Afaf listens to Mama’s chest; her heart beats softly but steadily.
A siren wails in the distance, then a thunder of footsteps up the staircase to their floor. Before they have a chance to knock, Majeed lets the paramedics in.
“Miss, give us some room,” a female paramedic orders.
Afaf gently places her mother’s head on the floor.
“You all need to stay in the hallway so we can help your mother.” She places a stethoscope in her ears and leans over Mama’s chest. She looks up at Baba. “Sir, is this your wife? Sir?”
Baba’s face is ashen. Afaf grips his arm and he gives a weak nod, as if in acknowledging it he’ll be blamed for her near-death.
“Any idea how long ago she drank the liquid?”
Baba shakes his head again.
Afaf’s pajama top is soaked through and she touches her bare head, realizing the male paramedic has seen her without her hijab. But he’s not paying attention to Afaf. He’s busy covering Mama’s nose and mouth with a respirator while his partner checks her blood pressure. They lift her onto a stretcher and strap her in.
Afaf clutches the wet towel to her chest. She can still feel Mama’s heartbeat against her ear like a faint drum.
8
BABA PARKS in an underground garage and they climb out of the car, the cacophony of slamming doors eerily amplified inside the cement structure. They enter a different wing than the last time they were here, after Baba’s crash. How terrified Afaf and Majeed had been that night in the ER.
Baba holds the elevator and the three of them enter. Afaf searches the directory of floors on the laminated placard:
LEVEL 3: PSYCHIATRIC HEALTH & CARE
A week later, Mama’s transferred from the poison unit. Afaf wonders if this is the floor where Mama had stayed when she’d had a nervous breakdown. Is that the natural sequence of events, she wonders. You lose a child, have a nervous breakdown, attempt suicide. And how do you go back to your life when you’ve failed at ending it? Do you simply wait for the misery to swallow you up one day?
Afaf had heard about arabiyyat drinking Drāno or Mr. Clean, trying to teach their cheating or abusive husbands a lesson. She’d once overheard Khalti Nesreen telling Mama about a woman she knew from Milwaukee who’d succeeded. Her own children came home from school and found her lifeless poisoned body curled on the floor.
A white couple enters the elevator behind them. They stare at her and she instinctively touches the hem of her hijab, a habit she’s developed. She’s growing accustomed to it, even forgetting she’s wearing it at times, until others remind her with their furrowed brows and pursed lips. They stare at Baba, too, with his skullcap, his musbaha looped across his hand. She can sense Majeed’s body tightening, readying himself for a fight. Afaf hooks her pinkie finger on his and gently tugs it, restraining him.
They exit into a hospital wing decorated in pastel blue and green. Framed prints of Monet’s haystacks cover the walls. At one station, two nurses wearing bright-patterned scrubs smile at them as they approach the desk. Afaf expects a muted mood, to match the hollowness she feels inside.
They walk down a corridor past patients’ rooms with curtains drawn around the beds; a few doors are closed. A doctor speaks with two women—a mother and daughter, Afaf guesses—outside one of the closed rooms. Tears stream down the young girl’s face.
Mama’s room is open, the curtain pulled back from her bed. Her eyes sink in dark circles, her cheeks are gaunt. She looks like an aging sorceress, once beautiful and bright. Her gray hair fans out like silk against the white pillows. An IV drip hangs beside the bed. Mama’s hands are in restraints, black cuffs enclosing her thin wrists.
“Salaam,” Baba softly greets her. He sets a small Quran on her bedside.
Mama tilts her head in the direction of his voice, pulling her gaze away from the window. Majeed immediately moves to her side, gently lifts her hand. He chokes up at Mama’s bound wrists. “Are these really necessary?” he asks, sniffling.
Afaf is quiet and remains frozen at the door, fingering the edge of a fresh bandage Majeed gently wrapped around her arm.
Mama looks feverish and her pupils are dilated. “I want to go home,” she croaks.
Baba holds her other hand, the restraint grazing his fingers. “Inshallah you’ll be discharged soon, and—”
“No. I want to go home.” She tries to lift her arms, but the cuffs only permit them to move a few inches above her body. “Home,” she repeats, with all the emphasis she can muster for a single word.
