by Mohja Kahf
Uncle Abdullah clears his throat at the microphone. Ever roly-poly, he is in a stout little safari suit. "Welcome, welcome for the One Week of my gran'dowtar," he says. He takes her from Sabriya into his arms and whispers the call to prayer into her right ear. There is no god but the God. Come to prayer, hearken to prayer. Khadra takes several shots of his nut-brown face so near the round face of his baby "gran'dowtar." If her settings are right and the light is not too dim as she prays it is not, they will be lovely. She promises copies.
Baby Mona's father, an awkward, rangy Trinidadian boy named Abdul Rahman from the Terre Haute CMC, takes her gently from Uncle Abdulla. You can tell he is in love with her; he's all elbows, trying to get her comfortable. Khadra takes precious pictures of him cradling the baby, daddy and daughter.
A motor revs up loudly somewhere and Khadra starts and looks instinctively up the street toward where Hubbard used to park.
Sabriya says "I know who you're looking for. Mrs. Moore's brother."
"No," Khadra shakes her head. "I was thinking about that man who used to hate us. He used to park across the street and-"
"I know," Sabriya cuts her off, "that's what I said. Mrs. Moore's brother."
"What on earth are you talking about? He-that wasn't her brother-he can't be her brother."
"Ask my father," Sabriya shrugs, like it's old news.
Apparently it is, around here-Khadra asks, and it's true. But to her, it's another astounding disclosure. Her brother? The Friendand the enemy-brother and sister? but suddenly now she can no longer think of Mr. Hubbard with the callous dismissal she used to-he's Mrs. Moore's brother-not just an icon for abstract hatethere is another sad and angry family drama there, in the cracks.
She has no time to think about it. The call to isha prayer is made. Mrs. Moore and Brig and Riley and several Dawah women who are not praying sit on the back porch. June bugs clatter around the porch lights and the crickets give the iqama. There are a number of new faces in the crowd Khadra surveys as the prayer lines begin to form, new Dawah officers and their families. The position that used to be Uncle Yusuf's is filled now by a hulking, broad-shouldered Bosnian brother with a blond beard. Sister Peaches from Salam Mosque works as the shipping clerk, Sister Habibaty from Malaysia does secretarial, and Brother Obaidah from Iraq has Wajdy's old liaison job.
Two fourteenish-looking girls lean their heads together and whisper. Khadra recognizes from their faces that one must be Sister Peaches' daughter and the other must be the Iraqi brother's girl. They are clearly the new reigning Dawah princesses. Khadra feels a twinge of jealousy. They're in the place that used to be hers and they don't even know who she is.
Here they are, then, she thinks, during salah. My beloved community. Grass smells pleasant when you put your nose in it, unless you are allergic like someone in the second row who sneezes repeatedly. It really does feel good, your face in the grass in the ripe ripe summer, touching the dark dirt between the flattened blades. I like my lovely community in Philly, too. Even if it's more disparate, not the unified thing going on here. Kind of a relief that it's not, really. All those raggedy knobby parts poking out. I love it. Even Bitsy, hunh.
Khadra rises from the grass with the movements of salah. Bitsy would hate it that I thought of her during prostration, hah. Funny, the strange ways of the heart in its grasp of things, the way Reality unveils itself for an instant and then just when you think you've got a shot at it, the shutter goes down, and the light has evaporated. And all you can do is keep plodding along working it, working it, hoping for another glimpse, and meanwhile working patiently at your little given task, just working at developing the picture, whatever you've been lucky enough to get in that instant.
So here they are. God, she thinks, surveying the rows in salah. My God, they're still pottering along the same way, the same old tired language, the same old restrictive ideas and crabbed beliefs.
Oh sure, some people thought about changing the old mentality. Sure, sure, it was significant, this turn toward becoming more genuinely representative of American Muslims, not the folks Over There. And, of course, the people of Dawah weren't all the same. Some were really quite freethinking, on their own, when it came down to it. But the Dawah as an institution still is what it is. Institutions tend to be like that, holding on to systems and perpetuating them. And it's so-limited and cramped and-she sighs-just outand-out wrong. Always stressing the wrong side of religion, the fearGod side instead of love-God. Always stressing the outer forms over the inner light.
