American Dervish: A Novel (38 page)

“What?”

“‘
This is how the divine is choosing to express Himself through me.
’” Her eyes glistened with eagerness to make the point that was—I would later come to see—something like the boiled-down essence of her life. “What he meant is that everything,
everything,
is an expression of Allah’s will. It is all His glory. Even the pain…” She paused. “That is the
real
truth about life.”

Epilogue: 1995

T
his story ends in Boston.

I ended up dating Rachel my junior and senior years, and after college we moved to Boston together, into an apartment in Kenmore Square. Our wonderful and troubled interfaith romance is a tale for another time, but there’s still something that needs to be said to finish this one: It was in Rachel’s arms—and it was with her love—that I finally discovered myself not only as a man, but as an American.

She was working at a clinic in Brookline; I was interning at the
Atlantic
on North Washington Street. On Saturdays, I would take the Green Line to the Red Line, and the Red Line to Harvard Square, where it was my habit to spend the afternoon and evening at the Algiers Coffee House, writing. There was something about the place—its oriental woodwork, its mirrored ceiling dome, the mint tea and the Arabic music—that put me in the frame of mind to set words to paper. It was on the Algiers’s second floor that I would write my first short story. And it was on that same second floor that I would run into Nathan.

I was sitting at a corner booth when a short, striking man came up the stairs, coffee in one hand, a plate of baklava in the other. I recognized Nathan almost immediately. It had been more than a decade since I’d last seen him, and aside from looking a little more weathered—his head of woolly hair was finely shorn and peppered generously with dashes of gray—he looked the same. He was standing at the top of the stairs, surveying the cramped room for a place to sit, when he noticed me looking right at him.

“Dr. Wolfsohn?” I asked, standing. Nathan’s brow crinkled and his eyes narrowed as recognition seemed to dance across his gaze. “It’s Hayat Shah,” I said.

“Hayat… My God,” he said, a hint of wonder in his voice as he approached. “How you’ve grown. You’re a man.”

“Not quite,” I joked. “But it sure has been a while.”

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“I come here a lot on the weekends. I’m interning at the
Atlantic.
”

“Good for you,” he said with an abundant smile. He kept looking at me, shaking his head gently in disbelief. My limbs were weak. My heart was racing. I was completely disarmed by how happy he was to see me. And all at once, it occurred to me for the first time that the apology I’d been trying to make to Mina all of these years was really one intended for him.

“Listen, Dr. Wolfsohn… ,” I began, hesitant.

“Call me Nathan, Hayat.”

“Right. Nathan. Do you—uh—wanna sit for a second?”

“Sure,” he said, putting his cup of coffee and his plate of dessert down on the table between us. He pulled out a chair and sat. I sat down, too.

“I’m not sure how to say this exactly…”

“Just go ahead, Hayat,” Nathan said. He was looking directly at me, something grave—even stern—in his gaze.

“I never got a chance to talk to you after what happened…I mean, I was pretty young and…” I stopped myself. My words somehow didn’t seem right. I looked up at him. He was still listening.

“I guess what I wanted to say was… I’m sorry for what happened. I didn’t exactly understand what I was doing, and…I can’t believe that I said those things.”

Nathan held my gaze for a moment, then gently nodded. He shifted in place, softly clearing his throat. “You know…I always knew that you would say that to me. One day. I always knew it…Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” I quietly replied.

There was a long silence between us. I was about to say more—to tell him about the telegram—when he asked me about my parents.

“My dad’s not so great. I don’t think he ever got over going into private practice. He drinks a lot. More than he should. Not that he admits it… My mom suffers, not quite in silence, as I’m sure you can imagine.”

“She has her hands full with him,” he said with a smile. “Naveed is a stubborn man.”

“Indeed.”

“But a good one. I owe him a call.”

“Do you still speak?”

“From time to time.”

“I think a call from you would be great. He still talks about you…”

“Does he?” Nathan asked, a sudden brightness in his tone. “What does he say?”

“You know—remembering the good times you used to have at the lab together. He still laughs about you not being able to tell a joke…or eat spicy food.”

