Children of Dust Page 14

  “Have you tried AOL?” Saleem replied. “You can find everything on the Web. That’s where I read about Ibn Taymiya.”

  At first it was difficult to convince my parents that they should let me move the computer to my room, but they relented when I told them that, like Saleem, I intended to go online to learn about Islam. Flim wasn’t happy about their decision, but I assured him that he could use the computer in my room whenever he needed it.

  Going on AOL for the first time without any supervision was incredibly exciting. When the digitized voice greeted me with “Hello! You’ve Got Mail!” I felt tingles.

  The quintessential component of socializing on AOL was the personal profile, because that was how a person determined if you were worthy of having a conversation with. Because I was desperate for attention, I crammed every characteristic I could think of into my profile, in the hope of attracting the widest possible range of girls. And I changed the description as ideas occurred to me. There was no accountability involved in editing myself endlessly. I could transform myself at a moment’s notice—add to myself the things I lacked; subtract my liabilities.

  AOL was perfect. It offered a means of communicating with the opposite sex that was severed from physical reality. Flirtation and arousal didn’t go past the textual level. Chatting with women was nothing more than a thought-crime—and sexuality at that level couldn’t be zina.

  It all started innocently enough. There was Jess, a sixteen-year-old from Pennsylvania. We talked about our favorite tennis players, but soon she was telling me what kind of guys she was into and how many bases she had covered. Then there was Annie from Colorado, who said she was the heiress of a mob fortune but couldn’t stand the sexual restrictions of Sicilian Catholicism; she wanted a boyfriend who would run away and travel the world with her. And there was Claire from Baton Rouge, who was an aspiring erotic novelist. She was bisexual, she said, and liked describing the difference between boys and girls to me. “Boys taste like stale 7-Up and corn; girls taste like strawberries warmed up in a towel left in the sun.”

  The easiest time to go online was in the evenings, but the best time to talk to Jess and Annie and Claire was at night, because that’s when the chat rooms heated up. However, going online late at night was all but impossible for me, because if Ammi or Pops heard the modem screeching they came in and pulled the phone line.

  I had to devise a way to cover my tracks. Islam came in handy.

  I took a pair of prayer rugs and wrapped them all around the PC. Then I took my fattest books—the Quran and a couple of Ammi’s big volumes of hadiths—and stacked them behind the tower to muffle the screeching. For background noise I put on a loud recording of Quranic recitation by Ajmi. Then I clicked “Sign on Now” and went to the living room to mislead my parents about my plans for the nights. “I’m about to prayer the isha prayer,” I would say. “Then before sleeping I’ll read some Quran.”

  During this time, when the modem would be reaching its highest pitch, I went to the bathroom and started making wazu, turning up the faucets in order to block any noise seeping from my room into the hallway. Just to give AOL enough time to sign on, I did a wazu that was five minutes long.

  Once I was assured that the modem had gotten quiet, I went out into the living room and prayed. After asking Allah to make me a good Muslim, I went and talked to girls in Teen Chat 123.

  This scheme took place every few nights. Those fifteen minutes of stress as I set the stage with my parents were followed by nights full of cybersex.

  The Quranic recitation had to stay on, of course, so that no one became suspicious.

  AOL sex lost its shine within a few weeks. Why bother to speak with someone a million miles away, where arousal was contingent on the integrity of a phone line, when at any time the Internet could, and often did, crash? If fantasies were to be imagined and nothing more, then why include others of lesser creative acumen—especially when my daydreams were far more detailed? Why engage in conversations where you could just as easily have been any of the other millions of screen names out there? AOL dropped out of the picture for good when I realized that when it came to the opposite sex, I didn’t want carnality; I wanted intimacy. That required having physical access to women. It required real women.

  The girls at school weren’t an option, unfortunately. Shortly after I started at my high school in Alabama, a girl named Mary had gotten my home number and called up to talk, only to have Ammi tell her, “It’s against my son’s religion to talk to you.” Word of her comment had gotten around so most of the girls at school had ceased considering me in a romantic manner. In order to elicit any interest from members of the opposite sex, I would have to publicly negate my devotion to Islam—a step I couldn’t take.

