The Bad Muslim Discount

by Syed M. Masood

  “Well, my grandmother just died—”

  “It won’t kill you to not be funny for like ten minutes,” Zuha said. “That’s not what I meant. And you knew that. It’s something else.”

  I got up off the bed and went to stand by a window. The moon was low and glorious, not silver that night but a pale gold, as if it had been touched by an alchemist. I stared at its bruised face, a chronicle of millennia, and said nothing for a long time. Eventually, Zuha came to stand next to me. She didn’t speak either. She just took my hand and squeezed it.

  “I haven’t cried,” I said, like a man seeking absolution from a priest at a confessional. “Everyone else did. But, somehow, I can’t. Is it because distance made her less real to me? I think I would’ve cried if I’d been there with her, but when you leave people behind, when you can’t see them…”

  She didn’t say anything. She just stood by me, looking up at the starless sky.

  “I don’t know. Maybe part of me just doesn’t believe it? She loved me, Zuha. It was a given in my life. I could do anything. I could be anyone. I knew that her love would never change. That’s what is gone from my world. That is why I thought Arnold was appropriate. There is no certainty anymore.”

  “You left out the best lines though. ‘Love, let us be true to one another….’ He wrote it on his honeymoon for his wife. These aren’t verses of loss and despair. They’re verses asking for a promise. Asking for a constant.”

  “My point is that there is no one left I can ask that of anymore.”

  “You can ask me,” Zuha said.

  I turned to look at her.

  “I don’t want you to be alone tonight, Anvar.”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said.

  “No. I want to stay with you. You should ask me to stay with you.”

  I stared down at her. That wasn’t something we had ever done—not that she had said we’d do anything, of course, but spending the night together was a very significant line to cross. I glanced in the direction of the bed. That made Zuha blush and look away from me.

  She tucked a strand of hair that didn’t need rearranging back behind an ear. “I mean…you know, if you don’t want…”

  I wasn’t looking at the bed. I was looking at the checkers board sitting on it, all the pieces perfectly in place.

  Life requires risk….You have to have courage, Anvar, to get what you want. You have to be bold. You have to, not to sound like your know-nothing mother, dare…

  “No,” I said. “I mean, yes. That would be…that…Yes. Stay with me. Please.”

  Later, when she turned off the light and closed the door to my room, even though we were alone together, and closed the distance between us…in those secret, holy, forbidden moments I learned that even if there was no cure for pain in the world, as long as I was with Zuha, there was relief from it.

  And later still, just before the rising of the sun, when she woke to find that I was not in our…my bed, she came to find me, and when she found me weeping, she kissed my forehead, stayed with me and let me cry.

  SAFWA

  I sat staring at a clock in Fahd’s room. That seemed like all I did these days. Dr. Yousef insisted it was too dangerous for me to work, and there was no work to be had anyway, certainly not for a young girl with no experience and little education.

  Rude laughter from outside the house broke the silence. I shivered, though it wasn’t cold. I no longer dared go to the window. Strangers had been coming to the neighborhood. They were armed and they were not pleasant. When Baba Adam, the old man next door, had tried to pick a fight with them, like he did with everyone, one of them hit him repeatedly in the face with the butt end of a rifle. He wasn’t expected to recover.

  Another had seen me on the roof a few days before and shouted something, and I’d hurried away. He’d banged at our gate a couple of times, yelling for me to come down, until his giggling friends had taken him away.

  He’d been back every day since, calling out lewd comments, singing romantic songs and threatening to break in.

  There was fighting too. I hadn’t slept more than a couple of hours in the last few nights. The songs of bullets and mortar shells kept me awake.

  Dr. Yousef was worried. He’d been informed by a patient that these men had spoken at the local mosque. They wanted to take our country back from the Americans and the British. They said they wanted to restore the glory of the caliphate.

  Dr. Yousef had insisted that I keep a bag packed with essentials in case I had to run. I’d told him I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t leave Fahd.

  I looked over at my brother’s sleeping form. His breathing was shallow now, though I knew that could change any minute. Sometimes he’d start panting, gasping for breath. Other times I’d be tempted to check on him, to see if he were still alive.

  He’d missed his last few dialysis treatments. I couldn’t afford them. It had been months now, and there was no word on Abu at all. I’d already asked Dr. Yousef to sell all of Mama’s jewelry, and anything else of value in the house. The computer, our phones, the microwave, the television. This home was emptying out around me. Soon it might not be around me at all. We were two months behind on the rent.

  Dr. Yousef had been helping us, but he had his own troubles. He’d been reduced to sleeping in his clinic. It didn’t make sense to me, how a doctor could be so poor, but I’d always heard Abu say Dr. Yousef was a truly Christian man. He worked in desperate areas, barely charging his patients and often giving them free care. Maybe he’d just been too generous.

  Still he came by every night, bringing food. I was waiting for him now. It was all I ever did. Wait for someone to save me. It was worse than hunger.

  I turned away from Fahd and went back to staring at the clock. It was the easier thing to do.

