A Good Country

by Laleh Khadivi

  Surprised, Rez couldn’t hide his joy.

  Dude! This is awesome. Indo?! Thanks, Dad. This is great. Really great. I mean, thanks.

  At the airport Rez prepared himself for whatever. He shaved closely. Wore the clothes of a traveling surfer and made Matthews promise to watch his back, tell Rez’s parents if he got handcuffed or taken away to some little room. Just call them and tell them to come here, but try not to freak them out. But nothing happened. They went to the ticket counter and the pretty Singapore Airlines lady looked at their passports and printed their tickets and gave them neon OVERLARGE tags for their boards and said, Have a nice flight. At security a fit man with a gray mustache looked at Rez’s passport and then his ticket and then the computer. He asked the nature of his trip and Rez said leisure and the man nodded his head and let grow a faint smile. Sounds good to me.

  Then they crammed into seats and were up in the air, up and gone from the problems of the land, and Rez let his body empty of gravity and roam without limit on any axis. He stared out the window at the open ocean, bright and unbordered, and when he felt the thump of Matthews’s sleeping head fall on his shoulder, he left it there and thought, This life.

  They landed first in Singapore and sat in a daze at a soccer-themed bar, and then Jakarta, where Rez gave himself over to the jet lag as if to a good dream where the tweaks on reality were a delight, nothing dark or scary, just surprising in a pleasurable way. In all directions the faces were brown, not a white face in the whole city, aside from Matthews and the random backpackers that crossed their path on the busy streets. Open, soft faces smiled at Rez regardless of whether he smiled first. Everywhere young girls and women gathered in groups and laughed, their heads and bodies draped in colorful patterned cloth, unconscious of their beauty. The food was sticky and sweet and salty all together and from suspicion he ate little but craved much more. The two drank beer in small bars where the music was British or French or Jamaican and sometimes local. Rez listened to these new songs and could not find any sounds of anger or confusion in their jaunty notes and he wondered what the words meant but did not ask.

  Neither he nor Matthews tried to pretend this wasn’t some amazing happier version of the world they had known their whole lives. The women were mostly in head scarves, but for some reason Rez did not recognize them as Muslim, did not hear the muezzin call above the sound of traffic and music and laughter.

  Dude. I feel like I’m stoned, or tripping.

  Totally.

  And that was the extent of it. Totally. They spent an entire afternoon in a craft market, sober as donkeys, looking at rugs of woven straw and wooden masks and life-size Buddhas carved out of teak, all of it smooth and fine and with the mark of hands. Rez stared at the masks for hours, their expressions wholly foreign to him, a single face at once conniving and gracious. Another blissed and demonic. Another repulsed and seducing. Eyeballs unique to each mask just as in an actual human face. That night they went to a club the guidebook listed as hip international and met a pair of Australian surfers, brothers, headed to West Java, to Cimaja. Matthews was beside himself.

  Dude, that’s where we are headed!

  Rez, thinking of Mexico, kept his mouth shut.

  Yeah. Crazy swells. Super-rides. Four, five minutes. No one for miles.

  The Australians had done their research, made solid plans. Their skin was orange and their hair near white; when they spoke, their accents made whatever they said sound like a joke.

  Heard you have a black prezzie over there in America?

  Yup, first one, Matthews said.

  Hard to imagine Aussies electing one of our aborigines, toothpick through the nose making laws and all that.

  The Aussie brothers laughed and Matthews laughed a little.

  Rez heard the top of the comment, and the bottom of it sank through him. He took a step back from the group and the conversation floated to surfing and comparisons of Australia’s west coast and America’s west coast and after a few more beers and surf talk, Rez liked them too and it was agreed they’d all take off together tomorrow and split the cost of a rental car.

  One of the Australians joked, Best avoid the public buses, what with the goats and chickens and all.

