American Taliban: A Novel

by Pearl Abraham

  THE FOLLOWING MONDAY, Yusef was waiting for him when he emerged from his last class of the morning, and John was relieved and anxious at the same time. Yusef’s stories, arriving as they had as handwritten notes, had convinced him that he was no longer welcome on Yusef’s bike, that his overeager penis, which stood erect at the least provocation, had embarassed or frightened Yusef.

  Yusef slid forward on his seat, inviting John on, and even before he was on the bike, spooning Yusef’s bum, John felt his peter stand up. It was this, he realized, this constant prickly unfulfilled desire, that was exhausting. And he was confused by this desire; he’d been unable to sort it out. His mind warned against it, held back, told him that he was not attracted to men, to Yusef, at least not that way, but still his body responded, celebrated the opportunity, another adventure. He hoped that with time, with familiarity to the experience of close proximity, his body would grow accustomed to the physical contact and become less responsive.

  Where are we going today? John shouted into Yusef’s ear.

  A picnic, Yusef replied. He pulled into the petrol station to fill up.

  You should get water, Yusef said.

  John slid off the bike and entered the little market, a Pakistani-style 7-Eleven. He bought two tall bottles of purified water, a bag of banana chips, which Barbara had recommended as a source of potassium, and a bag of pepitas, a snack of the region. He paid for the items and slipped them into his backpack.

  If we’re going to have a picnic, let’s pick up some chapli kebabs, John said.

  My oom made sandwiches, Yusef said, and lifted the lid on the black leather case at the back to show him.

  Y’allah, Yusef said. I’m taking you to Takht-e-Bahi, a Buddhist monastery on the Peshawar-Swat Road, just south of the Malakand Pass.

  It was a long drive, through mostly flat plains, beautifully bare, green where they were irrigated, brown elsewhere. Riding behind Yusef in the open air, John felt enlarged by the long perspective the open countryside offered. In the final stretch, they climbed a rocky spur about five hundred feet above the plains, the site of Takht-e-Bahi.

  Yusef locked his bike in the car park and, holding John’s hand, led the way up the path to the Court of Many Stupas, named for the thirty-five votive shrines it once contained. They approached the main courtyard, surrounded by the silent stone walls twenty-five feet high with chapels built into the wall, their entrances facing inward. Corners and edges of cornices and pilasters were still traceable, beautifully broken in the way that ruins are. Yusef pulled John along to the steps that led the way inside, but a beggar stopped John at the first step, and another at the second, and John hung back, preventing advance. He’d reached into his pocket and come up with a handful of change. This foolish act produced twenty open palms, and with an indulgent smile on his face, John proceeded to put a coin into each hand. Which produced shouting. One beggar had gotten a five-cent piece, the other a ten, the next one a mere penny.

  Yusef laughed. You have to place the same amount in each open palm.

  But John had only a handful of change, in different denominations, and soon he ran out of change, and there were more steps, more beggars, more open palms, more shouting. He apologized, he shrugged, but the beggars wouldn’t give up. They pinched his shirt. They grabbed at his pants, and John panicked.

  Yusef stepped down and pressed the beggars back. Ik sal amir, ik sal fakir, he said. Ik sal amir, ik sal fakir, he repeated, and the hands that demanded fell away, the word got out, ik sal fakir, interest waned, and the beggars moved off to seek elsewhere.

  John swallowed his panic and wiped his forehead. What does that mean exactly? he asked.

  A rich man this year, and a beggar the next. In other words, you’re like them now. And as a beggar, you’re not useful. If you don’t want to remain a beggar, don’t reach into your pockets again. He led the way up the stairs and around the walls.

  This court, he announced, taking charge, as if it were an architectural drawing and he the architect. This court, he said, consulting the brochure, measures thirty-six meters by fifteen meters, that is, one hundred twenty feet by fifty feet. The walls are about nine meters, or thirty feet high. Inside, against the walls, are thirty chapels. The chapels once contained huge statues of the Buddha, about four times his original size.

  They walked the paved north-south path from the main stupa on the north end to the monastery on the south side, went up the five steps, and stood in the center counting the cells. Fifteen in all.

