Real Differences

by S. L. Lim

  The concern in Elinor’s voice, lightly concealed beneath a rough exterior, squeezed her with guilt. ‘It’s not like that, Elinor,’ she said. ‘Really, it’s not …’ I shouldn’t have brought it up like that, she thought. I should have done it in a professional way, in private. But even as she thought this she felt herself caught up in a gathering exhilaration. For so very long, her working at Real Difference had been a given, part of the soundtrack of her life. The betrayal felt exhilarating.

  Ewan cut in. ‘Maybe we can all discuss this later.’ Andie saw that he was hurt, and with good reason. He and his then boyfriend had founded the Australian chapter of Real Difference. He loved it like family. Yet there was no rancour in his voice.

  ‘Thanks, Ewan,’ she said, hoping that he would sense just how grateful she was, but he just shrugged and said tersely, ‘Back to work, everyone. End of financial year – let’s get back to it.’

  Returning to her desk, Andie was surprised by how quickly her surroundings melted back into normalcy. All around were the familiar sounds of the office ecosystem: the grinding coffee machine, a sudden burst of laughter at a joke she knew in outline if not in detail. Unlike almost everyone she knew, she had never hated her job, nor the people she shared it with. There was Elinor, reaching for the bowl of sugar-free jelly tots she kept at her elbow; Ewan, swearing at some feature of Microsoft Word that refused to do his bidding. It was quite wonderfully restful, all of the friendships you made at work. You knew they would never ask you for something that you could not give.

  She thought back to the speech she had made, innumerable times, about the drowning child and Peter Singer. She found herself afflicted by a pressing need to imagine more of the scenario. Who was this child? Why was she drowning? What was the connection between her and Andie? It all seemed so vaporous. How many years of her life had she devoted to this invented figure? She wanted to sweep it all up, her computer and her ergonomic chair and manila folders, and throw them all into the sea. They would sink down to the bottom, and she would never have to look at them again.

  Then, conscious of her own overreaction, she looked around guiltily, as if the others might have guessed what she was thinking. There was no sign that they were concerned with her at all. They had already gone far away from her: back to the work they loved, which earned them less than virtually any other job they could have found. For all of its flaws, Real Difference helped other people; the staff made other lives better, this was true. Now she was leaving, and they would have to work harder to achieve the same results. How would they cope? She wanted them to succeed; at the same time, she thought it would be nice if they missed her horribly. She hoped they would not make a fuss of her leaving but that they would be sad about it; that there would be a speech, and also cake.

  Yes, she was sorry to be leaving Real Difference. But there had to be a place where encounters with the truth were possible. Where the sounds outside your head, other people’s lives, were granted just as much credence as the sounds within it. Andie stayed back late that evening, hoping in a childish way to get Elinor to forgive her by handing in an especially shiny final report. As she closed the door behind her she began to smile, thinking how next month, next year, she would be in a different place altogether. But as the lights went out, a suspicion glanced through her that she was no wiser than before. She was still living in a world where it was impossible to know things, where the people you wanted to help waited till you were out of the room to say the truth about anything at all. Where there were wheels within wheels, and shadows inside shadows.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Can was getting harder to keep track of. For two weeks in a row he didn’t turn up to their weekly meeting with the Haqq. Then, the third time round, he actually missed Friday prayers. He texted Tony with excuses: uni was super busy these days; you wouldn’t believe how hard this statistics subject was. Tony was worried at first, and hurt, though he tried unsuccessfully to be flippant about it. He missed Can so much it was like an ache inside his body.

  When Can did re-emerge, he behaved in a strangely distant manner. All of the old motions of friendship were there but there was something performative about it. Tony would touch his friend’s arm in their instinctive, familiar way, and Can would stiffen up. He would grab at Tony’s shoulder in a show of bonhomie, then release it as if he were putting down a heavy bag.