  And everyone laughed and they drank more cheap Thai beer and danced with a few girls from England. The next day Rez woke up and swallowed fresh juice of a fruit he’d never before seen and went with Matthews and the Australian brothers to rent a jeep with racks and sat in the back as they drove away from the blurred, muted sunrise of the city into the thrumming green countryside. Rez kept the window down and looked out at the scenery for as long as he could; the humid air and lush land quickly sucked up his head and swallowed him into a happy sleep.

  Eight days passed as a single day of wet and dry, day and night. The water was warm and the waves perfect, as if designed by a surfer to please surfers. It did not take them long to find weed and a bar and girls from Japan and France and Holland and they had fun and a little sex and epic sessions that started at dawn and went on long after the sun set. Rez walked about with his skin coated in sand and his hair stiff with salt and each day they talked less and less and simply watched as the ocean stretched out its long hollow arms to meet the land, meet the land, meet the land.

  On the second-to-last day a jellyfish stung Rez on the outside of his calf and he rode the board in on his stomach and tried to piss on the sting but no matter how he turned or twisted or bent, there was no way to get to the spot. A vendor of drinks and snacks watched him and laughed. The vendor jutted his head in the direction of the town and said, Cream cream, and Rez said thanks and grabbed his board and walked away from the beach and into the rice fields that led to the streets. The man at the store took a quick look at the wound and put the tube on the counter and said the price in English. Rez pulled money from his board shorts and felt his leg sting and then burn and then light itself on fire and then sting again. He stood outside the store and rubbed the ointment in and took some relief and walked back to the bamboo shack he and Matthews shared with the brothers. A woman was cleaning and his presence did not upset her. She wore a pink headscarf and Nike sneakers and cotton pants that looked like they could belong to a nurse. He sat on the thin couch and drank a beer and waited for her to finish and then took his first shower of the week and put on something other than board shorts and went for a walk.

  The town was small and, unlike Jakarta, quiet. The streets had no order to them and he walked down one and up another and bought a bowl of rice and sweet chicken and ate standing and then walked on until he was lost. In a small alley the call to prayer came over him and he saw that he was standing in front of a loudspeaker, laid into a building that looked a lot like the bamboo hut he was staying in, just a little bigger, with a wide doorway that showed a single room covered in rugs. Men and woman walked toward the entrance and left their groceries and strollers and shoes outside and then disappeared into the dim room. Rez followed them.

  The room was full and men took up the first ten or fifteen rows of bodies and the woman sat farther toward the back. Rez removed his shoes, washed as he remembered washing with Arash, and took a place near the back beside a wall to watch the men rise and bow and rise and bend and felt himself want to know the movements and join in. The imam was a small round man with a shiny brown face. He took his place and smiled as he spoke, smiled as he gestured. Rez found himself smiling in the midst of the happy room, and though he had no idea what was being said, he felt a great and easy joy come from the faces and the hands and the breath in the mouths of the people around him. He sat straighter and tried to find a way to interpret such gentleness among humans, such open love. They stood. They bowed. They opened their palms before their faces and kept a humble gaze.

  In the shoe area a few men put out their hands and he shook them and the old imam gave him a jolly grin in passing and a few words that sounded familiar to Rez, but were without meaning. A younger man in a thin hoodie came up to him and gave him a fist b
ump.

  Asalaamalalekiem. English?

  Yes. From California.

  Nice. I surf too.

  He was maybe five or six years older than Rez and his eyes flashed with enthusiasm.

  We love visitors here. Not many come to mosque.

  Rez said nothing.

  It is good you are here, brother.

  They guy reached around and gave Rez a hug and then a quick wave and walked out the front entrance. Rez stood frozen for a second and felt eyes on him. At the far end of the room was a young girl, her purple head scarf, inlaid with rhinestones, barely covering the masses of black curls that tried to push out from under it. She caught his eye and dropped her head with a demure expression and Rez felt his breath rise, his body warm, his sex stiffen. For a moment he took her as Fatima, the mouth and cheeks and hair, but without the anger and for a moment he saw what she could be, a person in peace. Rez searched the ground for his flip-flops and walked back into the small streets of a million shops and turned the idea around in his head: So this is Islam? This is the real Islam. I get it, Arash. I get it. And with a lifted mood and soothed heart he made his way through the rice paddies and to the beach with such an obvious looseness that Matthews teased him.