  This is where the monks lived, Yusef said, and led the way into one of the two largest ones. They were bare and small, with high walls and one small window too high for even the tallest monk to see through.

  Scary, John said. Kind of like jail.

  Yusef led the way back to the fifteen steps that led up to the main stupa, now merely a square base. Not much left of it, he explained. Cleaned out by thieves. Originally it had three bases like this first one, each smaller than the previous one, stacked. At the top, the stupa rested on pillars.

  He walked up the steps to the first and remaining base and turned to watch John stumble. He laughed.

  The half step, he explained, is intended to surprise and awaken the pilgrim. Reaching up for the expected full step, he doesn’t find it, and stumbles.

  Nice idea, John said, but it probably works only once or twice.

  Probably, Yusef agreed, but it wasn’t intended for the monks who used them daily. It was the pilgrims who needed awakening.

  They fell in line behind the other visitors—pilgrims dressed Punjabi style in shalwar kameez of all colors and stripes—keeping pace with those in front of them, remaining ahead of those behind.

  After touring the Assembly Hall, the Low Level Chambers, which housed the granaries, meditation rooms, and study, they stopped at the Court of Three Stupas to admire the sculpture collection, the Wall of Colossi, where six pairs of giant feet were discovered at its base, along with remaining fragments of the six statues of the Buddha. Based on the size of the feet, the statues are calculated to have been about twenty feet high, Yusef read aloud.

  They were hungry. Touring had given them an appetite. So they made their way back to the car park and rode west, to the modern town of Takht-e-Bahi, to a small park famous for its peepul tree.

  You know the one at Pipal Mandi in old Peshawar? he said. It’s said to be a descendant of the original peepul. These trees usually have legends attached to them, like the one in the Mahabharata. To prove himself as a warrior to Lord Krishna, Babreek offered to rope all the tree’s leaves with one arrow. After Babreek’s arrow had pierced every leaf, it hovered at Lord Krishna’s foot, and Babreek warned Krishna that if he didn’t move, the arrow would pierce it. It turned out that Lord Krishna had hidden a leaf under his foot.

  Yusef withdrew a square of cloth, paper-wrapped sandwiches, and oranges. John unzipped his backpack and contributed the water and snacks.

  Pepitas, Yusef said. To complete our meal.

  We should give thanks, John said.

  They folded their legs, Buddha pose, brought their palms together, and closed their eyes.

  Yusef broke the silence. Let’s break bread.

  They took their first bites cautiously, tasting, then rushed into their next ones.

  Your mom makes a mean sandwich, John said through a mouthful.

  They’re always better outside, Yusef said.

  They ate in silence. John noted the blue horizon, the oily haze the burning sun made when it heated the molecules in the air. He was grateful for the reprieve of green shade.

  Imagine, Yusef said, a monk’s life, roaming during the day, returning to his monastery at Takht-e-Bahi for the night, meditating on nothingness.

  I could have been a monk, John said. I was born in the wrong place and time.

  Really? Yusef asked, pointedly dropping his eyes from John’s face to his lower body.

  John shifted, and waited for his blush to recede. He swallowed. Maybe that’s why I wou
ld have made a good monk. I would have made the greater sacrifice.

  Sacrifice, Yusef said, is hard, and fighting your own desire is self-destructive. I watch you, from free America, struggle against what you really want. So who do you think’s freer?

  Yusef stretched his legs to reveal his own aroused state. The mystics, he said, knew that indulgence is sometimes more effective than abstaining. Think Richard Burton. And don’t think indulgence is easy. For example, I’m willing to give it to you, but are you prepared to submit, because that’s the only way I’ll have it?

  John looked into the distance, the landscape stark in desert browns, sparsely vegetated, and the people, dressed as they were in their shalwar kameez, could, with a minimum of squinting, appear as classically draped Greeks. He imagined Yusef as Caligula, claiming every virgin, male and female, branding them as his own, because this was what Yusef proposed, and John found, shockingly, that he wanted to submit, or rather his body wanted it, ached for it, but it was also impossible to admit to wanting such a thing.