  I thought back to Amal. She was someone I could pursue. First because she didn’t go to my school, and second because she was Muslim, meaning that the burden of my sin wouldn’t be borne by me alone. We’d both end up in hell, whereas with a non-Muslim girl I’d be the only one to burn.

  I went to Saleem to ask his advice about how to meet her. “Suppose I want to get to know Amal?” I asked.

  “Ask for her hand in marriage,” he replied. “Then you can start fucking her.”

  I wasn’t quite ready for that. “How about I just send her flowers?”

  “Why would you do that?” he replied. “Save the flower money to get some handcuffs or something.”

  I dropped the subject because I didn’t want to tell Saleem that I needed to have my emotions involved. Something like that would make him think that I was gay. Instead, I got myself hired part-time at the Starbucks where I’d first seen her, hoping to run into her again. On the way home every day I drove past her school and her neighborhood. I never saw her, though. Not once.

  Eventually I realized that if I planned it right I’d be able to see her during Sunday school at the mosque. There was a moment before the noontime prayer when the girls came out of their classroom into the parking lot to get some fresh air.

  The next Sunday, just before prayer, I broke away from the brothers and slithered around the edge of the mosque into the shadows. After a few minutes the girls emerged. They streamed out in their blue and salmon and pink hijabs, dillydallying before ducking through a side door. I saw all of them—girls, real girls, the flesh and the fashion of the faith—and I smiled broadly. Their soft clothes rippled on their bodies. The frilly bottom of their white petticoats stuck out beyond the hem of their long skirts. They lifted their hijabs and held an edge in their mouth while pinning back their crescent bangs. I gazed at the curvature of their waists and breasts and hips. They were beautiful, unbesmirched by the world around them. Sinless in a world of sluts. Virgins waiting to be wived.

  Then I saw Amal, one of the last to emerge and thus at the edge of the group.

  She was taller than I remembered, and thinner. She was in a long brown robe that hid her figure and wore a matching tan hijab. I was glad to see that she wasn’t wearing gloves, because I’d heard of an old wives’ trick which said that you could tell the shape of a woman’s body by looking at the shape of her middle finger—though not at this distance. I squinted, then tried to catch the sunlight in such a way as to be able to perceive a silhouette through her clothes. As I approached, I tested the air with my nostrils to see if I could pick up her perfume. Nothing but the smell of the nearby paper mills. I looked down to see if her second toe was bigger than the big toe, because that was said to indicate whether she was domineering or submissive. What I saw so surprised me that I forgot to compare toe lengths: she was wearing nail polish. The fact that a seemingly pious girl would do something that was forbidden by the Salafis gave me a slight hope that she might be willing to engage in some subterfuge with me. Then I remembered that the prohibition regarding nail polish didn’t apply when a girl was in her periods.

  Suddenly the girls noticed me and the whole flock sidled away.

  Thwarted, I grew angry. The nearness of these girls that coul
dn’t be touched, even approached, even befriended, upset me. Why did I spend my life in conformity with Islam? Wasn’t it supposed to be so that I’d have more in common with other Muslims? Have a community? If so, why did my fidelity to this faith, to the edicts of Islam, my perpetual presence at every Friday sermon and Eid prayer and observance of Ramadan, not grant me nearness to the female members of the faith? Why, in a case of egregious torture, were the Muslims I was most curious about the ones that were kept furthest away? Allah: I didn’t want to violate them—I simply wanted to eliminate the chasm of anonymity that existed between us. I wanted to know them. To greet them. To get a name and to give my name. Wasn’t the need for names divinely encoded? Wasn’t it the case in the Quran that the first thing Allah taught Adam was the “names of things.” Yet among Muslims of mixed gender this need wasn’t just unfulfilled; it was considered the handiwork of Iblis, the devil.

  In that moment it became apparent to me that if I was going to be able to live life how I wanted, I had to get the hell out of Allahbama.

  To do that I had to become someone else.

