Good Muslim Boy

by Osamah Sami

  Operation Looking for Mr Rezaei

  In our conservative society, you were far better off relying on hidden contacts, silent codes—something less ostentatious than hanging around outside a girls’ school with a newspaper and dark shades.

  For example, if a girl answered her doorbell and was wearing a red top, she was generally mischievous and willing. Armed with this folk wisdom, I devised another plan. I dubbed it Operation Looking for Mr Rezaei.

  We had to find a neighbourhood far away from our own home—then simply go around ringing doorbells. If a girl in a red top opened the door, voila! If not, no worries. We’d just move along to the next home.

  Rezaei was a popular name, the equivalent of Smith in Australia. For this reason, it was perfect. If, by chance, we asked for a Mr Rezaei and got one, we’d simply say we were looking for a different person—the fat Mr Rezaei, the skinny Mr Rezaei, older, younger, shorter, taller, all depending on the situation.

  Girls who didn’t wear red tops, we knew, could be smart and dangerous. If they smelled a rat, they could just yell ‘Dad! Perverts at the door.’ We figured we’d cross this bridge when we came to it. If, on the other hand, a girl answered wearing red? We’d treat that door like it was the Pearly Gates, plunging ahead and asking straight away if she was ‘willing and keen’.

  I went over the plan for weeks, getting my cousins bold and excited. On game day, I gave a long motivational speech, talking up our chances of success.

  We met a lot more men than we’d anticipated.

  Moustache after moustache, beard after beard. By the time evening rolled around, we were despondent.

  So my cousins lost faith in me. But I was undeterred, and kept Operation Looking for Mr Rezaei flying solo.

  Then one night, finally, when I was out door-knocking zealously and alone, a girl with large dark eyes answered, a loose scarf on her head. And to my enchantment, a bright red jumper.

  ‘What do you want?’ she asked me, in a matter-of-fact tone.

  I was freaked out, but I remembered: plunge ahead. Stick to the plan.

  ‘Are you willing?’ I asked, sounding nervous and overeager.

  She grinned. Her smile could’ve melted the snow off the Khezr Mountain.

  ‘My dad’s making tea, but yes, I’m up for it,’ she replied—so casual, she was even popping gum.

  She didn’t fix her scarf to make it cover her hair; it danced in waves over her face, making me tickle with excitement. So I extended my arm and offered her my sweaty palm. She grabbed it. We stared at each other for a stolen moment.

  Her hand was soft, then it was gone. She smiled again and closed the door. I collapsed, grinning, against the wall of the alley.

  I’d made contact, skin to skin. I couldn’t wait to tell my cousins. That was all we’d wanted, after all.

  Standing there in the alley, I brought my palm up to my nostrils. The girl’s hand was still on it; it smelled like cinnamon.

  I breathed deeply.

  It was a life-giving sensation.

  Girl-hunting at the movies

  The success of this encounter was the exception to the rule; in general, Operation Looking for Mr Rezaei had a low conversion rate. Nothing for it but to roll out another plan. I did not know whether to call this one Plan C or D or E. Who knew what letter we were at by now?

  Cinemas all over the world are closely associated with romantic rendezvous of every kind. Lucky for our souls, my cousins and I lived in Qom, where cinemas were safely partitioned into two halves: Male and Female.

  ‘Okay,’ I said to Mehdi and Musty, devising the plan out loud. ‘So we hang around outside the cinema on a Friday’—the most popular family day—‘and wait to see if there are any parents who’ve brought girls with them…’

  Mehdi looked worried, but Musty was hooked. ‘Where is this going, Os?’ he asked. ‘God willing, you’re going to say: we will sit next to the girls and pretend we’re part of their family?’

  I gaped at him. He’d taken the plan right out of my mouth.

  We headed to the cinema and found our marks: a family of five, the parents, a young boy and two girls in their teens.

  We loitered a while, knowing we had to get the timing perfect. Entezami officers were on the street, scrutinising us openly. The family joined the queue and just like that, we slipped in behind them: a family plus three hoodlums, or a family of eight? To complete the picture, I sidled up to the father and introduced myself, all friendly.

  ‘We only come to the movies once a month,’ I told him chattily. ‘Most of our time is spent at the mosque.’

  He was an older man, all grey-haired and stiff.

  ‘Too many wayward children out and about these days,’ I pressed.

  The old man just grumbled.

  Well, we didn’t need to sell it to him, specifically. We just needed to sell it. And to all outside appearances, I was talking to my father. We couldn’t believe it. The plan had worked. The daughters looked at us furtively, eyes twinkling. They were onto us, of course, but so much the better. They didn’t mind.

  We wandered into the cinema with them, playing it as cool as possible. But there were no Entezami in here.

