by Ayesha Mattu
Did she know I’d never kissed a girl before?
And then, a week or two later, my parents found out. My mom called me downstairs first thing in the morning. She stood on one side of the kitchen and my father on the other. Trying to play it cool, I focused on breakfast. My mother glanced at my father.
This was his cue. “Why did you have a girl in your car yesterday?”
Someone in the Muslim community—the local mukhabarat—had snitched on me.
I shrugged. “She needed a ride home.”
They stared into me. Hard. They could tell I was guilty of something. But what? Since offering a girl a ride home was already a moral trespass, maybe that and that alone was the worst of my deeds, the source of the guilt in my eyes. I folded an Eggo in half and shoved most of it into my mouth, washing it down with a glass of chocolate milk. “It was nothing.”
Though it most certainly was not. It was the most important thing ever to happen to me. But that was a close call, which meant I’d have to outsmart the local morality police. I started my own Arab Spring. My actions had to be kept hidden, though at great cost to posterity. For example: friends were asked to submit prophecies for the graduating seniors’ yearbook; Jeremy thought it’d be a riot to submit “Haroon dates a supermodel.”
Which meant when my parents asked me about yearbook photos—another letter in the mail—I had to move preemptively. “Yearbooks are stupid,” I said, doing my best impression of a jaded teenager, permanently bored out of his mind. “I’m not going to have my picture taken for that crap.”
So they never asked for my yearbook, and never found even the flimsiest evidence of my double life. The yearbook editors were proactive; they assumed I’d forgotten to submit a proper photograph, and helpfully found the worst possible picture of me, slapping it above my name, such that any future reader would wonder what kind of washed-out supermodel would date that man. It was too late, though, to try to erase myself from history: Months before, I’d submitted a quote. Pearl Jam. These were the years when we were too new to understand ourselves. We needed music to explain us to us. “All that is sacred comes from youth.”
McDonald’s never called back, so I found another job: helping my fellow students polish off their assignments. Technically I did not graduate high school once but several times.
I’d walk past Carla every morning; I needed to see her. Touch her. “To breathe. To feel. To know I’m alive.” Tool. I was years away from understanding my depression, years further from learning what to do with it. But I knew what Carla did, how she made me feel. Before her, what I thought was numbness was really a desperate, terrifying loneliness.
My friends teased me for not yet making out with her; I, too, wondered why I held back. Her friend Samantha sprang a pool party on us at the end of May, which I knew I had to attend—I’d make my move then and there. But of course her house had to be next door to that of our masjid president, which meant he might see my car. A huge risk to take two weeks before prom—but this new Haroon loved the edge.
Not enough, however, to drive his car over it. I asked my friend Jacob to be my ride. And, of course, on the way over, his nose started bleeding so badly that he all but ran his station wagon aground on someone’s lawn, opened his door, and nearly tripped into the grass. Then he sprinted to the closest tree, whose leaves were repurposed as napkins.
We met the homeowner, who had real napkins too, which she shared after we explained why a plurality of our town’s young Semites were frolicking around her favorite tree. This unfathomable omen aside, I ended up that night exactly where I’d wanted to: on Samantha’s pool deck. With Carla. But for the first time, things did not go my way. And they would keep on not going my way from then on.
Blind children learn how to walk without seeing anyone else do so—it’s deep instinct, buried inside them, and just needs to find the right time and place. I felt myself overcome with desire, but (and this was the best part) I could sense, with some radar I did not know I had (but would never again neglect), that Carla wanted the same thing. Opposite ends of a magnet. I knew what to do and for the first time how to. Fusion releases more energy than fission.
But we put more energy in than we got out. Her mom pulled up much earlier than expected. I walked Carla to her car, dejected, but as she made her way to the door, she offered me her hand in apology. My skinny fingers squeezed inside her smaller, softer, subtler hand. There was so much in that grasp, and I feared I’d spend my life trying only to return to that squeeze. Because there were no more such nights.
