The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf: A Novel

by Mohja Kahf

  "It's not that a woman's voice is awrah normally," Eyad said. "It's just-well, you have to admit, Khadra, your voice when you're reading Quran with all the tajwid stuff is pretty awesome. I heard some of the guys talking about it. Talking about you. It's almost like, if some girl's singing in a sultry voice. You wouldn't want to do that, would you? And I don't want to be put in that position, with guys listening to my sister and getting, well, almost turned on. Do you want me to have to be in such an uncomfortable position?"

  Of course she didn't want to be seen as a vamp. A Quran-reciting vamp. She quit doing the recitation. In fact, she stopped going to CMC meetings altogether for a while, in disgust.

  "You should join the Arab Students' Association," Joy said, when Khadra vented to her.

  "Why, are they less sexist?" Khadra said.

  "Nope."

  "Well, then ... ?"

  ". . . we just have more fun," her friend said teasingly.

  "Den of iniquities," Khadra half-joked. She half meant it: she'd never been around Muslims who drank, as some of those in the Arab club did, and the idea made her uncomfortable. Plus, the Arab students sponsored an annual bellydance performance, a tremendously popular event. They had done this for years, but recently the Campus Muslim Council had begun to object. CMC president Brother Sidky accused the Arab Students Association of promoting the stereotype of the lascivious Arab male. The ASA leaders retorted that the religious group was promoting the stereotype of the "tightass Muslim prick."

  This was unfair. The Muslims did too know how to have fun. The CMC guys played basketball against the Arab club and African club guys every Saturday morning. The CMC girls bowled in the Union alley every Thursday-although Khadra couldn't always afford to spend money on a game and shoe rental, some nights she joined in. And all the sisters and brothers together had a barbecue in Brown County State Park every semester. "Allahu Akbar and Pass the Ketchup," the flyer advertised.

  Juma asked to go home with Eyad and Khadra one day. From where Khadra sat, she had a view of the back of Juma's head, his lush black hair, his deep bronze complexion. Juma's lips as he turned to talk to Eyad were large and exquisitely chiseled, the lower lip wide and curved like a Kuwaiti dhow. The scent of sandalwood subtly invaded her senses.

  When it became clear during his visit that he was there to ask her parents and, by their permission, her, to consider a proposal of marriage from him, it was not entirely a surprise, even though he and Khadra had never exchanged a word beyond that phone call without Eyad in the middle.

  She considered it. He was up-front about his future being in Kuwait. She didn't mind that prospect. Maybe it was the answer to not belonging in America all these years. Maybe it was the "back" where she was supposed to go.

  Meanwhile, Khadra's father and brother swung into action. Their job was to check up on Juma's character and background. Wajdy, through a friend, contacted two of Juma's former professors at Kuwait University. They said Juma had no prior broken engagements or marriages, nor was he known as someone who played around. He was definitely not in the set that drove shiny red Mercedes and cruised for hookers and drugs on the Kuwait City strip. His family was well-liked and well-respected, moderately religious and moderately wealthy. Eyad used his contacts to turn up a cousin of Juma's at the University of Arizona who told him that Juma had an older sister who was a pediatrician. This fact meshed with the family being moderately observant and not among the ultrareligious who barred women working from outside the home. That allayed a worry of Khadra's, because some of the Gulfies she knew were too off-the-deep-end hardcore.

  So that was okay.

  And then something happened that added to the appeal of Juma's proposal. Wajdy was exploring the prospect of a job in South Bend. So her parents might be moving in a year or two.

  The Dawah Center was beginning to change, ever so slightly. A slow, lumbering, generational change toward a substance and style that was by no means progressive, but in the midst of which Ebtehaj and Wajdy seemed too old-school. They had made their contribution, and it was time to step aside. Meanwhile, newer batches of more conservative immigrants needed them, found them not outdated, but just right for their institution-building stage, a perfect balance of American know-how and reassuringly staunch Islamic devotion.

