Good Muslim Boy

by Osamah Sami

  The bus will take twelve hours—meaning I’ll lose all tomorrow, spend Wednesday in Tehran, spend Thursday bussing back, and since Friday is the ‘weekend’ here—it’s nothing but catastrophe. I still have three departments left to satisfy.

  And I really have to call my mother.

  Before I can hang up, the operator saves my life. ‘Would you fly chartered?’ she says. ‘It’s very expensive, and if you don’t mind the turbulence…’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes!’ I cry.

  ‘Okay. Can you get to the airport by ten-thirty tonight? Flight leaves at eleven-fifteen, and if you don’t have anything to check in…’

  ‘Fuck it. Let’s do it.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ she says.

  I realise I’ve said this in English. Thank God. I check the time. I always do. It’s 9.42 pm.

  ‘I said let’s do it,’ I say in Farsi. ‘Thank you very much.’

  ‘Alright, so you can pay by credit card. It’s four hundred US dollars.’

  I want to laugh. Dad and I flew here for about $30, but as I read out the credit card numbers, I pause to kiss the phone. Then I remember that I don’t have a passport.

  Again, fuck it. We’ll deal with it there. I take a taxi to the airport, telling the driver I’ll pay him extra if he hurries. He takes the invite like a gentleman and floors it.

  At 10.25 pm, I’m handing him a wad of cash. I head straight to the private airline’s booth, yelling like a madman that I’m a customer on the eleven-fifteen flight.

  I’m met with a beautiful smile—the perks the rich enjoy. I’m so used to being told off after the past few days that I almost double-take when the lady says, ‘How can I help you?’ She calms me, reassuring me there are still a few minutes left before check-in closes. I take a dozen deep breaths.

  She regrets to inform me that my luggage is too much for carry-on, and I’ll need to pay a heavy premium. I ask if there’s a locker service. No. She directs me to airport management, and asks for my ID. Smoothly, I hand her my card, with photograph.

  ‘What is this, sir?’

  ‘Madam,’ I say, ‘I fly with this all the time. It’s my Australian ID and it’s accepted worldwide. Shall I speak to your manager?’

  She scrutinises it. Lucky for me, her English is weaker than a decaf latte: the card is my swim pass, valid for twelve sessions. She doesn’t dare do anything but issue me a boarding pass. Again, the perks of the rich.

  I run to airport management and nutshell the events. The manager, an old man, glass of tea in hand—of course—points me to a corner of his office. ‘Drop the bags there,’ he whispers. ‘Go.’

  I shake his hand. I feel like I should hug him.

  GIRLS, GIRLS, GIRLS

  Qom, Iran, 1995

  Temporary marriage

  Lecture topics at the hawza ’ilmiyya were not limited to masturbation. We also learned about temporary marriage.

  This is a Shiite-only concept designed to satisfy the urges of young men without plunging them into the depths of sin. Temporary marriage—sigha in Persian—allows a consenting couple to marry each other, under a time lock. When the agreed period is over, the marriage is automatically voided, which saves time, not to mention messy divorce papers.

  This was a fascinating world: legal sex.

  There were, of course, rules and strictures. A virgin girl would need the permission of a guardian—a forbidding obstacle—and a normal marriage dowry must still be paid. And should the temporary marriage lead to actual intercourse, the girl would have to wait three months before embarking on her next contract.

  In practice, this meant virgins were well out of our league. We needed to approach mature women.

  In pursuit of such wonders, us boys would often go to the holy shrine under the pretence that we were there to pray. Women were covered head to toe; we could hardly see their faces, let alone make out their shapes beneath the black drapes. So we’d approach a woman at random, gently grab her long hijab and whisper: ‘Excuse me, miss, would you like some temporary marriage?’

  The response was often, ‘Go away, I’m sixty-eight years old.’

  Unfazed, we’d move straight on to the next-closest woman. ‘How about you, miss? Would you like some?’

  Temporary marriage could last anywhere from thirty minutes to a lifetime. It was used by many honest men to get to know a girl—sinlessly, and legally, before they would commit.

  Some imams, however, exploited this religious loophole to establish and run underground brothels. It made almost perverse sense: with the dowry rule, the women needed to be compensated anyway. Clerics had the perfect cover. Their line of work allowed them to converse with women openly, and no one would think twice.

  They also held lectures at the local mosques divided by gender, and had exclusive access behind closed doors. It was easy to see how some clerics took advantage, effectively becoming an imam version of a pimp. They’d sit behind a large desk, covered with Koranic verses, and humbly offer their services as a ‘marriage celebrant’. A selection of temporary wives was just behind the other door.

  It was a legitimate practice only to a point. The three-month waiting period between marriages meant there was no possible way that any cleric had enough girls to satisfy demand. The Monkerat ran undercover operations, but they rarely led to arrests. They presumably enjoyed these operations quite a lot.