I led my parents to believe that on the Friday night, the first week of June, I’d sleep over a (Muslim) friend’s house in Massachusetts; his (Muslim) mom covered for me. After school, I crossed state lines, where I showered and shaved, and then returned to our hometown just in time for events to be set in motion.
Jacob’s neighbors were on vacation, so I parked my hulking beige and brown SUV not merely in their backyard, but under their deck. Just in case my parents wandered up a driveway many streets away from their own and decided to look around. Then I went to Jacob’s house and threw caution to the wind, because I had to have some kind of memory of this: photographs.
Back then, you had to wait weeks for them to develop. You actually got to live in the moment, as opposed to looking at yourself living it a few seconds later, which meant the moment lasted considerably longer than a moment. The six of us, me, Jacob, Jeremy, and our dates—looked damn good, I must say. I have no other pictures of Carla. Just the smiles we wore for the camera, belying what was around the corner. I never got to thank her, though.
See, she held back on what she wanted, and gave me my night. Many students congratulated me, amazed I’d made it. Amazed I’d wanted to—everyone’s belief system appreciates validation. And I wanted theirs. Maybe so that one day I wouldn’t need it. We had steak and pounding music. Then Carla and I slow-danced to Sarah McLachlan’s “Adia,” which to this day I cannot listen to without getting goose bumps.
Carla was in my arms, like she’d been only a few times before in the past months (once after a flute solo in a school concert, once on the occasion of her communion). I couldn’t shake the thought: why was God sending me an Islamic meme here, of all places? “We are born innocent,” McLachlan sings. And Satan asked Adam, “Shall I lead you to a Tree, and to a Kingdom that never decays?”
Time stopped for me in that slow dance; I felt poetry flow through me. I’ve learned, in the years since, to pull over whenever an idea enters my mind. Published essays have been typed at New Jersey rest stops, or in the Istanbul airport, where there is no seating.
“Believe me, Adia. We are still innocent.” I was convinced I still was. We all were. No matter where I was or who I was touching. We can do the wrong thing for the right reasons. It depends on whether you think gray is still close to God. Adam and Eve both ate from the tree, but they repented. They were forgiven. But they stuck together. That is the point of innocence lost. It reclaims itself when it restores itself.
I was a seventeen-year-old who wanted more than anything in the world to belong. The flared jeans, the metal necklaces, the occasional bracelets: the tribal markers of an aspiring snowboarder were meant to validate me by announcing that I was other than me. Sticking out to fit in. But even these emblems couldn’t tell you how badly I’d wanted this cheerleader.
We can want what others want and still want it for ourselves. Sometimes we’re unable to point to where our desires begin and others’ end. After prom we might have stopped at Friendly’s, but Carla wanted nothing to do with me. The next afternoon, alone in an empty bedroom in someone else’s house in Massachusetts, half an hour from home, Carla turned to AOL Instant Messenger to shock and awe me: We should break up, she suggested.
Of course, I typed. I lied. My parents drove me to New York that night, to see family, but I sat broken in the backseat—they must have known something was wrong. But I could not tell them how my end run around them had failed because I was, in th
e end, them. We never moved beyond that kiss; I’d been more Catholic than the Catholic girl. This is human nature, or at least my fragment of fitra, what’s left of the Adam in you after Satan’s through. To me, dating was no different than marrying. Terminology was technicality.
I was shattered like I couldn’t believe. My religion says a man should not be alone with a woman. But somebody should have told me a man should not feel so alone that being with a woman is the only way he can feel life is worth living.
If every person has one great test, then mine was—and may still be—parting. I could deal with death. If I was a good Muslim (which I’m not), I believed I’d see the people I cared about down the line. We’re going to live on, forever and ever, Oasis sang. God would add: So will everyone else. But I couldn’t accept that God would let lives intersect, get entangled, and then be yanked apart. How can you live forever and be parted forever?