  Did you get a massage?

  No.

  Are you sure? There is something very post-blow-jobby about you.

  Rez laughed. What can I say? High on life, man. Good surf. Good friends. Beautiful place. A guy can’t bliss out?

  But Matthews was right, the ease he saw in Rez was real and Rez stood before his friend and smiled. Today was different from days before, now he was different, a door, long closed, had opened in him and his soul stepped through.

  23

  It was Matthews’s idea to wear skirts, blue and green sarongs with block patterns on them. Why not? They will be so much more comfortable on the plane. Finally Rez agreed and they dressed for the airport as if for some sort of costume show-and-tell of their summer vacation. The beaches and good food and days of waves had made Rez silly and happy and he and Matthews spent their last night walking around Jakarta buying gifts and acting like they owned the place. They stood in front of a stall selling fabrics and the owner tried to get them to try on the sarongs and they looked around on the streets and saw men wearing thin cotton skirts like it was nothing. Rez and Matthews tried them on over their shorts and the fabric guy shook his head no and laughed. They took off their shorts but kept their boxers on and walked around the city with warm humid air between their legs and did not hide from each other how great it felt.

  Women must have felt like this when they put on pants.

  Totally.

  They went to a bar and then to dinner and then drinking and then to the club where they met two girl backpackers from New Zealand. Matthews bought them all drinks and they drank way too much and went to a noisy outdoor rave and the girls used the open folds of the sarongs to give the boys hand jobs while they danced close.

  Now Rez waited in the passport line in America, waiting to be let into the country that was his but he felt too happy and silly and calm for. All around him the travelers from places that were not Indonesia wore bad-fitting gray or black or blue and seemed pushed down by sleepiness and their dark bland lives. He looked at Matthews beside him tinkering on his phone and laughed at his bleached-out hair, colorful skirt, and neon shirt that said COCA-COLA in Indonesian. Matthews stuck up his middle finger and kept tinkering and Rez knew it would be some time before their souls returned back to their American-born bodies.

  Rez whispered to Matthews, Keep it going as long as it lasts.

  Totally, dude. There has got to be an Indonesian restaurant somewhere in the OC.

  We’ll hit it up on the way home.

  Right-o.

  The line inched forward and Rez opened up his passport out of boredom. The few stamps were mostly European, with one for the family vacation to Canada, but Indo was the wildest place he’d been. He stared at the photo of himself. Ten years old. Pale skin, light brown hair, bangs cut straight across his face. A serious expression. Maybe even scared. Rez knew that kid, knew he wasn’t a happy kid, because of his mean dad and his quiet mom. He had a few friends and soccer and his textbooks and video games and those were fun, but the rest was tense. That was the word that came to him as he looked at the picture of the boy. Tense. Rez closed the passport, he couldn’t be more different, that kid had no relation to him now and he tried to clear his mind of the ten-year-old’s stare and then the passport official gestured to him come.

  Her nameplate said FENG and she wore exactly no expression on her face. She opened the blue book, ran the first page under the scanner, and stared at her computer. A small beep came from the machine and she pressed a button and looked again at the screen. Then she looked at him. She closed the passport.

  Reason for travel?

  Leisure.

  Length of stay?

  Eight days.

  How many cities did you travel to?

  Umm. Two, I think. Yeah. Two.

  Did you travel alone?

  No.

  Rez gestured over to Matthews, next in line, his sarong and neon-green tank top and dark tan skin and Rez could not help it and laughed.

  I traveled with that clown.

  Feng did not smile. She did nothing to change her posture or her face. Rez tried to steady himself, to get himself serious, though he could find no good reason for her seriousness.

  Sir, I am sorry but I will have to ask you a few more questions. I’d like you to answer as clearly as you can and keep your eyes on me.