Well, now, wait, Khadra pauses, in the last rakat. How arrogant of me. Do I know that for sure? Maybe they're right after all, on some other level I'm not aware of. A right principle wrongly applied, or something. Could be. Yeah, uh, I don't think so, honey, an ironic voice inside her says. Stop making excuses for them. That's what the poet would say, Khadra thinks drily. Okay. Fine. They're dead wrong. Yeah. They really are. My God. About God and everything. God is not an asshole. Alhamdulilah. I mean, subhana rabial a'la, she corrects herself, because she's in sajda.
But still, Khadra reflects, after salam. Why not? If all paths lead to God, this one also leads to God. The woman next to her kisses her cheek, sweetly, shyly. An after-salah kiss, her skin wrinkly and soft-papery. There is inner light here, too.
Wrong they may or may not be, but still. I would not have a single one of them harmed. I'd-I'd-here the melodramatic Syrian in Khadra waxes lyrical, I'd give my life to protect any of them, if it came to that! Well, or something. Something pretty close to that. Wrong and mulish they could be, but dear to her, and maddening and conformist and awful, but full of surprising beauty sometimes, and kindness, and, then, just as full of ugliness and pettiness and, overall, really quite mediocre mostly. But no, some were really quite remarkable, possessed of nobility and courage-yet the pride, the pride of holding themselves above the way they do, and thinking they know. In the end, then, they were just so very human and vulnerable, like anyone else. Really, so vulnerable, when you think about it. Especially now, Khadra realizes. Especially now.
After salah various people take the mike and make dua for the new baby. May she live a pious life and earn paradise in the hereafter. May she be the apple of your eyes. Khadra whispers to Jihad, "I wish we were listening to you guys now."
"Way ahead of you, sis. I already asked Uncle Abdulla, and we're on next." He grins at her. "Hey, Khadra?"
"What?"
"Listen, I need to talk to you. There's something I need to tell you."
His guys are calling him-"They're ready for us, Jihad."
"Not now," he whispers. "But later, okay?"
She gives him a corny thumbs-up and he rolls his eyes at her, mouthing "You're so eighties!" as he goes up to join his fellow band members.
Singing a capella, they open with Hearts of Light, and then a version of the Islamic traditional The Moon Has Risen Over Us and a rendition of Amazing Grace, neither of which have verses that are objectionable to any of the religions represented in the yard. They follow with a rousing cover of If I Had a Hammer. A few eyebrows rise at the line "love between my brothers and my sisters," but for the most part, the group knows how to play to their audience. At Khadra's request, they do I Can See into Your Heart, and It's a Beautiful Green Place. The Clash of Civilizations is a big hit. Both of Uncle Abdulla Awad's wives even agree, from separate, distant parts of the yard. The plump-cheeked young mother, Sabriya, glows contentedly in her reclining chair.
Khadra knows now how to turn down the food she doesn't want and enjoy the food she does want. She doesn't even need an antacid after an Awad dinner anymore. The boys, however, have no such hardearned wisdom. "I'm so stuffed," Brig groans. "Me too," Jihad moans. They fall asleep as soon as Khadra hits the highway. She switches the radio on-music, some man she doesn't recognize singing One last cry before I leave it all behind-then realizes she is running on empty. She pulls into a gas station off US 31. People stare. She is still in hijab. She pulls the tangerine silk tighter around her h
ead.
The stares only ever make her want to pull it on tighter, not take it off the way Seemi keeps suggesting she do after every Middle Eastern crisis dredges up more American hate. Seemi's mother's car got keyed in Manhattan when 250 Marines were bombed in Beirut, and she doesn't even wear hijab-just looking like you come from a Muslim country is enough.
"It's my connector," Khadra had tried to explain to Seemi once about wearing the scarf through hard times. "It makes me feel connected to the people in my family, my mosque, where I come from. My heritage."
"Don't be ridiculous," Seemi had said. "Take the damn thing off; it's not worth risking your life for."