The further you let a person into your soul, the longer it’ll take her to leave. The first time I saw Carla, she was walking away from me. I couldn’t have guessed then how much it would hurt to give anyone anything of my heart, so I’d naively given all of mine. My college friends, who met me a few months later, can tell you it took me a year to get over a girl I dated for less than two months.
The idea of Carla preceded her, and survived long after her. Her smile, her lightness, her kindness, all of them a bond she provided to a universe I otherwise felt misplaced by. But what I missed most of all, for months on end: her hand. From the first time she offered it to me, at a roller-skating rink (a dance remix of Celine Dion’s unavoidable “My Heart Will Go On” was playing), to the last, when we left the dance floor and I escorted her to our table.
“It may be you hate a thing and it is good for you.” That would be God. Beyond my desire for Carla was an awesome loneliness, a feeling of living in a nothing-place only briefly interrupted. From time to time, this emptiness made the world stark and beautiful, but most of the time it haunted and pursued me. After enough years had passed and enough hurt accumulated, I began to pursue the emptiness instead. Something came from nothing: “With every difficulty there’s relief.” Him again. It could be that this is me, or all of us. We stumble onto God in the blanks, the places you live in but don’t belong to, if only to be taught this hell of a mercy: no one belongs here.
Sabr: In Sickness and in Health
The Promise
By Alan Howard
I first met Joan in 1992 in New York, a city I had not planned on visiting, at a conference I had been skeptical about attending. I had just completed my first year in college and was still getting my bearings. Traveling to the United Nations headquarters for a collegiate conference on international crisis resolution was not something I wanted to do.
Nor were love and romance on my mind. I was a shy, geeky nineteen-year-old. Although a closet romantic, talking or interacting with women was not my forte. As I stood near the doors of the cavernous conference room surveying the eager college students within, my eyes lit upon a petite, beautiful Asian woman. I then did something I had never done before: I walked straight across the room and introduced myself. I’ve often wondered why I did this, since it was so uncharacteristic of me. I have no answers except that it was meant to happen.
Joan was funny and laughed a lot. She had a way of evaluating a situation in a matter of seconds, a quick intelligence and a focused intensity that allowed her to plot a course of action immediately. The rest of the conference is a blur in my memory. We attended sessions but spent the entire time passing notes back and forth discussing politics, family, our dreams, and everything in between. No subject was left untouched, and yet not a word passed our lips.
On the last evening, we sat down in a quiet hallway to talk face to face.
“What is that long scar on your neck?” I asked innocently, reaching out to brush it gently.
She stiffened and immediately turned away from me. Her hand instinctively moved to rub it, as if she’d just remembered it was there. She sighed, silent for a few seconds. “It’s from a surgery. I have cancer.”
Boom! Just like that, she introduced me to a terrifying part of her world.
Joan stared at me, curious to see my reaction, whatever her fears may have been. She seemed to be daring me: would I risk being interested in someone who was sick?
“Do you let it stop you from doing what you want with your life?” I asked.
And then, as if my first question wasn’t forward enough, I added, “The cancer affects you, but it doesn’t define you. What do you plan to do with your life?”
Years later, Joan told me that it was that statement that led her to believe that I was the person she wanted to be with for the rest of her life.
After the conference, Joan returned to California and I returned to South Carolina, where I was attending college. A continent separated us but we managed to talk often. We came from very different backgrounds. I was born and raised in South Carolina. The Deep South is a land of warm ocean currents, Spanish moss, history-filled towns, bad politics, and racial divisions. She was born to Filipino immigrants in San Francisco and raised in California. We found we complemented each other.
The first time I called Joan was awkward. She told me later she’d never expected to hear from me again. I took to calling every Tuesday evening to check on her and to talk. Over time our calls turned into hours-long conversations. She said she knew she loved me when she was late one Tuesday and ran as fast as she could to get to the phone before I called. I knew I loved her almost in the same instant that I saw her in that crowded conference room. I’d never felt that way about someone. Even then, like a magnet she drew me in.
