The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf: A Novel

by Mohja Kahf

  "Yeah."

  "Like what about children. We want children, of course. Not right away but someday. What are they they gonna be? I mean, of course they'd be considered Muslim by default because, well, Muslim dad, Muslim kids."

  "Yeah?"

  "Yeah."

  "You're both on the same page with that?"

  "Sure," Jihad says confidently. `But even if they are Muslim, what will they really wanna be? Because, I mean, they'll get to see both religions up close and like, both positive. Not, like, one is true and the other is false. They'll never have the pure sheltered one-religion experience our parents tried to give us. And, by `our parents.' I mean mine and Sariah's, both. Because it's not like one of us cares about our religion and the other one doesn't. We both care. A lot. I said that already, right?" He smiles and looks so tender and little boy vulnerable. He has such a huge mountain ahead of him to climb. "So they are gonna hear about religion from me and from her. Won't that confuse them?"

  "Why do you suppose the Quran allows Muslim men to marry Christian women and Jewish women?" Khadra asks, in an open-ended tone. "Obviously, mothers are going to influence their children."

  "They'll be Mor-lims."

  "Mus-mons?"

  They are quiet for a while. Then she says, "What about your band?" Chicago to South Bend was at least an hour commute. Puts a crimp in practicing every day.

  "Yeah, that's the thing," Jihad says. "When me and Sariah get married, it might break up The Clash of Civilizations. Or it might not. But it's no contest, man."

  The kid has his priorities straight.

  "So here's the thing, Khadra," he says. "What's your schedule like after the conference? Do you have to get straight back to work, I mean, or-the thing is, could you come up to South Bend? I need you. I need you to be there when I tell Mama and Baba."

  "High drama."

  "Yeah. Especially Mama. And Sariah's going to be telling her parents at the same time. More drama. Only in her family, it's the dad who's sort of like Mama is in our family."

  "He's the neurotic parental unit, then?"

  "He's the one. He's all, he wants her to be `worthy.' They use that word a lot, `worthy.' So anyway, will you come?"

  "Say no more, babe, I'm there," she says. She hugs him. It's going to be fireworks this July, that's for sure, she thinks as she walked back to the car. It's going to take every inner resource we've got to give this love a place to grow. All our families.

  Hence vision is through the veil, and inescapably so.

  -Ibn al-Arabi

  The contact sheets are ready next morning. Good, because she's run into about as much of her past as she can handle. Now all she needs to do is sort the thing out. She spreads everything in front of her and loses herself in the work for a while.

  "I don't care," Khadra argues on the phone with her photo editor. "The Awads are like family to me, I don't care if the Chief is excited about the polygamy angle. You said I had creative control."

  "No, of course I don't agree with polygamy. I think it sucks. But it's their choice and they've figured out a way to make it work for them, and no, I'm not going to do an expose on how many Muslims in America can be found who do it. It's what the mainstream media always does: Pick the most sensational thing and highlight the negative -Am I accusing you of Orientalism? No, Ernesto, I am not accusing you of anything so B-movie as Orientalism. See, the wives thing is just not the core story here. Don't trip on it." She packs her bag as she speaks. "Okay? 'Bye for now."

  She addresses the Madonna of the Trail postcard to her parents' home in South Bend. "Dear Mama & Baba," she writes. "Greetings from Muslimland-I'm in the midst of the Dawah! Saw this pioneer lady on the road & thought of you. Love from, Khadra. xxxooo." She'll mail it from Eyad and Omayma's house, where she's going to spend the day after the conference; she's looking forward to seeing how Coethar and Khalid are growing.

  The phone rings just as she's at the door to head down for check out.

  "Hi. Oh-I mean, assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh." Eyad got all nitpicky when Khadra did not use the full and proper Muslim greeting.

  "Yes of course I'm putting that in the article, Eyad.... Well, I don't care if Omayma and her committee don't want it in. It's an important part of the story."

  "La ilaha illa allah. Because it takes both sides to make a whole picture-the dark and the bright."

  "Well, I think you're wrong. I think people will see the beauty in it too."

  "Despite-despite all that. Yeah, even in spite of the Islamo- phobes and the ignorance out there. I'm counting on the intelligence of the readers-most of them."

  "I am well aware of that. You don't have to tell me how harsh the scrutiny is that the Muslim community is under. I know all that. We still need to face our darkness too. Negatives and positives. No, for our own sake, not to pander to them. For the sake of `studying what our own souls put forth,'you know?"