  And we were just about to sit down casually beside the daughters when their father turned around and grabbed me by the collar.

  ‘Listen, son. I’m with the Monkerat, but it’s my day off,’ he said. ‘I want to enjoy the movie, and I don’t want my wife and children to see me violent. So consider yourselves lucky and get lost.’

  The public execution of a gay man

  Not all of the hawza lectures were about relations between men and women. Some of them were about relations between men and men. Gay people were not people: this was very clear. One day, I saw one of them hanged in a public courtyard.

  The noose was hanging low to the ground, anchored by a crane. The condemned was a young man in his late twenties. He stood there in his spectacles, and a prisoner’s uniform. On his face there was a resigned expression.

  The Entezami officer read out the charges to the gathering throng—it was a strong crowd, masses and masses of people.

  The condemned was tall and lanky, but it was the glasses I couldn’t get past. They just weren’t something I associated with a homosexual. He spent his time bonking men, not reading like normal people. He didn’t need the glasses. And they made him human.

  Deep down, I felt the tickling knowledge that he was a human, and because he was a human, that he shouldn’t die.

  He was asked, as was the custom, if he had any last words. He politely asked the officer if he could set his hands free, momentarily, so he could raise them to the heavens and pray.

  ‘God will look upon repentance favourably,’ the Entezami officer said, and agreed to the condemned man’s request.

  Once freed, the condemned man, surrounded by a dozen officers, used his hands to pull his pants down and expose his bottom to the crowd. The officer stood up, unholstered his revolver, and shot a full round into the man’s head.

  The glasses shattered into his face. Blood fountained from his temple. The snow was crazed with a
thousand random splotches, all different shapes and sizes, but all the same dark red.

  The astonished crowd was silent, except for the man’s mother, whose wailing echoed through the courtyard for eternity. It did not stop, but was soon drowned beneath the wave of religious chanting—the entire crowd, passionate, approving.

  A brief atonement

  One day, my cousins and I conferred and decided to take an extended break from our corrupt behaviours. For all our rebellious spirit, we felt terrible, even monstrous. We’d taken fun to an aberrant level. We had gone astray.

  As the children of clerics, we knew just what our decadence could lead to. Looking at girls’ hair, knocking on strangers’ doors, infiltrating families at the movies, masturbating at the barbershop…how low would we sink next? Might we actually kiss a girl? God! We needed a time-out to reflect upon our sullied souls, and emerge renewed.

  So I spent countless days and nights reading up on Islamic jurisprudence, cloistered at home. I went to the holy shrine and sought forgiveness and repented. I began to visit the graves of the martyrs every Friday, and read the Koran to brighten their souls.

  Due to chemical conditions in the adolescent body, this reclusion didn’t last beyond two months. I was a Muslim in my heart—but the same heart that felt so Muslim pumped hot blood through my body, rendering me pagan.

  I accepted a compromise, deciding that my soul was Muslim but my body was 100 per cent agnostic. It knew nothing of Thou Shalt Not, nor of the Holy Text. All its knowledges were governed by the art of fornication. My soul needed a good dose of repentance. My body needed a good dose of romp.

  Accordingly, I closed the Koran, rounded up my cousins, and explained my latest plan—Plan F, G, H, whatever.

  Payphone pick-ups

  That stubborn desert heat was back. That’s why they called it stubborn. The city of Qom had turned into a furnace.

  We gathered once more outside the holy shrine—this time beside the payphones, which were segregated, like everything: men on the right, women on the left. All around us, more wholesome kids were cracking eggs on the sidewalk, cooking them on the large, flat stones for fun.

  I had now employed the services of my younger brother, Moe Greene, who had started moving up our adolescent ranks. Moe had been a great warrior and comrade of mine since an early age, and was thereby my most trustworthy relation.

  Today, he was required to secrete a cache of Bin Laden rockets inside a garbage can across the road. I had carefully choreographed our foursome’s movements:

  Musty chats to the Entezami officers in a distracting fashion.

  I walk to the women’s phone booth and attach an ‘out of order’ sign I’ve made.

  Mehdi keeps watch for a possible Monkerat ambush.

  Moe detonates the fireworks.

  Everything works perfectly.

  The other thing I needed to do during the chaos was call our home phone number from the men’s booth, then leave a pen and paper atop the phone.

  The idea was this: after all the madness—the out-of-order sign; the explosion across the street—the girls would naturally be forced to use the men’s booth. Because I’d already dialled our home phone, any girl who entered would themselves have access to my number on redial.

  As soon as a girl approached the booth, I’d line up behind her. This would appear legitimate. It was the men’s booth, after all. Safe and confident, I’d lean close to her hijab and whisper, ‘Hit redial!’ If she was anywhere near as daring, she would do as I’d asked, causing my home phone number to come up on the screen. She would then use the pen and paper I’d provided to write down my number, pocketing it for later use. Mum never picked up the phone, and Dad was in Australia. So when she called back later, I’d be the one picking up the phone.

