That Thing We Call a Heart

by Sheba Karim

  “You are correct, madam,” I said, then clapped my hand over my mouth. “Shit! I forgot it’s Ramadan!”

  “Except it doesn’t matter because I’m on my period,” Farah declared with a finger snap. “Al-hamdz! I’m so happy you brought Ye Olde. I’ve been sitting here inhaling Cinnabon for the past ten minutes and was about to cave and buy one.”

  “Please. Cinnabon? That’s like sacrilege. Allow me to present chocolate cream, raspberry jam, and vanilla lavender,” I said, ceremoniously laying the three donuts in a line on top of the bag.

  “Beauties!” Farah exclaimed. “Did you say vanilla lavender? When did Dino start making bougie donuts? Will you split that and the chocolate with me?”

  We each picked one up and broke it in two. Mine split unevenly, one half getting most of the chocolate cream. I graciously handed the better half to Farah, hoping she’d notice.

  “How’s our fabulous donut maker?” she asked, licking a dollop of chocolate cream from her finger.

  “He’s happy to see me but sad you’re not with me.”

  “Ah, Dino. I miss him. And where is Prince Charming?”

  “He texted that he was running late and would meet us here,” I told her. “I really like the turban look, by the way.”

  “Because it feels a little more African and a little less Muslim?” she replied wryly. “You know, some Muslims don’t like it precisely because of that. They think it doesn’t look Muslim enough, whatever the hell that means.”

  “God, you really can’t win, can you?”

  “When do women ever win, anywhere?”

  I thought about this. “Scandinavia?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “But then again, it’s not so great to be Muslim in Scandinavia.”

  “So we’re screwed.”

  “Unless we change the world.”

  “Are those black power fists on your scarf?”

  “Does it look okay?” Farah said, smoothing the top fold. “I swear, I spend more time on my hijab than I ever did on my hair.”

  “That’s because your hair is straight. Where did you find it?”

  “My hijab? My friend told me about this website that sells badass scarves.”

  I thought it was weird she didn’t use her friend’s name, given that I’d met most of them. “Which friend?”

  “Shahnaz. I met her through the internet—she has this awesome Tumblr blog.”

  “Shahnaz?” I exclaimed.

  “What?”

  “That’s so close to my name.”

  “Because it shares the first syllable?”

  I folded my arms. “Does she wear hijab?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re replacing me,” I accused her.

  “You, Qureshi, are irreplaceable.”

  I smiled. “It’s so nice to be here with you.”

  “Why? Because I’m fun again?”

  She said it like she was joking, but I knew there was more to it. After months of estrangement, here we were, behaving like BFFs again, except we still hadn’t discussed what happened. I hadn’t brought it up because things were going pretty well and I didn’t want to risk ruining it. I was hoping it would resolve itself with time. But when there’s so much left unsaid, it takes more than the bigger half of the donut to set things right.

  “There’s Jamie.” I stood up and waved, which I promptly felt dumb doing, because it seemed overeager and it wasn’t that big a food court. He was in his usual attire of Converse and rolled-up jeans, with the addition of a hunter-green fedora.

  “Greetings, ladies,” Jamie said, tipping his hat. His gaze lingered on Farah; I hadn’t told Jamie she wore hijab. I didn’t want him to come with any preconceived notions about who she was.

  “Greetings, Homo sapiens,” Farah said. “Pull up a chair.”

  He grabbed a chair from a neighboring table, flipped it around, and sat on it backward, his fingers tap-dancing along the metal bars of the backrest.

  “That”—Jamie pointed at Farah and made a circling motion around her face—“is a very cool scarf.”

  “Thanks,” Farah said. “I wish I could say the same about your style of wearing jeans.”

  Not everyone appreciated Farah’s humor, but Jamie didn’t miss a beat. He stuck his leg out. “What?” he said, pretend-shocked. “Are you saying I’m not the height of fashion?”

  Farah nodded slightly, and I knew she was thinking, at least he can play. They were off to a good start.

  She gestured at the table’s centerpiece—a fluffy, golden, fresh-raspberry-jam-engorged donut. “Would you like to sample the greatest donut in the world?”

  “Who could say no to that?” Jamie said.