  I wondered what Dr. Yousef would say about Fahd’s symptoms today. For the first time, he hadn’t recognized me. Were his body’s own poisons really going to kill him? It seemed like they were reaching his mind.

  I got to my feet and walked to the kitchen. I checked the cabinets and the fridge. There was nothing there. I’m not sure why I bothered. Still I went from room to room. Everything was clean, every surface recently dusted. There was nothing to do.

  I felt like my own mother’s ghost sometimes, cursed to haunting this place.

  A bullet rang out. Then another. There was the sound of breaking glass. I rushed toward it, running back into Fahd’s room. A window was shattered. There was a bullet hole in the ceiling. There were men yelling downstairs. I tiptoed around the shards of glass and dared to peek outside.

  Dr. Yousef’s car sped away as the same armed man who had been screaming at me a few days ago was shouting at him, asking him if the girl inside the house was his mistress and if he’d share. Obviously, he’d also shot into the house. There were other men around him, laughing either at him or with him.

  I had to clean up the mess in Fahd’s room. I went to get a broom and was surprised to find that my hands were trembling. I left the broken glass where it was.

  I packed a bag.

  * * *

  —

  Sunlight stung my eyes. I hadn’t been outside in a while, and they were raw from a lack of sleep. I’d spent the night weeping by Fahd’s side. I opened the gate to let Dr. Yousef in. He looked worse than he had when Mama died. His green eyes, bloodshot and swollen, underlined with dark bags, looked more like mine than they ever had. His head was drooped forward, his shoulders were hunched.

  There was a short, slender, middle-aged man with him who gave me the kind of smile one gives to a scared animal. The pity with which he looked at me made me feel exposed. I wished I’d put on my niqab. I was getting careless with it. Abu would’ve been upset.

  “This is Hasan al-Qurayshi,” Dr. Yousef said, his manner subdued but his voice firm. “You are going with him, my dear girl. I have s
poken to your mother’s sister in Basra. You can stay with her. Your filial piety is most commendable, but your decision to leave is the correct one. It isn’t safe here anymore. When the Americans come, and they will come for these fools, it’ll be a war zone.”

  “You’re sure Fahd can’t come with me?” I asked, unable to stop the tears that were suddenly falling from my eyes again.

  “We’ve already spoken of this. The journey will be impossible for him. Besides, with no money, who will give him medical care? I am here. I will see to him.”

  “You must,” I said. “You must.”

  “I promise.”

  I wiped my tears away. He might try, I knew, but he would only be able to stop by once, maybe twice a day, if that. I was abandoning my brother. I could pretend I was leaving him in a doctor’s care, and Yousef Ganni could do the same, but we both knew the truth.

  “Is there any chance he’ll live?” I asked, finally giving voice to the one question I’d been too scared to ask since Fahd had taken ill.

  Dr. Yousef shook his head.

  “I don’t want to die with him,” I whispered. “Or worse.”

  Our old family friend put a hand on my shoulder. “This is a good decision.”

  Except it wasn’t.

  It was mean and selfish and cruel. It might have been smart, but it wasn’t good.

  Then again, as Abu had once said to me, there is no good. There is only what is.

  I turned toward the man that Dr. Yousef had brought with him. Hasan. He was still looking at me with those sad eyes I did not like.

  “He’ll get you to Basra safe,” Yousef Ganni said.

  Hasan gave a little bow, as if that somehow demonstrated he was reliable.

  I glanced at Dr. Yousef and the question must have been obvious on my face.

  “I trust him with you. You’ve always been like a daughter to me, Safwa. Go on. Get your things. It is time.”

  * * *

  —

  Hasan al-Qurayshi didn’t speak to me as he drove me through Baghdad for the last time. That was fine with me. We passed the People’s Stadium and the graveyard where Mama was buried. It was only when we were outside the city that he finally decided to say something.

  “You’re a pretty girl.”

  I didn’t reply. That was not the kind of comment I wanted to invite.

  “How old are you? Come on. No harm telling me. Fifteen? Sixteen? It’s a sweet age.”

  “Just drive.” I said it like an order, with confidence I didn’t feel.

  He laughed. It was an inappropriately happy sound, and it unsettled my heart. “I like you. I’ve always liked serrated knives.”

  I didn’t know what that meant, exactly, and I didn’t want to encourage him to talk by asking him questions. Instead, I looked out of the window, at the roads broken under the weight of tanks, at the desolate landscape spotted with a few green shrubs, scattered palm trees and not much else.

  “Yousef Ganni said your father was taken. What did he do?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “That’s enough to get in trouble these days,” Hasan said. “You think he’s still alive?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you hope he’s still alive? You know if he is and they release him one day, he’ll find you. And you’ll have to tell him about how you left your brother behind. If it were my father, that isn’t a conversation that would go well.”

  “Can you stop talking please?”

  He shrugged. “We’re traveling for five hundred kilometers. We have to pass the time somehow.”

  “My father says the Prophet said to keep the name of Allah on your tongue always.”

  Hasan seemed to think this was uproariously funny. Abu had told me once he didn’t care for men who laughed too much. I was beginning to see why.

