by Mohja Kahf
The familiarity of it struck a chord in her. She and Eyad had never seen Arab folk like this: women called Rose who mangled Arabic with an American accent and played Arabic music on American guitars, and men who looked like Hoosier farmers in denim overalls but a shade or two darker. All sitting around eating kibbeh nayyeh of an Indiana evening as the midges and moths played in the porch light.
Joy's bedroom was cluttered with Holly Hobbie ornaments, Cesar Chavez posters, stacks of The Radical Ecologist, and ratty Green Lantern comic books. The whole house smelled as if it had flooded in 1920 and never recovered from the mildew. As Khadra made her way over the creaky floorboards after using the bathroom to make ablution, she spied, through a door slightly ajar, joy's father on his prayer rug, his back to her, finishing off a slow-moving rakat. He had made no fuss of "clap-clap-clap, it's prayer time, everyone hop to it." But wasn't it a father's duty to call everyone to prayer?
"Men should be men and women should be women," Rose was saying on the porch. "I don't truck with all this women's lib business. What do we need libbing from? You're with me, right, hon?" she said, looking at Khadra and Eyad. "It goes against religion, am I wrong or am I right?"
Eyad nodded, happy to find common ground. Khadra said, with mild protest, "I think religion allows a little more flexibility than that, Auntie. I mean, the Prophet used to help his wife with the housework, and Sitna Aisha led a battle once."
Rose waved this away. "God created us a certain way and that's the way it's supposed to be. Tradition, hon. It works. You don't mess with what works. Am I wrong or am I right?"
"Wrong or right, Mom, I'd like some more of your wonderful atayef,"Baker said with a wink, holding his out plate.
Joy rolled her eyes.
Khadra went home with an itty-bitty crush on Baker. Which she totally wouldn't admit to herself, much less to Joy. All she knew was, she liked to stop by the fireplace lounge of the Union and breathe in that woodburning smell. She nestled into an armchair and put her feet up on her bookbag, and she was riding full gallop through tall grasses right up to the edge of a deep woods, and then she was padding like an old-time Shawnee brave from tree to mossy tree, trying to get a closer glimpse of someone or something that evaded her.
... behold. The Shadow has departed. I will be a shieldmaiden no longer, nor vie with the great Riders, nor take joy only in the songs of slaying. I will be a healer, and love all things that grow and are not barren.
-Eowyn, in J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
A little while after returning from the Shelbys, Khadra put on a white scarf with tiny flowers like a village meadow in spring, and a pale blue blouse and soft floral skirt. Her broadcloth navy jilbab and plain black scarves she shoved to the back of her closet. Ebtehaj raised an eyebrow at breakfast but said nothing. Her political pamphlets, cassettes of Abdulla Azzam khutbas, and modern Muslim revolutionary tracts, Khadra swept into shoeboxes under her bed. Now she raided her parents' downstairs bookshelves for hadith books and Ibn Kathir's tafsir, making Ebtehaj nuts when it was time to prepare for taleem and she couldn't find the volume she needed. At the University library, Khadra checked out Muwatta Ibn Malik, Sahih Muslim, Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawzia, and usul al-fgh books. The latter, being untranslated, were difficult reading for her. She came home excited one day, dropping her bookbag with a thud.
"What do you have in there, rocks?" Eyad asked.
Khadra took out a huge red brick of a book. "Just came out in translation!" she said. "Reliance of the Traveler!"
Her mother, looking over her mending, said "Interesting."
"What does that mean?" Khadra said warily. She already loved the Reliance and didn't want her mother to spoil it by having some view about it that would then take up space in her head forever.
"Nothing. It's a good reference. We've had it for years in Arabic and you never took interest."
"Well, this is in English. Translated by an American Muslim. An American. A Muslim who is entirely American." Khadra was ripe for this sort of hadith wisdom anthology, steeped as she was since earliest childhood in the words of Quranic and Prophetic traditions.