  I frowned. I’d wanted to be the one to offer Jamie his very first Ye Olde donut experience. I was the one who bought them, after all. But I told myself that was stupid, and Farah and I leaned forward in anticipation of this life-changing moment. Jamie took a big bite, and immediately his eyes lit up. “Ummmmmmm,” he said, the same kind of noise he’d made yesterday when I’d finally got up the nerve to rest my hand on the crotch of his jeans and feel the erection throbbing inside.

  “I got an idea for a meme,” Farah said. “We can go around offering random people Ye Olde donuts and capture their initial reaction.”

  “Love at first bite,” I said.

  “It’s like my tongue had an orgasm,” Jamie said.

  “Donut porn,” Farah said, and he laughed.

  “I bought them,” I told Jamie.

  “Thanks, Morning Dew.”

  “Morning Dew?” Farah repeated.

  “It’s Jamie’s nickname for me,” I explained. “It’s because my name means morning dew in Persian.”

  “Are you Persian?” Jamie asked Farah.

  “Nope, I’m Pakistani, like your girl over here. You ever dated a brown girl before?” Farah said.

  “Yeah, but she was Hispanic,” Jamie replied.

  “Well, you know what they say, once you go brown you never go back. Welcome to the dark side,” Farah said, raising her coffee cup.

  “Thanks,” he said. “I like your necklace.”

  Farah had made it in a woodworking workshop she’d taken during Senior Art Week, polished crescents of reclaimed wood hanging unevenly from a thin braided cord. The instructor had told her she should consider working with her hands. She’d taken it as a sign she should become a surgeon.

  “Thanks. I made it,” Farah told Jamie.

  “Really? Wow.”

  “Farah’s an awesome artist but she’s going to be a doctor,” I said.

  “Oh?” Jamie replied. “How come?”

  “Because I’ll be readily employable, and earn a generous salary,” Farah responded.

  “What about helping people?” Jamie asked.

  “Secondary,” Farah replied.

  I didn’t think it was that funny, but Jamie laughed so hard his fedora fell off. I retrieved it for him, watching longingly as he ran his hands through his locks before putting it back on. I felt Farah looking at me. I could tell something was bothering her. Maybe she was jealous of me because I was in love. I’d be jealous of her if she was.

  Jamie drummed his palms against the edge of the table. “So, what’s the plan? Are we mall ratting it at the food court all day?”

  “Please. If I smell any more Cinnabon I might hurl,” Farah said.

  “So what should we do?” he wondered.

  “Well, I was thinking of smoking a joint,” Farah said.

  “What?” I said. “Since when do you smoke pot?”

  “Since I was in San Francisco with my cousins.”

  “But you started wearing hijab in San Francisco!”

  “So?”

  “So how can you do both? Isn’t it forbidden?”

  “The Quran doesn’t forbid marijuana. It forbids wine. Wine was considered high class, a luxury. Hashish was for the ‘losers,’ the weirdos, the misfits, the wanderers, the dervishes and scholars. Why do you think so many Sufi mystics
smoked it? People have always used it to bring themselves closer to truth, closer to Allah.”

  “Is that why you use it?” Jamie inquired.

  “Sometimes. Sometimes I just smoke and watch a movie,” Farah said.

  “And you don’t think it makes you a bad Muslim?” I pressed.

  “I think it makes me a better Muslim,” she replied.

  I wanted to ask her what her hijabi friends at the masjid would think about that, but I already knew.

  “You know, Morning Dew’s been teaching me about Sufi mystics,” Jamie informed her.

  “Is that so?” Farah said, genuinely surprised.

  “My dad’s been teaching me about Urdu poetry, which is inspired by Sufi poetry,” I explained. “Well, up till now we’ve pretty much only read Faiz.”

  “He’s great!” Jamie proclaimed.

  Farah nodded, impressed by Jamie’s enthusiasm. “Sounds like it.”

  “So are we smoking?” Jamie said. “I’m down.”

  “Morning Dew?” Farah asked.

  The name definitely didn’t sound as nice when she said it.

  Fifteen minutes later, we got into Jamie’s minivan and drove to an empty corner of the mall parking lot, parking against the fence so we could only be approached in three directions. Farah’s joint was already rolled, concealed inside a small odor-resistant container she’d bought off the internet. We sat on the hood of the car, and Farah lit the joint and took a long, smooth drag. I was so nervous when she passed it to me that I passed it right on to Jamie, who took an even longer drag, which culminated in one small cough and a shit ton of smoke.

