The Bad Muslim Discount

by Syed M. Masood

  She leaned forward and let her veiled lips graze my cheek, before turning away to leave forever.

  She did not look back.

  * * *

  —

  I sat with the absence of Azza bint Saqr and tried to see the world as she saw it. It was a difficult thing. I wasn’t in the business of vengeance. The lessons I had learned, the words I had been taught, the life I had led, the battle I’d fought for Taleb Mansoor had all contoured my moral lens in a way that made it impossible to see Azza’s perspective with any clarity.

  I understood her desire to punish Qais. I even shared it. However, it was simply wrong to allow anyone to be condemned for a crime they hadn’t committed, especially one as serious as terrorism. There was no guarantee of due process or even survival in a case like this one.

  Besides, Azza had concocted her entire scheme with the assumption that Qais’s arrest would free her from him, allowing her to continue to live her life with Abu Fahd in San Francisco. That was no longer a possibility. Azza was leaving the city herself. There was no reason, other than retribution, to let the Department of Homeland Security take Qais.

  “I am faced,” I said to the woman who wasn’t here anymore, “with a moral imperative.”

  Had Azza noticed that I hadn’t technically given her my word I wouldn’t interfere? I’d go to Powell station. I knew there were pay phones there. There was no way I could call Qais from my cell. It could lead to too many questions from DHS.

  Of course, it was entirely possible that he was asleep and would not answer, which meant that Azza might get her wish after all.

  AZZA

  Abu wouldn’t be back until after dawn, so I had several hours to pack. A small carry-on was enough to fit my life. A few clothes, all the money Abu hid under his mattress for emergencies and a toothbrush were all I kept.

  Deciding what to take was easy. Thinking about what to leave behind cost me time.

  I had to think about what, if anything, to leave Abu. Should I write a letter? For all the writing I’d done in the last month, I had no words of leave-taking for my father.

  I couldn’t just disappear. Abu would worry. He’d wonder at first where I’d gone. He’d wait for me. Then, slowly, panic would start taking ahold of him. He’d call hospitals and the police. He’d think I’d been hurt or worse.

  He’d feel the same way I’d felt, all those years ago, when Abu had been taken. That was too cruel a thing to do to anyone.

  There were a hundred thousand things to say and, at the same time, there was nothing to say. Should I write “Dear Abu” when he was neither my father nor very dear anymore? Should I end with “Love, Azza” or “Love, Safwa” or no love at all?

  I left him the ring Qais had given me and exactly one word.

  Goodbye.

  * * *

  —

  I was locking the apartment door behind me when I heard him call my name. I jumped and whirled around, my keys clattering on the ground.

  “Abu! Why aren’t you at work?”

  “Qais called me,” Abu said. “The police are after him. He’s going to get to safety, and tomorrow, once we have gathered our things, we will join him.”

  “How did he know?” I demanded, stepping forward. “How could Qais know that?”

  I didn’t need Abu to answer me though. I knew the truth even as the last question left my lips.

  Anvar had betrayed me.

  Rage flooded my eyes with hot tears.

  Then I realized that Abu was staring at me and at my luggage.

  “What are you doing? How are you outside without your niqab?”

  I tried to make something up but couldn’t. My mind was racing my heart, but my thoughts weren’t coherent. All I could think about was the certainty that Abu was going to hurt me. He was going to hit me. It would be worse than it had ever been before.

  Then, just like that, it was too late to lie. I saw the burning certainty in the hardening of his gaze, like lava becoming rock. He understood.

  “I’m leaving,” I said, gathering all the courage I had. “I’m leaving you and Qais and your stupid honor and—”

  “You’re not going anywhere.”

  “I am,” I said, “I’m running away.”

  He shook his head. “Safwa, my child, do you not know that in order to run, you have to be able to walk?”

  ANVAR

  Convincing Qais to run hadn’t been difficult. I told him the police had been in the building, asking questions. I’d learned they thought Qais had vandalized Hafeez Bhatti’s apartment. Because he was undocumented, I said, he’d face deportation with a conviction.

  It wasn’t exactly an airtight story. His immigration status wouldn’t be reported by the San Francisco Police Department if he were picked up for a property crime. He thought I was an expert though, and he had no reason to mistrust me. When you use the right language, when you use words that seem to be laden with significant meaning—words like “expedited removal” and “extraordinary rendition”—it is easy to make people believe the stories you tell, especially if you know what they are afraid of.

  Fearful people are credulous people. That is why entire populations can be manipulated to go along with wars, massacres and atrocities. Qais was only one man.

  Yet I worried.