It was the beginning of her neoclassical phase. She thirsted now to study the traditional Islamic heritage. It seemed to her the answer lay in there somewhere-not in the newfangled Islamic revivalism of her parents and the Dawah, with its odd mixtures of the modern and the Prophetic, and its tendency to come off more like a brisk civic action committee than a spiritual faith. No, not there, but in the direction of the old Quranic and hadith sciences, the various branches of fqh and shariah studies, and the spiritual wisdom that had been handed down with them for centuries-now there was something! These things were tried and true; they'd lasted because they worked. But how to get them, where? Going to Al-Azhar University in Cairo, as Eyad had done during his traditional Islam phase, was impossible.
"I'm thinking about changing my major to Islamic studies," she said to her father. He was driving her home from Bloomington one weekend when Eyad was out of town.
"Study Islam as taught by Orientalists?" Wajdy said, frowning into the driving rain on his windshield. "They don't believe in Revelation. They claim hadiths are fabrications. They malign the Prophet. They say Islam was spread by the sword. There is no end to the lies they will teach you-"
"I can see through that stuff," Khadra said airily. "I'll only go for what I want to get out of it. The classical texts."
"It doesn't work that way. They play with your brain." The rain fell in sheets. The wipers couldn't wipe it fast enough. Wajdy slowed down.
"You sound like Mama."
"What do you mean?"
"Paranoid."
Wajdy pulled over, displeased with the ungenerosity toward her mother, and waited for the rain to abate. A neoclassical phase had been part of his own youth, but beginning that path without the guidance of a classically trained teacher was foolhardy. How could you separate the study of texts from the spiritual guidance that a traditional sheikh imparted?
However, next month, again on the drive from Bloomington, he said to Khadra, "I've found something for you. The Terre Haute CMC is sponsoring a Mauritanian sheikh for a year. He'll be imam of their congregation there and offering weekly study. He is a hafiz, with ijazas in Quran and the Maliki school of jurisprudence."
The flat, featureless landscape of central Indiana stretched out on both sides of the car.
"But-that's in Terre Haute. How does that help me?" God. Soybean fields in winter are the most depressing sight you ever want to see, Khadra thought. She flashed on a Quranic phrase from "The Cave" to describe it-"transformed into dry stubble which the winds do scatter."
"Bear with me, Khadra. `Sabrun jameel-patience is beautiful,"' he quoted from the Quran. "You want to seek Islamic knowledge and that is a noble thing. Your mother and I want to support you in this. So I'm willing to drive you down once a week."
Khadra's face shone.
"It's what I think Saeed would have done," her father said. Saeed ibn al-Musayab, of the generation of the Tabiyun, the generation after the Prophet, was one of his personal heroes. He would have gone the distance to educate his daughters in Islamic knowledge, Wajdy felt.
The Terre Haute mosque was an apartment in a shabby four-story walk-up. The door number was missing, but you could tell which one it was by the pile of shoes at the threshold. The Mauritanian sheikh, in addition to letting her sit in the back of the men's tajwid session, gave over a special session to teach shariah to Khadra.
"He's pretty laid back about mixed-gender interactions," Khadra shared with Tayiba. "He's like, traditional, but that's part of the tradition he comes from."
Some of the Terre Haute men at first disapproved of a female presence at the halaqa. Most of them were foreign students from Musim heartland countries whose wives typically didn't go to the mosque. But the sheikh defended her presence. Maliki thought, the sheikh's school, emphasized the practice of the people of Medina in the early days of Islam, and the sheikh reminde
d the halaqa that the Prophet had taught women with no curtain between them, and that the first mosques of Islam had no physical barrier between men and women. So mixed-gender meetings, as long as they were circumspect and respectful, were not a newfangled thing in his book, but a continuation of tradition.
And so the treasures of Quran recital were unlocked for Khadra. It began with a diagram of the throat with the Arabic letters charted at their places of origin. Hard palate, soft palate, the root of the tongue, the median sulcus down its middle, the phonemes that belong to each of its side sections. When to soften the t and d and when to harden them. Proper Quran recital was an art form, like opera; Khadra'd had no idea. What a difference the training made. Before, she read the Quran like you'd read a newspaper. Now, she felt it surge through her throat and flow with her breath, and she could fill the room with the mellow sound of it, fill the day and night.