  In the meantime, Tony was developing doubts about the Haqq. Perhaps he’d always had them, but they were coming to the forefront of his mind now that he was no longer in Can’s orbit. These crystallised one evening when he and Can were sitting cross-legged at the back of an unventilated bookshop in the outer west. A speech was being made: something about crimes against humanity, divorce, promiscuity and all the rest. Ordinarily Tony would have thrilled to each repetition of the ills of the Western world, but today he found the words less compelling than usual. There was a lethargy soaking through him – he had to admit, it had been a disappointing afternoon. He and Can had gone to a first years’ event, hoping to pick up some extra followers, but they had come home empty-handed. The first years seemed more interested in pizza than in hearing about Islamic governance. On the other hand, maybe Tony had just learned to tell the difference between genuine interest and people who were just humouring them. The silence that he once mistook for piety was really just politeness, boredom and an instinct for free food.

  Perhaps, he reflected, the reason he was unable to convince the first years of the rightness of his cause was because his own belief in the Haqq was wavering. It was not that he disagreed with the premise. His debater’s mind moved rapidly through the issues, ducking and weaving around potential counterarguments. He still categorically rejected the separation of religion and state: if Islam were true, it was downright nonsensical not to use the answers it provided to govern all humanity. In an abstract way, he was certain that the millions murdered by the unbelievers cried out for justice. Similarly, he accepted that the daily ugliness he encountered in the world, from starving African children to girls on campus wearing ripped shorts with their butts hanging out, was all part of the same deeply corrupt and corrupting system – namely secularism, which substituted the immediate pleasures of the flesh for the more lasting joys of Allah. Yet if this was the case, it seemed that the problem deserved a more urgent and immediate response than they were marshalling right now. The other members of the Haqq talked week after week about murdered children, yet were content to continue hanging around campus, speechifying and handing out leaflets.

  That evening he said to Can, ‘I have a question. How long do we expect the political process to take?’ They were sitting in Can’s room, cross-legged on the covers, sipping Fanta from mugs, since Can’s mum didn’t believe in using drinking glasses. Come to that, Tony’s parents didn’t keep them in the house, either. Maybe glasses were something that only white people used, he reflected. What was their point? There was no structural reason. Nobody had ever explained this to him.

  ‘Um, what?’ Can was fiddling with his phone. ‘Oh man, this is practically impossible. This guy has a High Distinction average and they still turned him down after the second-round interview.’ He continued tapping away with an absorbed, inward expression.

  ‘I was just asking …’ Tony began, and then stopped. These days he was hyperconscious of even the mildest sign of rejection from Can. ‘Well, I was talking about the khalifa. The plan is to make it happen gradually, right?’

  Can squinted, as if trying to see where Tony’s point lay beyond the obvious. ‘Exactly, man!’ he said. But there was an automatic quality to his response. Tony was starting to feel like he was talking to an empty room.

  ‘What I’m asking is, what are we supposed to do in the meantime? I mean, we can talk about what the khalifa is going to be like in the future, but terrible things are happening right now, all over the world. Little children in Iraq, in Syria – being killed by the kufr and secularists every day. And what do we do? We sit around and talk. Making n
oise in lecture theatres – we’re like kids playing at revolution. Oh, sure, we pray all the time for the khalifa - but I’m beginning to think that if our prayers haven’t yet been answered, then there must be a good reason. I think that maybe Allah isn’t too impressed with what we’ve been trying to do.’ Perhaps as a leftover habit from debating, the words had come out more emphatically than he’d been planning. He cast Can a pleading look, not sure if he wanted his friend to agree or disagree with him.

  ‘Mmm,’ Can said. He put his phone down, not without a longing glance in its direction. ‘Yeah, I think about that stuff a lot as well. Like, I agree with you in principle, but in practice there’s a lot of other factors that make it difficult. What I do is, I take a nuanced approach. I mean, when you’ve been around for a while, you start to see that things aren’t black and white.’