  "Stop it, Eyad. I cannot operate from fear anymore. I cannot operate from fear."

  All paths are circular.

  -Ibn al-Arabi

  "It's about learning to surrender," Hanifa is saying, on the giant screen above the Speedway track. "Every race car driver knows that." It is Khadra's first sight of her since they were fifteen. Later, she'll see her in person, and they'll talk quietly.

  "Surrender?" the sportscaster says. "Won't you crash if you do that?"

  "You do everything you can to stay on track, of course," Hanifa explains. "You've trained. Your car, your engine, is right, down to the last nut and bolt. But in the end, you surrender-that's the only way you're going to get through the lap, going two hundred miles an hour." Here she gets into the race car, and her eyes sparkle like she's about to cartwheel through a mosque. "So you let go! And you feel your body doing it on its own, and your mind is thinking a thousand things and thinking nothing, and your heart is pounding, and you're connected to everything, to your car, to the air whizzing past, to everyone in the stands, to God. It all becomes one great big living thing." She puts the helmet on and waves.

  Khadra is in the stands. She never would've thought she'd be okay going to a place like the Speedway. Coming here is like following the white man into his lair. The sport was founded by bootleggers, for goodness' sake. But here I am, she thinks. I am here!

  As if to allay her fears, there is practically a whole Muslim bleacher section. Aunt Khadija and Uncle Jamal are here-she waves at themand they have Hanifa's daughter, thirteen-year-old Aziza, in tow. More black people and brown have been going to the race in recent years, not only in the stands and the pit, but at the starting line. So, in a lot of ways, it's a new day at the races, Khadra thinks. Maybe.

  She looks around at the white people, too-the Americans-no wait, she's American now-the other Americans. Hanifa has a white mechanic in her crew, blond and earnest and solid. Midwesterners -Hoosiers-set in their ways, hardworking, steady, valuing God and family. Suspicious of change. In a funny way, Khadra realizes suddenly, as she surveys the crowd: they're us, and we're them. Hah! My folks are the perfect Hoosiers!

  Khadra and Hakim go down to the concessions to get pop for Hanifa's daughter and themselves.

  "I've been thinking of coming up to Philadelphia," Hakim says, as they take their places in line. He looks at her steadily. "Spending some time up there."

  "Yeah?" Khadra says.

  "Yeah. Because-I've been thinking-what if-well, what if we get to know each other again, as adults?"

  She is caught off guard. What if they did? Her mind races. No, not her mind. It might-it might be nice. He could maybe stay at the dergah. She could introduce him to Mukhtar Bibi. She smiles at the thought of the tall, lanky imam meeting the little wizened sheikha. Wait-you're getting ahead of yourself, she thinks.

  "You're smiling. You wouldn't mind?"

  "I wouldn't mind," she says carefully. "Just to get to know each other, right?"

  "Right."

  She's not going to rush anything, this she knows. "For real thi
s time," she says.

  "Yeah," he says. After a moment, he adds, "It was for real before. You know-" He pauses, looks at his feet, then meets her eye with a twinkle she has not seen in their encounters all weekend. Hasn't seen since they were little. "Couldn't you tell-don't you know that-well, that I used to kind of have a thing for you? When we were kids?"

  She is floored. Then she thinks about it while they buy the soda pop. "You know what?" she says slowly, as they turn toward the stands, balancing trays. "I guess I-I never really let myself think about it, but somewhere along the line, I maybe had a little thing for you, too."

  He lets out a whoop and nearly spills the root beer. "I knew it! I knew it! Khadra likes Haki-eem, Khadra likes Haki-eem," he teases, and for a moment the years drop away and he is Hakim whose handlebars she rode, whizzing down Tecumseh Street.

  "Shut up," she says, giving him a flirty shoulder.

  But she is reflective as they hand Aziza her drink and head to their seats some rows up. She is thinking she knows why he never approached her parents.

  "All that Muslim-on-Muslim racism," he acknowledges. She appreciates that he is too kind to say, "Your racist parents."

  "But you should've told me, at least," she says.

  "Why?" he says. "You weren't going to go against them. You were very close to them. I liked that about you. It was sweet."

  "How do you know what I would've done?" Because she did break with their program, in the end. She wondered if she would've done it earlier, if-well, there was no point in wondering. "I know what I'm going to do now," she says, setting down her drink.

  "What?" he says, leaning closer to her, but not touching. His face is radiant, a face of intelligence.

