It’s so obvious now that my whole life has been wasted, but that doesn’t matter, none of it matters. Everything is new now, and I kneel on the floor, on the carpet I use at home, and I bend toward your pillow, toward Mecca, and I can’t help thinking what you’d say if you saw me now. Would you be relieved or horrified? And I feel that sea take hold of me again, the emptiness, the endlessness, feel it spreading like mercury through my bones and my blood, and I mumble what I remember of my prayers and fall down on the mat to keep it inside of me, to force it back into its nest at the bottom of my stomach, at the back of my chest.
And it works. I push it away with prayer. So what if I wasn’t filled with God instead? So what if I can’t feel his love and grace? This is one of his tests. I have to prove myself worthy before he’ll allow the golden light to descend upon me.
*
Months pass by without me talking to anyone except the Swedes at work, which I do my best to avoid, and the anonymous brothers who I chat with online. I’m in my room or in the gym where I do what I can to prepare myself, and I feel my body growing and aching, and I know I should thank Allah for each weight I lift, but that’s hard for me, seeing God in the everyday. I need something bigger, more important.
I’m a bad Muslim. I know I should respect and honor my parents, but I hide from them, at work or at the gym or in my room. I don’t know what to say to them, what they’ll say to me. It’s easier since you disappeared. I’d like to tell you that, because I know that keeps you awake, the idea that I’m still here. But he’s calmer now, maybe older. I was always better at avoiding him and rarely provoked his rage, despite all the shit I got up to.
It worries me even more that you probably don’t live righteously. I pray to Allah that you’ll understand and open your heart before it’s too late. And when I think about it, the darkness grows inside me until I have to recite lines from the Qur’an aloud, words I don’t even understand, but they help me, and I stop thinking of what I cannot change.
*
Sometime in October I run into Mehdi down by the bridge to the subway. He’s still fat and short of breath, and he’s sitting on a bench down by the gray tiles outside the Syrian’s, drinking one of those Turkish liter bottles of cola that the old man sells. I consider just walking past. I don’t even remember the last time I talked to my old crew. Probably not since you disappeared?
But now Mehdi looks up with his shiny cow’s eyes, and he sees me and straightens up on the bench before raising the hand with the cola in it.
“Shoo, Fadi!” he says. “What’s up, bre?”
So I can’t just keep walking, I have to stop and go over to him.
“It’s been ages, man,” he says, and stands up, fist bump, and hug with one arm. “I swear, you’re a hermit, brother.”
I shrug.
“You know how it is. I got a job in Fittja. Go to the gym. No free time.”
He takes a step back, tilts his head, laughs, bends forward, and pulls on my stubble.
“What the hell is this, yao? You got a beard now?”
I don’t answer, my heart starts to pound, I feel exposed, my private life suddenly out in the open. Is it a sin to deny your faith? I don’t remember, I don’t really know anything about the Qur’an, and I just shrug again, pull back.
“It’s just a beard, bitch,” I say. “What about you, what’s up?”
He smiles and takes a sip of his soda.
“You know Parisa?” he says. “Your sister’s friend?”
I nod. We used to be in love with her, her tight tops, her bare skin and slim jeans, and I still see her outside her mother’s salon. She’s still hot, but thicker around the hips.
“She’s my chick now, bre!” he says, holding up his hand for a high five I don’t give him.
“Ey, you lying?” I say.
It’s crazy that Mehdi of all those dudes would have landed Parisa. Fat fucking Mehdi with his asthma and his squeaky little voice, got the hottest girl in Bergort?
“No, no!” he says. “I swear, brother!”
He leans toward me, whispering.
“The sex, len… Ajajajaj! So hot, I swear!”
I pull back, this has gone too far, the Qur’an must have something to say about this.
“Seriously,” I say. “I don’t wanna hear about it, OK?”
“Don’t be so uptight, brother,” he says, laughing. “Anyway, gotta go.”
He holds out his fist, and I put my own against it.