  I worried that he might see the flaws in the lies I’d crafted for him or that he might seek a second opinion. Not only was it possible he’d be killed or disappeared, but if he were captured, he might tell Homeland Security I had called him and told him to run. I had no idea how I’d explain that.

  I hoped, at least, that Azza was safe. No one was hunting her, at least for the moment. There was a chance that by the time all this played out, she’d be in some remote part of Canada, with a different name, and with some freedom to call her own for the first time in her life.

  I tried to sleep, but couldn’t. In the deepest part of the night, desperately exhausted, I did something I hadn’t done for many years. I stood up to pray in my own home of my own volition.

  It didn’t help.

  Always perhaps, in the court of the King, the Fool is destined to remain unsatisfied.

  The worst of it was the guilt. Even though she would probably never know it, I’d betrayed Azza. I’d been absolutely certain that it was the right thing to do. Time, however, erodes certainty like the wind tears away at rock, leaving it jagged and disfigured.

  I took out my checkers set and set up the board. I don’t know why. There was no one to play against. It helped, a little, to do something familiar, something perfectly under my control.

  It helped to remember Naani Jaan, to remember that even though my choices now might have been wrong, there had been someone, once, who’d loved me unconditionally.

  Naani Jaan was right about you. You told me she said you play checkers without courage. But it’s true about everything you do. You never stand up and fight for what you want or believe in.

  You’re a coward.

  Aamir’s words still cut me, threatening to sever the connection I felt then with Naani Jaan’s memory.

  I got to my feet and began to pace. My first thought, as if I was arguing before a judge, was to say “Objection, relevance.” After all, what did this matter just then? It had nothing to do with Qais or Azza. My concerns about what was to come for them, and for me, were rational, given the circumstances. They did not make me craven.

  I knocked my knee against the coffee table and a black checkers piece from the last row slid off the board. I picked it up. It was an amazing thing, actually, that little round disk, limited yet full of potential. If it could brave the perils before it and survive, it would be coupled with another just like it, and become royal. It would make a real difference in the world it inhabited.

  Or, I suppose, it could sit back, a peasant in the king’s row, trapped
and made impotent by a desire to play it safe, refusing to move until it was too late to alter the course of the game.

  Bhatti had asked me to be brave. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard those words.

  My father had asked me to do the same, a lifetime ago, when I’d been tasked with killing Mikey the goat. I hadn’t told my father then that I wasn’t afraid, that I felt something else entirely, on that Eid, as I stood with a knife in my hand.

  I’d felt inadequate, like I wasn’t meant for the enormously sad charge before me. And I’d been right. If Aamir hadn’t spoken God’s name then, I would certainly have forgotten to do so and my sacrifice would’ve been fatally flawed.

  Then again, Abraham hadn’t been alone when he’d tried to follow God’s command either. He hadn’t been required to pass the test by himself. His son had been with him.

  I took the piece I held, and even though it was wrong, even though it broke all the rules, ancient and modern, that governed the game, I placed it on top of the piece next to where it had been, bestowing a crown on them of which neither one had yet proven worthy.

  For a few moments, I stared at what I had done.

  Then I called Zuha.

  “Anvar? It’s six in the morning.”

  “Can you come over?” I asked.

  “Now? Is everything okay?”

  “Please. I need you.”

  There was a pause. I could tell, however, that it wasn’t hesitation. It was just Zuha listening to what I’d said and hearing what I’d left unsaid.

  “Do I have time to get dressed?”

  “I suppose, though my day would be more fun if you didn’t.”

  She sighed. “I’ll be there as quickly as I can.”

  “Thank you,” I said, collapsing into a chair and closing my eyes. Finally, I’d found it. Something that I knew, beyond all doubt, was true.

  * * *

  —

  I forced myself to shower, shave and tidy the apartment a little. One must, Bariah Faris always assured me, maintain appearances. I was distracted enough, and tired enough, to not notice that the city still looked like morning hadn’t come, until the familiar tapping of heavy raindrops on the windows called my attention to the darkness outside.

  When I opened the door for Zuha, I found that the heavens had made her look heart-stopping. Perhaps anticipating a repeat of the bright day we’d had yesterday, she had decided to wear a long cotton maxi dress that must have been both modest and fetching when she had put it on. The rain, however, had left her absolutely drenched, and her dress clung to her with delightfully indecent precision.

  I realized that she’d greeted me and was asking if everything was all right when she fell silent and, noticing that I was staring, blushed fiercely.

  “I simply love your outfit,” I said after I gathered myself.

  “Jerk,” she muttered under her breath.

  I stepped aside to let her in. “I’m the perfect gentleman. I’m the Darcy of brown men.”

  “Funny. I don’t remember Darcy perving on his sister-in-law, Jane.”

