The Bad Muslim Discount

by Syed M. Masood

  He ignored the lethal dose of sarcasm in my response entirely. “You’re welcome. Don’t say I never did anything for you.”

  * * *

  —

  When my father said that all the cool kids were going to law school, he meant that the law had become a popular career choice for young Muslims after 9/11. Uncertainty and the fear of oppression breed lawyers. One would think that knowing this would be enough to make people be nicer to one another.

  The call of the times played some part in my decision to go to William and Mary and become an attorney. What had happened to Ma in that store—although it didn’t, on the scale of injustices committed in American history, even warrant a footnote to a footnote—pushed me in that direction as well.

  Mostly, however, it seemed like something I ought to do at a time when I had no idea what I wanted to do and a choice was demanded of me. I’d spent my life pursuing my own dreams, and I had nothing to show for it but heartbreak. It was, perhaps, time to fulfill the dreams of other people.

  I went to school in sleepy little Williamsburg, Virginia, in part because I knew it would make my father happy. He wandered around Colonial Williamsburg and then Monticello with a dazed smile on his face, blissfully unaware of the people looking at him strangely, as if he was going to burst into a Bollywood dance routine at any moment. It’s easy to forget, somehow, that for being pretty far north, Virginia can still be pretty far south.

  “Thomas Jefferson had a Quran, you know,” my father told me, an excited gleam in his eye.

  “I’ve heard.”

  “Do you think they have it on display? Can we see it?”

  “I doubt it, Dad.”

  His shoulders drooped a little at that, but his spirit recovered quickly enough when he went to use a public restroom. “Imagine it,” he said, unaware of the fact the zipper on his slacks was still open when he returned. “How many great men have peed in the same spot where I just peed. It’s humbling if you think about it.”

  I shook my head. “I’m pretty sure that bathroom wasn’t around back then.”

  “Those great men didn’t need bathrooms. The world was their bathroom, yaar.”

  My mother, overhearing the comment, made a disgusted sound.

  “I’m telling you.” Noticing that his fly was undone, my father zipped it up. “History is made by men who aren’t afraid to shit all over everything. Anyway, I’m very happy you decided to come here. It’s a big accomplishment. You know what, I almost forgot, that Shah girl, what’s her name?”

  “Zuha,” my mother said.

  “Right. We saw Zuha Shah the other day. She said to tell you congratulations on getting in here. You remember her, right?”

  SAFWA

  Three years after I’d left Basra, my world was smaller than it had ever been. Old age had put Bibi Warda in the ground. Abu and I were like ghosts to each other, existing together and not existing at all, and Qais was gone. Months ago, he’d said he would be back, but I knew that was a promise he might not be able to keep.

  I shouldn’t have wanted him to come back, not after telling him to leave me alone, but he was the only relief from my claustrophobic life. I had done it to myself. I could’ve made an effort to belong with the people I was living with. I could’ve tried to learn the language and pretended to be interested in the small details of their lives, so that I was not always so alone.

  I never did. I knew where that would lead. I would become entangled in this place, and some well-meaning woman would want me to marry her son, and maybe I would agree, and then there would be children and a little house and then I too would be in the ground, like my mother, like Bibi Warda and the countless others who had lived and died in these mountains. That was not how I would end.

  A few months after Abu returned, he stopped trying to draw words from me. He didn’t hit me. He came close, a few times, I think, but he held himself in check. The silence wasn’t as bad for him as it was for me. He could go out into the world, engage people, build relationships and have a purpose.

  In fact, before Qais left, he’d befriended Abu, despite the many years that separated them. I wasn’t sure why Qais spent so much time being religious for my father’s sake. My father had nothing that Qais wanted, and yet he was at our home often, the two men speaking for many hours about the fine points of theology or the rise and fall of empires. I asked Qais once why he did this, and he just laughed, and gave no reply.

  Abu’s life was not as quiet as mine and he knew it. He was the center of my life. He provided me food, shelter and protection. I needed him a lot more than he needed me.

  He’d use that against me, leaving without notice for a city or another village, and then returning with a cold smile and a question. “Did I not tell you I was leaving? It is hard to remember you are here sometimes.”

  Before Qais left, sneaking out to speak to him had been the highlight of my life. We traded dawn for midnight and met under the moon. I wore my niqab, until he asked me not to, and then I didn’t, because he said he wouldn’t come by anymore if I did, and that I could not bear. I did not like his smile when he got what he wanted.

  The pull of America had latched on to him like a fever that would not drop. There were no drones there, he insisted. There was peace. It was said, he told me, that you could be whatever you wanted in America. It was the land of opportunity. The land of the free.

  It was a nice dream. I began to dream it with him, not just because he would talk about it so often, but also because it spoke to my soul. I began to list for him the things that I wanted there. I would go to school. I would get a job. I would make my own money and have my own place and no one would tell me what to do and how to live.

  These were not the things he wanted. He wanted a big house and fast cars and security guards. He made fun of me sometimes for having such modest desires.

