American Taliban: A Novel

by Pearl Abraham

  HE WAS EMERGING from sleep when Barbara and Bill arrived, bearing his MP3 player, his laptop, the Tao, the Dylan, the Burton biography, Zone bars, and Katie trailing behind. John welcomed the company, but he was especially happy to have his music and his books for later, for when he would be alone again. He dreaded this long night in this place of the sick and the dying, but, he reminded himself, it was only one night and now he had his music, and, for the next hour, his parents and Katie.

  Checkout is scheduled for 9:00 a.m. tomorrow, Barbara reminded him. I’ll be here, she promised, with a wheelchair at 8:30.

  A wheelchair, John protested. What’s wrong with crutches?

  The doctor, Bill explained, doesn’t want you to put any weight on your broken arm, at least not yet. In a week or two, when the fracture is on its way to healing, he’ll prescribe crutches.

  You’re on hydrocodone, so you’re not feeling pain, Barbara pointed out. But that’ll change when you come off it. Give it a rest, and you’ll be as good as new in a few months. Deal?

  Barbara’s bustling eased over his initial discomforts. Katie’s natural sociability and teasing took care of the rest, and in a matter of seconds, following a hug and glad you’re okay, she engaged him in the usual banter, a kind of tacking, the zig and zag of skateboarding.

  If you’d been in water instead of on concrete, she teased, you might have gotten worked, but you’d still be walking.

  Yeah, John agreed, drowning is preferable to broken limbs because then I might still be afloat, at least until I washed up on some shore somewhere.

  Please stop, Barbara said. Both sports are extreme, and you’re both either fortunate or not to have parents who are willing to live with risk.

  John gave Katie the sign, which she returned; they touched pinkies, a truce. She settled in at the foot of the bed, and Barbara and Bill left them alone, to make wheelchair arrangements and sign papers, they said.

  What now? John asked, and Katie understood that he was asking about her future plans, about how winning would affect them.

  She shrugged, making light of it, for which John liked her.

  Same old, she said. I guess I’ll keep working at Jamba Juice, maybe take a class at NCCC, though I can’t figure out in what. My dad wants me to take business. And I’ll keep practicing whenever I can. As first-place winner, I qualify for the Championship Surf-Off and I need to stay in good form for that. Sylvie’s parents want her to go to a four-year school, but she wants to stay on and practice.

  And Jilly?

  I don’t know, Katie said. She won’t talk to me, which is too weird. Her mom says she’s too upset to talk. I feel bad, but I don’t know what else I could’ve done. One of us had to place third. But still, I’m sorry for her.

  John wasn’t sure what Katie could have done. Refuse the prize, perhaps. Or better yet refuse to continue without Jilly in the water. In the heat of the moment it would have been hard to predict how things would turn out, and Katie couldn’t have known that she’d place first. So it really wasn’t her fault. So what was he holding against her? Perhaps she didn’t have to celebrate quite so victoriously, given what happened.

  Why? Katie asked, watching his face. Do you think I should have done more?

  John shrugged. He didn’t know, he wasn’t sure, but this was a good example of what was wrong with competition, judged as it was by a collective, awarding not the best, but the face that best served its image. He didn’t know how Katie could have helped being that face, or how she could have prevented Jilly’s penalty, but having seen Jilly surf, they both knew there was something less than truth involved in Katie’s win. He didn’t want to, shouldn’t have to say it, but Katie wouldn’t let him off. She stood facing him, hand on hip.

  You have to answer the question, she said, in a bossy teacher’s voice.

  John felt cornered, badgered. He shrugged. He looked away, opened the Dylan book, but Katie waited.

  Only you really know, he finally said.

  After which Katie became quiet; he could tell she wanted to leave. Seeing her unhappy, he regretted what he’d said, tried to take it back, but it was too late. Katie excused herself to find a restroom. She returned ten minutes later to say that Sylvie was picking her up out front in a few minutes. She gave John a whisper of a hug, and hours later he was still wrestling with his own bad conscience. He had made her feel bad. For no good reason. He should have apologized right away. He had wanted to apologize. She had done nothing wrong.

