by Ayad Akhtar
“All what?” Nathan asked. When Mina hesitated, Nathan prodded. “All what?” he asked again.
“Nothing,” Mina replied, quietly.
“No, it’s something…All what?”
Mina paused, and when she spoke, it wasn’t with an answer to his question: “If you’re interested in Islam…”
“I am. You know that.”
Mina looked at him, suddenly weary, resigned, hopeless.
Nathan finally noticed me staring at him. I held his gaze with defiance. Then I looked away.
Out on the lawn, Father and Imran were creeping about, hunched, trying to catch fireflies with the plastic cups. It was just then that the first streak of light appeared, exploding against the night sky. The modest crowd responded to the golden, glittering trails with a chorus of oohs and aahs.
“It’s so beautiful,” Mother sang out, throwing a glance over her shoulder at Nathan and Mina. They were holding hands. Or rather, Nathan’s hand was resting on Mina’s, which sat leaden, unmoving on the folding chair’s armrest. Her face wore the same dead expression. Again, I noticed the paleness of Nathan’s face in the brown night. There was something sickly about it. I felt uneasy. And then I realized I didn’t have to feel that way: It wasn’t my white skin. I didn’t have white skin. He did.
Nathan made efforts to appease Mina through the show, but she was unresponsive. And by the time the final flurry of Chinese stars and peony shells and roman candles was under way, Mina was already on her feet, headed back to the parking lot. We packed up and walked to the car, where we found her waiting, silent, her eyes lowered to avoid our gazes.
“Meen… ,” Nathan pleaded. “Talk to me.” That, she wasn’t going to do. Mina didn’t speak a word to anyone the entire way home.
Back at the house, Mina disappeared inside without a good-night. Nathan was panicked. “I don’t understand,” he said to Father. I was unloading things from the trunk. He and Father were standing by his car in the driveway.
“Probably just that time of month, Nate,” Father said with a laugh.
“It’s not funny, Naveed. I’m worried. I think I may have really offended her.”
“With that stuff about Jesus?”
“I guess.”
“Are you serious?! We’re talking about Jesus! Who even knows if that guy lived? How stupid can you get? Arguing about nonsense like that?” Father turned to look at me.
I looked away.
What could possibly matter more? I thought. Mina had explained it all to me clearly: Isa had never died. That was why he was coming back, this time as a Muslim. And his return to earth, she’d said, would mark the end of time and the beginning of the Day of Judgment. That miraculous day when every soul that had ever lived would rise from its grave to account for itself.
“Naveed, please. Obviously she takes it very seriously—and something I said offended her.”
“If she’s offended by that, then she needs offending…That’ll teach you to talk about religion. Stay away from it. You know what everybody always says? Don’t discuss religion or politics. Especially with a Muslim.”
“I don’t know why she thinks I’m not interested in Islam. I’m reading the Quran every day.”
Father laughed.
“Naveed. Stop it.”
“Okay, okay, Nate…”
As they made their way down to Nathan’s car, I reached into the trunk for the remaining folding chairs. One of the aluminum legs was caught on the canvas covering the spare tire. I tugged, pulling the leg free. The canvas cover ripped open.
Cradled there in the tire’s hub was a bottle with a golden label, half-filled with wheat-colored water. I set the chairs down and reached for the bottle. I held it to the lightbulb in the corner.
Something inside me sank. WHISKEY, the label read.
I looked back at Father. He and Nathan were shaking hands. I reached back into the trunk and pulled the canvas closed again. My heart racing, I hurried into the open garage, the bottle hidden under my shirt. I noticed the pile of plastic tarps in the corner that Father used to collect leaves in the fall.
I looked back to see Nathan’s car pulling away and Father heading up the driveway.
I stuffed the bottle underneath the tarps. The bulge it formed looked conspicuous to me. I kicked at it a few times.
“Is this all?” Father asked as he turned to me. He was holding the rest of the folding chairs.
“Yeah,” I replied, hurrying back to the car.
Father stepped away. I slammed the trunk shut. I followed him into the garage, watching as he leaned the chairs along the far wall. He looked distracted, disoriented, like he was struggling with his balance.
Mother’s right, I thought. He’s a drunk.
But as he joined me at the garage’s open mouth, even my anger couldn’t blind me to the quiet ease in his gaze, the pleasing softness in his smile. He put his hand on my shoulder and held it there, tenderly.
“Look at that…all those fireflies,” he said as he looked out at the lawn. Pinpoints of bright yellow-white light pulsed and throbbed, careening along the bushes, disappearing into the grass. Father watched for a long moment, silent. Then he turned to me. In the darkness, the corners of his eyes gleamed, wet with feeling. “That’s my childhood. Right there. Fields and fields of fireflies. We used to catch them in the village. I never showed you how to do it, did I?”
“No,” I mumbled.
“Let me show you now,” he said brightly. He turned and headed back into the garage to inspect the shelves. “I just need to find some cups for us to use.” I watched him with apprehension as he rummaged. He was about to approach the pile of discarded tarps when I blurted out:
“Dad. I don’t want to.”
He turned to me. “C’mon, kurban.”
“I’m tired, Dad.”
