The Beauty of Your Face

by Sahar Mustafah

  He’d found work with a company that repaired heating and cooling units in corporate buildings in the Loop. His parents hadn’t heard from him and he planned to keep it that way. He convinced himself that it was a relief. He’d done as his brother had: one day you’re just gone. He marveled at how easy it was to disappear, and he wondered how many others like him and Joe had done it, when he read the newspaper every morning, perusing the classified ads for missing persons:

  Michelle Boyd, age 22, white female, 5′4″, 110 lbs. May have dyed hair brown. Last seen on May 3, 1978.

  Bradley Wade, age 31, white male, 6′1″, 145 lbs. Tattoo on right bicep. Last seen on October 27, 1976.

  Today, one way or another, he’d finally disappear for good.

  Through the frost-covered windows at the end of the corridor, he watched students escaping into the parking lot, their bodies hunched over, moving close to the ground. He heard someone on a loudspeaker giving the girls instructions to raise their arms in the air as they evacuated. Could their parents easily distinguish their child among the trembling green-uniformed bodies, heads swathed in white?

  He turned toward the loading dock; his work was done. According to his observations, at least twenty bodies had fallen. He could search out more students and teachers, but it hadn’t been about quantity. He’d seen their terror-stricken eyes, heard their bloodcurdling screams.

  He lowered his rifle and started to walk back from where he’d entered the school building. Then he heard a muffled voice and turned around. It seemed to be coming from inside the paneled wall. He listened closely. A woman’s voice, speaking in a quick, hushed tone.

  He raised his rifle again and touched the wooden lattice with his free hand. It reminded him of the confessional at his mother’s church. Then he remembered. This building had belonged to nuns nearly a century ago. Now these people had taken it over. More than two decades ago, he’d sat at the Tempest village hall meetings, seething at the prospect of a Muslim school in his own neighborhood. He’d stood side by side with the other protesters at the back of the room, holding up signs reading Vote NO to Terror School and Keep Tempest Safe. In the end, the board had failed to keep them out. And now they had no one but themselves to blame.

  You can’t act different and expect to be treated different, he’d told Eileen when incidents of vandalism made the front page of the Daily Southtown. When construction finally began on the school, he’d lobbed a wrench from his toolbox at a newly erected window on the first floor as he was passing late one night in his truck. He’d laughed with others at a local bar over stories they’d heard of people breaking in and taking shits on the fresh-tiled floors. It got so bad, two night guards were hired to keep vigil until construction was complete. This only further incensed him—it was at the village’s expense to protect the school. His tax dollars, his hard work.

  This room must be an old confessional. The wooden lattice was smooth against his fingertips.

  The loudspeakers continued to drone with orders outside. He could hear young girls crying and calling to each other. A sheet of frozen ice cracked on the window across from the confessional. He remembered how quiet the early morning had been when he’d taken Jeni for a walk, snow blanketing their path.

  He pressed his ear against the lattice of the confessional, then stepped back. With the full force of his boot, he kicked the door open, rifle poised.

  1993

  1

  IT’S LIKE a stranger staring back at her. At first a disembodied face floating in the mirror, until it morphs into her own face: Her eyes, brown and thick-lashed, stamps of early crow’s-feet appearing when she smiles. Her nose, its full bulb—matured into Baba’s—is the same, and her lips, bare and pale, twitch at the corners, unsure of the reflection in the mirror.

  Afaf touches the fabric along the top of her head and the folds gathered softly at her throat. Beneath the hijab, it’s still her. And yet a great part of Afaf is gone, hidden, never to be revealed again in public, and then only in the presence of women. A pang of something tragically permanent goes through her gut. She’s spent years hating her hair—its wiry and untamed waves, dreading all the hours she’s spent blow-drying it straight. Now it’s pulled into a bun at the base of her neck like a spool of thread. A wide inner elastic band keeps it in place and the forest-green shayla—a gift—wraps her head.