Khadra was in love with it. She practiced constantly. "Kaf ha ya ayn saad, "she said in the entomology lab over a branch swarming with ladybugs, coccinella novemnotata. And remember Mary in the Book, "she memorized, over the tsip, trip-zip of the katydids. "When she withdrew from her family to a place in the East, "she said, leaning over whirring blue-green dragonflies.
The Mauritanian sheikh announced that an international tajwid competition would allow him to select one of his students to enter. Khadra redoubled her recital practice. Tayiba grew used to her holding up her hand indicating that she was in the middle of a verse. "Thy Sign shall be that thou shalt speak to no man for three nights in a row. So Zachariah came out to his people from his chamber and told them by signs to celebrate God's praises in the morning and the evening, " she recited between bowling a spare and a strike. In the soundproof study room at the library, she proclaimed, "Oh Yahya, take hold of the Book with Strength. And we gave him Wisdom even in youth, and tenderness from Us, and Purity, and he was devout. And kind to his parents, not overbearing or rebellious. And Peace be upon him the day he was born, and the day that he dies, and the day he will be resurrected. "
"That's beautiful," Joy said, zipping her backpack. "You ready for Social Justice?" She and Khadra were taking one of the hot history courses on campus, taught by Dr. Turner Mattingly, a charismatic professor whose charm and good looks were quite possibly a factor in the course's brimming enrollments. Khadra's crowd took his classes because he was the only professor on campus who gave the Palestinian cause a fair shake, and even had some positive things to say about the Iranian Revolution. That was as good a reason for the CMC girls to take his classes as for the boys, and if the girls got a little extra flushed when they debated the value of Islamist politics with him after class, well, it was just their hijabs making them a bit sweaty around the neck, in all likelihood.
Her tajwid practice gathered momentum. Every place on campus became associated for Khadra with a cluster of verses. Under the stinky gingko tree was where she found herself setting to heart And the pains of childbirth drove her to the trunk of a palm tree. She cried Would that I had died before this and been a thing forgotten, long out of memory! But there called to her from underneath her, Grieve not! For thy Lord bath provided a rivulet beneath thee. "And in a thundering rainstorm on the path to Lindley Hall, she memorized: 'And shake toward thyself the trunk of the palm tree; it will let fall fresh ripe dates upon thee. So eat, and drink, and cool thine eye. "
In this way, she triumphed, memorizing the whole Maryam sura by the deadline, having perfected the transitions and techniques and tonalities. She recited it for the Mauritanian sheikh and he beamed, saying it was nearly flawless, the best in the class. Now Khadra passed her cassette tape up the row of students to him.
"What's this?" he said, smiling gently.
"My tape. For the contest," she said.
"Ah." He blinked. He opened his mouth to speak, then shut it, then said, "There's been some misunderstanding, dear Sister."
"How do you mean, Ustaz?"
"Well-you see-I never meant to imply-the contest, I'm afraid-it is not open to women."
Khadra was crushed. He was apologetic. Nothing wrong with having women in such a contest, he assured her. The sponsoring institution simply had not opened it to women yet. He would be sure to mention it to them for next year. Her reward was with God, in any case, for surely she had been memorizing for God and not for fame in this world?
He gazed, and gazed, and gazed, and gazed Amazed, amazed, amazed, amazed
-Robert Browning, "Rhymes for a Child Viewing a Naked Venus in a Painting of The Judgement of Paris"
Juma al-Tashkenti was a friend of Eyad's, a mechanical engineering grad student from Kuwait. Tall, with a basketball player's build, he was much darker than Eyad in coloring and had dark-rimmed eyes. Like Michael Ansara playing Abu Sufyan, the bad guy in the movie The Message. (The character converts to Islam three-quarters of the way through the film, and suddenly he's one of the good guys, just when you were enjoying hating him.) The Message had outraged Muslims when it had first come out in '76, with one Black Muslim group threatening that "heads would roll" if it opened in theaters. Later, when people took the time, actually, to watch it, they'd discovered it was not half bad, even ponderously respectful. By the 1980s, it was hailed as a Muslim film classic by people who attended Dawah Center conferences. Khadra had seen it many times at the Campus Muslim Council's annual Ramadan screening.
