Mariam Sharma Hits the Road

by Sheba Karim

  “I hope that isn’t roofied,” Umar said.

  “Come on, Ghaz,” I said, taking her hand. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Outside, a musician jammed on an electric keyboard, the sidewalk so crowded you either had to be pressed against a bar window or move with the tide of flesh that threatened to topple you if you paused for a selfie. A party pickup truck rumbled by, the back of it set up like an open-air limo, Justin Timberlake blasting from the speakers, the bachelorette party holding red plastic cups and dancing on couches.

  “Literally a party in a pickup truck,” Umar said. “That’s a first.”

  As if not to be outdone in the parade of vehicular debauchery, the party pickup was followed by a party pedal tavern, the bachelorettes swigging from cups as they pedaled halfheartedly, thongs visible above their jean shorts. The bride was wearing a penis hat, and holding up a photo of her fiancé on a stick.

  “That is so not sexy,” Umar said. “That is, like, where sexy goes to die.”

  “Oooh, look!” Ghaz exclaimed. “Karaoke!”

  “Ghaz!” I cried. “Haven’t you had enough?”

  “Come on, last bar, I promise,” she pleaded.

  Like the piano bar, the karaoke bar offered a variety of musical genres beyond country. Ghaz ordered another tequila, me another beer, and we stood in the crowd watching women with names like Amber and Brandi sing “Like a G6” and “Proud Mary.” Amber was talented, Brandi not so much.

  A group of bros near us started laughing and high-fiving one another. One was wearing a shirt that said, I’ve got the dick. You make the rules.

  “Hey, where did Ghaz go?” Umar asked.

  “Bathroom?” I ventured. “Either that or she’s making friends.”

  I hoped it was the former, because I’d wanted to leave even before I saw the unsmiling man sitting in the corner of the bar, underneath a string of Christmas lights that flashed haphazardly, his T-shirt emblazoned with the American flag. I tried to keep an open mind, reminding myself of not-so-scary camouflage man, but something about his presence and posture made me think of a man stockpiling weapons for the rise of the white supremacy army.

  A black woman took the stage. I was very happy to see her. Ghaz reappeared, her smile so broad you could spot her crooked tooth. She’d clearly been up to no good.

  “Where were you?” I asked.

  “Signing Umar up for karaoke,” she said triumphantly.

  “What?” Umar said. “Hell no.”

  “Come on, you have such a beautiful voice.”

  “What if I get booed?”

  “No one’s booing her,” she said, pointing at the woman on stage, who was singing something that sounded like country meets spiritual.

  “Yet,” Umar said.

  “You’ll be fine!” Ghaz insisted. With each tequila, the pitch of her voice increased exponentially. “Channel your inner Tabitha. If I rode the bull, you can sing karaoke. Even if this isn’t our scene, we can still contribute to it, right? We have to think, like, our presence here can make it better. We have as much right to be here as anyone else. Yes, Mars?”

  “I think it’s more a question of do we want to be here? But you have a point. You got chops, Umar. Surely this is a crowd who could appreciate that.”

  Umar sighed. “Fine,” he said, “but only if you promise that after the song, we’re done with the honky-tonks.”

  “Yay!” Ghaz hollered, kissing both of Umar’s cheeks and attracting the attention of the people around us, including two ruddy-cheeked older men. One looked at her admiringly, but the other, with a shaved head and reddish beard, his sunglasses perched in the center of his forehead, bore an expression bordering between curiosity and hostility. I stepped in front of Ghaz protectively.

  Ghaz pointed at the group of bros nearby. “Does his T-shirt say, I’ve got the dick. You make the rules? What is wrong with people?”

  “At least he’s ceding power,” I quipped.

  “Do you think that shirt gets him laid?”

  “Ummm, do you see how wasted people are getting? You could be a one-armed leper and you’d probably get laid.”

  Then, over the loudspeaker: “Next up is Muhammad. Do we have a Muhammad in the house?”

  “That’s you,” Ghaz said.

  The bar had become quieter. I pretended not to hear the snickers.

  “Muhammad? Are you serious?” Umar said. “Do you want to get me shot?”

