American Dervish: A Novel (17 page)

But as he joined me at the garage’s open mouth, even my anger couldn’t blind me to the quiet ease in his gaze, the pleasing softness in his smile. He put his hand on my shoulder and held it there, tenderly.

“Look at that…all those fireflies,” he said as he looked out at the lawn. Pinpoints of bright yellow-white light pulsed and throbbed, careening along the bushes, disappearing into the grass. Father watched for a long moment, silent. Then he turned to me. In the darkness, the corners of his eyes gleamed, wet with feeling. “That’s my childhood. Right there. Fields and fields of fireflies. We used to catch them in the village. I never showed you how to do it, did I?”

“No,” I mumbled.

“Let me show you now,” he said brightly. He turned and headed back into the garage to inspect the shelves. “I just need to find some cups for us to use.” I watched him with apprehension as he rummaged. He was about to approach the pile of discarded tarps when I blurted out:

“Dad. I don’t want to.”

He turned to me. “C’mon,
kurban.
”

“I’m tired, Dad.”

“It will be fun.”

Now I was firm, even disapproving. “I don’t want to,” I said.

He looked hurt. “Fine,” he said. He lingered in place for a moment. “Fine with me,” he repeated, curtly now. “Just make sure you shut the garage,” he said as he walked out.

9

The Hypocrites

W
hat I did next I can’t explain.

Once Father was gone, I went back to the tarps and pulled the bottle out. Grabbing a hand spade from the shelf covered with gardening tools, I walked out of the garage into the backyard. At the end of the lawn, to the right, was Father’s vegetable garden. To the left was a grove of birches. I headed for the trees.

The night sky was heavy and brown, and the air was thick with the cries of crickets. As I got to the trees, a branch snapped and something brushed against my head. I looked up. Large white wings beat without noise, then soared across our roof to the oaks on the other side. I dropped to my knees and pulled at the earth with the spade. The ground was soft, and it didn’t take me long to dig a hole just bigger than the bottle.

I undid the bottle’s cap, sniffing at the mouth. The putrid, smoky odor made no sense. It was unfathomable that anyone would want to drink this. I poured the rest of the whiskey into the hole, then laid the bottle inside. I stood up and jumped, coming down on the glass. It took me three tries, and then it finally cracked. I jumped again, and the bottle broke apart into shards. Kneeling, I poured dirt back into the hole. When I was finished, I stood up. I held my open palms before me, as we Muslims did to address Allah with our prayers. And I looked up at the sky.

Forgive him,
I whispered.

Mentioned in a footnote in the Quran Mina had given me was the tradition that anyone caught drinking alcohol was subject to forty lashes, and that whoever wasn’t caught—thereby escaping this earthly punishment—had far worse to expect in the hereafter: seventy years in hellfire. Just for a single drink.

Seventy years!

And the Quran left little to the imagination when it came to hellfire. We were told of pits and abysses filled with fire; homes of flame, with fire columns and fire for roofs; rooms of fire furnished with blazing couches and blazing beds; flaming garments fit to sinners’ bodies, shoes and hats so hot they roasted wrongdoers’ feet and boiled their brains. There was fire as food and molten drinks that torched the guts; springs of boiling water poured from flaming buckets, and eyeballs broiled in disbelievers’ sockets; there were faces shorn of lips to smile with saws of flame; fire-blackened skin that sloughed off endlessly to reveal fresh skin to burn underneath. And finally, there was the fire itself, nothing at all like the fire we knew but seventy times hotter, fueled as it was not by wood or coal but an endless store of sinners…

For two days, I obsessed over what Father had ahead of him. The whiskey he drank from that bottle alone promised him more than two centuries of these tortures. Two hundred years! And that was just the bottle I knew about. How many more were there in his past? How many more would there be in the future? And what other misdeeds—his various mistresses, say—did he stand to be punished for?