  I took the joint from Jamie and held it between my fingertips, hoping it wasn’t obvious I hadn’t done this before. After inhaling deeply, I erupted into a crazy coughing fit, my upper body convulsing. So much for playing it cool. Farah started pounding my back, Jamie rubbed my leg. My fit ended with a snort, which I tried to cover up with a fake cough.

  I felt weirdly light, like a strong breeze might blow me away. Wanting to connect with something solid and windproof, I pressed my palms against the hood of the minivan, imagining myself an extension of its steel. I was acutely aware of Jamie’s hand, still resting on my thigh. I was made of steel, but that steel was smoldering.

  We must have been silent for only a minute or so, but it felt like ten. During this slow passage of time, I become aware of all kinds of things, the patterns in the asphalt, the serpentine sizzle of summer heat, the whir of distant traffic.

  “Good stuff,” Jamie said.

  “Kaisi ho, Qureshi?” Farah asked.

  “Fine,” I assured her. “Really good.”

  Jamie offered me the dwindling joint, but I shook my head; I’d taken two hits now and was flying, so he passed it on to Farah.

  “How did you get the crazy scar?” Farah asked him.

  “This?” Jamie said, holding his hand up. “I punched through a window.”

  Farah glanced at me, signaling, did you know this? But I didn’t, because I’d never asked.

  “You punched a window?” I said. “Why?”

  “I got in a fight with my stepfather.”

  “You have a lot of beef with your stepfather?” Farah said.

  “Nah, not anymore. It was in high school, and he had a right to be pissed—I got arrested for trespassing. He’s actually a decent guy—my mother married him because he was the opposite of my real dad—nice, dependable, steady job, drove reeeeeeeal slow. She thought he’d make a good father figure. But even though I was still a kid when they married, I could tell she didn’t love him, at least not the way she loved my dad. She thought he was kind of boring. Sometimes when he was telling one of his long-winded stories I’d catch her rolling her eyes when she thought no one was looking. I used to look down on her for marrying this guy she didn’t love, but I get it now. She had a kid, she was scared. But I never want to be like that. I never want to be bored.”

  I realized this was the most I’d heard Jamie share about his personal life.

  “Yeah, man,” Farah agreed. “I never want to be in a marriage like my parents. After my parents’ most recent blowout, I asked my mother how she married my father. She said it had come down to two engineers with a green card, and she told her parents she liked my dad better because in his photo he was wearing two different-colored socks. She thought it was cute.”

  “It is kinda cute,” I said.

  “No it isn’t!” Farah cried. “I mean, if you get a proposal from a guy in two different-colored socks, don’t you think you ought to investigate a little before you decide to marry him? Like, is he color-blind? Is he lazy? Is it a fashion statement? Like what the fuck is going on?”

  Jamie and I were both laughing, Jamie so hard he was lying back against the hood, kicking his heels against the bumper.

  “Show me a marriage that isn’t somehow depressing,” Farah concluded, “and I’ll show you a unicorn.”

  “Oh, come on,” I said. “If you marry the right person, marriage can be awesome, right?”

  “Qureshi, you hopeless romantic,” Farah said. “It’s all those rom-coms you watch with your mom.”

  “Don’t forget Bollywood,” I reminded her.

  “I’ve never seen a Bollywood movie!” Jamie exclaimed. “Should we go see one? You think any are playing right now?”

  “Of course there is, we’re in New Jersey,” Farah said. “But we’re not going to one.”

  “Why not?” Jamie said.

  Farah snorted. “Two stoned desi girls and a white guy going to a Bollywood movie? The theater will be full of aunties and uncles!”

  Jamie shrugged. “They won’t know you’re stoned.”

  “But they’ll know you’re white,” she pointed out.

  Being in a crowded lobby surrounded by desi families sounded like a terrible idea. “And I’ll know I’m stoned,” I added.

  “Yeah, we don’t want Qureshi to start suddenly dancing like a chicken in the line for the bathroom.”

  “The last time I went to a Bollywood movie with my mom,” I said, “I went to the bathroom, and someone let out a loud fart. And when I went to the sink, all the aunties were kind of looking at each other, thinking was it you, it was probably you, you totally look like you ate chole for breakfast.”

  Farah was cracking up, slapping her knee, and Jamie was watching us with a grin.

  “What’s chole?” he asked.

  “Chickpeas,” I said.