  It was one such community that wanted to invite them to South Bend, where Wajdy would serve as the Islamic center director and Ebtehaj would help out at the new full-time Islamic school. Wajdy and Ebtehaj could become in their middle age the wise elders of a youngish newbie community, full of questions about how to raise young children by the waters of Babylon. Because there was no unifying force such as the Dawah Center drawing various ethnicities together, the Muslims in South Bend, as in other cities, clustered in ethnic comfort zones that grew organically in a way that encouraged ethnic sameness-families that were already there drew other families from the same country of origin. Wajdy and Ebtehaj's prospective new mosque was made up mostly of Syrian, Palestinian, Iraqi, and other Arabs.

  So, there was a chance that the parental home would soon be folded up and moved. What would Khadra do? Eyad could dorm on campus, but it was not acceptable by the Shamys' highly conservative standards for Khadra, as a young unmarried girl, to live out on her own. How would she finish her degree? She could move with her parents, transferring to a school up there. Go on as before. Or she could get married and stay in Bloomington. She could start a new stage of life, an adventure. A change.

  "If you don't marry this one," Ebtehaj said, "you should think about marrying in the next few years, anyway. A girl's window of opportunity narrows after that."

  Khadra had radical thoughts on mahr, the dowry Juma had to provide. The problem in his home country was that impossibly high mahrs were typically demanded by the bride's side, making mahr an obstacle in the way of many young couples' marriages. Khadra, drawing from the history of the Prophet, came up with a plan to have her mahr be that Juma would memorize a long sura of the Quran for her. She picked "The Table Spread," one of her favorites. However, Khadras parents insisted that she also take a cash sum, as that would be more protective of her security, and Juma agreed, even insisted, on that, although he was also happy to oblige her by memorizing the sura and was impressed that she wanted him to. His father-who would be paying the mahr, not Juma-insisted, too. They decided on eight thousand dollars, two thousand up front and the rest deferred, due only in case of a (husband-initiated) divorce. It was largely a symbolic deferment, or so every engaged couple tended to feel.

  Wonderfully, Teta made an exceptional, and possibly final, trip to America for the wedding.

  "Why did you choose to say yes to him?" Teta asked.

  It seemed fairly obvious, didn't it? What were the reasons again? "Well, there's Mama and Baba's possible move, and the fact that I want to go to college away from home," she began, ticking off items on her fingers. "And-"

  "No, dear, I don't mean, why get married. I hope you're not marrying him just to be married, te'ebrini. I mean, what made you choose this one?"

  Khadra thought for a moment. "Well, I guess he's as good as any other guy I'd end up marrying, so why not?" She saw TEta's face furrow. She went on hastily, "He's a good Muslim-you know, a practicing Muslim-and an active student in CMC, and he's intelligent, and a decent person and all. Everyone says he is."

  "What do you say?"

  "Me? Well, I like the way he talks, his friendliness. And he's handsome, don't you think?"

  Testa pondered. "Well. He is that. He has a nice tush, anyway."

  Khadra took that as a seal of approval.

  "Come, I want to give you your wedding gift," Testa said. She fumbled at her blouse and pulled something out of her impressive cleavage, a silk handkerchief, twisted around something solid. She unknotted the silk. "Here are some earrings for my lovesy Khadra," she said, drawing out a pair of gold linked hoops set with rich blue stones.

  "Testa! They're excellent!"

  "And here is something else," sh
e said. Three fat gold coins lay in her palm. Fat gold coins with mysterious writing, the alphabet neither Arabic nor Latin, nothing Khadra recognized. "Osmanli liras, " Testa said. "This is called security, my dear, and we never show it to our husbands. A woman must keep something for herself, in case of circumstances."

  "Circumstances?"

  "Yes. There are days when things are rosy, and then there may be days when you wake up and feel the future closing in on you, the horizon shrinking. The world being as we know it, the sad world as we know it. . . " she drifted off into a song. Then she seemed to remember something and became sober again. "Promise you'll keep the coins to yourself," she said.

  "Why?" Khadra said. "I trust him-We-"

  "Of course you do, dear. That's lovely. Trust him all you want, but have your own resources, te'ebrini."

  Khadra shook her head. "You're so cynical, Teta," she said lightly.

  Te ta's face clouded as it rarely did when she was with Khadra.

  "I'm sorry, Testa," Khadra said immediately. She could see how it hurt her.

  "Cynical is not what I am," Teta said heavily. "Turn on the air conditioning, te'ebrini, and go now and let me rest."