  The word ‘nuanced’ irritated Tony. As a rule he hated it when people described themselves that way – as if anyone who disagreed with them must have nothing but a head full of rigid dogma. ‘For Christ’s sake, Can, that must be the woolliest thing I’ve ever heard.’ Can grinned in a Gotcha! at this sign of Tony’s infidel upbringing re-asserting itself. ‘Oh look, you know I didn’t mean it like that. Look, Can –’ instinctively he grasped his friend’s wrist – ‘you and me, we’ve got some stuff we need to sort out. It’s like you’ve fallen off the planet. I never see you anymore – you even missed jummah, and you know that it’s fard!’

  For a moment, Can looked like he’d been knocked off balance. He looked younger than he was, as if he was ready to apologise and tell Tony everything. Then, quite abruptly, his expression closed off. Trying to read the thoughts behind the eyes, Tony found only a strange formality. ‘Look, mate, I’m sorry I’ve been hard to get hold of. I didn’t want to confuse you or anything. But I’ve been doing some thinking about this, you know? All this –’ he waved a vague hand encompassing Tony, the Haqq and possibly Islam itself – ‘sometimes I feel like I fell into it, like I didn’t really think things through. I know, I know, it’s my own fault and nobody else’s. But right now, I think what I need to do is step out for a while. People talk so much, and you lose track of your own opinion. You know?’ Tony nodded, although he really didn’t. ‘Anyway, not that I’m trying to chase you out or anything … but I really need to study for this test.’

  Tony took the hint. He and Can shook hands at the door, which made Tony feel miserable. No-one he cared about had ever shaken hands with him before, only teachers and school principals. ‘See you later, man,’ Can said, promising to call after exams.

  Time passed. Exams came and went, and still there was no call. Tony texted and waited, and saw that waiting was no use. He could have asked why, but he knew that he would never get an answer. It was bewilderingly painful to leave a friendship dangling like that, but he accepted it. There was nothing else he could do.

  Without Can around, it was no longer fun spending time with the other guys in the Haqq. It was almost miraculous how fast their feeling of comradeship evaporated. They got along well enough if they had some specific job to do; without a set task, however, they found themselves standing round making inane remarks about how busy everybody was. Without Can’s animating presence, the foolishness Tony had sensed at the heart of the organisation was magnified. It seemed positively infantile, hosting their silly debates against the Atheist Society, and all the while the forces of democracy and capitalism and the kufr continued on regardless.

  He started hanging out with Katherine, the white girl he used to see praying at ISOC. From a distance he hadn’t thought much of her; he thought her gushy, a little too eager to please. But away from the pressure of being grilled about her faith, she was quite different: steadier, more definite, less inclined to making unnecessary apologies. Technically, they weren’t supposed to interact one-on-one like this. But he thought there were extenuating circumstances. He needed somebody to share his faith with, to prevent it from wavering. He avoided the question of how strong his belief could be in the first place if it was so dependent on outside reinforcement.

  It was a great relief to spend time with someone whose religious trajectory was similar to his own. Katherine was brought up in a Christian household. Unlike his, however, her family were truly devout. They were Protestants, muscular ones, who sang hymns in the car and read a Bible verse every evening before sleep. They were banned from reading any number of secular books, including Harry Potter. At school, they had to leave the room if the teacher went so far as to mention evolution.

  All of this made her parents sound like stereotypical religious zealots. This was true, but they were also genuinely loving people. Both were pastors – they had met at nineteen at divinity school. They adored each other and their children to an extent that was almost blasphemous: He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me. He that loveth son or daughter more than me, is not worthy of me. Perhaps to compensate, they constrained their children’s lives with an imprisoning lattice of rules, cutting across every facet of their existence. They ate according to the Bible, drank according to the Bible, wore their hair according to the Bible – the girls had to grow theirs down to the waist. Short hair, apparently, was the manifestation of a disobedient woman. Their greatest fear was that one day, one of the children would grow up and lose their faith. Then the Day of Judgement would arrive and the family would be irrevocably parted.

  In her teens, though, Katherine had come across a book about comparative religion. The book was in the school library; her parents would not have allowed such a thing to enter the house. It didn’t actually compare very many religions, only the Abrahamic ones: Christianity, Judaism, Islam. This last chapter was just five pages long. ‘Muslims,’ it declared, ‘affirm that there is no God but Allah, and that Muhammad is his Prophet.’