  We stayed away from these seedy places, not because we were afraid of getting caught, but simply because, for all our bluster, we were afraid of real sex and the guilt we knew would come crashing down on us. We could ask scores of women at the shrine for temporary marriage; we always knew their answer would be no. What would we have done if some woman had turned around and consented? I really had no idea; I still don’t.

  One solitary occasion, without the protection of my friends, I pulled on the hijab of a young woman in her twenties and popped the question, as I always did. She turned around, smiling, and whispered: ‘And if I said yes, little boy, what would you do to me?’

  I stared at her like a stunned piece of taxidermy for what felt like eternity. Then I bolted as fast as I could out of the courtyard.

  Chatting up chicks on top of the mountain

  Beyond the fantastical loophole of temporary marriages, girls were vexing. They were distracting and satisfying, a happy-crazy drug. They were hypnotic and impossible, always just out of reach.

  The barbershop was a blessing and a curse. It was the only place that could legally display pictures of Western women—and thankfully, because school required us to keep our hair so short, getting haircuts was as common as going to the shrine.

  The catalogues were full of ’70s hair models with gorgeous, fiery hair, flowing, tantalising, hijab-free. I would flick through these catalogues while waiting for my turn, and find myself going crazy with all this eyeball-fuel. I would long for the barbers to take ages, cutting other boys’ hair and chatting among themselves. It gave me more time to subtly masturbate under the sheets. I know I’m not the only boy who took such drastic measures.

  It was impossible to talk to one of these creatures in public, or look at one longer than a few seconds at a time without ge
tting caught by the Piety Police. And Mum was just as watchful as the Monkerat.

  A series of diligent strategies had to be meticulously executed. I needed a solid reason to get out of the house, get up the mountain with my cousins, and devise them. As always, the shrine came to my rescue.

  ‘Mum, can we go to the shrine tomorrow?’

  ‘Such a good boy,’ she replied. ‘But you’ve been spending so much time at the shrine.’

  ‘Oh.’ Shit. ‘Have I?’

  ‘What’s going on? Sowmeh, maybe you should do some study.’

  ‘But Mum, you’ve always said God comes before anything else.’

  ‘I have never once said that. You’re thinking of your father.’

  ‘You say eggplant, I say eggplant,’ I replied. This was the Iraqi version of potato–potarto.

  She relented. ‘Okay, you can go. But come back right after your prayers. And make sure you pray for your father, too. Aqdas Khatoon—our neighbour—says they eat human beings in the desert and feed the remains to the kangaroos.’

  I was out the door before she knew it, my horny cousins in tow. We caught a bus to the shrine, for due diligence.

  It was tradition to kiss the door to the shrine upon entry. We weren’t planning to enter, but we kissed the door anyway, and asked the Prophet’s granddaughter to forgive us for the lies we’d told, the lies we were telling and the lies we were planning to tell. Then we were off to the mountains, where there were no police or mums, the one and only place where nobody but God could castigate us.

  We climbed hastily; winter’s days were short, and daylight was essential if you wanted to make it back down in one piece. In the enclaves we’d once used to store our fireworks, we’d planted other kinds of contraband—survival supplies, canned tuna, firewood, gloves, torches, spare batteries. The snow-covered mountain was one giant refrigerator, perfect for chilling drinks.

  It also made the trek vastly more difficult, which was great news for us: it meant we were the only three stooges in Qom crazy enough to be on this exact patch of earth at this exact time in the history of the universe.

  Once we reached the temple, we performed our ablutions and our afternoon prayers and got down to our strategic business. I felt reckless—like the mobsters I’d seen in Western movies, going to the woods to discuss a hit. I knew there were no bugs here, no possibility of surveillance. It was only us, the smell of rocky snow, and God—and maybe Prophet Khezr’s irate spirit.

  I laid out my plan, excited. My cousins responded with silence. I could hear the ants gossiping about our stupidity beneath the rocks.

  ‘I love it,’ said Musty.

  Medhi nodded too.

  The only thing left was to climb down and do a test drive.

  And that was how we found ourselves standing outside the all-girls school.

  We were here to gawk at girls. And maybe even talk to them. First we’d need to find Jack’s magic beans and grow some magic balls with them. For now—no talking, just gawking. Maybe not even gawking, if we couldn’t get Medhi to shut up. He was worried we’d get caught and deported to Iraq. We wasted a lot of time dealing with Medhi’s nervous breakdowns. Our fathers were war heroes, we told him. They’d never send us to Saddam.

  The three of us lurked incongruously by the school gates, which were very tall, and blocked our views. But the girls’ school was extremely close to Ma’sooma’s temple—a spectacular pilgrimage destination, allergic to all sin. The last place the Piety Police would expect three boys to do any gawking. It was the perfect crime.