  6

  I jumped out of my beat-up Ford Ranger with its sawed-off muffler and faded Confederate flag stickers, entered our cottage-style house perched on one of Alabama’s many creeks, and prepared myself for my revolt. For many months I had been going by another name outside of the house, and now I was going to tell my parents that I planned to make the change formal in the legal system. It was my way of becoming who I was.

  Everyone was home. Ammi had just returned from her classes at the university, where she had recently enrolled to study psychology, and was unfastening the safety pin on her pink hijab. Pops was in his green scrubs, getting ready for the night shift at the hospital. Flim was in the corner of the living room playing “Age of Empires” over the Internet (the computer having long since been returned to the living room). In the backyard, our new golden retriever, Rocky ul Islam Balboa, was barking at the neighbor kids bouncing on their trampoline on the other side of our brown picket fence.

  “Why would you ever want to change your name?” Ammi said after I made my announcement.

  “It’s a horrible name.”

  “Abir ul Islam is a horrible name?” she asked, incredulous.

  “Yes. A beer ul Islam is! Seven years in America people have been making fun of it.”

  “Like how?”

  “Bud. Budweiser. Bud Light. Coors. Coors Light. Zima. Corona. Michelob. Rolling Rock. I’ve been called every major alcoholic beverage there is. Even fictional ones. Did you know people call me Duff Beer, like from The Simpsons? I know the names of as many beers as there are names of Allah!”

  Ammi slapped me on the shoulder. “Astaghfirullah! Don’t you compare God to alcohol! Can’t you just tell people that your name is Abir ul Islam, emphasis on Islam, and that in your religion alcohol is forbidden?”

  “Yes, I’ll do just that,” I said snidely. “Then the rednecks at school will want to have interfaith dialogue when they call me names!”

  “Don’t call them rednecks,” Pops chided. “This state is our home now; we’re rednecks too. Although our necks are more brownish-red.”

  “Fine. Freaks. Happy?”

  “Don’t say freaks either,” Ammi interjected. “It’s a bad word.”

  “Jesus Christ, you people!” I said, exasperated.

  “Don’t say Jesus Christ!” Ammi and Pops exclaimed in alarmed unison. “We don’t believe that Jesus is God.”

  “Can we get back to the subject, please?” I said, having had enough of this religious turn.

  “Yes, we can. Look,” Pops said, taking on his most reasonable tone, “isn’t this the Bible Belt? People take religion seriously here. If you just explain it to them—”

  “I shouldn’t have to explain my name,” I said. “Just forget it. You people are too set in your ways.”

  “I can’t believe you don’t want to represent Islam,” Ammi said, looking hurt.

  “Why does everything have to do with Islam?”

  “Because we’re Muslims!” she said. “Muslims in a non-Muslim country.”

  “Before we even landed in America,” Pops said, pride resonating in his voice, “we resolved not to give up Islam. Don’t you remember the story of the naked woman in Holland?”

  Oh, I remembered. When we were flying to America, we’d had a layover in Amsterdam. In the terminal we came across a perfume shop where there was a six-foot cardboard cutout of a topless Nordic goddess. When we neared her, Pops put his hand on the top of my head and swiveled it to face her. Shorter then, I was eye to supple thigh. “Look at this naked woman,” he said. “America is filled with this kind of un-Islamic thing. Look all you want now so you don’t sin later.” The story about the naked woman had become a family legend. It was often retold—sometimes with the woman alive, sometimes as two women, and sometimes as a couple having sex in public—all to remind us that we had known about America’s un-Islamic inclinations before we even got here.

  “And what about halal food?” Ammi said. “We’ve worked so hard to maintain halal all these years, like good Muslims. That wasn’t easy.”

  I remembered that too. Back when we lived in Brooklyn, before my first day of school, Pops sat Flim and me down in front of Ammi and explained the byzantine world of halal meat. No pork, no bacon, no sausage, and no pepperoni; beef and chicken were also out in this country, because they weren’t slaughtered in the Islamic manner; fish was permissible, but we were supposed to tell the cook that it shouldn’t be prepared along with pork, beef, or chicken. And if we had eggs or pizza away from home, we were instructed to make sure that it wasn’t flipped or cut with a utensil that had touched pork, beef, or chicken. Finally, we had to make sure that our food was cooked in vegetable oil and not in lard or oils made from animal extracts.

