The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf: A Novel

by Mohja Kahf

  "And-look down!" her mother cried, pointing.

  There, spread below them, was the city, pinwheel after pinwheel of light. Spinning gears of light. This was amazing. This was America. The children marveled, but the parents were young themselves, and could hardly believe they were looking upon the world from these dizzying heights. They were a galaxy away from home, for the first time in sober young lives spent mostly within a small radius around Damascus.

  Danger abounded. Pork was everywhere. At first the young couple thought it was merely a matter of avoiding the meat of the pig. Soon their eyes were opened to the fact that pig meat came under other names and guises in this strange country. Sometimes it was called bacon, other times it was called sausage, or bologna, or ham. Its fat was called lard and even in a loaf of Wonder Bread it could be lurking. Bits of pig might appear in salad-imagine, in salad! Jell-O had pig. Hostess Twinkles had pig. Even candy could have pig.

  Pig meat was filthy. It had bugs in it, Khadra's father said. That's why God made it haram, her mother said. If you ate pig, bugs would grow and grow inside your stomach and eat your guts out. Always ask if there is pig in something before you eat anything from kuffar hands.

  Mrs. Brown the kindergarten teacher poured the candy corn into a little flowered plastic cup on Khadra's desk.

  Khadra said, "I can't eat this," her round, baby-fat face grave.

  "Why not, sweetie?" Mrs. Brown said, bending low so her white face was next to Khadra's.

  "There's a pig in it."

  Mrs. Brown laughed a pretty laugh and said, "Nooo, there isn't a pig in it, dear!"

  "Are you sure?"

  "I'm positive."

  She was so pretty and so nice and so sure. Khadra ate the candy corn and put some in her pocket. But when Eyad saw the candy corn on the bus he said, "Ommm, you ate candy corn. Candy corn has pig!"

  "Nuh uh!"

  But it did. And it was too late to throw it up. Khadra was tainted forever. If she lived, that is. Too ashamed to tell her parents, she waited in horror for the bugs to grow in her stomach and eat her guts out.

  Go forth lightly and heavily and strive with your wealth and your selves in the path of God, that is best for you, if you but knew.

  -Quran 9:41

  One day Khadra's father heard a call in the land and, the love of God his steps controlling, decided to take his family to a place in the middle of the country called Indiana, "The Crossroads of America." He had discovered the Dawah Center.

  His wife said that a Dawah worker's job was to go wherever in the country there were Muslims who wanted to learn Islam better, to teach it to their children, to build mosques, to help suffering Muslims in other countries, and to find solutions to the ways in which living in a kuffar land made practicing Islam hard. This was a noble jihad.

  "Position open: Chapter Coordinator, Dawah Center. Develop Islamic education programs via logical Islamic methodology. Requirements: Practicing Islamic lifestyle, sound Islamic belief, college degree. Contact: Br. Omar Nabolsy or Br. Kuldip Khan, Indianapolis Home Office, 1867 New Harmony Drive, Simmonsville, Indiana." (Classified in The Islamic Forerunner)

  So they loaded up everything they owned on the luggage rack of the station wagon and set off over prairie and dale like pioneers. Tall tall mountains shining in their eyes. Immaculate lakes like God's polished tables. Rivers that churned and frothed. Forests, high-treed and terrifying, and then land so wide and flat it made you lonely.

  "Where's Syria?" Khadra asked Eyad, staring at her stubby toes on the back window of the station wagon where they lay on a Navajo blanket. Khadra couldn't remember Syria, although she thought of it whenever she rubbed a little boomerang-shaped scar on her right knee that had been made on a broken tile in Syria. Red blood running down a white stone step. Walay himmek. Ey na'am. Sometimes she had a vague memory of having been on a mountain. Dry sunny days that had a certain smell made her think of Syria, and when she bit into a tart plum or a dark cherry, her mouth felt like Syria.

  Eyad, with his serious gray-green eyes, remembered Syria in complete sentences, not flashes of words and tastes. Life there had Aunt Razanne and Uncle Mazen. And their kids, cousin Reem and cousin Roddy, drinking powdered milk from a big tin that said NEEDO. Syria was Mama's daddy called Jiddo Candyman, with his tuft of thick white hair like cotton candy, throwing you up-up while you screamed with delight. The adhan floating down from up in the air. Streets busy with people who spoke Arabic in the same rhythms as his mother and father, ey wallah, people whose faces bore his parents' features. Here in 'Mreeka, no one looked like them and they looked like no one.

  "Far away," Eyad said gravely. "Syria's far, far away."