  It was elaborate, but life in Qom called for elaborate measures. If anything, this guaranteed against failure.

  Still, I was sweating, badly. I was worried about the sign hidden under my shirt—what if the sweat rendered it illegible?

  Musty was already in the shade beneath the minaret, where the Entezami officers liked to park themselves. Mehdi looked about to die from anxiety, and Moe looked so high I could’ve sworn he’d eaten pure octane for breakfast.

  Musty started to natter away. I looked across to Moe. He beamed a smile and headed to the bins, match and lighter in hand. Mehdi signalled a possible Monkerat at my two o’clock; I waited, but then I saw the thug spit at a freshly painted wall, a reasonable sign that he was not an undercover officer.

  People walked past us rapidly, busy with their days, all ready to write and wipe the next chapter of their lives and then:

  BANG!

  The noise of the explosions filled the street. God bless you, Moe, you truly are the brother of my dreams. The chaos and the mayhem were too beautiful. There was smoke, there was fire. The street felt under attack. I ran to the phone booth to execute my end of the deal. I saw Moe smiling, resigned to the fact he was about to be belted. His smile widened as the three officers prepared to take him down. He gestured at me—victory!—and his eyes said: We did it, bro.

  That’s when I pulled the plug on the operation.

  I could not do it. I couldn’t go through with the plan—not when my little bro was about to have his bones cracked in.

  I ran to the site of the explosion and drew the officers’ attention, abusing them with every name that came into my head.

  ‘Stop it, you dirty donkeys, you hairy camels! Leave him alone! Pick on someone your own size, you two-legged mountain goats!’

  They considered my suggestions.

  They implemented them in due course.

  WE’LL GET THERE WHEN WE GET THERE

  Tehran, Iran, 2013: four days until visa expires

  The chartered plane gets into Tehran just after midnight. I choose a cabbie without arguing the price and tell him, ‘Take me somewhere cheap.’

  ‘How cheap?’ he asks me, snapping gum—a driver with an attitude. ‘Beetles-on-the-floor cheap, mice-in-the-walls cheap, druggies-fighting-next-door cheap?’

  ‘Not that cheap,’ I say wearily.

  He drops me at a strip of 24/7 motels. Before he goes, I enquire discreetly about ‘the drugs’, thinking I could use something to help me stay awake and alert—there’s no time to sleep but a handful of hours here and there.

  ‘I’ve got prescription stuff, mainly. Codeine, Tramadol, Oxy…’

  ‘Oxy’s too strong,’ I say. ‘It’s like morphine.’

  ‘It’s an opiate! It’s good for you, my friend.’

  His tramadies are 200,000 tomans for a box of twenty-four. I do some mental arithmetic—$70 Australian. What the fuck am I doing? I don’t need Tramadol. I’ve never had them before—but I do read, and what I’ve read is they give you a sustained, relaxing high. He guarantees they’re clean, and downs a tablet right in front of me, just to prove his point.

  ‘Truck drivers use this all the time. You’ll be as beast as a Mack with one of these.’

  I check the time and accept the offer. Worried how the box might look if anybody finds it, I unpack it and stash the strips in
my backpack. I hand the box back to the driver. ‘God be with you,’ he coughs. I find a decent room. It’s way past three. My head is a minefield. I see a trio of cockroaches near the bed shake their antennae, perhaps over my purchase, and I fall asleep.

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  Four hours later, I wake up and take a shower. I can’t put off telling my family anymore.

  I call Moe Greene, my tough younger bro. I ask him to round up the family and put me on speakerphone.

  I still dance around it, until Mum gets sick of me. ‘Why are you calling?’ she says. ‘My blood’s dried up. Just spit out what’s on your mind.’

  ‘Okay,’ I say. ‘I’ll make this quick. There’s no easy way to say this, but I think you should read the Fatiha. Dad’s passed away.’

  I hear a loud scream. Then the sound of my sisters crying. I can’t bear it.

  ‘Listen, I only have a minute here. I have to go, there’s so much to do, but I promise you I will bring him back. I love you all.’

  ‘Please! Wait!’ Mum says, in deep agony. ‘Tell me he is just sick, in hospital. Tell me he’ll be okay.’

  ‘No, Mum. He’s been dead for three days.’

  More screams, more crying.

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t call earlier. I wanted to have everything in order.’ I hang up the phone and head out.

  I don’t want to think about what my family is going through—it will just slow me down. Luckily, my hunger is drowning out my thoughts. I find a small breakfast joint and order.

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  I call the Australian Embassy. I speak in English—and the lovely lady tells me I can come in anytime.