  “Remember that time you and I went to the farm?” Pops recalled fondly. “It was when we lived in Washington state. We went to Deer Park and put those chickens upside down in the metal ports and then took their heads and…Bismillahi allahu akbar,” he said, making a slicing motion with his hand. “We did all that hard work so that we could eat halal like true Muslims.”

  “And we always made sure you had an Islamic education,” Ammi said. “When we couldn’t even figure out the subway map in New York and Pops had to be at work in Staten Island, I used to take you for Friday prayer at the masjid at Coney Island Avenue. And then we enrolled you in the Islamic school for the summer!”

  “That wasn’t a school,” I replied. “That was a fat woman’s nasty apartment. And the only thing related to Islam that she did was to split the boys and girls into separate rooms and tell us to convert every non-Muslim to Islam.”

  “Well,” Ammi said. “At least there was a masjid in the building.”

  “Not really,” I said. “The masjid was the basement of our apartment building near the water heaters. All the paint was peeling and the carpet was gross. It smelled like fungus feet, remember? And sometimes when the imam did prayer the dryers in the laundry room buzzed and scared the hell out of everyone.”

  “Well, it’s important to be reminded of hell from time to time,” Ammi defended.

  “Then what about when we lived in Arizona?” Pops said, mulling over our numerous moves across America. “We took you to that qari at the beautiful masjid in the Mojave Desert that the doctors built. Man, that was some masjid wasn’t it? It even had a one-way mirror separating the men and women—very smart.”

  “Qari Fazal?” I scoffed. “He was an illiterate villager from Pakistan who secretly wanted to beat all the students—and he would have, except I kept reminding him that if he did he’d go to jail.”

  “Stop being so negative,” Ammi said. “What does criticism achieve?”

  “I just want to change my name!”

  “You really want to change your God-given name?” Pops asked.

  I nodded.

  “So what do you want it to be?” Pops asked. “Have you tho
ught of something?”

  “I want to be Amir. Just Amir.”

  “Amir,” Ammi said tentatively, looking at Pops. “Am-iiir.”

  There was a long period of silence. Outside even Rocky Balboa became quiet.

  “Why do you like this name?” Pops asked finally.

  “Well, because it’s not odd! All types of people have this name. I’ve met Jews and blacks who have it. I know of some popular businessmen with the name. Americans recognize the name more. It would make life easier. I just want to live.”

  I didn’t want to tell them that the name made me feel more American.

  “So this would be your nickname?” Pops asked.

  “No. I want to change it legally,” I said. “So it gets changed on the school transcripts and for roll call at school and in all my records.”

  Pops thought over it for a while and then patted my back. “You’ll need a new Social Security card, I guess, and you’ll have to go to Probate Court. I think you fill out a form there and explain your position to a judge. If he says fine, then I’m fine.”

  I was shocked by how easy it had been, all things considered. I pumped my fist and smiled in relief. Only then did I turn to see Ammi’s reaction.

  She had moved to the couch and was sitting with her arms folded, pouting.

  “I’m not happy about this,” she said ominously. “Your name was Abir ul Islam, and now you’ll be just…Amir? Don’t you care that I rubbed your chest against the walls of the Ka’ba? What about our mannat, our covenant with Allah?”

  “Pops said I could do this.”

  “Your Pops is wrong this time. You got that name, Abir ul Islam, Perfume of Islam, because you were promised to Islam in Mecca. You were supposed to spread Islam as if it were a fragrance. I rubbed your chest on the Ka’ba,” she repeated.

  “Tall tales.”

  “No. Do you know that you didn’t start walking until you got to Mecca? What about the fact that during hajj, in the middle of the night, you just got up and went into the desert? What eleven-month-old does that? You were drawn to the places where the Prophet Muhammad walked. Islam—it’s in your blood. You are Abir ul Islam.”