Afaf glances at Majeed and they watch Baba’s face drain of blood, the same as when they found her in the tub only a week before. They understand what Mama is asking for.
All this time, Mama’s been a ghost, wandering the present, searching for a portal to the past where she’d once been a young girl, carefree. Nobody’s mother, nobody’s wife. Only Muntaha, free from grief, treading lightly as a child who hasn’t known pain beyond a scuffed knee or a sprained ankle, hasn’t had a part of herself stolen from her.
Afaf had never imagined Mama had any other aspirations beyond motherhood—and she’d sorely failed that in Afaf’s eyes. Had Mama suppressed other dreams of being someone else, not the mother of a lost child? Not the wife of a broken man? Something washes over Afaf as she studies her mother, in restraints, denied any control. For the first time, Afaf sees Mama as a shattered woman.
Baba nods at Mama’s request, choked up. “Whatever you desire, habibti.”
Mama turns back to the window and her fingers slip from their hands, letting them go.
Nurrideen School for Girls
SHE WAS a slim woman. Her long-sleeved garment was loose-fitting, revealing a slight swelling of her bosom. Layers of fabric confined her limbs, a black headscarf tight around her head, the folds rippling at her neck. It was unsettling: her face and the skin of her hands were the only parts of her he could see. Her eyes were brown as hazelnuts, boring into him, her terror reflecting in each like pools of water. Tears streamed down her face and she continuously wiped them away with her sleeve. She fought to keep her composure, though she didn’t make a sound—not a whimper.
“What are you doing in here?” he asked the Muslim woman. It seemed unlikely to him that she’d chosen this place to hide. The first-floor exit was only a few feet away; she could have easily pushed through the doors as soon as she heard the gunfire, joining the others who were safely outside. She must have been occupying this space before he entered the building. Perhaps he’d just missed her when he rounded the corner.
“I— Nothing,” she stammered. He could see her working out her answer, gauging his reaction. She glanced at a small green rug on the floor, a pair of leather mules stacked neatly beside it. “I was praying.”
With his rifle, he gestured for her to sit down on the solitary chair. She hesitated for a moment, glancing again at her shoes. When she settled onto the cushion she gripped the armrests, her torso straight and rigid. The lower half of her body trembled, and her chin quivered. She was completely attentive.
He studied the space. A table with a gold-embossed book. No other furniture. On the ceiling he followed a metal track running from one side to the other, splitting the room in half. He imagined a curtain had once hung down, separating the priest from the confessor.
He’d hated going to confession when he was a kid. His mother dragged him and his brother Joe every Thursday evening while their father waited in his pickup truck outside of St. Matthew’s. He and his brother sat stiffly on a wooden bench across from the confessional, their mother inside. He’d wondered what she could possibly be confessing. She worked hard to make them a home, and what did she get in return? A man who seemed to despise the world. Why wasn’t his father in there confessing his sins?
His own transgressions were relatively minor: cursing at Joe, drinking an extra bottle of rationed milk. He’d never confess to immoral thoughts of harming his father, or masturbating in the shower. While they waited their turn, he a
nd Joe made funny faces at each other, each challenging the other to laugh first and break the somber quiet of the church. Behind them in the lonely pews, old women wearing short lace veils murmured prayers on their knees, rosaries tucked between their folded hands.
He couldn’t tell anything about this Muslim woman behind her watery eyes and quivering chin. Her folded olive-skinned hands trembled in her lap, and he studied a solid gold wedding band that she rubbed with her forefinger.
He and Eileen never talked about marriage, easing into a life of cohabitation that resembled something like love—a close and simple companionship. The first time they had sex, he traced a finger over a thin and long scar on her thigh, like a stroke from a fine-tipped brush.
Lover’s quarrel, she’d snorted. She lay flat on her back, her arm across his chest, and told him about her abusive ex-boyfriend who’d beaten her so badly she was in the hospital for a week. She’d lost her job as a secretary and for a long while waitressed until she could find something better.
