“Do you know how many churches there are in the state of Illinois?” Baba rails one night. “A thousand. And how many Buddhist temples and synagogues? Ten, twenty.” He pumps his hands in the air like he’s counting for a child, stressing the immensity of this fact.
“And how many masjids are there? Ha?”
Afaf has heard about the mosque Khalti Nesreen’s husband drives forty-five minutes to attend in Milwaukee every Friday. It was founded by a group of men exiled from Yemen in 1979.
“Wahid.” Baba points his long finger in their faces. “One. We, too, have the right to gather together and pray. It’s our human right.”
Afaf’s family hasn’t observed Islam beyond small celebrations of Eid with Khalti Nesreen. Mama reluctantly puts on a dress and they drive the hour and a half to Kenosha. It’s a religion she knows very little about, one limited to notions of what’s haram and ayb: gambling, drinking alcohol, premarital sex. She remembers a painting hanging in Sameera’s house of an old man carrying an ancient city on his back, a gold-domed mosque towering over stone houses with orange-tiled roofs. Afaf would stare at it for a long time, imagining the old man was the God of Arabs, who’d carried and protected her parents’ ancestors, eternally carrying His burden. He was an unadorned figure, barefoot and wearing a turban. As she grew older, the old man faded from consciousness and another kind of God emerged—a faraway, ominous being with whom you reckoned when you died, like the one who commands Moses in the movie that played every Easter Sunday night. She’d never prayed to either God, not even when her sister disappeared.
Majeed smiles at their father’s magnanimous decree.
“What are you laughing at?” Baba snaps.
“Nothing. It’s just that . . .” Majeed looks at Afaf, but she keeps quiet. She, too, is unsure how to react. “It seems like a dream, Baba.”
“Yes, yes,” Baba concedes. “It is a dream, habibi. One that will come true if we all have faith. Say inshallah.”
“Inshallah,” Afaf says. It’s such a simple word that seems full of promise, yet without the pressure of failure. A word conceding to a power that might ultimately decide all of their fates, lifting the burden from themselves.
Majeed is silent. Baba says it again: Inshallah.
The TV volume in her parents’ bedroom lowers. Mama is listening. The spell between her and Baba has broken since her father started talking to them about the prophet Muhammad, an illiterate shepherd, and how Allah had revealed His word through texts Muhammad could miraculously read and spread to the community. Afaf can’t understand it: Baba seems to want to improve himself, and Mama berates him for it.
“The Lord has given us a purpose in this life. To pray, to fast, to take care of the poor, to fulfill hajj. And above all, to believe in His beneficence, that He is the only God, and that Muhammad is His true Prophet.”
Afaf thinks of the evangelical preachers on TV, the only programming at one a.m. when Baba’s at work and she’s battling a fit of insomnia.
“The Prophet says, ‘Worship God as though you see Him, but if you do not see Him, know that He sees you.’ ” Baba sounds so sincere, his face light and airy, the wrinkles across his forehead dissolving a bit. “It is never too late.”
Mama suddenly looms in the doorway, a shadow inside her darkened bedroom. Her hair is in a loose braid, gray strands threading it. She holds a cigarette like an actress in an old black-and-white film—the wicked woman who’s about to foil a good-hearted plan. “Then why has the Lord turned away from the suffering of muslimeen? Ha? Why has he forsaken the Palestinians? You think your precious masjid will make a difference?”
But Afaf sees in Mama’s face the real question: Why has God taken Nada away from her?
Afaf, too, wonders why.
Baba smiles at Mama. “This earth is temporary, ya Muntaha. Allah has a plan and we must be patient and heed Him. Our suffering is temporary. ‘Shall I tell you of better things than those earthly joys? For the God-conscious there are, with their Sustainer, gardens through which running waters flow . . . ’ ”
It’s the first time Afaf hears her father quote the Quran. He knows the words to every Um Kalthum song, memorized Nat King Cole’s “Mona Lisa.” But he recites this verse as though the words are his own, summoning them from a deep well of serenity. It is a new song to learn—faith has become his instrument.
