Radiant Fugitives

by Nawaaz Ahmed

  No—you want to believe then that Seema is afflicted by no more than an assumed affectation, acquired along with her Oxford education, a rebellion for rebellion’s sake. Even when she chooses banishment over submitting to her father’s decree, you still cling to that hope, keeping it alive all those long years of her straying, heaving a sigh of relief when she finally returns to her senses and gets married.

  And even today, on this afternoon in San Francisco, when you’ve just invoked Akbar’s name and have spent the morning grieving over a father who will not relent in the face of his child’s happiness, you choose not to dwell on that painful part of your daughter’s past. You will not speak to Seema today about Bill, or Fiaz, while she’s recovering from whatever scare she had, but you are biding your time.

  43

  Tahera has told herself she’ll call Irvine after the asr namaz. She wanted the morning to herself, to reflect on the events of the last twenty-four hours, unprepared and unwilling to discuss them yet with Ismail. She even felt little urge that morning, unusual for her, to speak to her children, especially Amina. Now, right on cue, just as she’s finished her asr namaz, as though she can’t be trusted to follow up on her word, Ismail is on the phone.

  “Sorry, I couldn’t call earlier,” he says. “I’ve been busy all day at the mosque.”

  It’s late afternoon in San Francisco, evening in Irvine.

  “Was nobody else helping clean up after the fundraiser?” she asks. Ismail can go on for ages about the fundraiser. She’s glad for it today, preoccupied with deciding whether to relay Seema’s request to him.

  She doesn’t like keeping secrets from Ismail. But she can’t broach certain matters unless she’s prepared. If she appears muddled, Ismail will be dismissive of her concerns or, worse, will make up his mind too quickly, and then it will take a confrontation to change his views.

  She’d prayed the istikhara dua over Seema’s request after fajr this morning. Allah, who possesses the power and the knowledge that I do not, if accepting guardianship of Seema’s child is good for my faith and for my life here on this earth and in the hereafter, ordain it for me and make it easy for me to accept it. If not, keep it away from me and help me reject it. But she’s no closer to making sense of the conflicting emotions and thoughts Seema triggers in her. The dua’s effect, of course, may not be direct and immediate, and she may have to repeat the istikhara a few times and be patient.

  Only half listening to Ismail, her thoughts are interrupted by the word police.

  “Police?” she asks, immediately alert. “Forgive me, jaanu. My mind was elsewhere. Please tell me again, what happened?”

  Ismail takes a deep breath. “Someone painted graffiti on the mosque walls last night. We spent the morning painting over it.”

  “Who did it?”

  “We don’t know yet. We filed a complaint with the police. The entire front wall was defiled.”

  She can’t quite comprehend the extent of the violation, unable to picture the walls. But she knows when Ismail is keeping a tight rein on his emotions—by the swear words he bites off at the first syllables, before they sully his mouth, as he does now. She’s never heard him complete a single profanity, ever. “Whoever did it will surely burn in Jahannam,” she says.

  “We’re holding a meeting this evening to decide how to respond. Imam Zia wants to keep it quiet for now.”

  Tahera asks for more details, partly to stop herself from making any comments—hadn’t she privately feared something like this, that Ismail and Imam Zia were perhaps overreaching in their efforts to expand the mosque?—and partly to atone for her morning’s omissions, for having been so remiss as to ignore the circumstances surrounding her real life in Irvine. This is clearly not the time to bring up Seema’s affairs.

  “I took photos, I’ll email them to you later,” Ismail says. “The children are eager to talk to you.”

  Thankfully, Amina seems unaffected by the morning’s incident. She doesn’t even mention the mosque, excited at having spent the entire day with Taghrid Didi at her Najiba Aunty’s house. She and Taghrid Didi played with dolls, then helped Najiba Aunty in the kitchen. In the afternoon they baked cookies. “With cashews, and raisins, and pistachios, and rose essence.” Amina pronounces the list of ingredients carefully, proudly. “And I prayed namaz with Taghrid Didi and Najiba Aunty. I didn’t make any mistakes.”