Three days after burying the bottle, I went back to the birch trees. I knelt, my eyes closed, at the small hump of dirt. Hunched and bent about my aching heart, I saw Father waving at me through the endless flames. I begged God to forgive him, to turn him away from his sins. I heard Father’s cries of pain as the fires burned him. I imagined reaching in to pull him free. But even in my imagination, I couldn’t. The fires were too hot. I was powerless.

There has to be something I can do,
I thought.
There has to be…

But of course there was!

I was already doing it!

I put my head to the ground, thanking God. I got up and wiped my eyes. I went back to the house, up to my room, where I shut the door. At my desk, I opened the Quran and picked up memorizing where I’d left off. This was what I’d realized in the birch grove: All I had to do was finish becoming a
hafiz.
When I was done, both my parents would be saved. That’s what Mina had said. Every
hafiz
earned not only his own place in Paradise, but his parents’ as well.

No matter how many drinks, no matter how many mistresses, Father would be saved.

The week that followed was witness to a formidable feat: I got through an entire
juz
of our holy book, over two hundred verses. I shared my astonishing progress with Mina. We sat in the dining room—where I’d found her reading a book—and she followed along in my Quran, checking for mistakes as I went through the new verses. I only missed a single line. She was stunned.

“My God,
behta,
” she said. “How long did that take you?”

“Three days.”

“Three days?” she asked, shaking her head.

“Yes, Auntie.”

“My God,” she repeated. “You have a gift,
behta…
So which
surah
is next?”

“I don’t know.”

“Have you done
Surah Ya Sin
yet?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“Do it next. It’s the heart of the Quran. What we read when someone dies…to help them into the next life.” Mina turned the Quran’s pages. “There it is,” she said as she pushed the book across the table to me.

“What are you doing, Auntie?”

“What,
behta?
”

“It’s not respectful. You should pick up the book and hand
it to me.”

Mina looked startled for a moment, as if smarting from my comment. Then she nodded.

“You’re right,” she said. She picked up the Quran and brought it to her lips, kissing the cover. “There… ,” she said, handing it to me now, open to a page that read “
Surah Ya Sin.
”

I settled back into my chair, murmuring the verses to myself.

Mina stopped me. “What are you doing?”

“Memorizing.”

“But don’t just start with memorizing.
Read
it first. See what it means.”

“Okay.”

“You’re not just memorizing words. Words don’t matter if you don’t know what they mean.”

“Okay, Auntie,” I said.

“Don’t just say
okay,
Hayat. I want to know that you understand what I’m saying.”

“Intention is what matters, Auntie.”

“That’s right,
behta
. That’s what I’m saying…”

She went back to reading her book. I went back to my Quran. At some point, I realized Mina was looking at me.

“
Behta?
What would you think if Dr. Wolfsohn became your uncle?”

I didn’t understand. “How could he be my uncle?” I asked.

“We’re thinking of getting married.”

“Married?”

I felt my heart drop into a dark hole inside me.

“But he’s not Muslim,” I said.

“He’s going to convert, Hayat. He’s going to become one of us.” She was beaming.

“Why?” I asked coldly.

Her smile dimmed. “I don’t understand what you’re asking, Hayat.”

She seemed suddenly unsure of herself. I looked down and marked my place on the page. Then I shut the Quran. “Why does he want to become a Muslim?” I asked again.

“Why do you think?” she asked. “Because he sees it’s a wonderful way of life. What other reason?”

I stared at her without a reply.

Just then the phone rang.

“Hmm? What other reason could there be?” she repeated, defensive.

I continued to stare at her. She didn’t move. The ringing stopped.

She looked away from me.

And then the ringing started again. “Let me see who that is,” Mina said, getting up and going to the kitchen.

It was Nathan. She didn’t say his name, but I could tell from her voice. “I’ll call you back,” she said tenderly.

I watched her disappear down the steps into the family room. She’d left her book behind, a thin, old hardcover, not unlike the one Nathan had given me. I wondered what it was, and I wondered if he had written something inside as he’d done in mine.