“Nice to see you, Fadi,” he says. “The whole gang’s gonna grill if we get some good weather. You should come. It’s been a long time since we saw you.”
I nod and suddenly feel overcome by a strange melancholy. We’ll never grill again, I know it. We’ll never talk about chicks again. Never smoke a spliff or torch a car. All of that is behind me now. It should be a relief. It is a relief. But it’s also sad.
*
I’m almost home when I see him—squatting down and staring at the withering bushes next to my door. He looks like a Habesha—or Somalian, maybe, with a long beard, thick and combed, a caftan and a string of prayer beads, and I break out into a cold sweat, because I know what this is about, that now my life begins. And it scares me, the thought of what that might entail, but I know fear is a part of this, part of Allah’s test, something I have to endure in order to prove myself worthy. I take a deep breath and walk quietly toward the door.
The man stands up. His beard is not as thick as I thought, his cassock not as clean and freshly ironed as I thought, instead, he looks weary, and his small, skeptical eyes inspect me carefully.
“Fadi Ajam?” he says.
I nod silently.
“Speak so I can hear you,” the man says. “You have nothing to be ashamed of.”
I swallow.
“I am Fadi Ajam,” I say. “As-salamu alaykum.”
I bow slightly toward him, showing my respect.
“Wa alaykum salaam,” he replies.
Without looking away from me, he gestures toward the parking lot with one hand while continuing to finger his prayer beads with the other.
“Come here,” he says. “Otherwise we’ll miss isha’a.”
Still I hesitate. This is what I’ve dreamed of. What I tried to explain to the brothers online. That I need something more, I can’t handle being alone, can’t deal with the day-to-day, that I have to get away, inshallah. And now Allah has heard me and sent this Habesha to lead me forward. Still I hesitate.
“Come,” he says again, holding out his hand. “Allah, may he be glorified and exalted, needs you.”
And I throw a glance up at our old windows where the blinds are always down, and I take a breath and close my eyes.
Then I open them and follow the man across the asphalt toward the parking lot.
14
London—Monday, August 17, 2015
It’s the headache that wakes her up—heavy and dull, aching, rather than intense—and she opens her eyes gently. The room around her is filled with a gray light that she finds familiar and alien at the same time. She’s not home. She closes her eyes again, pressing them together tight.
Where is she? What happened? Slowly, in short intervals, yesterday tumbles back to her. The hunt with Grandpa, a glass of wine at the airport, the taxi to the Library. And then? She remembers that she got much drunker than usual. She remembers that she left the bar and that the streets were unsteady like suspension bridges, the buildings sagged and changed location. And she remembers a silhouette behind her. Then nothing.
In panic, she sits up and opens her eyes. Runs her hands over her body. She’s wearing a way-too-big, white T-shirt. It’s not hers. Just panties underneath. She feels her chest tighten even farther, her pulse quickens. She starts to sweat, her head is pounding. The room is familiar, but she can’t place it: a bed, a desk cluttered with paper and pens, a clothing rack with a man’s clothes hanging on it, a white sheet on the only window, through which gray light streams in. She puts her feet on the ca
rpet, sees her suitcase standing in the corner with her clothes folded on top.
Her phone? It only takes a few seconds to find it in one of her jeans pockets. It’s seven o’clock, no missed calls.
She stands up and realizes she needs water. Her mouth is sticky and dry. She moves hesitantly across the floor, out through the door, into what appears to be a living room that looks out onto a street. A small dining table for two stands in the middle of the floor, and there’s a sofa against the wall—on which a man is sleeping. She tiptoes into the room. She’s extremely thirsty now. But first she has to figure out where she is.
Halfway into the room relief pours through her. It’s Pete’s apartment. She’s only ever seen it at night, in various states of intoxication, always left before sunrise. Pete. It could have been worse. Much worse.