Juma met her at the point when her black-scarf phase was fading into her neoclassical phase and was impressed, without sharing all her views. When it came down to it, he didn't actually pay close attention to what she said at the podium during Campus Muslim Council meetings, so much as he was wowed by the fact that she got up and said intelligent-sounding things. She had a pure Arabic accent-even though she spoke English with a regular American accent too. She wore perfect hijab, even a little conservatively for his taste, but that was okay, better that she erred on that side than the other way, he thought.
And he'd seen her get passionate about Palestine and other Arab causes. He liked that she had not lost her Arab identity despite being raised entirely in America. Juma didn't know personally any other girls who combined all those qualities. He lowered his gaze diligently before her, which she, without thinking about it consciously, found charming. A scent of sandalwood clung about him.
One afternoon, Khadra picked up the phone. "I was just-is Eyad there?" It was Juma. "I was just calling to see if he's going to the program tonight," he said, using the muted voice proper for a woman not his mahram, the verbal equivalent of that lowered gaze.
"Of course," Khadra said, her tone equally sober. An official from the Reagan State Department was going to explain to the CMC how to expedite trips to Pakistan in aid of the Afghan mujahideen effort against the Soviet Union.
The Afghan jihad was the Muslim cause du jour. Some CMC boys in their first flush of Islamic movement geopolitical awareness had taken to wearing the rolled Afghan caps. Sort of the guy equivalent to the black-scarf thing, Khadra figured. Some even hoped to volunteer at Afghan camps in Peshawar. You could work at refugee hospitals, orphanages, and camp schools. It was the summer trip of choice. It was exciting, and new, and a little strange, to have U.S. State Department validation for such efforts. For similar Jewish causes, there had long been official sanctionlike, look at all the government support they got to help free Soviet Jews. The Hillel students all wore those buttons that said "Let My People Go," and now Muslim activists were simply doing the same. Their version.
"Are-I hope I'm not being forward but-are you going?" Juma asked.
Khadra said she was. (And it had been forward of him to ask. What business was she of his? But she liked it.)
Of course she was going; she was the one who had reserved the room, designed the flyer, made copies of it, and booked the flight for the speaker, just as she had for the last speaker, on divestment from South Africa, and the one before that, on Hindu terrorism against Muslims in India. That speaker, she'd flown him in from Ontario and arranged his stay in
town, down to the meals. Spoke with him on the phone about a dozen times throughout. Yet at the lectern, he thanked the "brothers" of the Campus Muslim Council for hosting him, never once mentioning her.
Eyad said that was her ego speaking. "You're not doing this for honor in the world, right? You're doing it for the Face of God."
"I don't see you turning down the honors of the world," Khadra retorted. Eyad was getting requests from affiliate clubs in Evansville and Terre Haute to speak as a CMC organizer. Eyad's "Islamic work" arc was rising. "What about your ego?" she said.
After each lecture, the speaker went out to eat with the brothers. They hung around him asking questions, even having tea in his hotel room. This was inappropriate for the sisters to do, and they did not join such gatherings.
Khadra had opened one of the public events with a reading from the Quran, and Brother Sidky had come up to her afterward. He was the current CMC president.
"That was great Quran recital, Sister Khadra," he said. "Can you open our weekly meetings like that?" Obligingly, Khadra recited at the next meeting, which was on a Friday, choosing the sura called "Friday/Congregation."
On the drive home through the soybean field landscape (they almost didn't see it anymore-it was all they'd ever known), Eyad said to her, "There were some objections to a woman reciting the Quran in front of men. Actually, there was more or less a consensus about it among the guys. Except Sidky. See, we sort of had a discussion. After the meeting broke up."
"You had a discussion, just the guys, and you didn't invite any of us?"
"Yeah. Calm down. We didn't plan it that way. It's just-well, it'd be the first time a Muslim woman did something like that at one of our meetings and so-"
Khadra made an impatient gesture. She'd heard that in the early 1970s, none of the Muslim women in the Campus Muslim Council even wore hijab. Zuhura had been the first. The rest were more like Joy Shelby Muslim women. So when he said "the first Muslim woman" Eyad really only meant the first of a certain type.