  “Last call for Muhammad,” the announcer said.

  Somebody booed, followed by laughter.

  “Go! Show ’em what you got!” Ghaz urged, giving him a push.

  As Umar went forth, I hissed at Ghaz.

  “Why did you do that? He could get killed! Or beaten up. Are you crazy?”

  “It’ll be fine,” she insisted. “Watch.”

  I don’t know what Umar overheard as he walked to the stage, but by the time he arrived his hands were shaking. Whatever people’s preconceived notions, he was one of the best-looking and best-dressed gentlemen in the bar, if your taste veered toward well-tailored cloth and textured scarves. As he stood in the spotlight, clutching the mic, the decibel level in the room lowered so dramatically you could hear the bartender making a drink.

  When the first bars began to play, Umar smiled at Ghaz, and Ghaz hooted. I didn’t recognize the song, but everyone else did, because they were hooting, too.

  I gave Ghaz a questioning glance. “Hank Williams Jr.,” she mouthed.

  When the crowd heard Umar’s beautiful voice, they cheered, swaying and singing with him. A group of Japanese tourists near us raised their beers. It must have been a honky-tonk anthem, judging from the intense audience enthusiasm and the fact they knew every word. With each verse, Umar became more confident, until he was strutting his stuff like a karaoke superstar, singing with a melodic glee that inspired much dancing and beer spillage.

  Every time he sang the refrain Hank, why do you drink? the entire bar went wild, replying in unison “To get drunk!”

  I looked back at the American flag man. Though still stone-faced, even he was nodding along to Umar’s heartfelt rendition.

  When Umar finished with a bow, the crowd responded in an uproar, people high-fiving him and slapping him on the back as he made his way toward us.

  “You’re a rock star!” Ghaz shrieked, giving him a smack on the lips.

  “Thanks,” Umar said. His smile vanished. “Can we get out of here?”

  When we left the karaoke bar, Ghaz and I were euphoric, proud of Umar, sailing on the energy of the audience, but Umar kept walking fast, pushing past pedestrians, not stopping till we’d reached the end of the street, to a small plaza that bordered a river. Then he sat down on a bench and put his head in his hands.

  “What is it?” I said.

  He looked up at Ghaz. “Never ever do that again.”

  “But it went so well! They loved you!” she protested. “Muhammad singing country—talk about challenging stereotypes!”

  Umar shook his head.

  “Ghaz,” I said. “Let’s listen to him. He clearly had a different experience. Umar, what happened?”

  Umar was too upset to respond, his obvious distress finally piercing Ghaz’s “everything is awesome” tequila goggles. She kneeled in front of him, directing him to breathe deeply, breathing with him until he was ready to talk.

  “So I’m walking up to the stage,” he said, “and everyone’s looking at me. A few people smiled, but a lot of them were hostile. Some guy says, ‘Better give him a pat down first,’ and people laughed like it was so funny. And I hear this guy, the one with the red beard and sunglasses on his forehead, say to his friend, ‘First black music, now a raghead.’ Then, as I’m singing, I see him singing along, lifting his beer high, and, when I’m walking back, he wants to give me a high five. And I wanted to tell him off, but what did I do? I high-fived him, with a big, fake smile on my face, like it’s all cool. But it’s not. It’s not cool.”

  “It’s all right,�
�� I said.

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “But,” Ghaz began gently, “how can you change people’s hearts and minds if you don’t engage with them? At least now red beard has one positive association with the name Muhammad.”

  “Engage with them?” Umar objected. “I felt like a performing monkey! Look at me, my name’s Muhammad, but hey, don’t worry, I like Hank Williams Jr., same as you! Let’s be friends!”

  “I’m sorry,” Ghaz said. “I didn’t mean for you to feel that way. I thought it would be cool and exciting and, I don’t know, subversive. But I don’t always make the best decisions when I’m drunk.”

  He sighed. “You do realize you gave new meaning to ‘lip-synch for your life’?”

  “If it helps any, you were brilliant,” I offered.

  “Yeah, I know I was fabulous,” he said, tossing his scarf over his shoulder. “That’s not the issue.”