  "Take some bad-ass pictures!" she says, laughing. She grabs her camera gear and heads down to the press tier, where she shows her pass. She climbs up and gets into position, into focus, legs apart to brace herself, qad qamat, qad qamat.

  There will be no postponing her task, and no crouching and stooping and restricting her movements for someone else's hang-ups. Not for Hakim or anyone-no surrender in those quarters, anyway.

  Because so what if they'd had crushes on each other once-that doesn't settle anything. Whether Hakim is just looking for someone to fit "the wife profile," or really is for real this time remains to be seen. But she's willing to go down the road to find out.

  The flag drops and the drivers are off. Click-shee, click-shee! Click-click-click-shee! Khadra is off too, shooting as fast as she can. Her flame is lit, and she will tend and cherish it.

  Hanifa is a back marker so far. "But that's okay, that's all right," Uncle Jamal is yelling, up in the stands. "She's here! She's in the race!"

  "Bismillah!" Aunt Khadija screams, covering Aziza's eyes, and Uncle Jamal and Hakim jump up. Hanifa's car has skidded against the wall-there is a terrible screech of metal-will she crash?- Whoa!-that was a close call for the green and black car-oversteering into the turn -a rookie mistake!

  Is she out of the race? No! she's back! cries the announcer. She's regrouping-I'm regrouping too, Khadra thinks with elation, and she is full of gratitude-she's gathering speed-and there she goes! and Khadra and her camera are lockstep with her friend for a cartwheeling second, clicking away, and the crowd cheers as one, and in that shutter-click instant, she knows she is where she belongs, doing what she must do, with intent, with abandon. And it is glorious, it is divine, and Khadra's own work takes her there: into the state of pure surrender.

  You claim "I broke The Idol of IllusionI'm liberated!" But I fear Your Manifesto is itself An idol