  UNABLE TO SLEEP, he plugged his laptop into the hospital’s DSL and went online. He might as well catch up on the latest chat-room conversations, which he’d missed. He might as well catch up on his lapsed correspondence.

  Josiah had forwarded a chat session on the similarities of the stories of Genesis and those of the Qur’an. Thought you’d be interested in this one, he wrote.

  John was interested. He’d started participating in this chat room in April, when he was reading fast and hard for World Religion, but he hadn’t kept up with the conversations or his research or his summer reading. He had not even gotten to Pagels’ Gnostic Gospels, scheduled for the end of his second week in June. He was way far behind.

  He opened the file. Josiah and Naim and Ahmed and Ibrahim had participated, and also someone new named Noor. It started with Naim criticizing Genesis’ version of the Ishmael story, and Naim, John knew, really knew this stuff.

  I read a convincing argument, Naim wrote, that it was Ishmael not Isaac Abraham went to sacrifice. According to this scholar, Isaac wasn’t even born yet. But Genesis gets chronology wrong all the time. As proof, this scholar offered the fact that God’s blessing to multiply as the sand came true for Arabs not Jews. There are 100 million Arabs in the world and only 10 million Jews.

  John paused. The proof seemed sort of unkosher, backward reasoning. But the idea that it was Ishmael not Isaac who was the intended victim made a lot of sense plotwise. At least from what he knew about the plot of Genesis. He wondered what Mr. G would say about this. They’d read the Binding of Isaac in class, discussed how awful it would have been for Isaac; also for Abraham, someone added.

  Exactly, Mr. G had said. A lot of readers and critics found the story difficult and wrote about it, including the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard. So if you’re still in the market for your senior topic, I recommend his famous problemata, published in Fear and Trembling. Before settling on his own topic, John had considered Kierkegaard.

  Naim went on to criticize Sarah’s infamous treatment of Hagar and, in response, Ahmed cited the orthodox explanation that God made Sarah do it because he wanted to test Abraham’s faith. Sounds like rationalization, I know, Ahmed wrote, but Abraham’s journey into the desert took him to Mecca and the Ka’ba, so there was a reason for the abuse.

  But you know, Noor interrupted, the details and especially the chronology are only important if you interpret the stories literally. I think of them as ancient myths that are useful to explain why we do things, sort of like fairy tales. Hagar’s quest for water, for example, is now part of the hajj ritual. My mom says that the reenactment of her desperate search celebrates Islamic motherhood.

  No one responded to Noor’s comment, perhaps because she was new and they didn’t know her yet. Noor dropped out, the conversation drifted to other things, but John wished she’d stayed, and that the discussion had gone further. It intrigued him. He’d have to pursue it on his own. Maybe add Kierkegaard to his reading list. He sent a poke to Noor, introducing himself as Attar, student of Arab literature, got no response, looked at the bedside clock, and guessed that it was too late for her. So he opened his Summer-Reading-List, a file saved on his laptop. He reviewed the books on the list and regretted having read so little. He’d never updated the list, never got to the Corbin. So Barbara was right. He’d slacked off, and now it was mid-August. He would have to make up for June and July. Renew his commitment to reading and knowing. Revise the list. So he settled in to work. He added the Qur’an. He added Kierkegaard. He wa
s pretty sure Barbara’s copy of the book was still on the shelves in D.C. He would read it. He would become Knowing John. As promised.

  STUDENT: John Jude Parish

  Session Hours: Mon—Fri 7:00–8:40 a.m.

  10-week syllabus

  REVISED 08/16/2000

  Course Title: MY Summer Reading

  I AM GOING TO START LIVING LIKE A MYSTIC

  Course Description: Today I am pulling on a green wool sweater/ and walking across the park in a dusky snowfall./ The trees stand like twenty-seven prophets in a field,/ each a station in a pilgrimage—silent, pondering./ Blue flakes of light falling across their bodies/ are the ciphers of a secret, an occultation./ I will examine their leaves as pages in a text/ and consider the bookish pigeons, students of winter./ I will kneel on the track of a vanquished squirrel/ and stare in to a blank pond for the figure of Sophia./ I shall begin scouring the sky for signs/ as if my whole future were constellated upon it./ I will walk home alone with the deep alone,/ a disciple of shadows, in praise of the mysteries. —Edward Hirsch from Lay Back the Darkness

  Week I Today I am pulling on a green wool sweater

  Text: Tao.