  “Good girl! Soon you’ll be praying perfectly.” Ever since her seventh birthday, Amina has wanted to learn to pray like her Taghrid Didi. The two girls are inseparable, though Taghrid is closer in age to Arshad. Taghrid is a good role model for Amina for the most part, though Tahera sometimes worries when Amina copies everything Taghrid does without questioning, like when Amina insisted on donning the hijab at such an innocent age. Amina’s stories contain everything Taghrid did and said today, and Tahera is almost driven to ask if she hadn’t missed her mother at all.

  Arshad, on the other hand, is more tight-lipped than usual. “Did you have a good time with Najiba Aunty?” He’s ordinarily talkative when he returns from his Najiba Aunty’s house. Najiba is a substitute science teacher, and she has various science kits in her home that she lets Arshad tinker with during his visits. Today, however, he returns monosyllabic answers to every question. Tahera, confronted with his remoteness, says, almost petulantly, “Go then, don’t tell your Ammi anything.”

  “I’d rather have been with Abba painting the mosque.” Arshad is aggrieved. “Why didn’t Abba let me stay and help?”

  “Abba has his reasons,” Tahera says. “He probably thought you’re not big enough and would get too tired.”

  “I could have done it. He didn’t want us to see what was painted on the walls. Like that stopped me from finding out—” He pauses, as though deciding whether to tell her what he’s seen.

  She can’t remember when she’s heard her son be this upset or speak this openly. She’s both dismayed at his distress and gratified at her new role as his confidant, though this last is surely only motivated by discontent with his father. She urges him on: “What did you find out?”

  “They called Prophet Muhammad a terrorist.” His voice trembles with anger, slurring the r’s. “They called him—” And here he hesitates, unsure of himself, pronouncing the word as carefully as Amina had pronounced pistachios. “They said Muslims are not welcome here. Why do they hate us so much, Ammi?”

  It’s an anguished cry, one that she’s never heard from him before. It causes her heart to leap up with the kind of tremor she associates only with Amina.

  But what should she say, what could she say? Later, she will rue that she didn’t know how to react to it, the years of reserved attention toward Arshad providing her no map.

  “Only Allah knows,” she says, aware that she’s encouraged him to open up only to forsake him. “Remember to say all your kalimas tonight.”

  She conscientiously narrates the exchange to Ismail, urging him to have a conversation with Arshad. She consoles herself with the thought that his father is the right person to talk to him—after all, she’s not even at hand.

  44

  Evening, Irvine: Arshad is alone in his parents’ bedroom, browsing search results on his father’s desktop. He’s engrossed in his task and becomes aware of his father’s presence only when Ismail coughs. Startled, Arshad attempts to kill the browser window—he’s only allowed to use the computer for homework, and only under supervision.

  Ismail stalls him. “What were you doing?”

  “Nothing. I was just searching for something for a class project.”

  “Did you ask my permission?”

  “You were busy talking with Ammi,” Arshad whines, mentally chiding himself for neglecting to keep an ear out for his father’s return. Usually Abba supervises him less strictly than Ammi as long as he believes Arshad is meaningfully occupied, but after this morning, Arshad shouldn’t have counted on it.

  Ismail scrolls through the search results. They’re on lies about the Prophet.
“I told you this morning”—Ismail wags his finger in Arshad’s face—“this is not a matter for children. You’re not old enough to understand.”

  Ismail closes the browser window with a decisive click. But Arhsad’s not out of trouble yet. Ismail, eyes drilling into him, continues, “Your Ammi tells me you’ve been using words you’re not supposed to know.”

  Arshad feels betrayed by Ammi. Why did she have to repeat what he told her? “She asked me, Abba,” he tries to explain. “I was just repeating what I saw on the wall.”

  “What do you know of such words anyway?” Ismail asks.

  “I looked it up in the dictionary.” He hangs his head in embarrassment hoping his father won’t ask him what it means. His understanding is still hazy, from the websites he visited today, sickeningly littered with insults and abuses, clearly written by enemies of the Prophet and Islam.

  “I don’t want you to think about such things,” Ismail says, leading him out of the room, gripping Arshad’s shoulders. “And don’t go looking again on the internet. I want you to forget all about this. Do you understand?”