“It will be fun.”
Now I was firm, even disapproving. “I don’t want to,” I said.
He looked hurt. “Fine,” he said. He lingered in place for a moment. “Fine with me,” he repeated, curtly now. “Just make sure you shut the garage,” he said as he walked out.
9
The Hypocrites
What I did next I can’t explain.
Once Father was gone, I went back to the tarps and pulled the bottle out. Grabbing a hand spade from the shelf covered with gardening tools, I walked out of the garage into the backyard. At the end of the lawn, to the right, was Father’s vegetable garden. To the left was a grove of birches. I headed for the trees.
The night sky was heavy and brown, and the air was thick with the cries of crickets. As I got to the trees, a branch snapped and something brushed against my head. I looked up. Large white wings beat without noise, then soared across our roof to the oaks on the other side. I dropped to my knees and pulled at the earth with the spade. The ground was soft, and it didn’t take me long to dig a hole just bigger than the bottle.
I undid the bottle’s cap, sniffing at the mouth. The putrid, smoky odor made no sense. It was unfathomable that anyone would want to drink this. I poured the rest of the whiskey into the hole, then laid the bottle inside. I stood up and jumped, coming down on the glass. It took me three tries, and then it finally cracked. I jumped again, and the bottle broke apart into shards. Kneeling, I poured dirt back into the hole. When I was finished, I stood up. I held my open palms before me, as we Muslims did to address Allah with our prayers. And I looked up at the sky.
Forgive him, I whispered.
Mentioned in a footnote in the Quran Mina had given me was the tradition that anyone caught drinking alcohol was subject to forty lashes, and that whoever wasn’t caught—thereby escaping this earthly punishment—had far worse to expect in the hereafter: seventy years in hellfire. Just for a single drink.
Seventy years!
And the Quran left little to the imagination when it came to hellfire. We were told of pits and abysses filled with fire; homes of flame, with fire columns and fire for roofs; rooms of fire furnished wit
h blazing couches and blazing beds; flaming garments fit to sinners’ bodies, shoes and hats so hot they roasted wrongdoers’ feet and boiled their brains. There was fire as food and molten drinks that torched the guts; springs of boiling water poured from flaming buckets, and eyeballs broiled in disbelievers’ sockets; there were faces shorn of lips to smile with saws of flame; fire-blackened skin that sloughed off endlessly to reveal fresh skin to burn underneath. And finally, there was the fire itself, nothing at all like the fire we knew but seventy times hotter, fueled as it was not by wood or coal but an endless store of sinners…
For two days, I obsessed over what Father had ahead of him. The whiskey he drank from that bottle alone promised him more than two centuries of these tortures. Two hundred years! And that was just the bottle I knew about. How many more were there in his past? How many more would there be in the future? And what other misdeeds—his various mistresses, say—did he stand to be punished for?
Three days after burying the bottle, I went back to the birch trees. I knelt, my eyes closed, at the small hump of dirt. Hunched and bent about my aching heart, I saw Father waving at me through the endless flames. I begged God to forgive him, to turn him away from his sins. I heard Father’s cries of pain as the fires burned him. I imagined reaching in to pull him free. But even in my imagination, I couldn’t. The fires were too hot. I was powerless.
There has to be something I can do, I thought. There has to be…
But of course there was!
I was already doing it!
I put my head to the ground, thanking God. I got up and wiped my eyes. I went back to the house, up to my room, where I shut the door. At my desk, I opened the Quran and picked up memorizing where I’d left off. This was what I’d realized in the birch grove: All I had to do was finish becoming a hafiz. When I was done, both my parents would be saved. That’s what Mina had said. Every hafiz earned not only his own place in Paradise, but his parents’ as well.
No matter how many drinks, no matter how many mistresses, Father would be saved.
The week that followed was witness to a formidable feat: I got through an entire juz of our holy book, over two hundred verses. I shared my astonishing progress with Mina. We sat in the dining room—where I’d found her reading a book—and she followed along in my Quran, checking for mistakes as I went through the new verses. I only missed a single line. She was stunned.
“My God, behta,” she said. “How long did that take you?”
“Three days.”
“Three days?” she asked, shaking her head.
“Yes, Auntie.”
“My God,” she repeated. “You have a gift, behta…So which surah is next?”
“I don’t know.”
“Have you done Surah Ya Sin yet?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“Do it next. It’s the heart of the Quran. What we read when someone dies…to help them into the next life.” Mina turned the Quran’s pages. “There it is,” she said as she pushed the book across the table to me.
“What are you doing, Auntie?”
“What, behta?”
“It’s not respectful. You should pick up the book and hand it to me.”
Mina looked startled for a moment, as if smarting from my comment. Then she nodded.
“You’re right,” she said. She picked up the Quran and brought it to her lips, kissing the cover. “There… ,” she said, handing it to me now, open to a page that read “Surah Ya Sin.”
I settled back into my chair, murmuring the verses to myself.
Mina stopped me. “What are you doing?”
“Memorizing.”
“But don’t just start with memorizing. Read it first. See what it means.”
“Okay.”
“You’re not just memorizing words. Words don’t matter if you don’t know what they mean.”
