by S. L. Lim
The first three months he spent walking on fluffy clouds and rainbows. While ostensibly still functioning in the ordinary world, Tony was now insulated from his usual inheritance of stress and academic pressure. His every conscious moment was pervaded with the knowledge, still wonderfully continuous, that Allah existed: that He watched over creation, and that the universe was orderly and just. This invisible insulating layer of faith was a great comfort at all times. It enabled him to maintain his equanimity while his parents, to put it bluntly, lost their shit on a level which surpassed even their well-documented shit-losing capabilities. Unfortunately, this period of glorious invulnerability was only temporary. Like how you can stick your hand into a bucket of freezing liquid nitrogen and be unharmed, but not for long.
Immediately after he told his parents, the household transformed into a vortex of rage, disbelief and terror. The force and impact of his parents’ anger astonished him, despite his having feared it from the moment he became aware of his new beliefs. True, Daisy and Arwin were officially Catholics, but not especially observant ones. They hadn’t even bothered to send him to Sunday school – they were too stingy and preferred his weekends to be spent at Mandarin class. Tony’s hitherto lukewarm attitude towards Christian observance had never seemed bother them. Yet here they were, all but rending their clothes over the prospect of their son being condemned to eternal damnation. Daisy and Arwin, he was discovering, responded far more powerfully to negative incentives than positive ones: staying away from hell was far more important than reaching heaven.
They wanted someone to blame, and they could hardly work out where to start looking: Tony, his friends, his schooling, his teachers, the media, themselves. At first they could hardly bring themselves to look him in the face. When they finally recovered their powers of speech, he really wished they hadn’t. There was ‘How can you do this?’ and ‘Oh God, what have we done to make this happen?’ As well as: ‘Do you want to kill us – do you want your mother and father to drop dead?’ Most memorable of all, from Tony’s point of view, was the ancient, melodramatic and yet entirely sincere lament: ‘Oh God, why have we been cursed with such a son?’ Once, Tony shrank from his mother in the kitchen, convinced she would knock him back against the oven with a single blow. Daisy gave him a scathing look. ‘No, don’t worry, I’m not going to touch you. I might get cancer or some awful disease if I touched your body.’
The words broke and spilled over Tony’s head, leaving him curiously unmoved. Up to this point, his parents had been like two angels on his shoulders, cataloguing his triumphs and misdemeanours. Being unbelievers, however, they were no longer fit to judge him. When the time came, he would be held accountable by a far greater power than this.
Meanwhile, the dailiness of life went on. He still went to school and came back to his homework; he still caught the sniffles and fell asleep and felt bone-crumblingly exhausted at the end of the school week. It should have been a fearful time: the final stretch of cramming before Year Twelve, when everything you do at school ‘counts’ towards your university admission score. ‘Does it count? Does it count?’ the boys were always asking, the way an oncology patient might demand to hear the results of the latest scans. Coming out to people other than his parents turned out to be better than expected. His debating friends, atheists and agnostics all, made an effort not to raise their eyebrows. Justin Peters, in particular, had to visibly restrain himself from condescending comments. Still, no-one actually said anything derogatory or untoward. One or two of them even congratulated him: any belief held in the face of strong opposition must command their respect. Religious belief itself they regarded as novel and impressive. An argument advocated consistently and forcefully will, more often than not, do better than a logically sound but ill-defended premise. His debating friends themselves had no inclination to accept the proposition that there was no God besides Allah. But they were moved by the fervour and sincerity with which Tony believed it.
The rest of his classmates expressed brief surprise and then forgot about it. So long as Tony was friendly in class and continued to lend them his stationery, he might have been a Moonie, a Mormon or a Zoroastrian for all they cared. Other people, he was discovering, are not nearly as concerned with the content of our souls as we imagine them to be.
Hasan was the one disappointment. He was overseas when Tony first reverted; Tony had looked forward with unseemly fervour to his coming home. He had not rehearsed the words he would use, and ended up blurting it out apropos of nothing: ‘Guess what?’ he said at lunchtime. ‘I’ve become a Muslim.’
