The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf: A Novel

by Mohja Kahf

  "You all is, immigrant brothers and sisters. `We' is, black people. I mean, African people. African people in the North American wilderness."

  "You're not African," Khadra retorted. "Aunt Ayesha's African. And `we' are all one thing: Muslim." This was the Dawah Center line: No racism in Islam. Meaning, none is allowed; a commendable ideal. But it was also a smokescreen of denial that retarded any real attempt to deal with the prejudices that existed among Muslims.

  "Oh yeah?" Hakim shot back. "Then how many Dawah Center officers are black? How many immigrants do you know who've married African American? Be for real! Immigrant white-pleasers'll marry white Americans, Muslim or not, but they won't marry black people."

  "Yeah well that cuts both ways," Khadra countered. "I don't see the proposals rolling in from the African Americans to the immigrants, either." She bit her lip, knowing he was right. Syrian Arabs like her parents sure didn't think black was beautiful.

  They pretended it was about language, not color. Losing Arabic was tantamount to losing the religion, so "You have to marry a native Arabic speaker" made sense.

  Then, one day, Eyad worked up the nerve to enlist his parents' help in asking for the hand of the Sudanese doctor's daughter, Maha Abdul-Kadir, a regal beauty whose color was rich and dark. Her family lived far and high above the Dawah Center Muslims in a Meridian Hills mansion, and the only problem he could foresee was his lack of means, especially compared to what she was used to. But maybe religious ideals-that material wealth matters little compared to piety and character in a spouse, and so forth-could overcome any qualms she or her family might have about the economic gap? And maybe they could be persuaded to bear in mind that he was pre-med, so that, even if he was poor now, he had good prospects?

  Khadra had noticed Eyad mooning over Maha at the massive Muslim Eid prayer at Eagle Creek Park. That is, he seemed to be trying a little extra hard to lower his gaze when he found himself in her vicinity. She was an usher, responsible for passing the zakat alms box up and down the women's rows. He lit up when she tapped him on the shoulder, even though it was only to hand him the box and ask him to see that Brother Derek, the men's usher, got it, because Brother Derek was too deep into the men's crowd for her to proceed to him modestly.

  The girl had impeccable character, was active at the mosque, and wore flawless hijab with not a hair showing. And, definitely, she was a native speaker of Arabic, with a pure accent, and a fluency aided by the private Arabic tutors her father had hired. She was splendidly qualified to teach their future children the language of the Quran. Piety, character, beauty, brains, the right language, the right home culture-what more to ask in a bride?

  "So ... I was wondering what you would think about the idea of proposing to Dr. Abdul-Kadir's daughter Maha," he began timidly one evening in the kitchen.

  His father stopped deboning the chicken, mid-breast, and blurted, "But for heaven's sake, she's black as coal!"

  So there it was. Out in the open.

  As soon as he'd said it, Wajdy looked queasy, and seemed almost taken aback that such a thing had come out of his own mouth. He lowered his eyes to the chicken bones and made no further comment. Ebtehaj was silent, but it was clear that black grandchildren were not what she had in mind, either. She concentrated on drawing out a slippery crescent of meat hidden between the bones of a chicken wing.

  Eyad seemed dazed, even paralyzed. The gulf between what they'd taught him and what was happening-and his not wanting to face that gulf even in light of what his father had just said-was overhelming. All of a sudden, his thought processes slowed down and he could only stare blankly.

  "But more importantly, she's older than you," Ebtehaj jumped in after the long awkward pause. "The woman should always be younger, because girls are more mature than boys and women go downhill faster in old age."

  "She's only older by a few months," Eyad said weakly. He was never going to marry anyone to whom his parents' first reaction was so negative. So that was that. He lowered his gaze to what would please his parents, believing their approval to be next to God's.

  Like many religious `radicals' they were persecuted, to the point of being executed for heresy. Finding no safe haven in other surrounding countries ... a conservative faction ... took the name of its leader, Jacob Amman, adopted his severe social and familial code, and looked for a better life across the sea.... The Amish follow an oft-misunderstood idea called gelassenheit, loosely translated as ... submission ... one must strictly adhere to or risk being shunned...