“You got kids?” he asked the woman.
“Yes. Two boys and a girl.” She hadn’t taken her eyes off the rifle—had she looked at him closely? If in a miracle she’d make it out alive, could she identify him? He’d been invisible his whole life. Today that would change forever.
He leaned against the door, his rifle still trained on her. He was suddenly exhausted, but remained alert.
“My daughter attends here.” She paused. “She’s a senior. Her name’s Az—”
“Shut up. You think I’ll feel sorry for you if you tell me their names? You’re ruining this country. Your people, your evil religion.”
He remembered that day. He was at home in the morning; he’d been assigned second-shift at his heating-and-cooling job. All alone, he watched raw video of two planes colliding into two hundred thousand tons of steel. It was surreal, like a sci-fi invasion—unlike anything that could plausibly happen in his country, the most powerful nation in the world. Newscasters cut into the footage to report what they knew so far. President Bush had been reading to a bunch of second-graders in Florida when the first plane hit.
Eileen called him from the restaurant. Holy Christ, she whispered into the phone. He could hear her coworkers sobbing in the background.
It was all anyone talked about in his online chat groups: the 9/11 terrorists. Members declared positions that were as sound as an overhaul of pilot licensing, and as extreme as corralling all the Muslims until the government could get to the bottom of the attack:
Quit looking for 1 mastermind . . . Every Muslim is an enemy of the state.
Now will you take away my right to bear arms? Fuck dems and liberals and Political Correctness!
A holy war has begun . . .
He’d had no direct interactions with Muslims, though he’d suddenly seemed surrounded by them in Tempest when he moved from Chicago. They’d be in line in front of him at the Walmart, their kids pulling candy bars off the checkout shelf despite their mother’s admonishment, or they’d be stopped at a traffic light beside him, women in headscarves perched behind the steering wheels of their luxury SUVs.
He’d started carrying a gun outside of the range, as times were increasingly dangerous according to the men at his shooting clubs and from what he’d been reading online. He’d started stowing a small handgun in the glove compartment of his car, keenly aware of it when he walked across a parking lot in a shopping mall and passed black teenagers hooting and hollering at each other.
The more he delved into the internet, the more alarmist the sites became, gripping him to his desk chair in the front room while Eileen knitted and watched Wheel of Fortune. Every blog transmitted information like an oracle proffering omens of a soon-to-be-destroyed society if his race did not rise up against every visible adversary. There was little sense of hope, only a resounding call to battle.
Afterward, he’d be in a terrible mood, Eileen wondering what had overcome him when she’d come home from her shift at the IHOP.
The hell’s gotten into you? she’d say as he slammed kitchen cabinets. It’s that crap you’re reading on the computer, isn’t it?
Never mind, he’d tell her, grabbing Jeni’s leash for a brisk walk to shake off his anger. He’d cut through the park across from the Willow Wood Apartments, children gleefully shrieking as they barreled down slides and bounced on seesaws.
Now, over a decade since 9/11 and the cataclysmic failure of the Obama administration, the most popular topic was still Islam—“Will You Submit to Sharia Law?”—and thousands of users left comments detailing incidents where they’d clashed with “Mussies” and “Hajjis.” One member had reported almost strangling a woman with her own headscarf. “Makes it easier to lynch these koran-thumping whores—they supply the noose.”
When the body of a little boy washed up on a Mediterranean shore, he’d felt numb. Eileen had covered her mouth in horror as she watched the news report. He’d already seen it on his Facebook feed:
Wish they’d all drown.
Like the Red Sea purging the Egyptians . . .
He studied the woman in front of him. He remembered the village hall meetings he’d attended, smoldering in his chair as a brown-skinned lawyer argued before the board to reopen the convent, make it a school for Muslim boys. He’d volunteered to pass out flyers at local grocery stores and the public library protesting the project.
The woman looked back, shifting her gaze from his rifle to his face. “I’m sorry for your pain,” she said quietly. “We can talk about it.”
The sirens wailed. How much time had passed since he’d entered the building? The only shard of natural light came from beneath the door. The light bulb cast a shadow of the woman’s head—the shape of a cave in a distant mountain.