  Qais had friends who had promised that they could get him there, if he did a few things for them. What these were he wouldn’t tell me. All he would say was that it would be good for us.

  The “us” should have given me pause. He had joined his hopes and mine, though they were not at all the same. He had other hopes too, hopes that forced me to tell him to leave me alone.

  “I’m going soon,” he said one night. “And when I return, we will go to America.”

  I laughed as quietly as I could. We were outside. Given where the crescent moon was in the sky, I thought it had to be a little after one. Voices carried in the night. My mother used to say that the whisper of a woman can travel farther than the roar of a lion. I never understood what that meant until I started meeting Qais this way.

  We were sitting across from each other on the ground behind Abu’s house. I was, as always, leaning my back against the wall. It was somehow pleasantly cool in the middle of a warm night.

  “I know we will,” I said. “And George Bush will come pick us up at the airport.”

  “I like it when you laugh. It’s such a lovely sound.”

  I made a face. “You know I don’t like it when you talk like that.”

  He nodded. Still he looked at me like he had the first day, like I was something he would devour. He got that look sometimes and I always ignored it, because there was nothing else to do.

  That night there was something else written on his face though, something between sadness and anger and frustration. “Have I not been patient with you, Safwa? I have been more patient than any other man would’ve been.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know what I mean. You know what I want.”

  I did.

  Of course, I did.

  I’d known from the first time we met. It was easy, necessary, to pretend otherwise. A great tiredness descended upon me. Now that he’d said it, it was impossible to pretend anymore.

  I got to my feet. “Good night, Qais.”
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  He stood as well, grabbing my wrist as he did so. I gasped and pulled away from him. “Don’t touch me.”

  He stepped closer. I’d never realized how much taller he was than me until just then. He stepped closer still. I tried to move back, but the wall was there, and though it had been a comfort a moment ago, now, suddenly, it betrayed me. There was a fleeting thought, a thought that I could call for help, but no matter what Abu would do to him, what he would do to me would be worse.

  Qais smirked as if he knew exactly what I was thinking. He reached up and with a single finger started to trace a line down my jaw. I slapped his hand away, and he sighed. “You’ll let me touch you when I come back. I’ll come back with proof that I can take you to America. Then I’ll have something you want, and you’ll let me have you.”

  “Get away from me.” My voice somehow sounded strong, like the wall behind me, unwilling to yield. “Now.”

  He held up his hands. “I’m making a trade, Safwa. Stay trapped here, with your legs closed, if you want. Or you can be a little more flexible and you’ll have a chance to live the life you want. Up to you.”

  “You should fear Allah.”

  “He sent you here. He sent me here. This was meant to happen. You know,” he said in a perfectly calm voice, as if he were in the mosque, or engaged in a philosophical debate with Abu, “scholars say that the future has already been written. I wasn’t the one who wrote it. Neither were you. So how can we be responsible for what happens next?”

  * * *

  —

  Three months passed. It was too much time. My days were empty, and at night I barely slept. Often the sound of Abu shouting out in his sleep in the other room would wake me, and sometimes, though he tried to be quiet, the sounds of him weeping kept me up.

  There was nothing to do except think, and I couldn’t help but think of what Qais had said.

  If Qais could get me to America, he could get Abu there as well. Maybe getting to a place of safety would help calm the demons that haunted my father.

  Or maybe it’d be better to just run away with Qais, leaving Abu behind. That would be easiest. There would be nothing holding me back in America then. I would, for the first time ever, be free.

  I felt tears come to my eyes when I thought of leaving Abu behind. He was hurt so badly, broken in worse ways, perhaps, than Fahd had been broken, and I knew what had happened when I abandoned my brother. I was not prepared to wonder, for the rest of my life, about what had become of my father.

  Besides, I would need him. I didn’t know what Qais’s plan was, but going with him alone would mean trusting him completely. I wasn’t prepared to do that. What had that man who drove me from Baghdad to Basra, the one who wanted to name his daughter after a gazelle, said?

  Trust is always a bad idea.

  No. I needed Abu. If Qais tossed me aside or left me alone in some strange land, I wouldn’t know how to protect myself. Besides, despite everything, Abu was still family. There was no real question of leaving him behind.

  It was only after I’d thought all of these things that I realized some part of me was considering Qais’s bargain.

  That was all it was to him. Like I was a thing to be bought and sold in the marketplace. My fingernails left deep marks on the palms of my hands when I remembered what he’d said.

  Everything I’d been taught, everything I knew about myself, told me that what he was proposing was wrong. It was against the will of Allah. It was a thing beneath me. Mama used to tell me that the most important things a woman has are honor and virtue. Qais was asking for both.

  Had Mama been right? It was easy to say yes, but maybe the easy answer was the wrong one. A small portion of one night could make the rest of my existence worth living. It would let me out of this barzakh—this purgatory—and into either heaven or hell. Was the cost not worth the prize?

  * * *

  —

  Qais came back and he didn’t seem at all surprised when, in the small hours, I snuck out to meet him, just as always. The knowing sneer on his face told me that he had been expecting me.