  -Thomas Huhti, The Great Indiana Touring Book

  "We have no passports," Wajdy told Ebtehaj. Their old raggedy green ones had expired, and the Syrian embassy was not about to renew the passports of dissidents and their children. So now they were paperless in America. Stuck. Plans to go on Haj had to be put on hold. But it was worse than that-their American residency papers, their green cards, depended on having valid passports to back them up. Remaining in this situation was not an option. Next they would become undocumented aliens, a precarious limbo status.

  "We're going to court to become U.S. citizens," Wajdy said one morning over his small cup of Turkish coffee. "Pick you up after school."

  Eyad guffawed and Khadra laughed. Surely their father wasn't serious. Becoming citizens had never been part of the picture.

  But he was. Very serious. It was a cloudy and confusing day. Ebtehaj looked as if she had been crying all the wounded afternoon.

  The five of them walked into the Marion County Courthouse in Indianapolis like a family in mourning, the wiry, olive-skinned father with the short beard and crinkly brown-black hair, the ivoryskinned, green-eyed mother in a blue georgette wimple; handsome grown-up Eyad with his mother's coloring; Khadra, now a young lady with her father's coarse hair peeking out of her scarf at the forehead; and seven-year-old Jihad, who was fair enough to have freckles across his nose.

  What did it matter to Jihad, Khadra thought, he was born here. He's American, anyway. To her, taking citizenship felt like giving up, giving in. After all she'd been through at school, defending her identity against the jeering kids who vaunted America's superiority as the clincher put-down to everything she said, everything she was. Wasn't she supposed to be an Islamic warrior woman, a Nusayba, a Sumaya, an Um Salamah in exile, by the waters dark, of Babylon? Wasn't she supposed to remember always the children in Syria who had to scour toilets on their knees at her age? For whom her tongue cleaved to the roof of her mouth, hamburgerless, with the guilt of one who got away? It was an ache that had gnawed her gut for years. What was all that, a big fat lie? She seethed. Land where my fathers died, hunh.

  There was no courtroom drama to it, like on TV. It took place in a room with the fancy name of "judge's chambers." It looked like any small, generic office, with a metal filing cabinet and framed photographs of bare-shaven American politicians. The Shamys sat in chrome-and-orange-vinyl chairs. Jihad, looking shy, leaned against his father's knee. The judge was a middle-aged white man with silver hair and the look of a pink-gilled fish around the eyes and jowls. He asked them to raise their right hands. For they required of us a song.

  They'd studied the citizenship booklet. Wajdy and Ebtehaj had memorized things like "Thomas Jefferson" and "judicial, executive, and legislative branches," things Khadra and Eyad already knew from school. They'd studied the booklet all right, but still it was startling when the judge asked if they renounced polygamy, drugs, and crime. None of the Shamys in that room countenanced polygamy personally, but it was still an honorable Islamic institution, not something dirty like drugs or crime. It was insulting, somehow.

  Then he asked if any of them were, or had ever been, members of the Communist Party. For a second it reminded Khadra of how TEta described the questions of the Syrian mukhabarat-and who are his associates? What are their political beliefs? But the kicker came when he said they had to swear to defend the U.S. in war when and if called upon to do so. Eyad made an involuntary motion and Khadra rolled her eyes-like she was ever g
oing to help the U.S. and its buddy Israel kill more Palestinians and Lebanese! Remember 0 Lord the day ofour destruction at Deir Yassin, at Sabra and Shatila, and even now they continue to destroy Palestinian homes, the children of Israel, with American guns, and they say `raze them, raze them, even to the foundations thereof' Happy shall he be, who rewardeth them as they have served us.

  The judge hadn't even looked up, but Wajdy saw their facial expressions, and shot Khadra and Eyad a terrible, stern look. Khadra's face froze, and her heart sank. How could her father and mother be doing this, how, and how could they be asking her to say these things? And her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth, yea, and her brother the same.

  "You could have jeopardized everything," Wajdy snapped, once they were back in the car. By the rivers dark, he panicked on.

  "It's just a piece of paper," Eyad muttered.

  "This is serious," Wajdy yelled. He hardly ever yelled. "Our futures are at stake."