  "Where? Point. Where the sky touches the ground, is that Syria?"

  "No," he said, with authority. "Farther."

  "Like a star?" She squinted at the street lamps, making them send rays of light to her eyes.

  The little frontier family trekked the Oregon Trail in reverse, with as much wonder in their hearts as the pioneers of an earlier century heading the other way. Square One itself had been strange enough and new, and now they were going further, over the edge of the known world. At the start of every day, their mother recited the Throne of the Heavens and the Earth Verse, the three "I seek refuge" chapters from the Quran, and her favorite travel prayer: 0 Thou My God: I seek refuge in Thee from humiliation or humiliating, from being astray or leading others astray, from wronging or being wronged, from ignorance or having ignorance perpetrated upon me.

  It has been seven years since the adult Khadra had set foot in Indi- ananapolis. She'd left in the middle of a college degree, in the middle of a marriage to a nice Muslim guy, in the middle of community ties she cauterized abruptly. The Fallen Timbers Townhouses are coming up on the right and, on a whim, she turns off on General Wayne Drive toward it: the old homestead.

  There are laundry lines by the corner wall. There's number 1492 Tecumseh Drive. A caramel-colored girl comes out the door swinging a brown shopping bag full of fancy ladies' shoes. iA la casa de Simona!" she shouts over her shoulder.

  Khadra, returning to this ground that didn't love her, tries to stave the panic in her gut that is entirely the fault of the state of Indiana and the lay of its flat, flat land, to which she had never asked to be brought. She repeats the favorite prayer of her mother aloud to the windshield of her little car and grips the steering wheel a little tighter, like someone holding a small lantern and going out to investigate, a little afraid of what she might find.

  Hoosier hii-zha r/ a native or resident of Indiana - used as a nickname.

  -Merriam-Webster

  ... in the eighteenth century, Hoosier was used generally to describe a backwoods-man, especially an ignorant boaster, with an overtone of crudeness and even lawlessness.

  -Howard H. Peckham, Indiana, A History

  The Shamy family had come to Indiana for God. It wasn't much pay.

  "It doesn't matter," Khadra's mother said. "We are not in love with the glitter of this world." But oh, Khadra loved the glitter of the purple banana seat bike at the garage sale. Her father haggled the price down to four dollars.

  "How come 'Nifa and them get new bikes, Baba?" she asked, skittering to keep up with her father as he maneuvered the bike to the station wagon.

  "When I was your age back in Syria, my folks were so poor I had to work after school till dark. Days we had nothing in the house but bread and olives."

  "Yeah, but how come Hanifa and them get new bikes?"

  "Say al-hamdu-lilah, Khadra." He hoisted the bike into the cargo space of the station wagon. "Give thanks for what you have."

  "Hamdilah. But how come-"

  His mother's mother had been a seamstress. In the days of privation and cholera epidemic in Damascus, when menfolk were drafted by the Turks and forced to fight the Safar Barlek, she scraped through by sewing for the neighbors. She pedaled that kettle-black Singer to success. By the 1920s, ladies from all over Damascus would come to her with fashion
magazines, point at an outfit, and she'd custom tailor it for them, or delegate it to one of her apprentices-young women vied to be trained by her.

  "Like, a fashion designer?" Khadra said, looking at the woman with the arching brows and upswept hair in the faded photo, one of the few pictures the Shamys packed with them from Syria. Her father's grandma eyeballed you, looking kind of magnificent and cheekbony, not like the pictures of Mama's mother, which showed a plump, sweet-faced woman looking like she was about to give you a big cozy hug in shades of black and white.

  The Shamy side tended to look heroic and solemn in photographs. Khadra's dad, Wajdy, had a picture of his father, Jiddo Abu Shakker, in his youth, standing at attention in a military uniform. His mother, Sitto Um Shakker, is seated next to him in her bridal dress. Both look brave and sad and serious. Of course they wouldn't have been called Um Shakker and Abu Shakker then, because they hadn't had the first baby, Shakker, yet.

  Jiddo the Soldier-Man had died the year before they came to America. It happened when her father's big brother Shakker got put in jail for saying things against the Syrian government. Her father said Syria was a mean government, and that Shakker had told the truth to its face and that's called standing witness and that's what a good Muslim should do. Shakker died a hero. A martyr. In Syria, everyone in the Shamy neighborhood called Wajdy "Shakker's little brother."

  The last picture they had of Jiddo Abu Shakker is of him in a fez and a full gray beard, smiling sadly. Baby Khadra is in his lap and little tyke Eyad in a sailor suit at his knee.

