by Ali Eteraz
I was perplexed by the zeal with which they wanted to emulate academics in the West. I wanted to ask them if they knew that a secular education was corrosive and corrupting to Islam.
The house was approximately a hundred yards from the mosque, where the azan was sung five times a day to announce the time for prayer. Yet I noticed that no one in the colony went to make regular prayers. The mosque seemed to be little more than a decoration that no one had much interest in.
At the house the TV stayed on most of the day. Every channel was from either mainland India or Dubai. Many stations featured music videos with scantily clad girls or songs full of innuendo. The VJs were all Western in behavior and clothing, and everyone was trying to out-MTV one another.
One day Uncle Saad took us for a tour of the colony and then to his base, where he put special emphasis on showing us the Officers’ Mess—a sparse, English-style dining hall with antique tables, solid chairs, and finely engraved china with insignias etched into the bottom. I saw a table of wine glasses in a corner and asked him what it was for.
“Lots of the people on base drink,” he said.
“Is it just the high-ranking people who drink?” I asked, “or does everyone?”
He thought for a moment. “Mostly it’s just the top officers.”
The notion that the foot soldiers and lower-level officers didn’t drink gave me a modicum of comfort—it was nice that they weren’t getting westernized. I resolved to talk with some of the lower-level officers and ask them how they allowed themselves to serve Muslims who drank.
One evening a military van with two machine-gun-bearing Pathan soldiers in the backseat picked us up and took us all to the commercial area, to go to an open-air restaurant on top of a ten-story hotel that seemed to cater to upper-middle-class families. When the restaurant attendant realized that we were from America, he started throwing in English words, and everything became “simply the…” The daal was “simply the best.” The naan was “simply the fluffiest.” The biryani was “simply the tastiest.” His colonialized mentality disgusted me. He should have demanded that we speak his language, not the other way around. Muslims had to be proud of who they were.
As he led us to our seat, I saw massive piles of red tandoori chicken, and kharay masalay ka gosht, and chicken jalfrezi. At least the food is native, I thought.
We were seated across from a musical ensemble featuring a middle-aged guy with oily hair who took requests from the diners. He belted out old-school ghazals as well as songs made popular by Michael Jackson and Frank Sinatra. I felt angry with him for bringing these Western songs into Pakistani society. Music itself was haram, and good Muslims ought not listen to it at all. But if people were indeed going to listen to music, then they should listen to their own and not try to copy the West.
I felt increasingly uncomfortable. Why was this establishment ignoring Islam? Wasn’t Islam why this nation had been created? Yet people’s attitudes, their definition of fun, the mix-gendered seating, the complete absence of Islamic rituals—all this was striking. It occurred to me that these people were thoroughly secularized, and that saddened me.
By the time we finally returned home from dinner, the Islam inside me was gasping for air. It seemed as if everything Karachiites did led them away from religion. Why did they pay so much attention to cricket, for example? It was a mindless sport that wasted the mind and kept people from worshipping God. Why did some of the programming on TV feature a mixture of Urdu and English—and more important, why had Pakistanis made English an official language? This was an Islamic country, wasn’t it? The only official language should’ve been Arabic, the language of the Quran.
That night I dug into my books and found the gleaming orange cover of The History of Islamic Philosophy, by Majid Fakhry. Just holding the book restored some of my security. Opening its pages, I read about Imam Ashari, who vanquished the Rationalists; and al-Ishraqi, the founder of Illuminationism, a non-rational Islamic theology; and al-Ghazali, who vanquished the Philosophers; and Ibn Taymiya, who showed that Muslims didn’t need logic because it was a Greek invention. I glanced through all the authentic Arabic and Persian scholars over history, and finding the name of Iqbal, the spiritual founder of Pakistan, at the very end of that list gave me a sense of comfort. It proved that Pakistan was part of the long, flowing river of Islam—indeed, its culmination.
I concluded that Pakistanis who weren’t true to this history weren’t being true to themselves.
The next night Uncle Saad took us to a big-time party at a superior’s house. The event was like something out of 90210 or Melrose Place. There were gleaming cars outside the enormous house, and servants in pressed uniforms ran around addressing every need. The event itself was in the garden, where food was served under white tents. Outside the tents there were countless round tables, laid out banquet style with fine china, and courteous waiters. The garden was stunning in its lushness, its damp geometry, and its crisply trimmed edges. Roses of all colors, as well as long rows of chambaylis and numerous other flowers, were banked against the main house, which gave off a golden luminosity from the chandeliers inside.
The main event at the party was a game of bingo organized by a couple of professionals. They passed out bingo cards to anyone who was interested and then spun a huge wheel with great aplomb. Uncle Saad quickly picked up a card for himself and began playing.
I wandered away from the table and went toward a corner of the garden where some young people were milling about.
As I got near them I stopped in my tracks. The guys were all wearing Western clothes—dress shoes, pressed slacks, and crisp, collared shirts with ties. The girls were variously dressed in tight chiffon dresses, backless shalwar kameezes, and knee-length skirts. I crinkled up my nose at their immodest attire.