Put like that, it sounded like something that he’d done on a whim over the long weekend. He found himself grinning inanely, despite not being aware of experiencing pleasure. He was intellectually conscious of the joy which should attend the news rather than actually feeling it.
Hasan was at first shocked and then conventionally pious. ‘Really? Wow. Well, welcome, brother. Praise Allah.’ He slapped Tony on the back, smiling a little too broadly. Somehow, however, his facility for being naturally and effortlessly charming seemed to have deserted him. He was as handsome as ever, the dark contours of his hair curving against his forehead, but he seemed distant somehow. Tony was struck by a sense of loss. He had visualised the scene so many times: Hasan’s arms outstretched in greeting, enfolding him into the ummah – past and present and future, the body of believers throughout the ages. It felt like being robbed of a memory which hadn’t happened yet. He pushed away the thought, which was obviously silly. Hasan was just surprised, that was all. And anyway, his conversion wasn’t meant to be about how his friends reacted. Faith, after all, was its own reward.
He tried to make friends with the other Muslim boys at school. He had maybe a dozen Muslim classmates; most of them, however, could be described as Muslim only in the sense that he himself had recently been listed on the school roll as Catholic. Every now and then they would address each other as ‘brother’; more often, though, it was ‘Hey you!’ or ‘Oi!’ They, like Tony, had been born in Australia, but of Indian, Pakistani, Lebanese and Arabic descent. When you asked about their faith, they smiled in shyness, and told you memories from their childhood. First Ramadans, the urgent joy of breaking fast. Travelling overseas, and the logistical difficulties of finding a prayer room on holiday. The ululating beauty of the call to prayer, heard for the very first time on a trip to their grandparents’ home in Jordan.
But they spoke little of faith itself, and faith was the only thing they and Tony had in common. They were scrupulously kind to him, almost too much so. But there was an intimacy through birth which could not be easily recreated.
He bought a copy of the Quran, which he pored over at night. He carried it everywhere, even when it was impossible that he would get a chance to read it. He had an idea, silly on the face of it, that he would learn something by osmosis. The weight of the hardcover was comforting, a tangible reminder of the decision he had made.
He prayed, daily and imperfectly. He wanted something to give up, to prove himself; he felt his faith would not be real till he had suffered for it. He still held on to the Catholic idea of penance and reward; after some reading on the internet, he stopped watching music videos. Music was supposedly forbidden in Islam, since it excited the blood and aroused sinful passions. Other sites disagreed: it could be allowed, they said, so long as it did not distract from family and religious duties. There was so much to learn. The debate sounded theologically legitimate, although the gyrating and writhing females on his laptop were definitely not. In wilder moments, he thought of tearing out the ethernet cable, which he had gone to great lengths to pilfer from his father’s room for when the WiFi was erratic: the urge to click was that compulsive. ‘Enjoin them to restrain their gaze – surely Allah is aware of all they do!’
He told Andie about it. ‘Surely, even if you don’t agree with my religion, that’s at least one positive,’ he said. ‘Scantily clad women, displaying themselves and being objectified. As a feminist
, that must be something you can get behind.’
‘Scantily clad?’ said Andie. ‘Where are you getting these words from? Next you’ll be going on about how kids these days just won’t stop gallivanting.’
Tony smiled involuntarily. ‘Gallivanting’ was a term deployed by their respective sets of parents, to describe any enjoyable but morally frowned-upon behaviour. It could be drinking alcohol, going to the swimming pool, or just being outside the home without a good excuse.
‘Well, I’m just trying to observe my faith as I understand it,’ he said. ‘I mean, I do my best. I have to follow my conscience wherever it takes me.’