Mama sneers, sucking on her cigarette. “All of it is haki fadi.” To Mama, such words are like Velcro, holding fast until you strip them away with your actions. She tosses her cigarette in the sink and it hisses. “You can keep your foolish words.” She retreats to the bedroom and the TV booms, drowning them out.
“Your mother has suffered greatly, but she will see how easy it is to cast off her suffering as soon as she opens her heart to the Lord.” He pauses. Something sad flickers in his eyes. He resumes his sermon. “And you, too, loolad. I’ll keep failing you as a father if I don’t lead you on the lighted path.”
Afaf shifts in her chair, uncomfortable. How did they fit into all of this? She thinks about the boys whose hands have roamed her body, and the resentment toward her parents that has rooted deep in her heart. Her bitterness toward an absent sister seizes like a tidal wave in her chest.
“I want you to come with me tonight to the masjid,” Baba declares. “I took the night off work for a special meeting. Young people will be there, too. Every hand, big and small, must lay down a brick. It’s your future we’re building today.”
It sounds like Baba’s reciting from a salesman’s script, but each word is doused in sincerity. Still, Afaf can’t fathom any day beyond tomorrow. She’ll be starting a new job at Pine Forest Mall, in a kiosk that duplicates keys. She’d quit two others since her graduation. Graduation was an event that extracted nothing more than a few awkward hugs from Baba and Majeed, and a strained dinner afterward at Leo’s Steakhouse, where other small parties of families were celebrating their children’s diplomas, bouquets of balloons floating above their tables. Mama had pretended to be sick. She’d given Afaf an envelope with thirty dollars.
“What do you say?” Baba says, his bright eyes imploring her and Majeed.
Afaf nudges her brother with her eyes.
“Okay,” her brother says, glancing at Mama’s closed door.
9
AN HOUR LATER, Baba pulls up to a furniture storefront building, a sign blinking though it’s closed for the evening. On a security door there’s a smaller sign indecipherable from the street: The Islamic Center of Greater Chicago: Welcome. Rain drips from the eaves of the roof. A woman pushes a grocery cart past, her translucent hair cap glistening.
“Here we are,” Baba announces, beaming at them.
Afaf remembers this place. She and Majeed have been here before, perhaps a decade ago. Before Nada disappeared. Mama had dressed them up for gatherings when her parents still socialized. Snapshots flicker in her mind as Afaf gazes up at the building: Baba playing his oud while the arrabi men sang old folk songs and danced dabka. She can still hear the lamentation in their voices, an aching for a stolen homeland—their bilad—a country she’s only seen in old photographs and heard about in stories Mama and Khalti Nesreen recollect over qahwa.
Baba climbs out and walks quickly around the front of the car, winking at Afaf. His backache seems to have temporarily disappeared.
Afaf looks over the passenger seat at Majeed. He reluctantly slides out and stands beside Baba. They wait for her, their chins tucked into their chests against the cold rain.
Afaf taps the door handle of Baba’s replacement car, a black Toyota Camry. The men inside the Center had collected enough money for a small down payment and one of them had cosigned on condition that Baba make the monthly payment without fail. They would repossess the car if he drank again. This new group of muslimeen—gas station owners, dentists, mechanics, and the retired—had embraced her father, given him a chance. And here they are, Afaf and Majeed, his children, about to enter their community.
Afaf ha
sn’t belonged to any place. Sameera and the other arabiyyat flash across her mind. The taste of rejection is sharp on her tongue.
Still, she climbs out of the car, and Baba squeezes her shoulder.
The older muslimat immediately flock around Afaf. They hug and kiss both of her cheeks, smoothing her hair, squeezing her shoulders.
“How lovely you are, mashallah!”
“I think I see a bit of Abu Majeed in that face!”
Afaf nods and smiles, her cheeks hot in response to their effusive attention pouring on her all at once. They usher her to the side where the women congregate. It’s not so different from the arrabi kids at school: men on one side, women on the other. The children find a space in between. Majeed and Baba are welcomed by a heavyset man—the imam—with a long, graying beard, and Afaf hears her brother plunged into the same gushing affection.