  Ismail’s fingers dig into his shoulder blades so deeply that Arshad winces. His father’s tone is angrier than ever before.

  “Why are you angry with me? Why aren’t you angry with whoever wrote those words?” Abba is behaving so unfairly toward him, like when he rebuffed his offer to help paint over the filth. “I did nothing wrong. They’re the ones who are abusing the Prophet, who are making up lies about him.”

  He shakes his father’s hands off his shoulders. “They should be killed like pigs.” Arshad spits the last word out.

  The smack, lightning quick, stuns the boy. But more than the impact, it’s the shock that hurts: Abba has never hit him before. He lifts a hand to his cheek, where his father’s palm struck, tears of shame searing his eyes. He shudders, his breath sticking in his nostrils and throat. The landing, and his father, tremble in a blurred haze.

  Ismail says, “You will not speak like that in this house. Go to your room.”

  Ismail gives Arshad a push, and he stumbles. Abba, he wants to scream, why did you hit me? Isn’t it every Muslim’s duty to protect the Prophet’s name, to fight those who abuse the Prophet? He kicks the door shut behind him, and the resounding thud that he can feel in his bones fills him with a fierce pleasure. He throws himself on his bed and lies there, sobbing.

  Presently a timid fluttering knock on the door: Amina. He half wipes his tears and opens the door. “What is it?”

  He sees her shrink at the sight of his tear-stained face, hugging her Asma doll tightly. “Bhaiya, Abba says come down,” she says in a loud voice designed to carry downstairs. “He has to go to the mosque for namaz and a meeting.” Then in a whisper, reaching a hand out to touch his face, “Why are you crying, Bhaiya?”

  “Go away.” He swats her hand away. “I’ll come down when I want to.”

  Amina lingers by the door, her eyes turning moist, and he thrusts her out and shuts the door. It’s because of her that he has to stay behind.

  When he’s sure she’s gone, he creeps down the stairs—his father is in the bedroom getting ready—and picks up his shoes, then slips down to the garage. He gets into his father’s car and waits, seat belt fastened.

  Upstairs, Ismail and Amina wander around the house, calling to him. Their voices reach him, thin and disembodied, first Ismail’s, irritated—“Arshad, where are you?”—and then, a moment later, Amina’s weak and anxious echo.

  Minutes pass, and his father’s voice gets louder and louder, the annoyance more pronounced. “Arshad! I have to leave for isha namaz. Don’t make me late.”

  He begins counting, calculating he’ll need to count to five thousand to remain there for an hour—if he can’t go, then neither can his father.

  Five hundred later the basement door opens, and Ismail enters. He turns the lights on, then winches up the main garage door. He walks out into the driveway, and Arshad watches him through the rear window, silhouetted against the indigo evening sky, scanning the front lot and the sidewalks for him. At times his father freezes in attention, as if suddenly hopeful. But his shoulders sag as he continues to stand there, as though air were leaking out of him. Arshad has never seen his father look so defeated.

  A few stars are visible in the sky, above the glow of the neighbor’s house opposite. Arshad is reminded of how they’d stood in the dark—was it only last night?—looking out the kitchen window, sipping their drinks in friendly silence, basking in the success of the fundraiser.

  “Abba—” he croaks out, opening the car door. “I want to come too.”

  Ismail catches sight of him and hurries to the car. “You’ve been here all along. I was worried.”

  “I’m sorry, Abba. But I want to come to the meeting.”

  Ismail looks at him with an expression Arshad can’t decipher. He braces himself for another reprimand. He clutches at the door handle to resist efforts to remove him from the car.

  But Ismail says, “Go get your sister.”

  Arshad doesn’t move. Has Abba really changed his mind, or is this some kind of ploy? His father repeats his command, and he climbs down from the car hesitantly and backs his way to the house. Once inside, he races to find Amina, keeping an ear out for the engine starting and the car pulling out of the driveway.

  He finds Amina combing Asma doll’s hair at the dining table. “Hurry, get your shoes, we’re going out.”

  He helps her into her shoes, tying the laces for her, then practically hauls her down to the garage. His father hasn’t left yet.

  “Get in,” Ismail says. “But this is the last time you’ll behave this way.”