“Well, that’s changed. At least the spicy food. He got me hooked. He…and Mina, of course.”

 “She died,” I said. I don’t even think I realized I had spoken until I heard my voice say the words.

But there was no surprise. Nathan nodded, quietly affirming that he knew.

There was another long silence.

Until he finally spoke: “There’s something you should know, Hayat. It might make you feel better.”

“What’s that?”

“Mina and I were in touch.”

I was shocked. “You were?”

Nathan nodded. “I got a letter from her a year after everything that happened between us. Sent to my parents’ house. She still had their address from a letter I’d written her from their place.” He smiled to himself, remembering. “Getting that letter was, I think, the biggest surprise of my life.”

“What did she say, if it’s okay for me to ask?”

“It was basically her version of what had happened. Her explanation. I mean, I think the real meaning of it was to let me know she regretted the decision she made…but she wasn’t going to come out and say it…Though she did later.”

“She did,” I said, meaning to ask a question, though it didn’t come out that way. And the clear relief in my reply was as much a surprise to Nathan as it was to me.

He held my gaze for a long moment, nodding. “That man she was married to was insane,” he added with visible anger.

“He got sick, did you know?”

“No, I didn’t. What happened?”

“Something with his lungs. He’s out of breath all the time. Has to carry oxygen around with him wherever he goes. It happened right after Mina died. Imran takes care of him.”

“How is Imran?”

“Fine. I saw him a few years ago. I mean, his mom was dying, so he wasn’t too talkative. But I think he’s okay. He’s in high school. He and his sister are both going to an Islamic school in Kansas City. The girl looks just like her mother. Her name is Nasreen.”

I paused.

Nathan shook his head. “You have no idea how many times I told her to leave him, Hayat.”

“Why didn’t she?”

Nathan shrugged. “You probably understand that better than I do. It has to be a cultural thing…My own feeling was that she knew if she wasn’t with him, she’d come back to me. And she knew I would take her back…” He stopped for a moment. “I never got over your aunt. She was, and always will be, the love of my life.”

Nathan held my gaze a moment longer before looking away. I suddenly felt close to him. I wanted to tell him that my girlfriend, Rachel, was Jewish. But I didn’t. His eyes were full, alive with memory. I didn’t want to interrupt.

Nathan cleared his throat. “We were lucky. The postal worker who delivered her mail was a black woman named Sheniqua. Somehow, she and your aunt got to be good friends. Mina would make that famous tea for her, and they would talk. Your aunt must have told her all about Sunil, and I guess at some point she told her about me as well…”

Nathan paused, remembering.

“So when Sheniqua found out about me, she offered to be the go-between for our letters to each other. I would send them to her, and Sheniqua would send Mina’s letters to me. And she would only bring them over when Sunil and the boys weren’t around. Mina would read them and give them back to Sheniqua. Sheniqua held on to them. All of them.”

“That’s amazing.”

“I don’t know how she kept it from her husband all those years, but she did…”

“Did you ever see each other?” I asked, not realizing—until Nathan didn’t reply—that the question might have been a delicate one.

He stared at me for a long moment, his eyes full, still, unblinking.

Just then, the Arabic music playing over the speakers stopped, revealing a mosaic of sounds underneath: spoons stirring porcelain mugs, the quiet talk between patrons, the beeping of the cash register downstairs. The sudden absence of the music felt naked, revealing. Nathan looked away, taking a sip of his coffee. His gaze was covered with a thin, wet film of what seemed to me like longing and regret. I wanted to ask him again if they had seen each other, but I didn’t.

All at once, the music returned.

“I should get going, Hayat,” he said, checking his watch. “I’m glad we ran into each other.”

“Me, too.”

“You want this?” he asked, indicating the piece of baklava before him. “It’s great. They make it with orange blossom water here.”

“You don’t want it?”

“Kind of lost my appetite.” Nathan got up and reached his hand out toward me. I got up as well. “Good luck with everything. And you know, if you want to get in touch with me sometime, I’m at Mass. General. In the radiology department now.”