  Yusef propped himself onto his elbows and reclined unashamedly, and John found himself both drawn and repulsed simultaneously. His body ached to stretch out beside Yusef, to give himself to Yusef; his mind, however, shouted against it. Submission. A word that had no place in Barbara’s vocabulary, and she wouldn’t welcome it in his. About his newly discovered bisexuality she wouldn’t be critical, but she also wouldn’t love it.

  So I’m right, Yusef said. Your problem isn’t sex, just submission. American men aren’t used to that, but they can learn. They’ll have to. Bismillah. You may not even know exactly why you’re here, therefore I’ll tell you that you’ve come to Islam in order to learn the grace and pleasure of submission.

  I know, John said, that Islam doesn’t approve of same-sex sex.

  Actually, the Qur’an is silent on homosexual love, so it isn’t haram. Our classical poetry is full of it. And most boys grow up doing it.

  Yusef made submission more desirable with every uttered word, but John remained where he was, on his side of the blanket. Sex in America, at least with a woman, had never weighed so meaningfully, never seemed so political. With Yusef, or maybe this was true in all of Pakistan, nothing was casual. Pakistanis were blithe about nothing.

  For the trip home, Yusef invited John to sit up front and steer, and with Yusef behind him, with insistent desire rumbling unashamedly against him all the way into Peshawar, the ride was both torment and delight, disabling, threatening, humiliating, and delicious.

  When Yusef finally parked the bike in the narrow, dark alleyway of the tea shop on Qissa Khwani, John found he couldn’t walk. And though his warning mind persisted, he found he could no longer hold back. He leaned his feverish forehead against the cool stone wall and untied his pants. Yusef’s hand cupped and held his penis, and snugged his own penis between John’s cheeks, and John dissolved. He was no longer John, he was something other that belonged to Yusef, who penetrated and fucked him, and it hurt and oh and but.

  John finished first, and then Yusef came, touching off something somewhere deep, a chord, a resonance, and John discovered that he was bawling. Yusef remained with him against the wall, holding him up, and John came again.

  SEATED AT A DARK SMALL TABLE, with a pot of cardamom tea between them, John felt weakened, vanquished, but also relieved.

  Why? Yusef was amazed. This was your first time ever. You were a virgin.

  No. John shook his head. I’ve had girlfriends.

  What are you feeling then?

  I don’t know, John said. Weak. Confused. But not bad. You might call it submission, but this was not how I felt when I submitted to Islam.

  Yusef touched John’s brow with the tips of his fingers. Salty, he said, tasting it. Like the water of Kallar Kahar, a lake that was once sweet. According to legend. One day Baba Fariduddin asked the local women for a drink, but the women put him off claiming the water was salty. If you say so, so be it! replied the saint and went away. The water has been salty ever since.

  Thirst. The theme of Pakistan, John said.

  And love, Yusef said. Love makes life worth living. But—he sighed, and recited:

  And you still are so ravishing—what should I do?

  There are other sorrows in this world

  Comforts other than love.

  Don’t ask me, my love, for that love again.

  Whose is it? John asked.

  Faiz Ahmed Faiz, a poet born in the Punjab, not far from here.

  But John wanted that love again. They were in the alleyway, getting ready to leave, and Yusef turned away at first, held back, tormented, then satisfied him.

  ————

  THE NEXT AFTERNOON, grinding on wheels across campus, feeling strong again, John saw Khaled on Yusef’s bike, seated in front of Yusef, comfortably familiar in front of Yusef, and understood that he wasn’t the only one.

  They waved, but he turned away, refused to acknowledge them, refused really to accept what he felt. Furious, jealous, hating, and hateful, he ground down a set of concrete steps and kickflipped onto curbs, anger sharpening his skill, whittling it into pure form. What, he asked himself with fury, had gotten into him? Why had he submitted to gay sex? Why did his body ache for it? He wasn’t a fag. He liked girls. His best friends were girls. Noor, Katie, Jilly, Sylvie. And Khaled had Samina. Even Yusef mentioned a girlfriend. Was everyone here bisexual?

  He turned up Khyber Road, toward the bazaar, and traveled the back way to busy Qissa Khwani. He looked in the alleyway. The bike was there. He found them at the table in the back.