A year later, I asked her father’s permission to marry her. Three months later, she moved cross-country and we married at my local mosque—nothing fancy, just a few dozen friends and my parents. I had converted to Islam during my first year of college after spending a long time battling personal demons and studying several religions. Joan converted in her own time three years later. We had little in terms of material wealth as I was still finishing up at the university, but we took trips together, talked about everything in our lives, and explored the South. We were unbelievably happy, going on long walks and holding hands, oblivious to anyone else. Exploring new foods or destinations together instead of individually was wonderful, like discovering a secret garden only we knew about.
When we met, Joan’s cancer was in remission. We didn’t want to think that it would resurface, interrupting our dreams as individuals and as a family. We moved to California for a year. We had a second marriage ceremony in Oakland, where she had attended college, so that her family could attend this time. We spent many fun weeks exploring San Francisco and Berkeley, but ultimately decided that California was too expensive.
We settled in Atlanta in 1997 and she and I began our careers in finance and IT, respectively. Having a major international airport in Atlanta allowed us to travel in Europe, Asia, and Africa. Each new destination expanded our knowledge of each other and of other people and cultures. We began talking about starting a family, although we weren’t initially sure if Joan could have children, given her medical history.
Our “good” years were filled with love and lovemaking, joy and fun, travel and discovery. And, finally, the blessed birth of our son, Jibril, in 2000. Joan embraced motherhood. She loved to put Jibril in a wagon and run around the yard with him, while he screamed happily. She would take him hiking in the forests and watch his face fill with wonder when holding a tree frog or touching a mushroom.
In 2005, the cancer came back. Joan was working on her PhD in economics at Georgia State University. Jibril was five years old—too young to understand.
For the next eight years, our marriage was filled with radiation and chemotherapy treatments, thirteen surgeries, and countless visits to specialists. With every new surgery and treatment, I lost another piece of my beautiful wife.
Our small family adjusted as well as we
could to each new development. There were chemotherapy treatments that caused Joan incontinence or extreme nausea; surgeries that meant months of recovery; brain tumors that led to an inability to use her left hand; pelvic damage that caused a pronounced limp on her right side; and fluid that built up in her lungs and forced her to be on oxygen all the time. It was overwhelming. But Joan transformed into a mighty warrior, fighting for her life every second of every day. I, on the other hand, hated it. I hated what it did to her. I hated what it made her become and hated that the cancer robbed my son and me of her active presence in our lives.
Joan’s faith shaped her response to everything—good or bad—that happened. She believed that God tests each of us over the course of our lives with challenges. These are not to prove anything to God, who is infinite and knows the outcome, but, rather, to prove to ourselves what we are capable of as humans. For Joan there were no “Why me?” moments. She had sabr, an Arabic word that encompasses both patience and perseverance. Anyone can be patient, but to have patience in the face of hardship requires sabr.
Unlike my wife, I became very angry with God when she got sick. I stopped practicing my faith for a full year—no prayer, no reflection, nothing. Looking back, I don’t believe that I lost my faith so much as I unconsciously thought I was punishing Allah by refusing to worship Him. But the sicker Joan became, the more I was drawn back to Allah and the need to pray for her—for her recovery, for the strength to care for her, and, finally, weeping uncontrollably, for her release from pain and suffering.
Through Joan’s ordeal, I learned to accept that there are things that happen in this world that I do not understand and cannot control, but must face with sabr anyway. Joan’s embodiment of Islam taught me how to understand and survive the tests I have been given in life, in order to grow and change and become more beautiful. The Qur’an states, “And, behold, with every hardship comes ease: verily, with every hardship comes ease!” (Sura ash-Sharh [The Opening-Up of the Heart], 94: 5–6.) My wife’s test in this life was cancer; it changed her and made her strong. My test was to take care of her, to never turn away. It was my duty to stand by her, but it was also my love. It was the core of my humanity.