed to my sad version of stuffed squash, where I
end up stabbing the squash and cutting holes into them, though I try so very hard to do it right.)
The ritual takes about half an hour, and once the squash are cored and the rice-meat mixture is ready, it’s time to stuff them.
Wordlessly, the two of us sit at the table, filling the squash halfway with the rice mixture. Only once does Teta talk to me during the procedure, when she sees me overfill a squash.
“Laa,” she says, shaking her head in disapproval. She’s adamant the squash should be loosely stuffed.
I tip over the squash, allowing a little of the rice to fall back into the bowl, and she nods in assent, smiling. “Aiwa,” she says.
As we work together, there are so many questions I want to ask:
Why didn’t you learn English? Why didn’t you teach me your language?
How long did it take you to fall in love with Jido?
Did you feel pressured to get married so young? Did you have a say?
Teta was seventeen when she married my grandfather. They were third cousins once removed, an arrangement that might seem weird by American standards, but wasn’t bizarre by Circassian ones. (Hey, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were first cousins, and theirs was one of the greatest love stories of all times, if Netflix is to be believed.)
There are so many questions I want to ask her, but I don’t.
Because I can’t.
* * *
The call to Dhuhr starts, a plaintive wailing from Teta’s phone on the coffee table. Dad’s face tightens at the sound, but he doesn’t say anything.
Teta is sitting next to my dad, her fingers clutching her prayer beads. She threads them mindlessly all day long—except I’m realizing it’s probably not mindless.
After the call to prayer rings, Teta motions to me. “Ta’ali.”
She takes me by the hand, leading me out of the room and up the stairs toward the guest bedroom she’s turned into a temporary home with silk flowers and a framed photo of Jido. I sense my father’s eyes heavy on my back as we walk away.
In the room, she pulls out a prayer rug, an intricate black-and-gold woven mat with the Ka’baa embroidered in the center. She gestures at it, saying something in Arabic. When I don’t respond, she repeats herself, pointing at my bedroom. Ah, I get it: She wants me to grab my own rug.
I return with my mat and my abaya, leaving them on the bed and following Teta into the guest bathroom, where we splash water on our hands, faces, and feet.
“Ta’ali,” she says again. I move closer to her, and she washes my feet, her hands vigorously rubbing soap and water over my heels and toes. The gesture is slightly awkward, more physically intimate than I’m used to being with my sixty-year-old grandmother, but it’s also sweet.
After she performs her own ablutions, we return to the bedroom, where Teta leads the prayers.
While we pray, I focus my intentions on gratitude.
Gratitude for my life. Gratitude for my teta. And, yes, gratitude for my dad—even though he’s being exceptionally frustrating.
I sneak glances at my teta, feeling connected to her as we pray. It’s a special feeling—as though we are one.
* * *
4:28 a.m.
My alarm goes off.
For once, I don’t hit SNOOZE.
I crawl out of bed well before sunrise. The house is silent; even my mother won’t be waking up for at least another hour.
She always gets up early, to hit the pool at the gym and swim thirty laps. When I was young, my father would rise in solidarity, though he didn’t have classes until ten most days, and the two of them would pad around the kitchen together. Every once in a while, I’d wake to their voices wafting up the stairs, the sound of laughter making me feel cozy in bed.
Today, it’s quiet. Teta flew back to Dallas last night, and her departure left a void. No hum of cable news or satellite TV in the background. No grinding of coffee. No chatter and laughter between my parents as the two of them talk about what they’re expecting from the day and teasingly push each other’s buttons.
I peek out of my window into the darkness. Our house is at the end of a cul-de-sac, nestled in the middle of Cape Cods and brick Colonials, rife with picket fences, Uga bulldogs, and American flags—Dad’s dream street made real.
I turn on the lamp next to my bed and pull open my drawer, pulling out my copy of the Qur’an. I’m rereading it more slowly in the hopes of absorbing it—of truly understanding what it’s saying.
I’m on the thirty-second surah, known as Surah as-Sajdah. I learned at study group that the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, reportedly recited it every night before bed. It’s an intense one, full of fire and brimstone, like the Old Testament of the Bible. I’ve been rereading the surahs several times, trying to soak them up, to understand them, to feel them in my soul.
And what a soulful time it is. It clicks: That’s the advantage of getting up early to pray. No background noise, none of my friends posting on social media—just me and my thoughts.