As I turned away to head back in, I saw a face I recognized: it was the chador-clad girl from the airplane—the one I had found so beautiful in her modesty. Now she was wearing a pair of tight jeans and a skimpy tank top, cut off at the midriff to show off a diamond-encrusted navel ring. I could see one edge of her thong as she sashayed over toward the group of teenagers. She didn’t seem to recognize me but gave me a nice smile anyway.
Feeling almost ill from the encounter—I felt she had betrayed all of Islam—I went to look for Ammi, who was off chatting with my aunt.
“Why don’t we go to the desert?” I suggested. “We should go and see Dada Abu and Dadi Ma.”
“I’ve been trying to persuade them to fly out here instead,” she said. “It’s a hellish trip to the desert.”
“But there’s nothing for us to do in Karachi,” I said flatly.
“We’re here to try to find you a good girl to marry. Uncle Saad told me he’s informed some of his colleagues that we’re looking. You’re an American citizen, which should be a draw. You’ll have plenty of luck here, I think. In fact, there are some girls over there,” she said, pointing toward the group I’d just turned back from. “Go talk to them.”
“Forget it,” I said, feeling angry by the chador-girl turning into a secular whore. “Those are not the sort of girls I want.”
“What are we talking about here?” Uncle Saad chimed in, joining his wife.
“He’s talking about going to visit the desert,” Ammi said.
“Why would you want to do that?” Uncle Saad asked. “Tell your grandparents to fly out here.”
“I want to go to the desert,” I said firmly, “because I can tell you now that I’m not going to like any of these city girls.”
“You want to go to the desert?” Uncle Saad asked. “Then tell me—have you ever grown a beard?”
“I grew a scruffy one at college,” I said. “Pops told me to shave it off before we flew here. Why?”
“If you want to go to the desert,” he said, “you’ll have to grow a long one.”
“But why?”
“Those people over there: they aren’t like they used to be. If you don’t have a beard, they’ll beat
you up.”
“I don’t understand.”
“They say that men should wear a beard,” he explained, “because that’s what Islam says.”
I found nothing wrong with that. “Well, they’re right,” I said. “Islam does stipulate that men grow a beard. If you don’t have a beard, you’re not a good Muslim. There’s a hadith—”
“If you aren’t going to like a girl here,” Ammi interrupted, with a bit of doubt creeping into her voice, “then maybe we should look elsewhere. Besides, your grandparents don’t seem interested in flying out, and I’m feeling guilty about coming all the way to Pakistan and not seeing them. Maybe we should go up north.”
I nodded eagerly. After hearing that in the desert the men were expected to grow a beard for religious reasons, it seemed like Sehra Kush was the type of place where people actually cared about Islam. I wanted to get there as soon as possible.
Within a week Ammi had purchased a niqab and the three of us were on a train.
I stroked my face and willed my youthful stubble to grow long like a true Muslim’s.
9
Neither garlands nor fireworks announced our homecoming. We were welcomed to Dada Abu’s house by a naked toddler named Usama who ran to the ledge above the courtyard and urinated on me as I entered. I should have considered it symbolic; instead I just purified myself with water.
Flim and I were quickly separated from Ammi as long-forgotten relatives streamed into the house and greeted us eagerly. Being able to speak Urdu, I was able to respond to them adequately, but they were disappointed by Flim’s incomplete grasp of the language. He was so young when we left Pakistan that he remembered only fragments.
“What has America done to this boy!” an uncle complained, and I felt a pang of shame for being an American.
Ammi, meanwhile, wasn’t feeling particularly sociable. Feeling dirty from the train ride, she wanted to freshen up, but the water had been shut off for three days. Except for a sun-warmed bucket of stale water, there was no clean water with which to wash up. She asked one of the cousins to go and purchase bottled water from the nearby pharmacy, only to find out on his return that the caps weren’t sealed. She made a disparaging comment about the desert’s backwardness, and I felt angry with her for insulting a place where people were not only religious but pious.
“You’d rather be in Karachi?” I asked.
“Yes,” she answered curtly. “They have bottled water there.”
“They’re irreligious there. I’d rather have a clean soul than clean water.”
“That’s fine,” Ammi replied. “Just know that you’re about to get diarrhea.”
“The Prophet lived in a desert just like this,” I reminded her sternly. “Things worked out fine for him.”
Ammi turned out to be right: I did get diarrhea. However, when I went to use the latrine in the ground, I didn’t indict myself for drinking bad water. Instead, as I squatted down I remembered the way I used to squat in the rooster position at the madrassa. It occurred to me that I should have embraced my childhood beatings, because they prepared me to be more adept at using a latrine. I exhaled a subhanallah. It was amazing the way Islam was everywhere.
After making sure that I’d greeted everyone, I took a walk in my old alley. The entire block had changed. Dada Abu had bought the house that had once belonged to the Balochi people; he’d torn it down and remade it in solid cement, adding a blue metal gate. This was now the primary residence, where he lived with Dadi Ma and one of my uncles, along with the uncle’s wife and six children. My other uncles lived in various houses scattered around the neighborhood. Uncle Saroor, who had taken two more wives after black magic Gina, lived directly across the street in a multi-story home, keeping each wife on a separate floor.