  Ghaz gripped Umar’s arm, planting a series of kisses on his cheek. “What can I do to make you feel better?”

  “Take me someplace where I can stuff myself with greasy food.”

  “I think this place called Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack is open late,” she offered.

  “I’m down for that,” he said.

  But I was hungry, too, and I’d had enough.

  “Um, hello,” I said, “have you forgotten that I’M A VEGETARIAN.”

  “Whoa,” Umar said.

  “I think you mean, vege-terrorist,” Ghaz said.

  “Osama bin Lettuce,” Umar said.

  “Kohlrabi Wahhabi.”

  “Jihadi Jackfruit.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You guys are idiots.”

  We ended up at a Greek diner instead.

  Twenty-Eight

  AS WE DROVE THROUGH southern Tennessee, Ghaz read us an email from her fourteen-year-old sister.

  Ammi and Abba say we’re not supposed to contact you, but I thought I should let you know Ammi’s been really sick, some mornings she won’t even get out of bed. And some of the uncles have stopped shaking Abba’s hand after Friday prayers. A lot of people blame Ammi and Abba for what you did, even though anyone who knows them knows how religious they are. You really hurt them, and our whole family. Ammi’s stopped going to the masjid because she’s too ashamed to show her face. I don’t like going anymore either because I know everyone’s either looking at me and wondering if I’m like you or feeling sorry for me because of what you did. Ammi says she hopes by the time it’s time for me to get married people will have forgotten about what you did. Insha’allah I’ll meet a guy who understands siblings can be very different. Anyone who respected themselves and their body wouldn’t pose naked on a billboard for the whole world to see. Anyway, you should know Ammi and Abba and all of us are really suffering. I don’t know if you still care about us but if you do please don’t bring any more shame on us. Your sister, as if you care.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said.

  “She doesn’t mince words, does she?” Umar said.

  Silence. I glanced back. Ghaz chewed her bottom lip as she stared out the window, her knees tucked into her chest, her feet pushing against the back of my seat. We followed her lead, quietly watching the world go by at seventy miles per hour. The landscape was lush and green and monotonous, except for the occasional sun-bleached billboard.

  We passed one that asked, Where Will You End Up? Heaven or Hell?

  Even with the AC on high, my skin was slowly roasting from the sun streaming through the windshield. In the highway median, lanky weeds undulated wildly in the wind from passing cars. We drove by a small cemetery on a grassy slope bordering the highway, a faded billboard for America’s Best Value Inn towering above the tombstones.

  Even the dead couldn’t escape capitalism, and no one, it seemed, could ever really escape their families. They’d continue to haunt you, through technology or memories or an aching for what once was, like the pain of a phantom limb. I wondered if Ghaz would ever have a healthy relationship with her family, if Umar would after he came out. It made me feel helpless. I could try to ease my friends’ hurt, but nothing I could do or say would change their families’ attitudes. I’d seen it in my own naani, this stubborn clinging to notions of right and wrong that superseded even love.

  We had been listening to a Belle and Sebastian playlist, and the song “The Party Line” came on. It was the kind of song that made you want to dance from the very first note. I thought maybe dancing would be inappropriate given Ghaz’s sorrow, but she was the first one to start bopping her head, Umar soon joining in. I turned the volume up, and it was on.

  All three of us loved to dance. Umar’s and Ghaz’s moves were more graceful and fluid, mine were staccato, like a robot’s, but a cool robot’s. At least I liked to think so.

  Umar had an amazing ability to groove and steer at the same time. He had solid dance-driving skills. I was doing my robot arms, and Ghaz was sitting up now, embellishing her moves with Bollywood gestures.

  Ghaz hooted, and I knew that, despite all that had happened and whatever lay ahead, we were lucky to have music and dancing and one another.

  After the song ended and we’d caught our breath, I asked Ghaz how she was feeling.

  “You mean about my sister stabbing me in the back?” she said.

  “You two have always been very different,” Umar pointed out.