But it was the other way around. Seemi didn't get it. When you're in danger, you don't strip off your armor. And she couldn't get her progressive, but not very tolerant, friend, to see that hijab was also more than that for her. It was the outer sign of an inner quality she wants to be reminded of, more often than she could manage to remind herself without it. "No matter how much of a feminist you talk me into becoming, Seemi, I won't let go of my hijab," Khadra'd said. And her friend had thrown up her hands.
The radio talk is about the new secret-evidence laws, where the government doesn't even have to tell you the case against you. She blinks at a highway sign, realizing that, without planning to, she has taken the route nearest the gully where they found Zuhura, instead of the shortest, safest, straightest way to Bloomington. A cop pulls up behind her. She quakes. How does she know it's really a cop? Maybe it's one of those men who use flashing blue lights to pull women over and attack them. Well, but I've got Jihad and the boys, she thinks. Be rational. Huh, but how much help would they be? She looks at the four big teenaged lugs with their legs every which way and their heads askew, in seventh snoozeland. But it's really a cop. She fakes calm. He writes her a ticket for speeding.
Back on the rural highway. Beanblossom Bridge, one mile. On a sudden impulse she pulls off at the exit. "This is where she was found," Tayiba had told her, driving to Bloomington with her once during college. She parks just before the covered bridge. Jihad stirs when the car stops, but goes back to sleep. The others are snoring. You're not supposed to stop on the way to Bloomington. You're not supposed to stop on these Indiana white people country roads. The friendly back roads of Indiana, full of friendly Hoosier people yeah right. You're not supposed to be here.
She walks quietly over to the side of the bridge and peers underneath in the dark damp, her heart beating frantically. What does she expect to see, after all these years? Some orange bead from a macrame bag, some sign of Zuhura? There is nothing here but darkness. Alternating with thin broken moonlight through the slats of the bridge. Crickets clickety-click. A frog slaps the water. It is very late. She should get back, get those boys to Bloomingtonthere is a crunch of twigs behind her.
"Who's here?" she calls out. Crunch, crack, and no answer. The silhouette of a man. "Who is it? Who's here?" she says, her voice suddenly shrilling.
The heart a sudden rose flowering rich and deep. Redness darker than sunset, darkness deeper than the sea
-Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore
The moon is backlighting him. She cannot see his face. "Who? Who's out there?" she says, her heart jumping. Panic.
"It's me," a voice says, distorted by a yawn. He takes a step closer, almost upon her. "It's me-" and she flails at him, pummeling, "Go away, stop it, leave me be!" He just stands there in complete surprise and then he's crying out "Khadra, it's me, it's me, it's me!" over and over. "It's your brother, Jihad. JIHAD, JIHAD!" he shouts and she begins to calm down. "Khadra?" He shivers, even though it's summer. "What are you doing out here?"
"Oh God," she says. "I'm sorry, Jihad." And she needs to sit down on something, there is nothing here, she sinks down, her knees in the mudbank. "This is where she was killed." We still don't know who killed her, Khadra's mind races. What killed her is still out there. We haven't learned a thing from her death.
"She-" Jihad is about to say, "She who?" But then he remembers -he doesn't really remember the murder or the funeral or anything about Zuhura directly, just that it was a big part of community life growing up, a thing everybody knew. A sign for all to consider. And all these years later, it is making tears run down his sister's face.
Jihad doesn't know what to do, is not good at what to do with girls crying. He gingerly puts his arm around her shoulder.
But she takes his arm and pulls him down into the mud with her and gives a piercing wail. He can't make her stop. She is rocking in his arms, back and forth, and wailing-no words, just an awful keening he wished would stop but knows better than to try to get her to stop. Knows that much, to his credit.
Between wails her mouth is wide-open, lips like the painting of The Scream that he's seen a picture of somewhere. She is just this gaping wail, drawing breath drawing drawing then the wail comes again, enormous. And again. Alternating silence and sound, veiling and unveiling, again and again. It has its own rhythm and its own demand for breath. No one has taught her to do this. The body does it with its own will. The body becomes a reed for the sound to blow through. Hearken, hearken to the body's reed. The throat gives it its tone, and the stomach and the diaphragm and the root give it depth.