  "They didn't have such fancy titles as `fashion designer' in Syria then," her father answered Khadra. "Seamstress is what she called it." He had learned to sew almost by osmosis. `Burdas"-that's what Wajdy called sewing patterns-"burdas are for beginners."

  Little Khadra had only to point to a dress in her Sleeping Beauty Golden Book and her father would whip it up for her on the secondhand Singer. Her friends may have flaunted gorgeous new ghararas from Hyderabad on Eid, with gold-on-red and silveron-green chumki-bordered brocade and matching depattas thrown over their shoulders like glamorous boas. But they had nothing on the fairy-tale gown Khadra's father made for her. It boasted fivecount 'em, five-tiers of ruffles on the full-length violet skirt, and a petal collar with rickrack trim.

  Their mother was getting fat. Soon the children were told-it wasn't fat, it was a new baby on the way. Khadra and Eyad got it then-the worry about money. They clipped coupons for double coupon day and saved pennies for baby-food jars and diapers and plastic panties. In brother-sister huddles, Eyad and Khadra discussed getting jobs that would help the family budget. "Paper route?" Eyad whispered. "How much money do they make?" Khadra whispered back.

  Their mother didn't work. At least, not outside the home. Inside she worked plenty, scrubbing things clean, getting spots out, refolding aluminum foil, deboning chicken to make it last several meals, stretching things out until the next paycheck. Making sure filth did not seep underfoot from the trickle around the toilet bowl and get carried to the rest of the house by the wet squishing soles of plastic bathroom slippers. Don't wear the bathroom slippers outside the bathroom. Leave them at the door-you're tracking impurities-now we can't pray there until the carpet's shampooed and purified.' Making sure the kids did chores and didn't turn into lazy American children. But Mama-Hanifa and Hakim are waiting for us to ride our bikes to the candy store!

  Hanifa and Hakim al-Deen lived in the Fallen Timbers. Their dad, Uncle Jamal, worked at a big pharmaceutical company but their mom, Aunt Khadija, was a secretary at the Dawah Center so they played with the Shamy kids nearabout every day.

  "I have a college degree, like Wajdy," Khadra's mother said to Aunt Khadija. At one time, she thought she might go to medical school. "But after I graduated, I chose to stay home. For the children." She patted her belly, which globed firm and round in front of her.

  "That is her most important work: making more Muslims," Khadra's father liked to say jovially. "Good-quality Muslims, that is. An educated mother is the child's first school!"

  Ebtehaj Qadry-Agha had a good-quality Muslim baby at the hospital. A beaming Wajdy Shamy pointed him out to Khadra and Eyad through the nursery window, a red, squinting, mewling bundle that turned out to be a boy named Jihad. Khadra and Eyad spent the night at Hakim and Hanifa's.

  The al-Deen townhouse was a mirror image of the Shamys'. Where the Shamys' entrance and hallway were to the left of the dinette, kitchen, and living room, the al-Deen hallway was to the right. Instead of a matching country plaid couch set in harvest gold and hunter green, the al-Deens had a beige overstuffed sectional that overfilled the living room. Instead of the Shamys' big wooden TV with the rabbit ears (on which they'd all watched Nixon's big square head say "I am resigning the office of the presidency effective at noon tomorrow"), the Al-Deens had a hi-fi stereo system and stacks of records and eight-tracks by K-tel, from Al Green to the Valadiers. Khadra's parents ignored this wall of music when visiting Uncle Jamal and Aunt Khadija and didn't understand why they kept this monument to their pre-Muslim years.

  ... the Honorable Elijah Muhammad's teaching ... is part of Islamic tradition, not an isolated, unique invention of half-baked negro theology.... Arabs have no monopoly on Islam.

  -Marvin X, In the Crazy House called America

  Aunt Khadija's name used to be Kacey. Kacey Thompson, then she changed it to Kacey X, then Khadija X, then Khadija Kareem when she became a Bilalian, then Khadija Al-Deen when she married Uncle Jamal.

  "Was that when you finally became a real Muslim?" Khadra asked, licking powdered Tang out of a paper cup, a habit for which Aunt Khadija said she'd lose all her teeth before the age of twenty. "Or were you still that Elijah thing. The fake Muslims where it's only for black people?" Khadra was perched on the side of Aunt Khadija's desk in the secretarial pool at the Dawah Center, swinging her short legs. It was the room that used to be the front parlor when the house had been a family home.