  Song of Myself. Whitman, Walt.

  Transcendentalism. Emerson, Ralph Waldo.

  Week II. The trees stand like twenty-seven prophets in a field

  Text: Bob Dylan: An Intimate Biography. Scaduto, Anthony.

  The Gnostic Gospels. Pagels, Elaine.

  Week III. The ciphers of a secret, an occultation

  Text: The Sufis. Shah, Idries.

  Week IV. I will examine their leaves as pages in a text

  Text: The Qur’an. Muhammed.

  Week V. Consider the bookish pigeons, students of winter

  Text: The Arabs: A Short History. Hitti, Philip K.

  Week VI. I will kneel on the track of a vanquished squirrel

  Text: The Gift. Hafiz.

  Week VII. Stare into a blank pond for the figure of Sophia

  Text: Stations of Desire. Ibn ’Arabi.

  Week VIII: I shall begin scouring the sky for signs

  Text: Aesop Without Morals.

  Week IX. I will walk home alone with the deep alone

  Text: Alone with the Alone: Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn ’Arabi. Corbin, Henry.

  Week X. A disciple of shadows, in praise of the mysteries

  Text: Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard.

  SHE WAS A FORCE, a hurricane. Somehow, between hospital visits and daily life and sleep, she’d also cleaned his room, unhooked his clothesline, put away his clothes, arranged his books in neat piles on a bench at the foot of his bed, and purchased a long stainless-steel tray table on wheels. Most impressively, she’d had a temporary ramp installed over the stairs that led up to his room. In a day.

  Awesome redecorating, Mom.

  Barbara took his appreciation in stride. This room needed it. You’ll probably spend more hours here in the next few weeks than you have all summer. But, she continued matter-of-factly, it doesn’t have to be all work. The general outline of our schedule will, at least for the next few weeks, give shape to yours. Mornings, when your father paints, you can read and work. I might be in the garden or out running errands. If you want anything in particular from the shops in Duck or Kitty Hawk, let me know the night before. We’ll eat a light lunch together at noon. Afternoons you can travel with us, if you like. We might have drinks with friends, or go to the beach, or play tennis—I hope you’ll want to join us for some of this, even if only as a spectator. And, of course, Katie and the girls will visit.

  Today we’re playing doubles with the Winograds at four, she said, and I’ve proposed you as scorekeeper since it seems we’re all either in our menopausal moment or experiencing early Alzheimer’s. So we’re counting on you.

  John understood that this was Barbara’s way of keeping him socially engaged, despite his immobility. He rolled his eyes, as was expected of him. He’d please her this once, keep score, after which he’d have to reassert his independence. He was eighteen, and he wouldn’t spend his evenings watching his parents play.

  Before he could settle in, Barbara announced lunch on the screened porch. Bill steered the wheelchair down the ramp and through the house to the porch, moved John’s regular chair out of the way, and the wheelchair into its place. Then he followed Barbara to the kitchen.

  With no choice but to sit, John sat. And felt the ocean breeze. He gave his attention to the canopy of quivering leaves, to the shadows parting and departing on the sunlit patio outside, and recalled endless hallowed summers, but why were they no longer so endless? Slow and silent had departed with childhood. For the first time all summer, he dropped into reverie, a laptop at rest until called forth again with the brush of a hand. He’d had a busy summer. That’s why summers were no longer slow. And now he had two weeks left to recapture slowness, unless he allowed Barbara’s planning to get in the way.

  She came in bearing a tray of sandwiches, clicking him out of his reverie. Behind her was Bill with plates, chips, pickles, and mustard. He set them down and went back for the jug of lemon iced tea and glasses. Barbara pulled cloth napkins and picnic cutlery from the covered basket on the buffet, set the table, and then they were all seated, the sandwiches were named—cucumber with cream cheese, ham and cheese, tomato basil. John took a bite of each, to rate them. On a scale of most to least satisfying, the ham and cheese came in number one; the beefy tomato basil second.