  To complete the look, I went to Hajji’s, the local grocer, a tiny shop, pungent with spice. The plan was to hide behind a gigantic newspaper—you know, like they do in the movies.

  Hajji knew me. He looked at me with grave suspicion. ‘Since when do you buy political tabloids?’

  ‘It’s for Dad,’ I said.

  ‘But your father buys the Arabic Times.’

  ‘Er, yeah, he’s improving his Farsi.’

  ‘Hasn’t he gone away or something? You know, to that far country?’

  ‘Yeah, he wants me to collect them. Every edition.’

  I paid nervously and ran back over to Musty and Medhi. Our itinerary was very simple and very stupid.

  Huddle outside the school gates.

  Don sunglasses to hide our eyes.

  Begin reading the tabloid.

  Girls, girls, girls.

  Underneath their black hijabs, all those masses of fabric, we might be lucky enough to see a strand of hair, or even make eye contact. Whoever achieved this would be known as ‘the dude’.

  The bell rang, the gates opened—and a swift kick struck my rib cage. We looked like three uncouth perverts to everyone on the street, and the Monkerat responded with lightning speed. One officer punched my face so hard it bent into a shape I hadn’t even come across in a mathematics class. He turned me into a walking Picasso piece.

  They swept us, quickly, unfussily, into an unmarked sedan and sped us towards the Entezami station. The Entezami were cops too—but of the military variety. They had martial ranks and carried machine guns.

  They wore green uniforms, black beards and faces devoid of smiles. When they were through with us, we lay bruised and bloodied in the wet basement of the station. But, crazily enough, we were laughing—we were on the biggest high. We had done it. We were all the dude. We weren’t virgins anymore.

  Before the cops swept in, two girls had just had time to flash us. One had lifted part of her headscarf, pretending to adjust.

  ‘I saw a blonde tip,’ Cousin Musty whispered.

  ‘Get out of here! You’re a legend!’ I screeched back, sweating and pulse racing.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘On a scale of one to blonde, she was about 8.5 heaven. She was just like the American girls.’

  My mind went back to the street near the holy shrine. I reassembled the scene in my memory.

  In my preferred version of events, the wide courtyard was empty. The turban festival had ended, shopkeepers had shut up shop, schoolteachers were on vacation—and there were no Piety Police. Only the larks floated by the gold dome of the shrine.

  An angel stood across the road, covered in her hijab. Suddenly, like a caterpillar coming out of its cocoon, she flung open the hijab and exposed so many hair strands I could die a happy young boy, in this cement-smelling basement.

  The moment outside the shrine had been just that: a moment. But I painted and repainted it, a languorous mural in my mind.

  I was dragged out of the reverie when the cops came for Musty. We hadn’t planned this far ahead; we hadn’t believed we’d get caught. What if each of us gave a different alibi?

  He gave me the lowdown later on:

  A fist smashed across his jaw.

  ‘Why were you loitering around a girls’ school?’ barked the cop.

  ‘I have come from Yazd,’ he told them. ‘Check my ID. I’m not from this town. I was looking for a boys’ school. I got the address mixed up.’

  The officer threw Musty out. Now it was Mehdi’s turn.
Mehdi immediately fell to tears.

  ‘Please don’t tell my father. I’m so sorry. Please don’t deport me to Iraq. I just wanted to check out the school for my sister, to see if she should enrol next year…’

  The cop whacked Mehdi once more for good measure and unceremoniously bundled him out. Before we got a chance to talk, it was my turn.

  ‘And what’s your excuse, motherless, two-legged mule?’ he asked me.

  ‘My name’s Osamah and my mother is still alive, sir.’

  This was the wrong answer. Whack. He punched me in the jaw. Strangely, my face filled with an anaesthetic sensation.

  I tried again. ‘We were there because I had to pick up my sister from school.’

  ‘Are you sure about this?’ he asked me.

  I sensed I’d misspoken. ‘I mean chaperone pick up, not rude pick up. That’s my sister we’re talking about.’

  ‘I see. And what is her name?’

  ‘Um, what?’ And finally I broke down, sobbing. ‘Sorry, sir. I lied, I have no sister at that school, please forgive me…’

  The first punch hadn’t made me as numb as I imagined, which I learned firsthand when the officer’s fist met my face again. It was decided I had to pay a higher price than my cousins, because I’d initially insisted on the lie. The officer brought me into a separate chamber and began to lift me up by the ear.

  I writhed in pain, then blurted: ‘Sir! Are you telling me when you were my age, your dick never moved for a girl?’

  The Entezami officer stopped, bewildered. Then his face slowly changed. I’d never seen a human angrier—in life, films or cartoons. He howled, and then came down on me with a wrath worthy of scripture. He struck me wherever there was flesh and bone.

  The harder he hit me, the more convinced I was that he probably had played with himself a few decades ago. He just couldn’t admit it because of his uniform.