*
She finds the kitchen and a glass. Fills it to the brim and gulps down three of the same until she feels like she might vomit from rapid rehydration. But her headache recedes slightly, and she puts the glass down and goes back into the living room. She drops down to her knees beside Pete and feels a rush of tenderness mixed with her increasing anxiety. How drunk was she?
“Pete,” she says, and gently nudges his arm.
Pete snores and turns a half turn away from her, so she shakes him gently again. This time he opens his eyes and turns toward her, seemingly immediately wide awake.
“Klara?” he says. “You’re awake?”
He sits up on the couch and looks at her with clear blue eyes. She shrugs and is overcome by immense shame. How could she get so drunk? How can she not remember what happened?
“I…” she begins, but doesn’t know what to say and falls silent.
Pete sits up on the couch now and looks at her worriedly.
“Are you feeling better?” he says with genuine concern in his voice.
She nods gently.
“Bloody hell,” he says. “You were completely wasted. Do you remember what happened?”
“Kind of,” she says. “I must have lost control for a bit.”
She smiles wryly and blushes. The headache makes her temples vibrate gently.
“How much did you drink before you got to the Library?” he says.
She can feel herself getting redder, and it makes her feel warm and raw. She’s not sure she can handle this discussion, not with Pete, not now.
“A glass on the plane,” she says at last. “But I don’t know. I lost control at the Library, I guess.”
Pete shakes his head, an uneasy expression in his eyes.
“You drank three glasses of red wine at the Library,” he said. “I kept an eye on you. Didn’t want you to get too drunk, you know. Three glasses? That usually isn’t a problem for you?”
Klara isn’t sure that’s a compliment, so she shrugs again. What does he mean?
“Also,” Pete continues, “you were completely out of it there in the alley. You vomited. Do you remember?”
She stiffens. She remembers fragments—collapsing in the alley, the world shaking. She remembers vaguely that she threw up. But she also remembers the outline of a man in the alley.
“Oh my God,” she whispers. “There was somebody there, in the alley. Was it you?”
She looks straight into his eyes. “Were you there when I fell down?”
Pete frowns, and his eyes get even smaller, even bluer and more intense.
“Klara? You don’t remember? I came out there because somebody from the bar found you in the alley and wondered what he should do about it. You were lying there alone.”
Memories flash by and pull away. Her legs feel weak and unsteady. She remembers falling down on all fours. Remembers vomiting. A whispering voice. It gives her goose bumps now.
“My bags?” she says. “Did you bring them here?”
“Bags?” Pete says. “You only had the one? A roller bag?”
The silhouette in the alley. The memory of hands and a whispering voice.
She stands up and runs back into the bedroom, pushes her clothes off the carry-on, turns it over, opens it, roots around inside. Nothing. She turns around and shouts over her shoulder: “Did you see my backpack? My computer bag?”
Pete is standing in the doorway behind her.
“No. When I found you, that’s all you had.”
He points to the carry-on. Klara sits up and runs her hands through her hair. Fuck! She bends over the bag again, opens the top compartment and sees her passport and wallet. It gives her some relief.
“Do you mean you lost a bag?” Pete says.
She pretends not to hear him. Her thoughts and anxiety rush through her like water, like a waterfall. Someone took her laptop bag. Nothing else. She turns to Pete.
“Are you sure I only drank three glasses? I don’t know, I lost count. Besides, I thought I left the last glass half full. All of a sudden I just felt incredibly drunk.”
“Yes. One hundred percent. I mean, there weren’t that many people in the bar.”
“There weren’t?”
In her memory, it was quite full, rowdy and noisy.
“Just a regular Sunday,” said Pete. “A little more than half full.”
Klara nods slightly. She remembers the shadows and hands pulling and prying, and it makes her tremble.
“So what happened?” she says. “If I only drank two and a half glasses of wine? What the hell happened?”
He shrugs and squats down beside her.
“Are you on any medication?”
She pulls back and puts her feet down on the bed next to him, irritated by his sudden intimacy. Sure, she’s grateful he took care of her, but now she just wants to get out of here.