  "Thank you. Thank you for the gift," Khadra said. Uta had already climbed into bed and closed her eyes. Khadra pulled a coverlet gently over her.

  After the katb el-ktaab, Uta was to chaperone them on a picnic at Eagle Creek. Juma opened the front passenger door of his car for Teta, over her protests that Khadra sit next to him.

  "So you can gaze into each other's eyes!" she said, making them both blush.

  Khadra agreed with Juma. "More comfortable for your legs, Teta."

  "Age before Beauty," Juma said, with just slightly awkward gallantry.

  "I'm still Beauty, yoh!" Uta harrumphed. She finally took the front seat, muttering that lovers had been smarter in her day.

  When they got to Eagle Creek, Teta insisted on their taking out a paddleboat without her. "You must be joking, my old paddlers need a rest," she said. Now she was old.

  Khadra eased herself into the boat. Juma offered his hand and, unsteadily, she took it. This was the first touch. Immediately there was new grace in both their movements. They lowered themselves into the seats, which were puddled with water.

  "My seat's wet." Khadra laughed.

  "Mine too."

  "How do you work this thing?"

  "Well, let's see." Juma reached for a shift in the rack between the seats. "I guess this is the steering. Let's backpedal out of the dock."

  They did it too fast, bumping the docking slip. They both reached for the shift at the same time. Second touch. Khadra left her hand there in his, snug as if it was in a pocket. Juma took it up to his mouth and kissed it. "Your hands are pretty," he said.

  "No-I've always thought of them as dishpan hands." Her hands made her think of only either prayer or cleaning chores.

  "But they are not. They're cashmere." They were stalled in the dock. They worked on pedaling until they got the boat cutting a path out on the lake. Then they leaned back and let it float. Waterskimmers skimmed and dragonflies darted.

  "So what do you think?" Khadra said. "Are we going to have a good life, or what?"

  "With God's grace," he said. "Hey-" A boat with three children churned past, chopping up the waters. "-how many children do you want?"

  "Right away? None," she said, an edge creeping into her voice.

  "Okay, okay." He dangled his arm out to the water. A lot of girls talked that way when they first got married; his own sister, for one. Later, they tended to come around. "Fine. Later on. How many?"

  "I dunno. I haven't thought that far ahead. How many do you want?" She held her breath, suddenly worried.

  "Oh, I don't know exactly. I was hoping somewhere between two ... and nine."

  She sat up. "Nine! Nuh-uh!"

  He is laughing at her. "What is this, `nuh-uh'?"

  "Nothing. Just dumb Hoosier talk. Means no. Not nine!"

  "Okay."

  "No. Say it. Not nine." She was smiling.

  He laughed. "Not nine. How about eight then?"

  "Okay. I see how it is with you." She dipped her fingers into the lake and splashed him. "Let's just go back to shore right now, mister."

  "No, no, please. Look, I brought bread for the ducks." Reaching into the little brown paper bag for the bits of stale bread was a nice prospect because it meant their hands got to meet several more times by accident. Every time hers touched his, she now thought, cashmere, cashmere. When they went under a cascade of green willow branches, he leaned over to her side and grazed the corner of her mouth with his wide shapely lips.

  There was a thrill. The boat got tipsy.

  In Islam, it is said "Marriage is half of the faith. " In close relationship, the sharpened edges of our nafi (ego-soul) can be little by little smoothed.

  -Camille Adams Helminski, Women of Sufism, Hidden Tresure

  Khadra's wedding was to be held at the Dawah Center-the women's party, that is. The men's party would be at the Community Room at the Fallen Timbers. Nothing was a more natural culmination of Khadra's girlhood than for her to come down the staircase of the blue Victorian house in her wedding white.

  Her choice was Butterick #1287, in scads of lace and tulle, sewn by Wajdy at his Singer, beadwork painstakingly added to the bodice and arms by Ebtehaj, who pored over the dress, bead by bead and stitch by stitch. Even Eyad and Jihad helped sew on the last ones, when Ebtehaj was behind in wedding work and panicking.