“What do you know about it?” he sneered. “You don’t care a goddamn bit about me or this country. You don’t belong here.”
“I was born in this country—just like you,” she said, leaning forward, her hands fluttering like birds in her lap.
“Yeah? You sure don’t fucking act like it.” He shook his head vehemently. “Naw, lady, you don’t belong here at all.”
And he believed it now. It was a message that suddenly resounded louder than all the times he’d heard it or read it online over the years: They don’t belong here.
Like most true citizens, he’d perceived them as mere outsiders, a nuisance. But everything changed on 9/11. Now they were killing innocent citizens with their suicide missions, believing their Allah would gift them with virgins in paradise. On that fatal morning, he clocked in at work and headed toward the break room to store his lunch when the planes crashed into the World Trade Center.
“I’m not your enemy,” the woman suddenly blurted. She shifted in her chair and he instinctively raised his rifle chest-height again.
“Yes, you are,” he responded. She happened to be one kind of enemy he’d encountered up close.
2002
1
“WE SHOULD cancel hajj,” Afaf says, pouring almond slivers into a saucepan sizzling with butter.
Bilal sighs as he sets the kitchen table. “I will not allow monsters masquerading as muslimeen to control our lives. The trip is paid for. We are going.”
Her husband’s English—no contractions, no slang—is as meticulous as his place setting: he folds the paper napkins precisely, like hospital corners on sheets.
Bilal pretends he hasn’t lost three more clients this week, one who’d told him she was taking her business elsewhere, to “real Americans.” Another client apologized profusely when he closed his account with Bilal, confessing his fear of the feds. Bilal continues to reassure Afaf that his financial consulting firm will survive the country’s backlash. After all, he’d said, most of my clients are muslimeen.
Ayman ambles into the kitchen on small crutches. “I’m hungry.”
“Soon.” Bilal helps their seven-year-old son onto a kitchen chair. Ayman sprained his ankle sledding with neighborhood kids. He props his
bandaged leg on another chair, his little body parallel with the table. He’s grown nimble at maneuvering around the house on one leg. It amazes Afaf how resilient children are. His first scrape, his first lost tooth sent Afaf into hysteria, yet how quickly her son overcomes any physical setback, how quickly he adapts to new conditions.
“I’m worried about my father,” she insists, stirring the almonds, careful not to burn them as they turn golden in the bubbling butter. The kitchen is pungent with the aroma of yogurt and lamb. “How can he travel in this terrible climate?”
“It is his choice, draga moja,” Bilal says. “You can try to persuade him, but you will be wasting your time.” He eyes their son. “No games at the table, Ayman.”
Their son grudgingly powers off the Game Boy and stows the console in his sweatshirt pocket.
Afaf turns off the flame under the almonds and stirs a pot of rice. “And what about you? They might not let you leave the country.”
Bilal sighs again. “They cannot prevent me from traveling, Afaf. No matter how much they try to intimidate me.”
It doesn’t help that Bilal’s the head of a halal consulting firm that helps muslimeen properly disperse their interest into charitable organizations to avoid riba. It is perhaps what’s most interesting to the intelligence agencies. Bilal’s dream of starting a financial business that observes halal practices had come true, only to fall under federal suspicion.
Would they be prevented from going to hajj, to a country that was the cradle of Islam and home to fifteen of the nineteen hijackers? Bilal is much more optimistic than Afaf. She’s ready to postpone their pilgrimage for another year or two. Since September, she’s heard too many stories of men and women—some of them teenagers—detained without cause, barred from legal representation. From the circle of women, Lamise Abu Nasser’s brother-in-law has not been heard from in three months since his detainment in Connecticut. In Brooklyn, a group of underage boys from a mosque were taken into custody, their parents unable to see them until they appeared before a circuit judge. A college student from Fairfax, Virginia, was interrogated for eighteen hours after she posted comments about illegal arrests on her Muslim blog. Dozens of stories emerge every week, terrifying Afaf.
The Beauty of Your Face Page 16