  Ebtehaj sniffled and blew her nose. She did not have a cold.

  "What happened?" Jihad asked. He'd missed the glance in the judge's chambers and the whole drama.

  "Nothing," Khadra answered angrily. "Just me practicing my First Amendment right to freedom of expression," she added, under her breath.

  "What?" Jihad pressed.

  "Shut up," Khadra said.

  "Don't tell your brother to shut up," Ebtehaj said. And blew her nose again.

  By the waters of Indianapolis, everyone withdrew into sullen silence the rest of the way home.

  "In many ways, my brothers, America is more Islamic than the countries of the Muslim world. There is no widespread corruption. You can enter a judge's offices and not need to bribe his secretary for the simple basic services." It was Wajdy's turn to give the khutba at the Dawah Center's small juma service. He always said "brothers" even though Sisters Khadija and Ayesha and Ebtehaj and lots of other women attended. He said it was okay, sisters were included in brotherhood, that's just how language was.

  "Brothers, do not for a minute think that we will stop protesting against the immoral and unfair policies of America outside, in the Muslim world. May my tongue be cut off if I forget Jerusalem. But let's face it: here inside America, there are many good qualities. Law and order, cleanliness, democracy, freedom to work and honestly seek the provision of the Lord"-heads nodded among the immigrants"freedom to practice religion. These are Islamic qualities. America," he concluded, "is like Islam without Muslims. And our sick and corrupt Muslim home countries-they are Muslims without Islam."

  He began the prayer, reciting from the Quran, "He who forsakes his home for the sake of God finds in the earth many a refuge, and abundance; should he die as a refugee from home for God and his Messenger, his reward becomes due and certain with God, and God is oftforgiving, most Merciful. "

  Wajdy's citizenship khutba was not received as warmly when he was invited to lead the juma prayer at the predominantly AfroAmerican Salam Mosque.

  "You're just discovering that you're American and you want to wave a flag now?" Brother Taher said over a paper plate of whiting fish bought from a Muslim pushcart vendor in the parking lot after juma. "Brother Wajdy, I've been American all my life. And I still don't want to wave no flag."

  Wajdy was uncomprehending.

  "You immigrant brothers come in yesterday, and suddenly you white," Brother Derek chimed in. "We been here longer and this country was built on our backs. I don't see nobody trying to give us a silver platter."

  Anyway, it was done. The Shamys-on paper, anyway-were now American.

  Whoso believeth in God and the Last Day, let them be generous to the guest, and whoso believeth in God and the Last Day, let them be generous to the neighbor, and whoso believeth in God and the Last Day, let them speak kindly or keep silent.

  -Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him

  The androgynous. couple next door was moving away. "We'll miss you!" Lindsey, or maybe it was Leslie, said, waving at the Shamys. They were headed for someplace called Fayetteville, Arkansas. They'd found what they were looking for, something called "an intentional community." Did that mean group sex? Wajdy wondered, but tried to put out of mind and think better of them. He and Ebtehaj nodded and waved. They hoped wherever it was they were going, it would help man-woman-Leslie-Lindsey sort themselves out.

  New neighbors moved in. They seemed like a regular family, thank God-the man was a man and the woman was a woman. They had twin boys jihad's age, and a little girl. Ebtehaj knocked on their door with a "welcome, neighbor" tray of goodies and invited them for coffee. The Whitcombs said they didn't drink coffee, but would like to come anyway. Coffee and tea were against their religion.

  "How does one socialize without coffee or tea?" Ebtehaj murmured.

  At the same time, she and her husband were impressed. Especially when they realized the Whitcombs didn't smoke, either, or drink alcohol. There were Americans who observed religious prescriptions for halal and haram in their diet?

  As it turned out, the Whitcombs and the Shamys seemed to have many values in common. John Whitcomb was a hardworking family man who stayed close to home in the evenings. Norma Whitcomb had married young, just like Ebtehaj, and dressed modestly, often in long denim jumpers and spotless white blouses.

  "Her kitchen is so clean, it sparkles like snow!" Ebtehaj exclaimed after a visit. For Ebtehaj to be moved to remark on the cleanliness of another woman's kitchen, much less that of an American woman, was a historical moment, Khadra drily noted to her brother.