There were visible signs of material progress. The houses with the dung patties on the walls were gone. The alley was paved. The gutters were covered. The pungent nali smell was fainter. There were no cows or donkeys blocking the main square. The big empty lot that used to be full of trash and wandering cows taking plump dumps looked as if it had been bulldozed.
The desert had also discovered privacy. Everyone had erected huge walls around their roofs. This meant no more roof-hopping and no peeking into other people’s lives. No one left their doors open during the daytime either; and no children ran from house to house, chasing chickens or stealing an egg or sitting down arbitrarily at someone else’s breakfast table. There were virtually no people in the streets. Even when the azan occurred, I saw no increased signs of activity in the neighborhood.
It was Dada Abu who finally helped me understand the neighborhood’s newfound obsession with secrecy.
“You shouldn’t leave the house except with a grown male relative,” he cautioned Flim and me. “And you,” he said to Ammi, “shouldn’t leave the house at all!”
“Why not?” I asked, disappointed.
“This place isn’t safe,” he said. “There are strangers here. Foreigners.” He was referring to the countless new sectarian and militant groups that passed through town.
Then he stepped closer and inspected the length of my beard.
10
I hated staying at home with the women. What made it particularly irritating was that they didn’t treat me like the other men: when I walked past them, they neither covered their face nor threw a dupatta over their head. I considered this nonchalance an affront to my masculinity, and I blamed my lack of a legitimate beard.
I wanted them to scurry before me and be fearful of unleashing my masculine hormones. Instead, they treated me like a child.
There was one woman who did exhibit a bit of self-conscious modesty—my cousin Nyla. Whenever I came near her, she tossed her dupatta over her head or turned a bit to the side so as not to make direct eye contact. This suggested to me that she was wary of the possibility of temptation arising between the two of us; naturally, I became attracted to her and started following her around.
I spied her from a distance one day when she was in the kitchen. She squatted on her chowki and thrust her small hands into sticky dough on a tray, her thin body rocking back and forth. The chowki squeaked and the steel tray skidded on the cement floor as she worked and rocked. Her cheap chooriyan clinked on her arms. They were her only adornments. As I watched, one of the chooriyan snapped. She pulled the broken pieces off her arm and placed them in her pocket so that the children wouldn’t step on them.
Nyla was a domestic dervish. She was a master of the kitchen. When she was working, she was under constant assault by the toddlers, who seemed particularly fond of her. The miniature Mongols wandered back and forth and tried to stick their feet into the food or upturn the tray of cut radishes. She withstood their onslaught by offering them vegetable bribes and sweet-talk.
At night, when everyone had finished dinner, Nyla cleaned the dishes at the trickling faucet. When—more often than not—there was no running water, she had to pump the nalka from a seated position, which required a great deal of force. As she did the dishes, the rest of the family, women included, retired to their charpais on the rooftop, leaving her downstairs in the dark, scrubbing the brass pots with a steel sponge. When she was finished with that chore, she still wasn’t done: she walked through the house and straightened out all the scattered shoes and slippers. She paid special attention to those that were flipped over, since it was an insult against Allah for a shoe to be upside down. Seeing her respect for God, combined with her modesty toward me, I felt a great deal of admiration for her.
In the middle of her daily duties Nyla often retreated to her sparsely furnished upstairs bedroom. In it, there was a tiny charpai that was leaned up against the wall during the day to give her more space. There were a few boxes with crocheted covers. There was a sewing machine, usually draped with a new outfit she was putting together. There were a couple of copies of the Quran wrapped in thick cloth to prevent dust from gathering on them.
During the midday breaks to her room, Nyla didn’t go
to sleep or, as I initially imagined, write her frustrations into a diary. Instead, as I discovered one day when I peeked in, she wrapped an old white shawl around her body—and prayed on a mat. Her eyes were downcast as her thin lips murmured surah Fatiha. Her face was placid and serene, with a hint of water still visible on the upper lip.
The sparse beauty of her room, along with the quiet serenity of her prayer, filled me with a sense of dignity and decorum. This was a real Muslim woman: pious and patient, dutiful and persevering. If anyone was going to benefit from my American citizenship, it should be her. I felt as if God had brought me to Pakistan to serve as a conduit for Nyla’s ascension to America. I was like the winged horse Buraq, who took the Prophet up to the heavens.
I went to Ammi and let her know my intentions.
“I want to marry Nyla.”
“Our Nyla?”
“Yes. She’s a Siddiqui, like me.”
“But she’s older than you,” Ammi pointed out.
“I know. I don’t mind, though. The Prophet’s first wife was older than he was by fifteen years.”
“Do you know this girl’s story?”
“No,” I admitted. “I’ve barely talked to her.”
“She’s the maid,” Ammi said somewhat derisively.
“No she’s not. She’s my cousin.”
“I mean that she dropped out of college to come live here with your grandparents. Now she’s a glorified maid.”
“Why did she do that?” I asked, genuinely curious.
It turned out that Dada Abu had given Nyla’s father—one of my uncles—a loan, but he came down with lung disease and wasn’t able to pay it back. Instead of financial repayment, he’d told Nyla to drop out of college and had given Dada Abu authority over her.