  ‘But I have always believed this,’ Katherine said out loud. It happened just like that. There was no sudden fall, no calamitous and dizzying reversal, only the wonderful consciousness of her own soul’s continuity within Allah. When she learned that those embracing Islam in adult life were known as ‘reverts’, it made perfect sense to her. ‘It wasn’t really a change – I wasn’t travelling somewhere new. I was going home.’

  She told her parents that evening, told them directly and without any pretence of trying to hide the fact that she was rejecting their entire way of life. Her mother looked like she’d just been punched in the face. ‘Go on,’ she kept on sobbing. ‘Go on, get out.’ Katherine wasn’t sure if she was talking about leaving the Christian faith or the actual family dwelling. She didn’t stay to find out. She packed her bags that night and was gone by the next morning.

  ‘But couldn’t you have tried to explain it to them?’ Tony asked. ‘I mean, that’s how the Quran is different from the Bible. It says to be kind to your parents, even if they’re unbelievers. Paradise is at the feet …’

  ‘… of the mother.’ Katherine completed the sentence with a weary roll of the eyes. ‘No, no. They would never have accepted it. They would have locked me in the house. They would have been at me every second: come to Jesus, come to Jesus. I didn’t even tell them where I was going.’

  She moved in with her uncle, a childless atheist bachelor, everything she had been brought up to despise. On learning that Katherine was now a Muslimah, he raised a suspiciously groomed right eyebrow. ‘Oh, congratulations,’ he said. ‘You’ve found a new bat for your belfry.’ He showed no further interest in her faith apart from mocking it occasionally; for all that, though, he was kind to her. He brought out a mattress for her to sleep on. He let her share his cereal and fruit, which she had to spoon into her mouth sideways – her wisdom tooth was giving her trouble, and she couldn’t afford to get it fixed – while studying for her final exams at the kitchen table.

  She got a part-time job and went to live with two girls who were also starting university. Neither of them were Muslims, Christians, Jews or anything else – they weren’t even decisive enough to be atheists
. This was unfortunate, because it meant they had no kind of morality.

  ‘They’re total sluts,’ she said, screwing up her eyes. ‘Sometimes I can hear them through the wall having sex with their ugly boyfriends.’

  ‘Oh, wow,’ Tony said. ‘Can’t you ask them to stop? Aren’t they ashamed of themselves?’

  Katherine shook her head. ‘Shame’s beyond them. I think they might even be proud of it. Anyway, they already think I’m an idiot for wearing this.’ She tugged at the folds of her headscarf, which clung and twirled around her neck, not entirely expertly. ‘They make all these jokes about towelhead, tea towel. As if they think I haven’t heard all that before.’

  Like Tony, Katherine was studying engineering. She got better marks than he did; though less naturally gifted, she was more meticulous in her study and preparation. She was meticulous with everything, hated most Arts students, and mocked their coursework at every opportunity. ‘What on earth is “radical destabilisation”,’ she would ask, ‘and what is a “lived experience”? How could you possibly have an un-lived one?’ This was the emphatic side of her character. She came slowly to an opinion, but once one had lodged inside her, there was no force which could induce it to budge from its position.

  Katherine’s belief in her religion was entirely literal. She had no patience for the kind of vacillating faith which dealt in metaphor and historical interpretation. It seemed to her a terrible insult that the gorgeous, frightening clarity of the commands in the Quran – or indeed, the Bible – could be distorted through such lens. It was a slur on the nature of religion itself, to act as if its claims to truth were not eternal, but only personal and contingent. There was nothing metaphorical about eternal life or the existence of a Creator. Despite their obvious disagreements, she felt a great deal more sympathy for the fire-and-brimstone Christians of her youth than their weak-kneed cousins, Christian liberals who consorted with gays, who happily fornicated outside marriage – who even were gays who fornicated outside marriage.