  You suffer, Bill said, the twenty-first-century mania for rating things. We grew up with Consumer Reports, which helped rational shoppers make informed decisions. Which was useful. But your generation is encouraged to rate everything.

  Barbara blamed it on the online phenomenon, with stores like Amazon encouraging readers to rate every book and product. Consumer interaction is capitalism’s latest frontier. Reality television’s success is based in the popular vote. We’re raising a generation for whom opinion is a kind of knowingness, which is a parody of knowledge.

  If you just listen to yourselves, John said, you’ll notice that you’re sounding like your parents and grandparents. Every generation gets criticized by its elders.

  It’s possible, Barbara conceded, that this late in human development, knowing too much about everything, we’re all mere parodies, acting on images of who we supposedly are, or images we’ve conjured up for ourselves as acceptable.

  It’s been said before, Bill said. All the world’s a stage—dot dot dot.

  John pushed his plate away and retired to his room, to reacquaint himself with himself, and plan the next weeks.

  Out of habit, he went to www.surfcheck.com and watched the virtual waves, their virtual heave and crash. They were head high, the promise of yesterday’s hurricane had materialized, and Katie and Sylvie were out there somewhere. About Jilly, he didn’t know; she might be home moping, though the best thing she could do was get out there, practice, push against limitations, against what did or didn’t happen, and prove how good she was. Katie was right. Jilly had as good a chance at championship as anyone else. After Hatteras, he would have put his money on her, but personal doubt and general negativity could hold her back. So he writes a poke: If you seek safety, it is on the shore. Warning: E-mail cannot be unsent. So he postpones sending it. So he Googles the word transcendent, reads the original, medieval, philosophical, and colloquial definitions, understands only the last one, links to links, moving through pages on American Transcendentalism, medieval transcendence, Emerson and Whitman, whose sources were Buddhist—

  I am the poet of the body

  And I am the poet of the soul …

  I think I will do nothing for a long time but listen,

  And accrue what I hear into myself … and let sounds contribute toward me.

  He’d been meaning to do this ever since he handed in his senior thesis. He’d been meaning to read and continue his chat-room conversations. He’d learned a lot from some well-informed correspondents. John checked to see whethe
r Noor had participated in the chat room again. She hadn’t. But in his inbox he found her response to his poke.

  I live in Brooklyn and study at NYU, Noor wrote. I was named after the queen of Jordan, who in case you don’t know started out as just a daughter in a Syrian-Scottish-Swedish American family, named Lisa Halaby. But she graduated from Princeton with a degree in architecture and urban planning and met King Hussein when she was working on the design of the International Airport in Amman. Before marrying King Hussein, she accepted Islam and took the name Noor, meaning light. And she’s very beautiful.

  Noor from Brooklyn seemed to him exquisitely sensitive, lonely, sublime somehow, though he was largely making her up, imagining her, as he’d made himself up for her, introducing himself as a reader of Arab literature, which he had yet to read.

  I love Arabic poetry, she wrote in response. Isn’t the trilateral root system of classical Arabic awesome? she asked. I love how it allows the poem to mean more only if you know more vocabulary. Sort of a reward for knowing. The Sufis, who wrote in code to stay safe, really knew and used this root system. My dad says it’s impossible to understand the depths of Sufi ideas without a grounding in classical Arabic.

  She was writing to him as an insider, John noted, assuming that he read in classical Arabic, though even Arabs, he’d read, often don’t understand the Qur’an.

  Curious, John Googled the trilateral root system and read about the variety of conjugations possible on one three-letter root, about near and far meanings. It became clear to him that though his research may have been good enough for high school, he knew next to nothing. But he would begin knowing. He would take this inadvertent time-out to learn. He would read his Hafiz. He would read the Ibn ’Arabi. Become a student of Arab literature. He would write Noor. Write Jilly. So he toggles back to his poke. He hesitates. Fact: The first letter in the first modern novel (Don Quixote), which borrowed or stole from Sufi work, his tenth-grade English teacher lectured, was never delivered. So he delays. Links to pages on Islamic spirituality. Finds a Sufi center in Los Angeles. Finds Madonna’s Kabbalah Center. He should call Katie, whom he loves. He should answer Noor’s e-mail. He rereads her long and intriguing response to his poke.