I reached across and picked it up, opening to the title page. “
Heart of Darkness,”
it read. There was no message written inside, only an address inscribed in a corner of one of the blank pages:

Mina Suhail

Dawes Lines Rd 14

Karachi, Pakistan

I shut the book’s cover and set it down.

That evening, I sat with Mother in the family room, and she explained to me what was happening. She and Mina had both come to the conclusion that Mina’s parents were not going to accept Nathan unless he became a Muslim.

I was dumbfounded. The idea hadn’t even been his own!

“Does he really believe?” I asked.

“He believes in his love for Mina-Auntie,” Mother replied, her eyes liquid with reverie.

“But does he
believe?
” I repeated, insistent.

Mother looked confused. “What’s wrong with you, Hayat? Are you hungry or something?”

“I want to know if he really believes.”

“Believes what?”

If, in my growing religious fervor, I’d been somewhat unclear about my mother’s relationship to our faith, purposely turning a blind eye to all the outward signs of her lack of interest or commitment, that question made it clear to me just how ridiculous it was that she called herself a Muslim. “In the Prophet? In the Last Day? In Allah?”

“How should I know?” she said, casually shrugging off my pointed tone. “What matters is what the man is
doing…
He is making a wonderful
sacrifice.
For goodness’ sake, he’s abandoning his own people because of his love for your auntie. Do you know that his father is a Holocaust survivor? What do you think
he
will say about this? But what his father says doesn’t matter to the man. He is in love with your auntie.” Mother paused for effect, as if to impress upon me now the true importance of Nathan’s decision. “What has your Father sacrificed for my sake? Hmm? Tell me! Not even one night’s pleasure with one of his white
prostitutes…
”

I knew where this was headed. I wanted nothing to do with it.

“Hayat, are you listening to me?”

I looked up. “I thought Mina-Auntie’s last name was Ali,” I said abruptly.

Mother looked at me, confused—it seemed—not only by the question, but by its timing. “It is her last name.”

“What’s Suhail?”

“That was Hamed’s name. Her first husband.” And Mother paused. “Her
first
husband,” she repeated to herself, smiling. “How wonderful,” she said, turning to me again, “now she’ll have a second!”

They’re hypocrites,
I thought.
All of them.

My resolve early that winter not to look directly on my lower parts had become a reflex. It had been months since I’d looked at myself there. But the following Saturday, I would have to break my own interdiction.

I awoke after sunrise, the curtains on my windows barely showing light. Something was wrong. I felt pain between my legs, like an aching hole. I got out of bed and pulled my pajamas down. My soft penis was covered with dried, flaking skin. And the front of my pajama bottom was crusty, hardened, the inside of its surface covered with a whitish film.

I headed to the bathroom, where I picked at the skin on my penis. The pieces peeled off with ease. I couldn’t understand the pain.
Maybe I’m sick,
I thought. But somehow I knew that wasn’t it.

I washed myself between my legs.

Back in my room, I put on another pajama bottom, hiding the one I’d worn under the bed. I went to my prayer rug in the corner of the room. Facing east, I lifted my hands to my ears…

“Allah hu akbar…”

…and began the morning prayer.

I had difficulty praying, at least as Mina had instructed me. I couldn’t keep the thought of God close to me, not with the aching in my loins, and the nagging sense that something wasn’t right.

When I was done, I slipped back into bed, but I couldn’t sleep. At some point, I realized Mother was standing in the doorway, staring at me. “You’re up,
kurban?
” she asked, crossing from her place at the jamb to my bedside.

I considered telling her about the pain. “I did my
fajr
prayers,” I said instead.

She shook her head. “You put me to shame, Hayat. Either that, or you’ll end up making me a better Muslim.” She lingered over me, looking lost.

“I’m going to be a
hafiz,
Mom. You don’t have to worry about that. Then you’ll go to heaven, too.”

“Oh,
behta.
You have such a good heart,” she said, sniffling. “I love you so much.”

“I love you too, Mom.”

Hearing this, Mother sat down beside me, her hands to her face. She started to cry.