Andie opened her mouth to speak, then clamped it shut. She was endeavouring to take things lightly, to play the cool aunt with Tony in contrast to his exacting parents. He could tell what a strain she was under: it was all so new to her, this proximity to a faith which dealt not in metaphor or platitude but in actual belief. Much like his own, her family tended to hedge their spiritual bets. They made offerings to ancestors, went to church at Christmas, and prayed to nobody in particular. Andie’s own atheism offended nobody. No-one had ever thought to ask about it.
Tony felt mildly guilty. It was manipulative of him to have brought up the matter of his conscience – this was a sure-fire way to hit Andie right in the guilt-box ‘Hey, don’t worry,’ he said, touching her gently on the arm. ‘This is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.’
Andie smiled back warily, drawing her hands inside her jumper. But later, he heard her defend him in an argument with her parents: ‘How is it any business of yours? Just let him do what he wants to do and decide what he wants to believe for himself. He isn’t hurting anyone. There are worse things he could be getting up to.’
It was just as well he had her on his side. After the initial rages, his parents had subsided into an ominous passivity. You could almost mistake it for acceptance, except he had known his parents long enough to know that they would never roll over so easily. Sure enough, it soon became apparent they were only biding their time before the inevitable second assault. This latest battle would be fought on the grounds of food: now that his spirit had slipped from them, they would try and take control of his body. Daisy was an extremely talented cook, and when she wasn’t yelling at either Arwin or Tony for what they had or hadn’t done, she dedicated herself to pork in all its forms. She made fried rice with sausages, German pork knuckle, burgers with streaky bacon and poached egg. Painstakingly, laboriously, she prepared batches of homemade pork buns, perfectly steamed so that they puffed up into fluffy extravagances. She made a special effort to prepare all of those dishes he had loved the most before his conversion, so he was constantly lured by the aromas drifting through the house. Sometimes she would try to physically force a piece of meat into his mouth – short of punching his own mother, or pushing her away, there was little he could do but clamp his jaw shut so that the square of piggy flesh tumbled down his shirt front, leaving streaks of grease across his pants.
Pork invaded his dreams. Once while he slept he was transported to the final scene of Animal Farm. His mother was walking round the conference of pigs at the table, carrying an electric saw, which she used to carve pieces off their backs. The pigs didn’t mind. They continued laughing and making plans for how they would control the other animals. The meat his mother cut was taken home, wrapped up in plastic, and marinated on bamboo skewers.
At first it was almost laughable, then not so much. He could buy his own food and was not in danger of starvation. Though he did not earn pocket money, periodic cash gifts for his birthday or the Lunar New Year had added up over the years into a sizeable stash. Still, Tony had been raised with a reverence for food: it pained him deeply to cast his mother’s most elaborate dishes into the garbage. It was like casting away his childhood. Far more than hugs or I love yous, here was the tangible evidence of his parents’ love for him – and now he was throwing it in the garbage to be swallowed by gross ibises!
Then something changed – or possibly broke. One day after school, he came to the dinner table to find his parents already seated. Wordlessly, his father gestured towards a sticker on a stack of plastic takeaway containers: JR Halal Butcher. A tingling feeling swept through his limbs, pure exhaustion or relief.
‘Thank you,’ he said at last, feeling that words were not sufficient for the occasion. Daisy did not even look at him.
‘A mother,’ she said, ‘does not expect thanks for preparing food for her only child.’
That evening, before his shower, he stood before the full- length mirror in his bedroom to examine his body. There was no mistaking it – he had lost weight. His ribs were more prominent than he remembered them; beneath the shallow drape of flesh, he could see his shoulderblades moving up and down. He felt his heart expand, as if he were listening to unbearably evocative music. He knelt down on the bathmat, lips moving in thanks and imperfect prayer.
After that, he and his parents gradually inched back towards their ordinary relationship. His mother took up Halal cooking with the same obsessiveness she had until recently applied to pork. All her spare time was spent googling recipes, which she printed out and stuck on the fridge. There were so many that their industrial-strength fridge magnet was not up to the task: it collapsed to the floor, sending sheets whooshing to every corner of the room. Once, his father laughed at a joke Tony had made, before remembering that he and his son weren’t supposed to be on speaking terms.