A few of the women wear headscarves, loose-fitting around their faces, strands of dark hair that have strayed from the fabric. She thinks of Mama and Khalti Nesreen, how they wouldn’t be caught dead in a headscarf. There’s a black woman with a daughter Afaf’s age. They both wear turbans, green and orange, their faces shiny. A few prayer rugs like the one Baba brought home hang as tapestries on one wall.
A large woman shaped like a bell waddles over to Afaf, chubby arms outstretched in her abaya. “Ya habibti! Come, come! We’re so happy you’re here!” She presses Afaf to her heavy bosom and Afaf smells lilac and sweat. “Why haven’t you come sooner?”
She is called Um Zuraib, though she doesn’t have any children. Afaf finds out later she’s been widowed since her early twenties, never remarried. It’s rumored her husband was among the Palestinian liberation fighters who’d fought and perished in the Battle of Karameh. “Come meet the other banat.”
The girls smile at Afaf and introduce themselves. The only one she recognizes is Kowkab Suleiman. She’s the only young person Afaf has seen wearing a headscarf at school. Not loose and fashionable, but snug around her face, her neck disappearing beneath the folds of her scarf.
If that had not been sufficient reason for others to torment her at Hoover, Kowkab’s name clinched it. Freshman year, Afaf’s English class was assigned to tell the origin of their names. Kowkab had stood quietly in front of rows of lanky, pimply white boys and stuck-up girls and announced, “Planet.”
“Your name means ‘planet,’ ” the teacher repeated.
“Like ‘your anus’?” one of the white boys had called out. The class descended into laughter. Afaf watched Kowkab slip a finger inside her headscarf as though tucking away an invisible strand of hair. She looked down at her desk.
“That’s enough,” the teacher warned.
The awful nickname had stuck. “Here comes Your Anus!” the boys taunted. Kowkab found notes on her desk with crudely drawn illustrations and immediately crumpled them up without reading them and stuffed them into her backpack. She’d settle into her desk, crack open her textbook, and stare straight ahead, her headscarf like horse blinders. The more blatant insults thinned out by the end of the year, but Afaf suspected Kowkab found a glob of spit or chewed gum stuck to the back of her headscarf on some days.
“Hi,” Afaf says, sensing Kowkab won’t make the first move.
“Hi.” Kowkab smiles shyly at Afaf. She gestures to a table with trays of hummus and baba ganoush, freshly baked khubuz sliced in quarters. “I think we had a class together sophomore year,” Kowkab says. “Seems like forever.”
“It was freshman year. English,” Afaf tells her, following her.
“Oh, yeah. Mr. Ryland.” Kowkab’s eyes do not betray any humiliating memory.
This girl had been the easier target. Afaf grew invincible to her classmates’ barbs a long time ago, her skin gradually hardening from the name-calling and insults: Where’d you park your camel? You got oil in your backpack? She refused to cower. Had Kowkab heard about her? Does this girl know how many hands have groped Afaf? She feels her cheeks flush with the fresh sting of Rami’s slap across her face.
Kowkab’s smile doesn’t contain any judgment—more a guarded politeness, like she’s trying not to offend Afaf.
They don’t say any more and turn to observe the other girls for a while. They’re a hodgepodge of ages: grade-school-age and teenagers, young and married pregnant mothers, and a few wearing engagement rings. The older women hover like doting hens.
Afaf doesn’t notice anyone else from Hoover High School. It occurs to her that, aside from Kowkab, she is anonymous here. It suddenly feels like a chance to start over—the same as for Baba, maybe. People deserve second chances, right? Isn’t that what Silas learns with the arrival of his golden-haired Eppie? Isn’t that what drew Afaf to her favorite books? Through near-spirit-breaking ordeals, the protagonists still overcome. It’s what hope is, after all. Baba found it after the car crash and now he wants to blanket her and Majeed in its folds. For Baba, hope is religion, though it’s a more complicated shape to Afaf, as she knows so little about Islam.
The imam makes an announcement that she doesn’t understand and suddenly everyone shifts from their places. Men roll out two massive Persian rugs, their fraying edges touching on the middle of the tiled floor. They are burgundy and forest-green, giant flowers adorning the center, smaller ones tracing their perimeter.