“Okay. Thanks…Um, Nathan, you know…There’s something else I should tell you …”

He held up his hand, looking at me with what felt like knowing tenderness. “Whatever it is, Hayat, don’t worry about it. It’s okay.” He smiled. “Good luck at the
Atlantic.
I’ll be looking out for your name.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” I replied.

He turned and walked to the railing. After a last, lingering look, he went down the steps.

I sat upstairs at the coffeehouse a little while longer, finishing the baklava Nathan had left me. I was stunned that he and Mina had stayed in touch. And I sat there revisiting Nathan’s pregnant silence around whether he’d ever seen Mina again. I wanted desperately to think that he had.

I packed my pad and pens into my bag and got up. As I made my way down the steps to the street, I felt awake. Outside, a brisk March breeze blew, sharp against my face. Instead of heading for the subway to return home, I turned to walk toward the river. I wove my way through the campus buildings and the old homes lining Brattle Street and Mount Auburn, an ease in my body as I moved. The alertness I was feeling tingled even along my limbs, and the ground itself—strong and solid beneath my feet—seemed different to me.

As I walked with the wind, verses from the Quran I’d not recalled or thought about for more than ten years echoed inside me, unbidden:

Have We not opened your heart

And removed your burden?

Have We not remembered you?

Truly, with hardship comes ease,

With hardship comes ease!

And so when you are finished, do not rest,

But return to your Lord with love…

I crossed the road at the river’s edge and found a bench along the joggers’ path. The Charles River was thick and brown, full from days of rain, its surface rolling and choppy in the breezy day. The trees across the river were bare. The ground around me was covered with brown grass only recently showing from beneath a winter of heavy snow. Joggers came and went in both directions, the shuffle of their sneakers on the wet pavement sounding an even pulse. I sat down. Behind me, a bare linden tree reached out and over the bench, its bud-covered branches defining the form of a canopy that, in a couple of months’ time, would provide ample shade from the summer sun. But for now, that sun was nowhere to be seen, hidden as it was behind the sheetlike gray of an overcast sky. Low against the horizon, billows of slow-moving dark blue clouds drifted, pregnant with rain. It was a picture of power and grace, and it filled me with quiet wonder.

All at once, I felt a swell of gratitude.

Gratitude for what?
I wondered.

I remembered the afternoon of the ice cream social when Mina first taught me to listen to a still, small voice inside, hidden between and beneath the breath.

I breathed in deeply and exhaled. And into the silence at the end of my breath I quietly intoned my question.

Gratitude for what?

I listened for a reply.

I heard a passing car’s wet tires on the road. And then a jogger’s rubber soles lightly squeaking on the pavement.

I breathed again and listened more deeply.

The branches lightly creaked and swayed in the breeze. The river softly coursed at the bank’s edge.

I kept listening. Another breath. And then another. And then again.

And finally I started to hear it. It was only this:

My heart, silently murmuring its steady beat.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank: My extraordinary agent, Donna Bagdasarian, for her devotion to this book. The inimitable Judy Clain for her brilliant editing. Arzu Tahsin at Orion for her incisive comments. Marc H. Glick for support that seems to have no limit. Nathan Rostron and the whole team at Little, Brown for their enthusiasm and commitment. Don Shaw and Michael Pollard for more than I could list.

I have had so many important readers: Foremost, my brilliant brother Shazad. Nicole Galland, who helped me to shape this story from earlier drafts. Larry Levine, Jason Shulman, and Seymour Bernstein, who offered sage and illuminating commentary. Marisol Page and Poorna Jagannathan, who asked the questions that helped me find the ending. Martha Harrell, Dan Hancock, Elise Joffe, Ami Dayan, Sean Sullivan, Brett Grabel, Shane Leprevost, Jeremy Xido, and Nadia Malik, all better friends than I deserve. Stuart Rosenthal, Marcia Butler, Aja Nisenson, Barbara Stehle, Oren Moverman, Firdous Bamji, Alexa Fogel, Nicole Laliberte, Amina Chaudhury, Siddhartha Mitter, Andrew Dickson, Aisha Ghani, Kiran Khalid, Faraaz Siddiqi and the Siddiqi family, for their time, energy, and intelligence.