  Arshad nods, buckles Amina into her booster seat in the back, then sits up in the front with his father. Ismail says nothing during the drive to the mosque, but Arshad exults: he’s finally been admitted into the adult circle. He rolls down the window to feel on his cheeks the slap of the evening air.

  45

  When they turn into the parking lot, all the lights are on, and the mosque glows from within with a purple-white light escaping through the frosted windowpanes. The newly applied paint has not fully dried yet but shimmers faintly, giving the mosque the air of a mirage. The mosque projects a serene but fragile grace, marred by the blotches of red on the ground, the only remaining witness to the previous night’s defacing.

  They are late for isha namaz. “Did you do wadu?” Ismail asks, and Arshad shakes his head, embarrassed.

  The entrance hallway is packed, as during Eid prayers: the mosque is overflowing today. Ismail leads Amina and Arshad along the walls to the washroom, skirting the praying men, who take half steps without breaking their namaz to let them through. When Amina and Arshad are done with wadu—Amina copies her brother’s actions, following whispered instructions from Ismail—they head back the way they came, and the men quietly make room for them, squeezing in slightly, so that Arshad joins one row and Ismail and Amina the row behind him.

  Lo: as one, the congregation stands in qiyam, hands folded, and as one, bends in ruku, palms on knees, and as one, stands erect in qawma, hands by the sides, and as one, prostrates in sajda, head to floor, and then sits up in jalsa, hands on thighs.

  There is a different energy in the mosque this evening from the other times Arshad has prayed here, as though the worshippers gathered today have altered gravity, so that the very air seems heavier, every action more deliberate to counteract it. Arshad and Amina, their eyes half open to make sure they are in sync with the congregation, murmur their prayers earnestly (with Amina whispering the little she knows, mumbling through the rest). They recite the takbir in unison with the congregation—Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar.

  Allah is great. Allah is greater. Allah is the greatest.

  After the final thashahud and the salaams to the left and right, the congregation is on its feet, milling around, turning to neighbors and clasping hands, embracing, but with none of the gaiety of Eid or the other occa
sions Arshad has seen here. Instead there is the somber meeting of eyes, of hands, of necks and chests, as at a funeral.

  46

  All the seats in the conference room are taken. More men throng the back and sides, standing. Yet there’s little sound in the room except for Imam Zia reciting from the Quran.

  He’s seated on the dais, a Quran open on the rehal before him. Though his eyes appear focused on the book, he doesn’t turn the pages, reciting instead from memory, as he always does. He glides over the words, swoops at them, hovers, drops. His entire body appears to recite. His chest lifts as he takes a breath before plunging into the cadence of the next ayat; the hull of his body rides each nasal ghunnah, vibrates with each quivering qalqala, with each ululating vowel. It freezes, motionless, at the crest of each soaring note.

  Ismail recognizes the surah: Al-An’am. The Cattle. Say: Travel through the earth and see what was the end of those who rejected truth. He lifts Amina into his arms and beckons Arshad closer. This is Ismail’s favorite—everything essential to Islam, he feels, is captured in this one surah. Don’t conjoin anyone as equal with Allah. Establish regular prayers. Be good to your parents and take care of your children. Don’t be tempted by illegitimate intimacy and promiscuity. Don’t take life, except by way of justice and law. Measure and weigh your actions with fairness. Speak justly, even if a near relative is involved.

  Also, doesn’t the surah say, Don’t revile those that call upon others besides Allah, lest they, out of spite, revile Allah in their ignorance? For Allah has made their actions seem fair to them, and when they return to Him, He will show them what they have done.

  Allah knows best who strays from His path. He knows best who is open to His guidance.

  How appropriate that Imam Zia has chosen this surah for this evening. Ismail’s anger, bottled within him since morning, dissipates, vaporized by Imam Zia’s cleansing voice. Even the burden of his guilt—at precipitating the vandalism—is lightened by the recognition that Allah has not set him as keeper over those who stray. Ismail is not responsible for their actions. And as for his supposed vanity—wasn’t it merely misguided exuberance? As the surah says, Allah is most merciful, and oft-forgiving.