  Regarding herself in the mirror, the bride thought she looked almost pretty, despite the annoying baby-roundness of her face that just would not leave her. She was shortwaisted and plump. Her mother called it "well proportioned." Teta, of course, said she was absolutely gorgeous, but that was just Teta for you.

  Joy was exasperated at the separate wedding parties for men and women. "I mean, come on!" she said. "Then how is it a wedding?" She was dating an Assyrian guy nowadays. "Dating" meant doubledating with her brother; her parents had strict boundaries, and Joy was really pretty straitlaced. Not that any of the Shelbys' careful standards mattered to Khadra's circle. The fact that Joy dated at all was enough to put her, in their view, on the slippery slope to promiscuity.

  "So he's a Syrian guy?" Khadra'd said when Joy told her about him.

  "No, not Syrian. Assyrian. It's an ethnic group in the Middle East-they've been around longer than Arabs, longer than anybody." Khadra didn't seem to think it possible that Joy could know something about the Middle East that Khadra didn't already know.

  "I've never heard of them. Do they speak Arabic?"

  "Yeah but they have their own language, Aramaic. It's, like, the mother tongue of Arabic and Hebrew."

  "Well, if they speak Arabic, then they're Arabs."

  "No," Joy had said, getting annoyed. "They are not. They don't want to be Arabs."

  "Are they Muslim?"

  "No. Christian."

  Khadra had been taken aback.

  Joy went on, "They were massacred by Muslims back around 1914. The Assyrians."

  "Oh." Khadra's defenses had gone up. Without even knowing the story, she resisted it.

  She was sitting in an ornamented chair on the bridal dais now, surrounded by bouquets, and Joy had come up through the throng of wedding guests to greet her.

  "Smile," a little kid said, and Khadra and Joy looked up as a camera flashed. Someone had handed one of Aunt Fatma's kids a point-and-shoot and told them to take pictures. That's why all of Khadra's wedding photos showed people in the middle of a bite, their mouths misshapen, or Ebtehaj pointing with her arm stretched out toward something off camera as she directed the flow of wedding cake.

  After the banqueting was done, and several rounds of cake and tea had been served to the women, the Dawah Center front door opened to reveal the crowd of male wedding guests waiting outside, having "brought the groom to his doom," as they said, teasing him. They carried Juma on their shoulders, singing and clapping. Khadra caug
ht a glimpse of him, his head tucked down, sneaking anxious looks into the hall. Behind him were Eyad and Hakim and elevenyear-old Jihad with his tie loose.

  There were cries of "shut the door, we're not covered yet!" from the women. The newly "hijabed" little preteen girls, like Aunt Fatma's wild-haired daughter Sabriya, squealed the loudest about their hijab being violated. Eventually, the groom entered, to cheers on both sides of the door. The crowd of male guests outside began to thin as some of the women emerged and families, reunited, headed home.

  Juma maneuvered his way up the dais crowded with flower arrangements to sit next to Khadra, marking the family part of the evening. He presented the wedding jewelry sent for her by his parents in a red velvet box. There were "oohs!" and "ahs!" at the appropriate moments. When Testa began belting out a Syrian folk song, "Girl of my homeland, where are you going, so tender and true," Ebtehaj hurried away to the buffet table, no doubt to take care of some important logistical detail.

  "Omigosh," Khadra whispered to Tayiba. "I've forgotten something important. Help." And she sent Tayiba to Hook's Drugs before they closed to pick up a refill of her birth control pills, which she'd been taking since her last period.

  "Okay, but this is going to look weird." Tayiba smiled, patting her second trimester bulge. She and Danny Nabolsy, who'd married the year before, were expecting their first baby.

  More pictures were posed for. And then they made their break. The couple, after a pit stop at Khadra's parents' place in the Fallen Timbers to change their clothes and collect their things, was dispatched in Juma's new black Mercury Capri to their honeymoon weekend. Tayiba pulled into the parking lot beside the Capri just in time and handed Khadra a little white paper sack from the drugstore.

  "You're really adamant about that, aren't you?" Juma remarked, looking sideways at her in the car as she broke a pill off the little disk.

  In the honeymoon suite, Juma took out a small stone mortar and a little goldfoil package, then unwrapped a nugget from the foil and lit it in the mortar. He tossed a little bit of something like bark on top of it.