“No, I’m not on any fucking medication.”
He stands up again. He’s only got his underwear on, and she tries her best not to look at him. She can’t handle this intimate, unaffected situation.
“Maybe you ate something bad?” he says. “And the backpack might still be at the bar? We’ll check.”
She nods.
“Sure,” she says. “We’ll check.”
But she already knows it’s not there.
15
Bergort—October 2014
I follow the Habesha over the parking lot under the afternoon sun. He doesn’t have a car like I expected, instead, we walk slowly toward the low-rise apartment building that Bounty lived in until his family moved to a row house. I’ve hardly been there since we were little. There’s nothing over there, even less than where we live, and it’s in the opposite direction of the main square or the subway.
The grass at the edge of the parking lot is yellow and unkempt, full of wilting cow parsley, nettles, and thistles, but the Habesha points to a narrow path that crosses the small field. It seems to lead in a half-circle around the low-rise, toward the little grove where you and I used to have adventures when we were little, where you’d tell me the story of Ronia the Robber’s Daughter, which your teacher read to you in school, and I was so afraid of trolls and robbers that you had to hold my hand on the way home at dusk, even though I was far too old to hold someone by the hand. I think of all of that as I follow the Habesha through the grass and bushes and nettles. And it occurs to me that I’m scared now too, but I don’t have anybody’s hand to hold. Nobody but Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala—may he be glorified and exalted. But he’s quiet tonight, and his hands are cold. This is a test, and I keep going step by step through the growing grass.
The grove is much smaller than I remember it and the subway tracks much closer, the rocks are not like the ones from storybooks, but more like big, gray boulders with plastic bags and rusty beer cans wedged in between them. We place our feet carefully and make our way up the gentle slope toward what I vaguely remember as a clearing in the middle of the grove.
*
It’s in this patch of woods that it begins. My new life consists of three men in beards, one is dressed in a caftan similar to the Habesha’s, the other two in jeans and dress shirts that are bu
ttoned up to their Adam’s apples. They stand in a line, as if they’re waiting for us, five prayer rugs spread in a row behind them, facing an opening in the trees through which you can just make out the beginning of the tunnel and behind that a high-rise building and shopping center. I’m outside of myself now, above myself, and reality seems sharp and angular, light falls from an unnatural angle and turns us gold and emerald.
The Habesha goes over to the men and kisses them one by one on the cheeks, muttering greetings in Arabic, and then turns back to me.
“This is brother Ajam,” he says in Swedish.
I don’t know what to say, don’t know what language to speak, what gestures to use. I don’t know anything, so I just hold up my hand in greeting, like a dork.
“Hi.”
The man in the caftan smiles and takes a couple of steps toward me, holds out his arms in an embrace, and pulls me toward him, kisses me on both cheeks, and then pushes me away. He has red hair, a red beard, and green, inquisitive eyes. He’s Swedish, not an Arab, maybe a convert.
“Welcome, brother Ajam,” he says and smiles.
There’s something sincere about him, something warm and deep, and I want him to hold me again, want him to pull me close, whisper to me that everything will be all right, that faith is what’s most important, that God sees my heart, and it doesn’t matter that I’m such a bad Muslim as long as my heart is true.
“I’m imam Dakhil,” he says.
Imam Dakhil’s Swedish has the rolling sounds of a Gothenburg accent. He’s not from Bergort.
“And this is my congregation,” he says.
One by one the men approach me, first the Habesha that led me here.
“Brother Tasheem, you’ve already met,” imam Dakhil says.
Tasheem kisses me on both cheeks and murmurs something in Arabic, which I don’t understand.
“Brother Taimur,” the imam continues, and the youngest of the men in jeans comes over and kisses me on both cheeks, he doesn’t look much older than me, maybe five years. Maybe your age.
“And finally brother al-Amin,” the imam adds.
Brother al-Amin is in his forties, tall and large, with a large well-groomed beard, a leather jacket, and a kufi on his head.
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