  Aunt Khadija didn't answer right off. She turned her face away and filed some papers in a metal cabinet. Things were busy because it was almost Memorial Day, the time of year when the Dawah Center held its annual conference.

  "What is a real Muslim, Khadra?" Aunt Khadija said finally.

  "When you do the Five Pillars," Khadra shrugged, "you know, and follow the Quran and the Prophet and wear hijab and follow the Islamic way of life and-"

  Aunt Khadija said gently, "Shahada. That's all. Belief that God is One. When that enters your heart and you surrender to it, you are a Muslim."

  Khadra felt alarm. It wasn't that simple. Her parents said so. You have to practice Islam to be a real Muslim.

  "Remember," Aunt Khadija said, "I was born a Muslim, Khadra. Just like you." "But-you converted," Khadra protested. She had seen Aunt Khadija's yearbook. She used to be a regular American girl with beehive hair, wearing a miniskirt, having a boyfriend. That's not Living the Islamic Lifestyle. She peered wonderingly up at Aunt Khadija's face, her rounded cheeks like dark red apples. Khadra's father said all that Elijah Mohammad business was nonsense. He said it was a good thing Black Muslims like Aunt Khadija and Uncle Jamal converted to real Islam or they would be wandering astray.

  "I don't say I `converted,"' Aunt Khadija said gently. "I say I `reverted.' Everyone is born in a state of surrender to God. That's what the word `muslim' means, really. I rediscovered my natural state, that's all. Surrender is-"

  "Khadra, Khadra, let Aunty do her work," Khadra's father said. Hundreds of mailed-in conference registration forms needed to be sorted.

  Aunt Khadija helped Khadra tie on her scarf for prayer. "Imagine being made to stand naked in front of a whole bunch of people," Aunt Khadija murmured.

  Khadra drew back with a look of horror.

  "Mmm hmm. That's how it was," Aunt Khadija said, her face framed in a plum-colored scarf. "That's how it was for black women back in slavery times. Up on the auction block. Covering up is a strong thing." Khadra hopped off the desk and followed the
back of Auntie Khadija's dark rose thobe as it trailed, dignified, up the stairs to the prayer room.

  One time in fourth grade, Khadra thought she might start wearing hijab like the big girls, but then Hanifa had called to say "let's go swimming!" so she'd put it off and run to meet her friend at the Fallen Timbers pool. The two girls cannonballed and butterflied, and raced squealing to the finish line in the water, basking in sun and air.

  After hijab, she'd still be able to swim in private pools, such as at the home of the Sudanese doctor's family up in Meridian Hills. Dr. Abdul-Kadir's elegant, tobe-clad wife sometimes invited all the girls to a women-only pool party, and Khadra and Hanifa got into splash fights with Maha, the doctor's daughter.

  The Abdul-Kadir family and the other Northern Indy Muslims were rich. They didn't work for the cause of Islam full-time like Dawah people but were doctors, lawyers, engineers. Khadra's mother said somebody had to do those important jobs. "I used to dream I would be a doctor one day, and open a free clinic for poor people," she said. And Khadra's dad said it was okay to be rich, but it was a trial from God. What would you do with it?

  The Abdul-Kadirs did good things with it. Like, a lot of Muslims were being killed in Cambodia, and the Dawah Center wanted to help Cambodian Muslims get to a safe haven in America, but raising enough money was hard. Khadra and Hanifa baked tray after tray of brownies, and Aunt Trish made her carrot cake, and Aunt Dilshad fried her samosas (Too hot! They made your eyes water). Eyad and Hakim and Malik Jefferson and the Haqiqat sisters pitched in to sell it all for weeks and weeks after juma at Masjid Salam. Still, it wasn't enough. Then the Abdul-Kadirs wrote a big check, as much as had been raised in weeks of bake sales, and boom, just like that, there was enough to bring over the Cambodian family, Sufiya and Ali and their baby Hassan. Only Uncle Kuldip said to call them Cham, not Cambodian.

  "They're here, they're here!" Uncle Kuldip was bringing the Chams from the airport. The "auntie crew" was stocking the cabinets with groceries. Eyad and Hakim and Danny Nabolsy had to shovel the walk to the guest house and, since it was the kind of snow that had sat and iced over for days and came off only in chunks, they had a job of it. Danny's big brother Sammy sat on the back porch with his feet up on the rail, laughing at them. Nilofar Haqiqat and Hanifa al-Deen hustled to put the vacuum cleaner away. Khadra, at the window with Insaf Hagiqat, stared curiously as Uncle Kuldip drove up with the newcomers.