He did not try to convert them. ‘All things are possible in Allah,’ it was said, but not his parents, not quite yet. For a while they were able – almost – to have conversations which did not completely sidestep the subject of Islam. Mostly he was the one who introduced the topic, usually by mentioning something which had been on the news, a little bite-sized statistic or piece of information he thought they would find uncontroversial yet stimulating. ‘Did you know there are more Muslims in Asia than members of any other religion?’
Once, daringly, he tried to bring up their memories of Indonesia. ‘I suppose,’ he said carefully, ‘even though it must have been horrible for you, it’s still their ancestral country, isn’t it? If you try and see it from their point of view – there’s this minority group in your homeland, and they all have lots of money, but they don’t share your core beliefs. Not meaning to excuse them, but don’t you think it’s natural they would start to feel resentful? And –’
Arwin fixed him with a stare that might have pierced a small animal. ‘My son wants to kill me,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you give me a piece of rope so I can go and hang myself? Why don’t you hang me from the mandarin tree in the backyard?’
Tony hovered at the door for a moment, and then left. It was not the sort of question that would lead to a productive conversation.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The next time I saw Benjamin and Andie they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. We were in a bar with lots of couples, mostly, standing in approximate circles with drinks in their hands and little untouched plates of pear and haloumi salad scattered with pistachios. Hardly anyone knew each other: it was one of those events where the people tagging along outnumbered those who were originally invited. I shot sideways looks at Andie in the hope that she would keep me company, but she was too busy letting Benjamin grab her round the waist and rub his nose into her hair.
Ben and I crossed paths in the bathroom.
‘How are things going with Andie?’ I asked, rather disingenuously, since they were obviously going very well.
‘Oh, great, thanks,’ he said, as radiantly as he could manage through the ugly sproutings of the moustache he was growing for Movember. The intimacy we had been on the cusp of achieving at Matty’s party had evaporated. I washed my hands at the sink and retreated to the balcony, feeling irrationally put out, as if I’d been tricked into giving him a sympathy he did not deserve.
#
It was around this time I found myself a girlfriend. Her name was Linda, and we met after
I reactivated my OkCupid account. I wasn’t quite sure what had prompted this. I wasn’t exactly lonely, but I had a feeling that my life needed some sort of punctuation, otherwise it would continue as it was pretty much indefinitely. The only cause of major change would be if one of my parents died, or if I suffered some calamitous health problem. This depressed me very much.
Linda – I suppose you’ll need a physical description – was very good looking. She had hair which she described as being strawberry blonde, although it bore no resemblance to a strawberry. (I had added an inch to my height on OkCupid, so I couldn’t complain.) Her personality was like a strawberry, though – sweet and easy to consume. She approached life as a series of discrete pleasures, to be sampled with enjoyment and no feeling of pressure, inadequacy or fear. Everything we did together felt wholesome and delicious. We went to bars, and to well-reviewed shows at the Belvoir St Theatre; we ate classy and unpretentious food at modern Australian restaurants. She was interested in art, federal politics and me; I was interested in her. I took her everywhere: housewarming parties, weddings, birthdays, and even one funeral. I always introduced her as ‘Linda, my girlfriend’, emphasising the word in a way which probably revealed how few I’d actually had. People smiled at me knowingly, as they do when observing other people’s new relationships. Other people’s affairs are always so well defined and comprehensible compared to your own.
One conversation we had early on stuck with me. We were talking about a friend of hers who was planning her wedding. The friend had ordered two hundred specialty invitations, on parchment paper, from a small greeting card business in the inner west. The owners were delighted, since the business was in a financially precarious state: getting a big order like that gave them hope that they could finally turn things around. Then the friend found a deal somewhere else which was more expensive but also more convenient – the new company delivered, whereas the old one wanted her to come by and pick the invitations up.