  It’s not like she’s never worn a headscarf in public. Since joining the Center, Afaf’s slipped it on for Eid parties and wakes, for prayers at the mosque. And yet how quickly she slipped it off as soon as she climbed into her car, shaking out her heavy hair, checking the rearview mirror, and patting down strands that were static-laced because of the synthetic fabric.

  She touches the back of her head, feeling for her hair. Is this concealment a high price to pay for her submission to God? She’ll no longer feel the Illinois winter rushing through her hair, tingling her ears as she leaves the apartment. Or the sun beating down on her head when she goes for walks with Baba along the lakefront, her scalp warm and moist with sweat.

  Afaf will miss her hair, the way it completes her face, one she hasn’t always loved.

  “Are you ready?” Kowkab asks her through the door.

  “Almost.” It’s been a long time she’s been standing here in her friend’s bathroom.

  Afaf slips a finger inside the hem of the scarf and traces her hairline all the way to her ear. Something else has been bothering her: One day, will Nada recognize her in this thing? She has always felt like her sister is waiting to be found.

  Last month, she walked past Nada in an aisle at the supermarket. Afaf turned around, followed her, pushing her own cart full of groceries from the list Mama gives her every week, a task she’s taken over from Baba. Nada’s wavy hair had grown longer and her body had plumped with age. When her sister turned the corner, Afaf caught her profile. Her heart sank. It wasn’t Nada.

  It’s never Nada. Over the years, Afaf has pushed her cart behind strangers, all the way to the checkout line, sometimes to the parking lot. She spots Nada in public places—at Navy Pier or in the bleachers at a White Sox game. Every time, her heart lodges in her throat and her stomach heaves with sick excitement at the prospect that she’s finally found her sister. As soon as Nada turns around, it’s a stranger’s face smiling at Afaf in curiosity: Can I help you?

  And now, will she, too, become a stranger, should Nada happen to pass her by? Will her sister do a double-take at the young woman wearing a headscarf? Could she express to her sister how much Islam and the Tempest Prayer Center have meant to her? It had started with a sense of community; the first time, really, she’d felt she truly belonged anywhere. Wasn’t that what Nada, too, had been craving? Perhaps it’s much easier to understand. Um Zuraib, Kowkab and her family, the rest of the circle of women—they’d accepted Afaf, discarded her past, pardoned her flaws. Before she discovered God, she’d found family at the Center. And through their grace and her own devotion to Islam, she found Allah. She gave extra du’aa for Nada: inshallah one day they’ll meet again. And if not in this world, in the next one she’ll be waiting for her sister.

  And though this gives her hope, Afaf still searches for Nada in the aisles at the grocery store.

  In the mirror, Afaf adjusts her shayla for the last time and wipes away tears. She unlocks the door.

  “Mashallah!” Kowkab throws her arms around Afaf, her friend’s swollen belly preventing a full embrace. “You look beautiful!”

  Afaf laughs at her friend’s compliment, the kind you give to a woman standing in her wedding dress.

  Kowkab claps her hands. “I knew green was your color! The color of the Prophet! Allah dayman yihdeeki, ya Afaf!”

  She silently hopes, too, that God may bestow upon her His every blessing, every gift. She feels as though she’s on the cusp of something greater and it’s this force that will carry her outside, in public, her hair—like a pair of naked breasts—now a private part of her body.

  Her hijab celebration i
s hosted by Suha Bakri, the previous woman to commit from the circle of women from the Center. A tradition has started among them: once you’ve donned the hijab for life, you honor the next woman to do so, in your home with trays of baklawa and fatayir. Since the late 1980s, some of the muslimat had started covering up in subtle ways: berets pulled down below their ears along with turtlenecks, or headscarves loosely wrapped like those fashionable women driving convertibles in the 1950s, tufts of bangs peeking out. Suha Bakri was the latest in an increasing number of women to completely pledge the hijab.

  “How do I really look?” Afaf asks Kowkab, fussing with a tiny pin on the side of her head.