  The two women began to exchange recipes while Jihad Shamy played outside with Brig and Riley Whitcomb and their little sister Sariah. Ebtehaj taught Norma to bake pita bread, which Norma always called "Bible bread," and Norma taught Ebtehaj to make an important American dish called tuna casserole.

  Norma was quite the artist with Jell-O. One day she brought over a marvelous mold of lime green striped with cherry red.

  "You're very kind," Ebtehaj said, but she had to explain to her that they couldn't eat it. "It's the gelatin," she said. "It's made with enzymes from animal fat. Could be pork."

  "Oh, dear," Norma said. Far from poo-pooing Ebtehaj's concern, she, putting herself in her neighbor's place for a moment, was almost as chagrined at the Muslim woman's close brush with pork as she would've been had she herself been offered a food prohibited by her church or her personal views. After that, whenever the two women wheeled their carts side by side at the Safeway, she was anxious lest her friend pick up something with pork and, if Ebtehaj had any doubt about a word on the nutritional label, Norma doublechecked it.

  So the Shamys' sojourn in the land grew long and, although there was danger in it still, there was also relief from danger and, beyond even that, moments of unexpected grace.

  And you put on the ugly mask and try to smash through ... You don't care who you offend

  the teacups shatter, and you bash into the barrier again and again.

  -Starhawk, Truth or Dare

  That was the year Khadra donned black headscarves with a surge of righteous austerity that startled her parents. They thought a young girl should be wearing lighter colors. Stern in dress and gaze, she descended the stairs. She wore a no-nonsense black scarf and a navyblue jilbab her father had sewn at her request.

  "Going to a funeral today?" Ebtehaj asked sharply.

  A scathing look was all she received in response from her sixteenyear-old daughter.

  Khadra and her friends were impatient with traditional Islamic scholarship, with its tedious, plodding chapters on categories of water purity and how to determine the exact end of menses.

  "Islam is action in the world!" Khadra said. "Not studying the various levels of water purity for ablution."

  Agreed, her parents would have said, given half a chance. But their moderate Islamic revival movement she now scorned, for it did not go far enough down the revolutionary path.

  Wajdy and Ebtehaj exchanged looks but didn't say anything. What could they say? They were the o
nes who had introduced Khadra to the works of Islamist revolutionary Sayid Qutb, after all, and his multivolume taf it of the Quran sat on their rickety bookshelf in the living room. She seemed only to be taking his rhetoric a step or two further along the path of its own logic.

  It had begun with an argument some of the Dawah teens had about Iran when they were leaving a Muslim youth camp up in Lafayette. At first the kids had stared out the van windows at the Hoosier horizon rolling out flatly unto forever. Then, with the earnestness of Dawah teens, they began discussing the disappointment of Iran's Islamic revolution. It had seemed to be the beginning of truly moral Islamic government in the whole Muslim world. Then the leaders of Iran had become power-andpolitics obsessed, no better than any other regime.

  "Yeah, it's just like early Islamic history," said Ramsey-he was the third Nabolsy brother, the redhaired one. He tossed a miniature foam football up in the air and caught it again and again. "It was all spiritual for, like, five minutes and then as soon as the Prophet died, it all went to crap."

  "That's not true, Islam wasn't all downhill after the Prophet" Eyad said gravely. "Peace be upon him. You had the four rightly guided caliphs. May God be pleased with them."

  "Who were followed by Muawiya," Ramsey said sardonically, as if it were a punch line to something. Danny Nabolsy did not look up from the Rubik's Cube he was twiddling.

  "Yeah, so?" Eyad said.

  "Whose son had the Prophet's grandson killed? Who had the Prophet's entire family killed?" Ramsey was like someone waiting for a reason to explode.

  "Muawiya didn't mean it to happen that way. It was just a tragedy-"

  "Bullshit!" Ramsey said. Khadra did a double take.

  "Don't use that language!" Eyad said, batting the football away. "And don't badmouth a Companion of the Prophet! Muawiya's still a Companion, no matter what mistakes he made."