  “Yeah—she’s been a Goody Two-shoes since she could talk. She would tell on me all the time. ‘Ammi, guess what I saw Ghaz do, guess what Ghaz said, blah blah,’ and then as my mother yelled at me, she’d stand behind her and stick her tongue out. She’s always wanted to define herself in opposition to me, like we were in some sort of competition. My brother and I are much closer, but it’s only a matter of time before he gets completely brainwashed. My whole family’s right-handed. I’m left. It was doomed from the beginning.”

  “But you still love them,” I said.

  “Loving your family and liking them are two very different things.”

  “They might come around,” I said.

  “Will they?” Ghaz said. “Will Umar’s family come around to him being gay? I mean, really come around? Will his parents ever say, ‘we’ll throw you and your husband a wedding as dope as your sister’s, with a nice mehndi ki raat and a fancy reception, because you deserve it just as much’? Will my mother ever say, ‘sorry for the things I said to you, for calling you a slut, a whore, a filthy prostitute’? She won’t, because she thinks I am those things.”

  “Oh, Ghaz,” I said. I’d heard enough about Ghaz’s mother that I should no longer be surprised by these revelations, but I always was.

  “What kills me is that she portrays herself as the powerless, weak one. ‘Look at me, look at how sick I’ve gotten, how depressed you’ve made me’. But she was unhappy before I was even old enough to do anything wrong.”

  “My mother’s the opposite,” I said. “She doesn’t dare feel sorry for herself. But I don’t know, I think there’s a balance. It’s okay to sometimes think your life is hard, or unfair.”

  “You know what I once heard my sister say?” Umar said. “She’s like, ‘I totally accept that there are gay people, but why can’t they keep it quiet? I don’t go around flaunting my heterosexuality everywhere.’ Oh, and she also said gay men could never be as good parents because two good gay men still could never equal one good mother.”

  “Well, you’ll have to prove her wrong,” I said.

  “Can we take the next exit?” Ghaz requested. “I think I need to scream.”

  “I could eat some fries,” Umar said.

  “You have an unhealthy relationship to grease,” I told him.

  “Relaxi, taxi, it’s a road trip. Road trips run on grease.”

  “Let’s see where we are,” Ghaz said, searching on Umar’s phone. “Hmmm . . . we are about to pass Pulaski, Tennessee, which is apparently where the KKK was founded.”

  “Hell no,” Umar declared.

  “Come on, I’d never! Let’s
stop at the next rest stop.”

  When we pulled into the rest stop parking lot, Ghaz said she didn’t feel like screaming anymore, so we got out for a pee and sugar refuel. The challenge of summer in the South was not only the sun’s intensity, but its weight. The moment you left the car’s air-conditioned cocoon, you felt it bearing down on you.

  “Damn, it’s hot,” Ghaz complained. “Imagine the slaves having to pick cotton in this.”

  While in the South, it was hard not to view everything through the lens of history, even the sun.

  We walked toward the rest stop, past a white rape van and a line of trucks with brightly colored cabs: purple, cobalt blue, fire-engine red. The few people milling around were old, with alarmingly thick middles.

  “People here really like their poly blend,” Umar noted.

  “Spoken like a true clothes snob,” I said.

  “I’m not a snob. Some items from my wardrobe are from Target.”

  “What do you think is harder?” I said. “Being Muslim or being poor?”

  “Being a poor Muslim,” he said.

  “Being a poor, trans, lesbian, black, Muslim woman,” Ghaz said. “That’s probably the hardest.”

  “Being poor isn’t an excuse for being racist,” Umar argued.

  “I wasn’t excusing it,” I said. “I was only reminding you—us—that we’re also privileged.”

  “What a cute rest stop,” Ghaz said, pointing to the rest area’s main building, made entirely of stone, bluegrass playing through its outdoor speakers. Inside, a life-size cardboard cutout of Dolly Parton welcomed us to Tennessee, which meant several minutes of posing and selfies. There was no food available, but the old lady at the information desk directed us to the one-room building next door, which featured wall-to-wall vending machines. It smelled like chemical cleaning supplies, but Umar was immediately in heaven, doing a circuit of the machines and proclaiming the possibilities.

  “Peanut M&M’s! Twix? Cheddar potato skins! Raspberry shortbread? Goldfish! Swedish fish! Jalapeño poppers?”