  Her friend beams at her like she did that first time they prayed side by side on the run-down floor of the Center. Now they are twenty-seven years old. Kowkab is married, her first child on the way. At first Afaf had been suspicious of her fiancé Yazen, convinced no man could ever be worthy of her dear friend. He’d shown up at Kowkab’s house with a small entourage of brothers, cousins, and uncles to ask for her hand, and Kowkab had officially accepted. Over their courtship, Afaf watched them together, a quiet affection between them, their love never on display. But now Afaf catches a squeeze of the hand when they pass each other at fund-raisers for Palestine, sees the lingering gazes they share across a table full of guests at Ramadan dinners.

  Real, enduring love seems possible when she’s around her friend and her husband. At their ceremony, the imam had recited: Allah has created for you spouses from amongst yourselves so that you might take comfort in them and He has placed between you love and mercy.

  Afaf had listened, long jaded by her parents’ marriage eroding like a fossil of something once living and thriving, obliterated by a natural disaster. Baba’s devotion to Islam, and her own, have split her family: quiet alliances have sprung up between Afaf and Baba on one side, and Mama and Majeed on the other. Her brother rejects any “organized religion,” as he calls it, and repeats that message when he checks in from college. But Afaf knows it’s a rejection of Baba and what he’s put Mama through since they were children. In Majeed’s eyes, their mother is blameless, a woman uprooted from her family, then her daughter stolen from her. Baba only made things worse for them.

  Mama’s contempt for religion is less ideological than Majeed’s, but just as personal. She barely speaks to Afaf, always cooking and cleaning, the TV veiling the silence between them. Afaf can feel her mother’s eyes on her from the hallway when she prays in the family room on the same rug Baba brought home from the masjid all those years ago. She also watches her husband: is she yearning for something to anchor her? Is Mama’s open disgust merely secret envy?

  Fasting’s good for the body and soul, Afaf told Mama last Ramadan, inviting her mother to join her and Baba for a month of spiritual renewal. She posted the iftar calendar on fridge, counting down the days to Eid with a highlighter. She’d catch Mama studying it, tracing her fingers along the timetable of prayer and fast-breaking.

  Don’t you worry about my soul, Mama had retorted. I’ve got scores to settle.

  The corners of Baba’s eyes crinkle with yearning for Mama. At supper, he shares the Center’s latest news as he spoons turmeric-dyed rice onto his plate, while Mama puffs away on her cigarette, her back leaning against the kitchen sink. His lips twitch in anticipation. Afaf eats Mama’s lima bean stew and nods at her father’s incessant rambling. She feels as though she must compensate for Mama’s indifference. Shouldn’t this be a time of growing closer, their aging bodies bracing each other as they carry the grief and misfortune life has dealt them? Mama’s rejection pushes him closer to his faith and he clings to it.

  Two human beings living in such misery together have colored Afaf’s belief in marriage. It seems far worse than deliberately being alone.

  Kowkab reaches for Afaf’s hand, her other rubbing her belly. “You’re glowing.”

  Afaf takes her friend’s and they head out the door.

  The cardamom-spiced coffee wafts through the foyer of Suha Bakri’s luxurious house. She lives in a well-manicured neighborhood in Tempest, part of a population of well-to-do Arabs who’ve migrated miles south of Chicago, along with thousands of white people, discarding their urban existence. The hypocrisy of her husband’s liquor store is politely ignored—Allah will judge each on his and her own merits, the imam lectures them each Friday. Suha’s husband recently donated to the youth field house to be installed in the spring.

  A massive chandelier glitters above Afaf’s head and gilded frames with Quranic verses hang on sponge-painted walls.

  “Ahlan! Ahlan!” Suha gushes. “Welcome and congratulations, habibti!” She’s wearing her hijab though she’s inside her own house, and Afaf can tell she’s still brimming with the excitement of her own commitment last month. One glimpse of Suha Bakri’s house—a spiral staircase, cathedral ceilings, marble floors, and a Range Rover in the driveway—and Afaf can see how easy a transition it is for someone like Suha to devote herself to Islam. How else can one account for such wealth and comfort, for the blessings of healthy children? Afaf smiles to herself as she and Kowkab are ushered into a large family. It’s a small sacrifice, a woman like Suha concealing her mass of thick, highlighted curls beneath a taut fuchsia fabric with tiny rhinestones.