“Okay, Auntie,” I said.
“Don’t just say okay, Hayat. I want to know that you understand what I’m saying.”
“Intention is what matters, Auntie.”
“That’s right, behta. That’s what I’m saying…”
She went back to reading her book. I went back to my Quran. At some point, I realized Mina was looking at me.
“Behta? What would you think if Dr. Wolfsohn became your uncle?”
I didn’t understand. “How could he be my uncle?” I asked.
“We’re thinking of getting married.”
“Married?”
I felt my heart drop into a dark hole inside me.
“But he’s not Muslim,” I said.
“He’s going to convert, Hayat. He’s going to become one of us.” She was beaming.
“Why?” I asked coldly.
Her smile dimmed. “I don’t understand what you’re asking, Hayat.”
She seemed suddenly unsure of herself. I looked down and marked my place on the page. Then I shut the Quran. “Why does he want to become a Muslim?” I asked again.
“Why do you think?” she asked. “Because he sees it’s a wonderful way of life. What other reason?”
I stared at her without a reply.
Just then the phone rang.
“Hmm? What other reason could there be?” she repeated, defensive.
I continued to stare at her. She didn’t move. The ringing stopped.
She looked away from me.
And then the ringing started again. “Let me see who that is,” Mina said, getting up and going to the kitchen.
It was Nathan. She didn’t say his name, but I could tell from her voice. “I’ll call you back,” she said tenderly.
I watched her disappear down the steps into the family room. She’d left her book behind, a thin, old hardcover, not unlike the one Nathan had given me. I wondered what it was, and I wondered if he had written something inside as he’d done in mine.
I reached across and picked it up, opening to the title page. “Heart of Darkness,” it read. There was no message written inside, only an address inscribed in a corner of one of the blank pages:
Mina Suhail
Dawes Lines Rd 14
Karachi, Pakistan
I shut the book’s cover and set it down.
That evening, I sat with Mother in the family room, and she explained to me what was happening. She and Mina had both come to the conclusion that Mina’s parents were not going to accept Nathan unless he became a Muslim.
I was dumbfounded. The idea hadn’t even been his own!
“Does he really believe?” I asked.
“He believes in his love for Mina-Auntie,” Mother replied, her eyes liquid with reverie.
“But does he believe?” I repeated, insistent.
Mother looked confused. “What’s wrong with you, Hayat? Are you hungry or something?”
“I want to know if he really believes.”
“Believes what?”
If, in my growing religious fervor, I’d been somewhat unclear about my mother’s relationship to our faith, purposely turning a blind eye to all the outward signs of her lack of interest or commitment, that question made it clear to me just how ridiculous it was that she called herself a Muslim. “In the Prophet? In the Last Day? In Allah?”
“How should I know?” she said, casually shrugging off my pointed tone. “What matters is what the man is doing…He is making a wonderful sacrifice. For goodness’ sake, he’s abandoning his own people because of his love for your auntie. Do you know that his father is a Holocaust survivor? What do you think he will say about this? But what his father says doesn’t matter to the man. He is in love with your auntie.” Mother paused for effect, as if to impress upon me now the true importance of Nathan’s decision. “What has your Father sacrificed for my sake? Hmm? Tell me! Not even one night’s pleasure with one of his white prostitutes…”
I knew where this was headed. I wanted nothing to do with it.
“Hayat, are you listening to me?”
I looked up. “I thought Mina-Auntie’s last name was Ali,”
I said abruptly.
Mother looked at me, confused—it seemed—not only by the question, but by its timing. “It is her last name.”
“What’s Suhail?”
“That was Hamed’s name. Her first husband.” And Mother paused. “Her first husband,” she repeated to herself, smiling. “How wonderful,” she said, turning to me again, “now she’ll have a second!”
They’re hypocrites, I thought. All of them.
My resolve early that winter not to look directly on my lower parts had become a reflex. It had been months since I’d looked at myself there. But the following Saturday, I would have to break my own interdiction.
I awoke after sunrise, the curtains on my windows barely showing light. Something was wrong. I felt pain between my legs, like an aching hole. I got out of bed and pulled my pajamas down. My soft penis was covered with dried, flaking skin. And the front of my pajama bottom was crusty, hardened, the inside of its surface covered with a whitish film.
I headed to the bathroom, where I picked at the skin on my penis. The pieces peeled off with ease. I couldn’t understand the pain. Maybe I’m sick, I thought. But somehow I knew that wasn’t it.
I washed myself between my legs.
Back in my room, I put on another pajama bottom, hiding the one I’d worn under the bed. I went to my prayer rug in the corner of the room. Facing east, I lifted my hands to my ears…
“Allah hu akbar…”
…and began the morning prayer.
I had difficulty praying, at least as Mina had instructed me. I couldn’t keep the thought of God close to me, not with the aching in my loins, and the nagging sense that something wasn’t right.
When I was done, I slipped back into bed, but I couldn’t sleep. At some point, I realized Mother was standing in the doorway, staring at me. “You’re up, kurban?” she asked, crossing from her place at the jamb to my bedside.
I considered telling her about the pain. “I did my fajr prayers,” I said instead.