It’s been a rough year, with so much uncertainty. But despite the bumps—with Wells, with my dad, with everything—things are changing for the better.
I can feel it.
PART
THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“Salaam a’alaykum,” Samira says to me as I walk into my living room. In the kitchen, I hear Mom puttering around, making a snack platter.
This part is easy.
“Wa a’alaykum as-salaam,” I respond.
“Kefic, ya Alia?”
“Hamdullah.”
I’m a few weeks into my Arabic lessons with Samira. So far, spring has been all about new beginnings: starting Arabic, helping the MSA raise more money, learning my lines for the school musical, memorizing prayers and studying the history of Islam, trying to match my words to my deeds.
We’ve been doing Arabic lessons once a week, on Saturdays at my house. Dad knows about it—I lied and said Teta begged me to—but I’ve been trying to minimize exposure by scheduling the lessons in the early afternoon, while he’s sequestered upstairs slogging through research or grant applications.
I expected lessons to be harder, but shocker: I’m learning easily.
“You have an ear for it, Alia,” Samira told me last week. “You’re picking it up much more quickly than most of my students.”
“Really?”
“It’s clear you grew up hearing it. Your accent is strong. Not perfect, mind you, but strong.”
“That’s awesome!”
“No pressure, but you might consider studying without transliteration.”
“What’s that?”
“Instead of studying with an English alphabet, which isn’t precise, we could essentially start from scratch with the Arabic characters. I think you’d learn it quickly.”
“You think?”
“Sure. You’re a fast study. You’re good with languages. Most importantly, you have the motivation. Wanting to learn is nearly as important as doing the work. Motivation is key.”
I loved the idea of being able to not just speak with my teta but to read the Qur’an in the original language, of being able to connect with my ancestors through the written word.
“Let’s do it,” I said, internally squashing worries about juggling Arabic lessons with my course load. I ordered all the textbooks that night, including a giant one called Al-Kitaab, written almost entirely in Arabic. There’s something so satisfying about crisp, new pages. And reading from right to left is even cooler.
“How did you find the homework?” Samira asks me now.
I pull the Al-Kitaab book and some loose-leaf papers out of my backpack. “It was harder than I expected,” I admit. I was awake until three in the morning doing homework.
“Which languages do you study at school?”
“French.”
She nods. “How long did it take to learn?”
I think back on the years I’ve spent studying French. “I started in sixth grade, so … four and
a half.”
“And are you fluent yet?”
“Ha! No way. My French is okay. Decent,” I say, making a so-so hand gesture.
“Look at your French as a guide. It’s taken you years of diligent study, and you’re still not fluent. I bet you’ll pick up Arabic much faster.”
“You think I’ll be able to speak to my teta the next time I see her?”
“When?”
“At the end of the year, at the family reunion in Dallas.”
“If you stick with it, by the end of the year you and your teta will be speaking Arabic to each other over the dining table. No doubt.”
I would die.
I can’t wait to surprise her.
* * *
After group one Sunday at Shamsah’s house, I’m texting with Wells when Shamsah pops her head outside the front door.
“You still here?”
“Yeah, sorry, my mom’s late. Dua just left.”
“No use hanging out on my porch like a fugitive. Come back inside while you wait. Have more besan ladoo.”
I follow her through the foyer into the kitchen, where she pulls out a Tupperware container filled with the same sweet, nutty little balls we ate during group. I hop onto a kitchen stool next to her and we sit, side by side, popping the balls into our mouths.
“This is so good,” I moan.
“I gotta get rid of it,” Shamsah says. “Otherwise, I’m gonna eat the whole batch. I was obsessed with it as a kid.” She eats another one. “Some things never change.”
“Love those.” I gently kick her sparkly Converse under the counter. “I wish I could wear them.”
“Why can’t you?”
“My arches. I get cramps without proper support—it’s this whole annoying thing. My feet are basically eighty.” I point down to my flats resting on the stool. “I can’t do heels, either.”
“I loathe heels. You know men used to wear them, right?” she says. “They were for nobles.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. For horseback riding. And to look bigger and more intimidating. Persians actually wore them first, but then eventually, the European nobles started wearing them, and then the middle and lower classes started wearing them, and suddenly—boom—the snobby upper-class white dudes didn’t want anything to do with them anymore. They became a thing solely for the womenfolk.”
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