  “I like you. Did I say that I like you?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s true, you know. I hope my daughter is like you. Brave.”

  “Brave?” That was a ridiculous thing to say. I was anything but brave. I was running away from my home, leaving a sick, dying Fahd behind to suffer alone. I was a coward.

  “You don’t think so?” He turned to look at me, as if to make sure, then shrugged. “I think it’s brave to know when to live and when to die. Pretty brave to understand that sometimes a drowning man has to grab ahold of a snake. Pretty brave to get in this car with a man you don’t know.”

  “Dr. Yousef said I could trust you.”

  “Trust is always a bad idea. Your family, your friends and, if you ever get married, your husband—always assume they’re going to hurt you because they probably will.”

  He waited for me to respond.

  When I didn’t, he went on. “My pregnant wife is at Yousef Ganni’s clinic. He’ll be delivering our daughter. That’s why he believes I’ll deliver you. Besides, he’s known my family forever.”

  “You know it’s a girl?”

  His laugh wasn’t so annoying this time. “My wife couldn’t wait to find out. No patience in that woman. It’s better to know what you’re getting, I think. This way, we have a name ready and everything.”

  “What are you going to call her?”

  “Azza,” he said. “It means gazelle. I want her to be like that, you know. Free. A little wild. Alert, always, and fast enough to escape when the predators of the world come chasing after her.”

  “That’s a good name,” I said.

  “We think so.” He paused, then said, “It’s difficult, you know, having a child in these times. I just pray that she has a good life.” His eyes flicked up to the mirror again, and he added, “I hope you do as well.”

  THE ZUGZWANG

  2005–2010

  You’re caught in a zugzwang, Anvar. You have to take your turn, but anything you do will cost you pieces. There are no good options. This happens. Sometimes all you get are dark clouds. Sometimes there are no silver linings. Just make the best move you can and hope the weather will turn.

  —Naani Jaan

  ANVAR

  Aamir was running to be the treasurer of his school’s Muslim Students Association. I was blacklisted from mine.

  My relationship with the MSA—there is one in almost every college and university in the United States—got off to a poor start. I only went to their first meeting in my freshman year because Zuha dragged me there.

  “It’s a cult.”

  Zuha laughed. “You’re insane. It’s a social club.”

  “Isn’t that what all cults call themselves?”

  “You’ll have fun.” She pinched my arm for no reason at all. “Come on. Don’t you want to meet other people like you?”

  “There’s no one else like me.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Thank God for that. We’re going.”

  So, of course, we went. It didn’t exactly go well. I mean, it started out fine, but then most things do. The president, an earnest senior with a pleasant smile and entirely too much energy, was babbling on about something or another. I wasn’t paying attention. I’d picked up the MSA newsletter and was skimming through it. There was an article on the life of Bilal, one of the Prophet’s Companions, extolling the man’s many virtues. A few reminders about why prayers were important, a calendar of upcoming events and a humor section.

  That was where the trouble started. The first few jokes were barely jokes at all, but it is hard to be funny when you’re also trying to preach, so that wasn’t necessarily unexpected. As I read on, however, I came across one that, after wasting a paragraph on the setup, had a punch line that called atheists fools.

  I didn’t say anything right away. No point in making a scene. I waited for the president to be done speaking, and while everyone else rushed to the spread of finger foods that the MSA had laid out, I pulled him asi
de. I showed him the newsletter.

  “You guys really shouldn’t print stuff like that. It’s offensive.”

  “But funny,” the president replied with a disarming grin.

  “Not really. You’re mocking another creed.” That was something even I knew Muslims weren’t supposed to do. “Isn’t there something about not making fun of other people’s gods?”

  “The Prophet did say that,” he said. “But they’re atheists. They don’t have gods. It’s different. Hey, where are you going?”

  “I’m out,” I said, probably a little louder than was absolutely necessary, as I backed away. “I don’t agree with your underlying philosophy.”

  He looked genuinely confused. “But we don’t have an underlying philosophy. It’s just a newsletter. Nobody even reads it.” I was walking away now, and Zuha, having noticed the commotion, was scrambling after me while balancing the snacks she had picked out on a paper plate.

  The president, his stunned disbelief at this turn of events evident in his voice, called out after me. “We have samosas.”

  “Got one,” I heard Zuha say as she hurried past him. “They look lovely. Thank you.”

  “Wait. At least sign up for our mailing list!”

  * * *

  —

  It is surely to the MSA’s credit that almost all of their members continued to be irritatingly nice to me after that little kerfuffle. I never went to another meeting, though Zuha did. She told me I’d become famous among the Muslim students at the school for not having a sense of humor, which was hilarious.

  Anyway, it was fine that Zuha wanted to hang out with them. Really. We didn’t have to do everything together. She had the MSA, and I had the school newspaper. Apparently, I had a tendency to take things no one read seriously.

  I didn’t like Zuha’s new friends though. One girl in particular, Shabana Wassay, had latched on to her like a leech. She followed her everywhere, significantly cutting into our alone time.