  Wordlessly, he handed me proof that he could make America a reality. Not a guarantee, but a hope at least. It was a Pakistani passport—his Pakistani passport, though he hadn’t been born in Pakistan. It was fake.

  Qais took the little green book from my hands carefully, like it was precious beyond words, and maybe it was in a way. He flipped through it until he came to the page he wanted to show me. A visa for Mexico.

  “We can cross the border there,” he said, “into America. I’ve heard people cross all the time. It is all over their news. My friends—”

  “Who are these friends? What did you do for them?”

  “The only question you should ask,” he said, “is what you will do for me.” He held up the passport. “To get you one of these.”

  I looked away, from him, from the prize he offered. In the dim silver light of a fading moon, a small animal scurried across the sand and disappeared into the dark. I wondered what it had been. A mouse, maybe, maybe a rat. In the distance, an owl cried out and then everything was still again.

  I looked back at him. “Two.”

  He frowned. “What?”

  “My father will come with us. I want two passports. Two visas.”

  “You’re haggling? This isn’t—”

  “It’s a trade.” I stood up as tall as I could, though my heart was mired in quicksand. “You said it yourself. That is what I want in exchange…in exchange for what you want.”

  “Expensive.” His voice was steeped in contempt.

  I didn’t say anything. I just kept looking at him, until finally, he nodded and smiled, his hands going to his belt.

  “Wait.” There was panic in my voice now, but I ignored it and he ignored it too. “I’ll do this one time, and then…Just…promise me.”

  “I promise,” he said, “that I’ll get you the two passports you need.”

  Then he shoved his lips against mine. His breath was damp and sour and sweet, like curdled milk with honey in it. His hands were soft, but he was rough. Sharp rocks on the ground cut into the skin on my back. I closed my eyes. I let him do what he wanted, and when pain brought tears, I did not open my eyes to allow them to fall. Not in front of him.

  Never in front of him.

  A few minutes later, when he pulled away just before he was finished, I left him lying there.

  I ran. I bathed. I wept.

  I wept into a pillow so that no one would hear me. Not Abu and not God.

  * * *

  —

  Qais came by the house the next evening and spoke to Abu. Their conversation was, as always, about religion.

  “Adam was made so that he would sin,” Qais said. “His disobedience of Allah was necessary for the world, for all human beings, to exist. From the seed of that first sin, everything in the world has grown. God knew this when He made the first man, Adam, and the first woman, Hawwah. It was all His plan for the fall to happen.”

  “So no blame falls on Adam?” Abu sipped thoughtfully at a glass full of weak tea he was holding. “My young friend, if you believe that, then we are no better than characters in a book or a play. Nothing we do has any meaning.”

  “Does that thought never occur to you?”

  “Stand up,” Abu said, setting his drink aside. As Qais did what he asked, Abu said, “Now balance yourself on one leg.”

  Qais glanced over at the corner where I was standing, wrapped in my niqab, of course. Then he shrugged and did what he was asked.

  “That,” Abu told him, “is free will. Now you keep standing as you are but lift up your other leg as well.”

  “I can’t,” Qais told him. “I’ll fall.”

  “And that,” my father said with a satisfied smile, “is destiny.”

  Qais laughed
. “You’re a wise man, Abu Fahd.”

  “Ali, May Allah Be Pleased with Him, was a wise man. I’ve just stolen a drop from the ocean of his knowledge. Tell me, Badami, why the interest today in destiny all of a sudden?”

  “I was in Peshawar the last few months,” Qais said, “and I heard a saying there. On every grain of rice is written the name of the person who will eat it. They mean to say that you will go where you are meant to go, take from the world what Allah has written for you, and you will die where you are meant to die.”

  Abu, who’d been nodding along, said, “Yes, but—”

  “I’m going to America, Abu Fahd. I’ve found a way to go. That is what is written for me.”

  My father raised his eyebrows. “I suppose that is good news?”

  “It is a chance for a good life.”

  “A man can live a good life wherever he finds himself, I think.”

  “But not an easy one.”

  For the first time in forever, I actually heard Abu laugh. It was a sharp, cutting sound. “Now you have spoken the truth. Very well, my friend, it will be a sad thing to lose your company but—”

  “I want you to come with me. You and your daughter. We can all go together. I will arrange everything, all the papers, everything.”

  Abu stared at Qais as if he were completely insane.

  “Think about the life you and your daughter are living. You know there is no peace here. There is only war. Tomorrow, it may touch this village. Even if it doesn’t, a drone may come, or just a bomb that falls where it isn’t supposed to fall—”

  Abu’s voice was somehow stern and weak at the same time. “I am not afraid.”

  “Not for yourself, but think of your child—”

  “No.”

  “Abu Fahd, you must—”

  “I will not go,” my father said, “to the land of those…men. I will not be their neighbor. I will not—”

  There it was. The old steel forming in his voice. I recognized it right away. He would talk and talk, convincing himself of his own argument, and would stand for no disagreement.