  -Ahmad Jami

  Permissions

  I would like to acknowledge the following works, cited in this novel. • Quran quotes throughout based on translations by A. Yusuf Ali, Amana Publications, 1997; Ahmed All, Princeton University Press, 1993; and Michael Sells's Approaching the Quran: The Early Revelations, White Cloud Press, 1999. • Prefatory epigraph from Sue Monk Kidd, Dance ofthe Dissident Daughter. A Woman's Journey from the Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine, HarperSanFrancisco, 1996. • Wudu blessing and "salat" definition from Coleman Barks and Michael Green, The Illuminated Prayer: The Five Times Prayer of the Sufis as Revealed by Jel- laludin Rumi & Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, Ballantine Wellspring, 2000. • Howard H. Peckham, Indiana: A History, University of Illinois Press, 2003. • Marvin X, In the Crazy House Called America, Black Bird Press, 2003. • Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House on the Prairie, HarperCollins edition, 1971. • Hoda Barakat, trans. Marilyn Booth, Tiller of Waters, American University in Cairo Press, 2001. • Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Kramer, manna, Queen of Heaven and Earth, Harper & Row, 1983. • Libby Roderick, "How Could Anyone," (c) Libby Roderick Music 1988. All rights reserved. From the recordings "How Could Anyone" and "If You See a Dream," Turtle Island Records, P.O. Box 203294, Anchorage, AK 99520, (907) 278-6817, www.libbyroderick.com, libbyroderick@gmail.com. • Leonard Cohen, Book ofMerry, McClelland & Stewart, 1986. • James Baldwin, "The Fire Next Time," Collected Essays, Library of America, 1998. • Hoyt Axton, "Joy to the World/A Country Anthem (Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog)," Rondor Music Publishing Ltd./Universal Music Publishing Ltd. • James H. Madison, The Indiana Way: A State History, Indiana University Press, Indiana Historical Society, 1986. Michael Wilkerson, "Indiana Origin Stories," in David Hoppe, ed., When We Live: • Essays About Indiana, Indiana University Press, 1989. • Ali ibn Abi Talib, excerpts from Nahj al-Balagha (The Peak of Eloquence), trans. Thomas Cleary as Living and Dying with Grace: Counsels of Hadrat Ali, Shambhala, 1996. • Middle East Watch, Syria Unmasked- The Suppression of Human Rights by the Asad Regime, Yale University Press, 1991. • Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. Walter Kaufmann, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970. • Thomas Huhti, The Great Indiana Touring Book: 20 SpectacularAuto Tours, Black Earth, WI: Trails Books, 2002. • Six lines used as epigraph from Truth or Dare: Encounters with Power by Starhawk, Copyright 1987 by Miriam Simos, reprinted by permission of HarperCollins publishers. • James Olney. Metaphors ofSel the Meaning ofAutobiography, Princeton University Press, 1972. • • Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens), "Moonshadow" from Teaser and the Firecat, A&M Records, 1971. • Marilyn Booth, trans. Aisha Taymuriya, from Miriam Cooke and Margot Badran, Opening the Gates: A Century ofArab Feminism, Indiana University Press, 1990. • J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993. • Camille Adams Helminski, Women of Sufism: A Hidden Treasure. Shambhala, 2003. • Badr Shakir al-Sayyab, "Ode to the Rain" from Salma Khadra Jayyusi, ed., Modern Arabic Poetry, Columbia University Press, 1991. • Sue Hubbell, Broadsides from the Other Orders: A Book of Bugs, NY: Random House, 1993. • Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore, from Some of the Mysteries of the Self, Philadelphia, Zilzal Press, 1994, and from "The Question Posed" in Awake as Never Before, Zilzal Press, 1984. Now published through www.danielmoorepoetry.com. • Adrienne Rich, "Diving into the Wreck," from Diving into the Wreck: Poems 1971-1972. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1973. • Attar, Sanai, Rumi, Shah Dai Shirazi, and Abroad Jami, trans., Peter Lamborn Wilson and Nasrollah Pourjavady, The Drunken Universe, Omega Publications, New Lebanon, NY, 1987. • Anna Akhmatova, Selected Poems ofAnna Akhmatova, trans. Richard McKane, Bloodaxe Books, 1989. • Naomi Long Madgett, "Black Woman," in Wendy Mulford, ed., Love Poems by Women: An anthology ofpoetry from around the world and through the ages. Ballantine Books/Fawcett Columbine, 1990. • The Epic of Gilgamesh: An English Version, by N. K. Sanders, quoted on p. 340. Penguin, revised edition, 1964. • John L. Foster, trans., "The Harper's Song for Inherkhawy," from Ancient Egyptian Literature: An Anthology, Copyright (c) 2001. Quoted on p. 340, courtesy of the University of Texas Press. • Sandra Cisneros, "Introduction," The House on Mango Street, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994. • Phil Collins, "In the Air Tonight" from the album Face Value, 1981, copyright Phillip Collins Ltd., London. • Memphis Minnie, "Me and My Chauffeur Blues," in Wendy Mulford, ed., Love Poems by Women: An anthology ofpoetry from around the world andthrough the ages. Ballantine Books/Fawcett Columbine, 1990. • "By th
e Rivers Dark" Q Sony/ATV Songs LLC, Robinhill Music. All rights on behalf of Sony/ATV Songs LLC administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing, 8 Music Square West, Nashville, TN 37203. All rights reserved. Used by Permission. • Translations of Ibn al-Arabi are from William C. Chittick, The Self-Disclosure of God- Principles of Ibn al Arabi's Cosmology, State University of New York Press, 1998. • Excerpts from Hadiths numbers 7, 15, 22, 23, and 27, Ezzeddin Ibrahim and Denys Johnson-Davies, trans., Forty Hadith Qudsi, the Holy Koran Publishing House, Beirut and Vienna, 1980. • Translation of lines from poem by Wallada hint al-Mustakfi is by the author, Mohja Kahf. • Rabia excerpts from the Penguin anthology Love Porno from God, copyright 2002 Daniel Ladinsky and used by his permission. • Sonia Sanchez, "To All Brothers: From All Sisters" from Homegirls and Handgrenades, Thunder's Mouth Press, 1997. Ibn Faraj, "Chastity" excerpts from Cola Franzen, trans., Poems ofArab Andalusia, City Lights Books, 1990. • Thulani Davis, "Don't Worry, Be Buppie: Black Novelists Head for the Mainstream," in Joy Press, ed., War of the Words: 20 Years of Writing on Contemporary Literature, Three Rivers Press, 2001. • Trans. by Mohja Kahf of excerpts from "The Palm Reader" by Nizar Kabbani, from the Arabic poem published in The Complete Works of Nizar Kabbani, Nizar Kabbani Publications, Beirut, 1973. • Joy Harjo, "Eagle Poem," in John Frederick Nims and David Mason, Western Wind- An Introduction to Poetry, McGraw-Hill, 1999.

  Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders where appropriate, but if errors or omissions are brought to our attention we shall be pleased to publish corrections in future editions of this book.