Good Muslim Boy (20 page)

I look at Dad’s coffin, one last time. The grey-pink sky above. I do say, ‘Thank
you,’ for good measure. And then it’s time to go.

Melbourne, Australia, 2002

The day my first, false year at university ended, I floated around on cloud nine.
All around me, on campus, students were celebrating the end of exams and assignments.
I had no such hurdles, but somehow that made it all the sweeter—I’d studied all year,
just as hard as them, maybe, and I hadn’t even
had
to. No professor was grading
me; I was wasting no fees. I was a self-made man, my own teacher. I thought I was
ready to sit a placement test and get into my Science degree. I felt no guilt at
all about sharing the elation of everybody around me.

I ran inside the house, exhausted and happy—the wake of a hard-won achievement. Immediately,
though, I sensed the mood of the room was dark and electric.

My whole family was sitting in the lounge room, ashen. It looked like an intervention.

Dad held up two papers.

‘In one hand I have this,’ he said sombrely. ‘A paper you showed us, claiming you
got 99.9. In my other hand, however, there’s this paper, where the figure is 68.7.
So, Osamah, I’ll ask once and once only. Which score is the real one?’

Slam. The world collapsed around me.

My chest got tight like a rope looped around it and knotted, tighter and tighter.
The rope looped again, knotting and knotting, larger and heavier and more choking.
Then my heart got pressed under a shipping container filled with tons of raw metal.
Then somebody threw me thousands of feet underwater and my lungs filled up. I dropped
to the floor, sobbing.

As I went down, Dad stood up and towered over me.

‘What were you thinking—that you’d become a pretend doctor and treat pretend patients?’

‘I’m sorry, Dad. I’m so sorry,’ I managed to finally breathe.

‘Save your apology for the others,’ he responded, and walked out of the room, leaving
me bawling.

By ‘others’, my father did not just mean my family. He meant all the others. Everybody.

Dad walked ahead of me into the mosque, grimly. I trailed, wan and sorrowful.

At the door stood Luay, handing out photocopies of my true results to the gathering
crowd.

I looked up from the ground and caught a glimpse of my future bride, Yomna. I had
thought my disgrace may have had one silver lining—that her family would call off
the engagement. Unfortunately, my future in-laws had been disappointingly supportive.
Her father had just said, ‘We all make mistakes.’ I could atone, lucky for me, through
marrying his daughter—a chance to prove myself an honest man.

Yomna gave me a supportive thumbs-up. I returned a sickly smile and stood before
the congregation. Literally one thousand eyes on me.

‘The Prophet has said,’ I began, ‘“Lying is a sin which burns away the soul as fire
burns through wood.”’

Deep breaths.

‘Hence I stand before you all and before God, offering my repentance, and inshallah
with enough of my soul left unburned that it can all heal again. Not because I was
caught, but because I allowed myself to drag this thing out for so long. Alas, I
have failed before you and God.’

I felt there should be more, but I came up with nothing. ‘Thank you,’ I said weakly,
and stepped down from the lectern.

Sayyed Ghaffar seized the microphone in a caricature of grimness, barely disguising
his giddy delight.

‘We’ve now heard it,’ he burbled glumly. ‘Where to now? I hear everyone ask. Our
beloved sheikh has done a reasonable job raising his children. But…’

He looked regretful.

‘If it weren’t for my son Luay’s vigilance, who knows how far Osamah would have taken
this? I do not see the need for the sheikh to step down—not immediately. Noah, the
Prophet of God, couldn’t tame his own infidel son. Was the Prophet at fault when
his son was no good? Of course he wasn’t. But if this were Luay, I know in my heart
I could not live with the shame. I know in my heart I could never continue as a role
model for my people.’

What was there to say? Dad excused himself from the hall. In his absence, deathly
silence invaded. Nobody knew what to do, including Sayyed Ghaffar. He stepped down
from the lectern, and we all trickled away.

When I got home: an email from Sisi.

I didn’t even get dressed. I sped to the airport in my trackpants.

I wandered through the international terminal, lost in the surges of strangers. Hundreds
of people, none of them her, all trying to get somewhere important.

Then, there she was—surrounded by family. How could I get her attention? I wanted
to rush over, grab her and run. But that was impossible. All I could do was stand
vaguely in her sightline and hope for the best.

She spotted me across the airport. I could see her eyes widen and her legs tighten.

I rubbed my forehead with my index finger, pointing subtly towards the bathrooms.
Then I unlocked my eyes from hers, fully aware I might never see her again.

When I got to the bathrooms, I hunted through the ever-changing crowd to find her
again, but nothing. Finally I spotted her family, but where was Sisi? It was hard
to get a good look.

I turned around. Bang. There she was. She punched me hard on the chest.

I grabbed her hand and hugged her, not saying a word.

I wished we could do this forever, but we both knew time was running out. I took
a letter out of my pocket and shoved it in her hand. And then, before I could do
something smarter, or stupider, I let go and hurried away.

I cannot remember the physical details of the march up the aisle towards Yomna. With
each step through the mosque, my mind went back a hundred, until I’d gone back to
before I was born. This is called having your life flash before your eyes, and I
knew it was not traditionally something that happened unless you were dying.