  The women are waiting in a circle to embrace Afaf. It’s a flurry of lips and eyes and headscarves. She’s moving so quickly through the line she can’t recall whom she’s just greeted. When she can finally stand back, she’s happy to see her favorite women are present. Kowkab’s mother and sisters, all sharing that same crooked smile, beam at Afaf. Rita Parker and her daughter Ashanti wave at her from the living room. They wear emerald turbans, their faces a shimmering deep bronze.

  Afaf remembers the first time she met Benjamin Parker. Mama had recoiled at the presence of the heavyset black man Baba had invited into her small kitchen. With a stiff back, she served them coffee. Either completely oblivious, or magnanimously polite as Afaf has come to know him, Mr. Parker never stopped smiling and thanking Mama for her hospitality. He and his family are the first black members of the mosque. They live one town over from Tempest.

  Baba was instantly taken by Mr. Parker’s fervent beliefs. They spent hours at the Lower Delta Restaurant on Eighty-Seventh Street and Kedzie Avenue, arguing about muslimeen who profit at the expense of poor black folks.

  There should be a rec center or day care on every corner—not a liquor store, brother, Mr. Parker protested, rubbing stubble on his chin.

  Allah see the evil they do, Baba conceded. He see everything.

  Um Zuraib waits for Afaf in the living room. Last year, her mentor had fallen outside her home, breaking her hip. Her once-robust body, its girth taking up a love seat, is now whittled down to a slack frame, her welcoming bosom deflated. She sits on a leather recliner, the other women fretting over her.

  She reaches out her hands. “I’m so proud, ya Afaf,” Um Zuraib tells her as Afaf bends over her. “You’ve come a long way, habibti.”

  Afaf kneels on the floor beside her, nodding, remembering that rainy day she and Majeed, timid and unsure teenagers, followed Baba inside that dilapidated building on Sixty-Third and Kedzie. The women accepting Afaf without question, without judgment. How she’d gazed across the lines of worshippers on the Persian rugs, their faith palpable. They made her believe she was worthy of something grander than Hoover High School, its white girls and their boyfriends, made her believe she could soar above a broken family with a disappeared sister and a vacant mother. This circle of women and their daughters propel her to do good, to love Allah, and learn that His love reflects back once you open your heart. Before she could fathom His great bounty, she had loved these women first, could touch and gather their kindness in her hands, could wrap herself in their grace until she could start to love herself again.

  Now Um Zuraib squeezes Afaf’s hands, then presses her palm against Afaf’s partially covered forehead. “Inshallah your mother is not too far away.”

&n
bsp; A chorus of Inshallah rises from the women, like a geyser, gushing hope.

  2

  THE FESTIVE excitement surges and falls in Suha’s house. Afaf escapes into a guest bathroom, gathering a few quiet moments for herself. She gazes at her reflection in the vanity mirror above the sink and thinks of Bilal. His face reaches from the corners of her mind, seeping into every recess. His irises are like two drops of honey, under heavy eyebrows. He’ll be proud of her hijab. Though he’s not the reason she’s finally decided to wear it, she’s glad it will please him.

  Bilal Hamzić. Ibn al ajnabeeyah, as Baba calls him: Son of the foreign woman.

  He showed up one weekend to take the English-language class Afaf taught to new refugees at the Center. He was always the first one to arrive and his eyes seemed to follow her every gesture, as he listened intently to each word she slowly enunciated while pointing to a chalkboard behind her. She could see it was more than ambition driving Bilal. There was a kind of muted desperation in his face, an urgent need to do well, to make something of himself. She’d heard his story told around the mosque, how he’d escaped eastern Bosnia. His father and uncles were executed.

  The Center sponsored Bilal’s immigration. In America, he was reunited with his mother and sister, who’d also fled. Afaf could see the debt Bilal carried for surviving the killings, a terrible weight on his shoulders under which he struggled. Now he would make the most of his spared life.