  As she spoke, a man entered the glass cubicle where she sat. He stood behind her, in the same green outfit the border patrol wore in San Diego, and leaned down toward her computer screen. The two of them had the most stressed faces Rez had seen in days, their whole selves taut and forced and behind all that a little scared.

  Ok.

  What cities did you visit?

  Jakarta. Cimaja.

  While you were there, did you visit any schools, religious organizations, nongovernmental organizations? Please list them by name and location.

  No. We just surfed.

  He did not think of it, the afternoon trip to the mosque, the room of men and woman at prayer. He thought of the waves and the beaches and the soupy rice fields he had to walk through to get there. There were clubs and restaurants and that nice hostel they stayed at in Jakarta. Feng stared at him and then stared at the computer screen. The border patrol guard did the same and then they briefly looked at each other. The guard walked out of the room and came to stand beside Rez. Feng spoke, her face soft now, lenient, even a little kind.

  Mr. Courdee, we need to ask a few additional questions.

  Rez looked at the guard beside him and the woman behind the glass and felt no panic. His nerves lay somewhere deep below his skin, deep and out of reach. He had done nothing wrong, he was full of the warm sea, and it gave him a luxurious patience from which he could mine no fear. The country he’d left ten days ago was the same as the country he returned to now, but he, Mr. Reza Courdee, was different.

  My pleasure.

  He and the guard turned their backs to the line and began to walk away.

  Behind him Matthews yelled, Hey! Wait! Rez!

  And Rez turned around and called back, Chill. Chill. It’s all good. Just some questions. Meet me at baggage claim. And don’t ding my board!

  The guard took him to an elevator, pressed a button without a number next to it, and then inserted a key beside the button, and the big box moved up and then what felt like down and then what Rez was sure was sideways. He looked at the guard and smiled as if to say, This is cool, but the guard stared straight ahead with his hands behind his back.

  They walked down a long bright hallway where men and a few women sat with clunky large plastic bracelets on their wrists that flashed every few seconds. They looked at him and he looked at them, every last one of their faces a shade of brown all the way from dark tan
to near black. There were a few women in hijabs and a few women in tracksuits and a group of men in Mexican soccer jerseys. Santos Laguna. Club León. Cruz Azul. They seemed tired and bored and Rez tried not to look at them too much and kept his mind on the waves and the clouds of Cimaja, the place most opposite this.

  They put him in a room with a single chair and a low table. The guard said nothing and left. Rez looked around and eventually sat down in the chair and closed his eyes and when he heard the noise of the door, he opened them again and took a look at the two men who came in. Both tall. Both thin. The asked him if he was who he was and he nodded again, surprised at their formality, their suits, and that there was nowhere for them to sit.

  They took turns asking questions from memory and Rez said what he felt to be true. Yes, he was an American citizen. On a surf trip. A graduation present. Berkeley. No political leanings. Not devout. Not his mother or his father. Yes, he knew of the terrorist threat. Yes, he felt it was a threat. Yes, he was worried for the country. No, he had no other plans to leave the United States in the near future. Chemistry.

  Then he paused.

  Minor in religion if I can find the time.

  He didn’t know why he said it. The thought had not once crossed his mind, a minor, religion. But something inside of him was roiling, some defiance, some anger that life was going to be hard again, hard and ugly and tense. He thought of the boy in the passport picture, serious from the pressures of the outside world, and wanted to be other than that, wanted to embody the bright spirit of these last eight days. The men stared at him.

  Religion?

  Yeah. With everything going on now, it would be good to see what it’s all about. Don’t you think? Figure out why people are killing each other for it.

  The one who did all the talking said nothing and the other left the room and returned seconds later with a small black box.

  Retina scanner. Please look into the lens.

  A tiny red speck stared back at him and Rez blinked and the machine beeped and the man who held it left the room and the man who stayed walked toward Rez and crouched until his face was at the level of Rez’s knees beneath the sarong.