She has never cried for Zuhura before. Not even at the funeral, the busy busy funeral. Zuhura, and all of the hate and hardness that killed her, and the beating against it that can make you hard too, and the hate and hurt inside that eats us. The men who are hard and the women who are hard, and the waves of hard news that come over the airwaves all the time all the time and now takes the shape of white men in hoods and cops who beat what they call nonhumans and now takes the shape of Muslims who murder not for justice in the end, no matter their claims, but for rage and revenge and despair. There is no Oneness in all that hard separation. Ahura, I don't care what you really did or didn't do, who you really were or were trying to be. An past holding you to task for anything. It's all right. It's all right. Usiwe na wasi-wasi. You just be. You go ahead and be what you are. She rocks and rocks. Small sharp pebbles dig into her shins. She feels the creekbank with open hands, palm palm knee knee. She disrupts the home of an entire colony of potato bugs.
The other boys are up of course. Who can sleep through this racket? Not even the sleep-craving lumps that nineteen- and twentyyear-old boys can be. They all appear by the mudbank at the bridge, and are startled and mystified at the sight of their friend and his sister, covered in mud and wailing. Jihad murmurs the deal to them, that this one girl my sister knew was, like, murdered here a long time ago, and it is sufficiently dramatic and urgent a, like, explanation. They stand around awkwardly, Garry with two is and Brig and Riley and Jihad and at least one frog and several cicada and night crawlers and crawdads in the mudbank under the broken moon at Beanblossom Bridge. Now and then one will offer a hand on her shoulder, just to say "hey now" and "hey there" and other phrases that seem to carry a lot of weight with not-too-talkative young men of the Midwest. And Khadra wails and wails in the midst of The Clash of Civilizations.
And then it is over.
"Okay," Khadra says in a nearly sane voice. "I'm all cried out. Finito. Thank you for waiting. Let's move on. Everybody in the car!"
Jihad smiles with relief. Later, in some other night's telling, Khadra might become the nutty sister who cried and screamed at Beanblossom Bridge, but right now he's nice to her. He waves the guys away.
"Khadra? This might not be the best time, but I have to tell you something." He sits down on a rock ledge.
"God," she sighs. She comes over and sits down next to him. "I think I'm covered head to toe in mud. I need a bath."
"That's okay," he says. They sit quietly. The sawyer beetles tssrr- tsssst, tssrr-tssst. "Man, those are some loud crickets," he says.
" `I love to hear thine earnest voice,
Wherever thou art hid,
Thou testy little dogmatist,
Thou pretty katydid!'" she recites. "Oliver Wendell Holmes."
"K
hadra, I'm in love with Sariah Whitcomb," Jihad blurts.
It is stunning news. "Wow," Khadra breathes.
"We've been in love for two years. No one else knows."
"Wow ... wait, how old is she?"
"Eighteen." They fell in secret love when she was only sixteen and he eighteen? She feels a twinge of sympathy for the parents, his and hers. Who wouldn't worry about their kids falling in love at that vulnerable age?
"We want to get married," he goes on.
This is huge. "I'm delighted you're in love, Jihad! What a blessing. Alhamdulilah."
"We didn't want it to happen. It just sort of-did, you know? Despite our best efforts."
Khadra marvels. She never would've had the courage at his age. It took that, to embrace love that seizes you outside your expectations. She tells him this and he beams.
"I'm serious. It was hard. We, like, tried to deny we were in love. For a long, long time. Like, weeks! I didn't know what was happening to me. It was like, you know in Saturday-morning cartoons, when the Road Runner runs out over the cliff and he's pedaling in the air, right? Then he looks down and realizes there's no ground under him anymore? I didn't ever think I d marry someone outside our religion. Neither did she-she told me. She grew up real religious. Actually, we first bonded over that-how strict our parental units are and stuff."
'Just-tell-them-we-are-from-France, " Khadra says in her Jane Curtin Conehead imitation. Jihad smiles.
Sariah wants to be a nutritionist, he says proudly. She has a scholarship to DePaul. Jihad is halfway through college. They'd be engaged for three years, giving them both time to graduate. Three years sounds wise.
"We've got a lot of stuff to figure out."