Before I knew it, though, I was reading the vows and exchanging the rings with Yomna.
I sat on the chair, alone in a tux, before close to a thousand segregated onlookers.
Yomna had been wheeled back to the women’s section by the time I realised I was married.

People read the
Fatiha
for us; some even smiled. I had made my atonement, and had
been forgiven. I had been married. I was a man.

People lined up to offer their congratulations. Abu Ghazi, the mosque’s resident
octogenarian, kissed my cheeks three times and used the distraction to slip a pill
into my hand.

‘One hour before bed,’ he whispered through the gaps in his teeth. ‘The rocket will
launch and keep launching.’

After Abu Ghazi was one of the white friends I’d made in the library. ‘Big fuckin’
turnout!’ he exclaimed. ‘Shit, I’m not meant to swear in a mosque.’

‘No.’

‘But your mob don’t speak English, do they?’

All around him was evidence to the contrary: mosque members, openly glaring.

‘Holy fuck,’ he whispered. ‘So no alcohol, right?’

‘No,’ I replied, deep in my own thoughts.

‘So it’s just beer? How do you guys do it? Anyway, should go say hi to your old man.
What do I call him? Your Holiness?’

And then there was dancing. Freestyle Arab—think hip-hop but clumsier. And then the
cars honking, and Yomna and I were shoved into the limo.

Moe Greene was our driver. He smiled over his shoulder. ‘Not bad, bro. Beautiful
bride. Sick car. You done well. Congrats!’

Our eyes met for a second, and we used that second to say more than we could possibly
vocalise.

The car crawled out of the courtyard, inching us towards our new home. Yomna’s father
had found us a place directly behind his own; he’d taken care of our bond and our
first month’s rent as a bonus. I’d maxed out my credit card filling this home with
the necessary appliances. My tux was stuffed with cash from guests at the wedding,
but we still couldn’t afford a real honeymoon.

I kept forgetting Yomna was in the car. I noticed she was grabbing my hand, and idly
realised this was the first time we’d touched each other. Each red light only delayed
the inevitable; I was about to have sex with a stranger. I prayed for the lights
to last longer, but they never lasted long enough.

I dug into my jacket pocket, down past the money, and found Sisi’s email I had printed
out. I clutched it. Where was she? What if she was getting married right now? We
could share the gold medal for Synchronised Arranged Weddings at the Muslim Olympics.
I let loose the tattered laugh of a madman, causing my wife to let go of my hand
and Moe Greene to glance over his shoulder.

Three dozen hoon-mobiles tailed us to the house, horns honking, music blaring. I’d
seen the cops often enough at just the wrong moment that I prayed they’d show up
right now.
Where are you, policemen? Come arrest all these law-breaking Muslims.
They’ve all got their heads stuck out the window and they’re not wearing seatbelts,
for God’s sake! Moe Greene was actually unlicensed, and had an abiding, much-publicised
love for the smell of burning rubber on a rental. I couldn’t call the cops myself—he
was my little bro—but I
could
pray for some racist Aussie to report the bunch of
rowdy Moozlemz on the road.

No racist Aussie came.

We were rapidly closing on our happy new home, but everything was slowing down. The
theory of general relativity had vexed me in high school, but everything finally
clicked. With every second, I felt my skin cells aging. The world muted, save for
a dark, constant droning—the same one you hear late at night when a TV channel is
no longer broadcasting.

My head filled with strobe lights, popping and flashing. I asked Moe to pull over
at the 7-Eleven, a strange one where I didn’t know any of the employees.

‘Bottle of water,’ I croaked. Moe Greene imperceptibly nodded.

He found one, and pulled over. The long train of community members was doing its
best to pull over too.

I opened the door, gulped the fresh air, looked at the cars and looked back at Yomna.

The oxygen hit me, exploding through my lungs. It was a starlit, hot December.

I jumped out of the car, but held the door open.

‘Yomna,’ I said.

Yomna looked worried.

‘I’m sorry for everything,’ I said.

I closed the door and a strong spell was broken.

I sucked in another deep breath and took off running.

Summer was over, and I was still living in a shabby one-bedroom in Brunswick.

At the 7-Eleven on my wedding day, I hadn’t looked back to see who was chasing me.
I’d used alleys and backstreets and stuck to the shadows. I’d run several kilometres
by midnight.

And then I had ended up here. For three months, I’d been living in hiding, paying
the rent with the cash everybody had shoved into my tux at the wedding. I spent my
days lying on the mattress with the window open, listening to my neighbours fighting:
Wazza would steal Shazza’s packet of smokes, causing Shazza to turn around and steal
Wazza’s. I kept to myself because I didn’t want to be seen by anyone, but also because
I lacked bite and energy. One day I tried joining the gym, but I saw someone from
the mosque through the window. The first thing I’d done was change my SIM card and
phone number.

Thus undisturbed, I lay on the mattress, searching for an epiphany.

That, and writing to Sisi.

Moe Greene had told me via email she’d been married off to a cousin. I put my heart
back together by drafting and redrafting one final handwritten letter.

There were infinite variations. None of them would do, but I was grateful: so long
as I kept writing and writing, it wasn’t, it couldn’t be, over.

Rent was due in April, and I didn’t have it. I paced all day, knowing what I had
to do, but delaying the inevitable as long as possible.

Finally, I picked up the phone.