The women and girls move to a corner of the room where homemade prayer clothes hang on wooden knobs. Some of the shapeless tops and bottoms are mismatched, simply stitched fabrics. The women quickly slip them on and suddenly their previous forms disappear. They look like Russian nesting dolls, their faces poking through the fabric, their hands peeking from under small tents. They quickly assemble in lines behind the men. Everyone faces the eastern wall, which has no windows. Kowkab hands her a pair of prayer clothes. Afaf hesitates.
“Yalla,” she encourages. “It’s time for salat. Do you have wudu?”
Afaf nods, though she doesn’t understand.
It’s easy to follow Kowkab’s orders, her tone kind yet insistent. Afaf slips the bottom over her jeans, hitching the elastic band over her hips. She pokes her face through a hole in the material and it hangs over her head and torso like a tent, billowing around her shoulders.
Kowkab gestures for Afaf to stand beside her. She searches for Baba and Majeed and finds them in the second row of men and boys. Her brother turns around a few times, stealing glances, until he finds Afaf and grins. How funny she must look!
“Just follow my moves,” Kowkab whispers as the imam begins the prayer.
“Allahu Akbar . . .”
She watches Kowkab in her peripheral vision, folding her hands across her stomach as Kowkab does. It’s the same way Baba begins when Afaf watches him from the hallway.
“Subhanakal-lahumma . . .”
Everyone bends at their knees. “Allahu Akbar . . .”
The blood rushes to Afaf’s head for a second and she feels strangely vulnerable as she bows to some unforeseen presence that she imagines can, at its own whim, punish her in hellfire or gather her in its folds.
“Subhanna rubbal azzeem wa bi hamdeh.”
Everyone pulls their bodies upright. “Allahu Akbar . . .”
Then they’re suddenly on the floor, their legs folded beneath them. Afaf watches Kowkab touch her forehead to the rug and she hesitates, lifting her gaze to watch the others. The folded bodies look peaceful. Afaf touches the rug, her forehead at first bristling at the scratchy, woven thread. She remembers to breathe.
“Allahu Akbar . . .”
They repeat this pattern three more times and conclude in the sitting position.
“Peace be upon you,” Kowkab says to a woman on the other side of her, then turns to Afaf. “Peace be upon you.”
Kowkab is like a proud teacher. “Good job, Afaf!” She pats Afaf’s shoulder. “You’ll learn the words in no time. If you keep doing it.”
Afaf feels like a stranger who’s finally come home, one who’s forgotten the language, the mannerisms of her people. She’s ner
vous, tentative.
Um Zuraib’s words ring in her ears: Why haven’t you come sooner?
10
ON THE ride home, Baba talks to them with a new kind of excitement, his one-sided speech jumbled with scripture and triumph. His voice rises above the pounding rain against the windshield.
“Your mother will finally see,” Baba declares. “The adults must first reveal the path and children will follow.”
Majeed rolls his eyes at Afaf when she looks back at him in the backseat. She doesn’t feel very changed, either, though the kindness of Kowkab and the women still glows inside her. Do you have to believe in God to join the masjid? She won’t dare say it out loud, but it wasn’t at all what she’d expected. Kowkab and the others had made her feel at home. And the strange ritual of praying—it had turned out to be peaceful and soothing. Afaf couldn’t quite explain it. It wasn’t exactly a spiritual thing. It was more like she belonged among them, those strangers.
At home, Mama emerges from her bedroom when they arrive, her eyes glinting with expectation. Arms folded, she looks from Afaf to Majeed. Her lips curl in a sneer.
“A bunch of fools, mish ah?” she says, patting Majeed’s cheek, tousling his hair.
Afaf watches Baba pull himself up straighter to face Mama, slightly wincing at the pain in his back. “It takes time, Muntaha. We have to encourage them.”
Afaf imagines Kowkab’s parents gathering them for prayer, leading them through every prostration, reciting each verse until the words become automatic expressions, her family moving in the same direction toward a common joy. Mama is like a giant boulder, splitting the river—Afaf and Majeed surging forward on one side, Baba on the other.
The Beauty of Your Face Page 10