  “Punjabi fart food,” Farah said, and we cracked up again.

  “Sorry,” she told Jamie. “Sometimes Q and I can’t help but dabble in a little bathroom humor. We come from a culture where your day can’t properly begin until you take a good dump.”

  “I guess that’s pretty on point,” Jamie noted.

  “Sometimes my dad will go into the downstairs bathroom with the New York Times,” I said. “He’ll be in there for like twenty minutes, and then bring the same paper to the table where we’re all eating breakfast. So gross.”

  “So I guess that’s a definite no on the movie?” Jamie said.

  “Yeah, let’s go. We can see if any of the aunties offer us their son’s bio data.” Farah began to imitate a Pakistani accent. “Look, there is Mahmood Haider’s daughter, she is going to Harvard, so must be very smart, but wears hijab, so also must be good, religious girl.”

  “But why she has to dress in those garbage clothes?” I riffed.

  “And dehko, what’s on her necklace—skull! Yeh ladki, shayad yeh ithni acchi nahin hai,” Farah continued.

  “What does that mean?” Jamie asked.

  “This girl, maybe she isn’t so good after all,” I translated.

  Farah held up the nub of the joint. “Who wants the last drag?”

  “It’s all yours,” I said.

  As she exhaled, she said “What?” to me, and I realized that I’d been staring.

  “It’s so weird to see you smoke pot in hijab.”

  “Why?” Jamie asked.

&nb
sp; “It’s like . . .” I considered. “It’s like if you saw a nun chugging a bottle of Jägermeister.”

  “Did you just compare me to an alky nun?” Farah exclaimed.

  “You know what I mean,” I said.

  “What do you mean?” Jamie asked.

  Farah sighed, leaning her elbows against the hood. “What Qureshi means is that the hijab is seen as a symbol of piety, and a girl wearing hijab is visibly Muslim, so people assume if you’re wearing it you must be a model Muslim, very pious and straight, and most Muslims would say that you should aim to be a model Muslim, because you’re now representing Islam to the whole world. Par example, if Qureshi is rude to a sales clerk, that sales clerk is going to think, ‘That girl is such a bitch.’ But if I’m rude to a sales clerk, she’ll think, ‘That Muslim girl is such a bitch.’”

  “And you don’t mind that pressure?” Jamie said.

  Farah shrugged. “I’m not usually rude to sales clerks. They’re poorly paid cogs in our screwed-up consumerist society.”

  “Yeah, man, we are so consumerist,” Jamie agreed. “People forget what’s really important. Like now, this moment, all of us together, the warm sun on our faces, the blue sky above, that’s what’s important. That’s what really matters.”

  “I’ll tell you what doesn’t matter,” Farah said. “QVC. An entire channel devoted to selling people shit they don’t need.”

  “If you had to sell something on QVC, what would it be?” I asked.

  “I don’t even know,” Farah said, and I could tell she was thinking about something else. Her parents, probably.

  After a few seconds of silence, Jamie said, “It must be hard, though, wearing that on your head. People must stare at you and stuff.”

  “Yeah, they stare. Though my friends who’ve worn hijab for a while say at some point you stop noticing it. You gotta keep walking with pride, like you belong on this street, or in this mall, or wherever, as much as anyone else. But the thing is, I get it from both sides. I told one of my hijabi friends who I thought was cool that I was going to see this awesome band, Rebel Antigone—they’re great, it’s a queercore band with two badass girls and this genderqueer lead singer who was trained in opera and has this killer voice, Qureshi, you’d probably hate them—but anyway she asked me if I was going to take my hijab off when I went to the club, and I was like why, and she said, you won’t feel weird?, as if hijab and a punk show are fundamentally incompatible. Most of my hijabi friends would disapprove of me smoking weed. I don’t know. I’m too Muslim for the non-Muslims, but not Muslim enough for the Muslims. And the weird thing is, I realized I’ve been trying to prove to people that I’m cool, that yeah, I don’t drink and whatever but I’m smart and funny and extremely un-oppressed, but I wonder, at the end of the day, will they secretly think a girl in hijab can never be that cool simply because she wears hijab? But then I think, why does it matter what they think of me? I refuse to spend my life proving myself, not to the Muslims, not to the non-Muslims. I’m going to wear a headscarf and I’m going to pray and fast and I’m going to smoke ganja and I’m going to get into Harvard Medical School.”