  They made room for him, and the waiter brought another glass. Yusef poured.

  Khaled quoted someone, John wasn’t certain who, he wasn’t concentrating well, something about the tree of life as not really a tree, but the best of man, his best virtues, his piety, his only chance at immortality.

  Man is mortal, only mind can achieve immortality, Yusef countered.

  No, John corrected. Nothing’s immortal, but you can make yourself worthy of immortality. But still you die. Every day, every hour, every minute, you die a little, but if you make yourself unworthy, you can die a lot in one day.

  You look alive enough to me, Khaled said.

  John felt the pressure of Yusef’s hand on his thigh and paused. It was possible he’d misread things. It was possible they were just friends who attended the same classes, drank tea after classes, as he did, as they all did. Jealousy and guilt might be misleading him.

  Khaled was looking at him, with his one-sided smile. You should relax, he said. My mom has an expression about newcomers to Islam. She says they burn too hot and soon burn out. Muslims born into the fold understand that aspiring to an ideal is enough.

  I’ve tried to tell him, Yusef said. He needs to slow down, respect the heat. His face is a ripe tomato.

  Pour me some of that tea and shut up, John said.

  Yusef and Khaled laughed and ordered a second pot of tea. John relaxed and sipped. They talked about the recent Hindu atrocities.

  I read, John said, that this time the Kashmiri rebels incited the Hindus.

  Of course they did, Yusef said. They’re living under Hindu rule. History shows that wherever there’s oppression, there’s rebellion. In the end, the people always win. And the oppressor always knows this, fears it, but still he oppresses, stupidly trying to hold back what’s coming anyway. During World War Two, prisoner workers sabotaged the Nazis by making faulty bombs. One such bomb fell into a home in London and never exploded. When the family unraveled it, they found a note: Dear English, Don’t worry. We’re with you. The Polish.

  Good story, Khaled said.

  Yusef looked at his watch. Y’allah. I must escort my sister home.

  John perked up. He had been meaning to ask Yusef about this sister.

  He has a date with his sister, Khaled teased.

  Yeah, he keeps his women well hidden, John said. As everyone around here must because I never see any girls.

&nbs
p; But Yusef remained unruffled. In Pakistan, he said, we protect the honor of our women.

  THE REGULARS AT THE INTERNET CAFÉ greeted him when he came in, and after several repetitions of the handshake-hug-handshake greeting, John went to get himself a gaziz. He had to wait briefly for a computer to free up, chatted with Muhammed at the counter, then settled in.

  He signed in. He had twelve messages. An urgent one from Barbara. News from Noor. Nothing from the girls. A p.s. from Barbara. A sale notice from Al-ma-Ha-laat.com. A note from Josiah. And, of course, spam, Hotmail’s middle name. He opened Noor’s e-mail first: She was working on the school newspaper, getting experience. They’d sent her to cover a film opening, and she asked Claire Danes to name the title of her favorite book of all time, and it was Pride and Prejudice. About the women in Pakistan, Noor wrote: They lead significant lives, I’m sure, but not in public, with the exception of a few, like Benazir Bhutto. As a male, and especially a foreign male, you probably won’t be allowed anywhere near them. The women have contact only with male relatives. I’m sure, Noor wrote, if you stop at the fruit and vegetable bazaars late afternoon, you’ll see women purchasing fresh produce for dinner, but they will be older, the married ones with families.

  Noor sent love from Ali, who was beginning to jump curbs. He mentions you every day, Noor wrote. It’s like you’re his guru, and I think it’s starting to annoy my dad. John smiled. And made a mental note to send Ali step-by-step instructions for a grind, but he had to consider which one. He opened Barbara’s e-mail.

  From: BarbDC672@adelphia.net

  To: John_P47892@hotmail.com

  Date: July 16, 2001

  RE: Urgent

  Honey,

  Bad news. Jilly is missing, presumed dead– – – – – – – – – –

  ————No! John shouted, slamming his head down on the keyboard. The screen filled quickly: ddeeeexxxxjjjjjjjiiiiiiiiiiiiillllllllllllllkkkkkkkjjjjjjjjssssssssaaaaaaa