  “Austen never gave him the chance. It’s easy to be chaste when you’re never tempted.”

  “And you know all about temptation.”

  I waved in her direction. “I mean…just look at you.”

  “You’re a bad person.”

  I didn’t argue the point.

  “I need to dry off and change. Do you have something I can wear?”

  I picked out the smallest T-shirt I had. It was green, with the phrase luck of the irish printed on it. I handed it to her along with a white shalwar that was much too long for her. While she was changing, I put some coffee on.

  “You look ridiculous,” I told her as she marched out of the bathroom. “I prefer it when you are dripping wet.”

  Zuha shook her head. “You’re incorrigible.”

  “That’s a good word.”

  “I thought you’d like it,” she said wryly, then, turning serious, continued, “You all right? You don’t look great.”

  “It’s been rough,” I admitted, handing her a warm mug she wrapped her fingers around immediately. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  I followed her to the couch in the living room, and she curled up in the corner opposite mine. “Tell me about it.”

  So I did. I told her about how I’d met Azza and Abu Fahd and Qais, and everything I’d learned about their lives since then. I told her about Azza’s plot, Homeland Security’s involvement and my decision to tell Qais he’d best run.

  Zuha listened without speaking. If she was judging me, she had the courtesy to do so in silence.

  “Do you think what I did was wrong?”

  She laughed.

  “What?”

  “This is so like you. Remember that story about how Azar’il—the angel of death—was told that the dinosaurs had to go extinct so Adam could live on the planet, so he flung a meteor at the Earth, setting off a totally unplanned cataclysmic global ice age?”

  “Really?”

  “So, Jibril goes to him and demands to know what Azar’il thinks he’s doing. Azar’il turns to Jibril calmly and asks, ‘Why? Did I do it wrong?’ Remember that?”

  “No.” I frowned. “That’s new to me.”

  “It’s new to everyone. I just made it up. Anvar, you’re so awful at asking for help.”

  “I called you.”

  “For comfort and reassurance,” Zuha said. “That’s not asking for help. What am I supposed to say now? If I tell you there may have been a better way, it’ll just make me feel bad about myself and make you feel bad about yourself. It’s not fair.”

  I nodded. “So…what was the better way?”

  Zuha looked up, as if asking for divine aid. “Telling Agent Hale the truth. Given Azza’s circumstances, they may have let her actions go. She would’ve still been able to leave her father’s home, but she wouldn’t be on the run from the United States government. Also, the chances of you being in trouble with the Department of Homeland Security would have been zero.”

  “Too risky,” I said. “If the Feds hadn’t let it go, if they had failed to have mercy—which, you know, isn’t unheard of—Azza could have been in serious trouble. My priority was to protect her.”

  “Isn’t she in serious trouble now? But you’re right. Our priorities would’ve been different. I would have tried to protect you.”

  Zuha looked down and studied the steam rising from her coffee. The silence was long but comfortable and achingly familiar. It made me think of a trip, years ago, when my family had gone back to Karachi and I’d gotten a chance to walk through our old neighborhood. It was like I had found a piece of myself. I was surprised at how incomplete I’d been without ever realizing it.

  “Honestly,” she said eventually. “I don’t know what I would have done in your place. I do know that I would have called you a lot sooner than you called me.”

  “That wasn’t my decision to make.”

  “Azza wasn’t why you didn’t reach out. It never occurred to you to ask your parents or Aamir or me or other attorneys—anyone—to help you. That’s who you are. You’ve always believed your moral character is better than anyone else’s. You’ve always believed that you’re smarter than everyone else.”

  “My ‘moral character’ is good enough that if you had a sister, I wouldn’t have agreed to marry her,” I said before I could stop myself.

  I waited for her to hit back. She didn’t.

  “Sorry, I—”

  “No, you’re right. I should have said no at the very beginning.”

  “What was your plan, anyway?” I asked. “Marry Aamir out of spite?”

  “It wasn’t just spite. I mean, he’s a nice enough guy.”

  I snorted my disdain for that notion. “He’s a tool from Toolistan.”


  “If it wasn’t going to be you, then what did it matter who I ended up with?”

  “That’s just about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “Didn’t you just try to bite my head off for saying you thought you were superior to everyone?”

  “I said I was sorry,” I protested.

  “And I’m sorry I didn’t run it all by you first.” Zuha snapped her fingers, as if just remembering something. “Oh, wait. You weren’t around. The moment there was no sex in our relationship, you dropped me and ran all the way across the damn continent.”

  “Were you not there when you dumped me?”

  “I didn’t mean cut me out of your life. Walk by me when you see me in the halls like I didn’t exist.”

  “That is usually what happens when a couple splits up.”

  “We were more than that.” She looked up at me, her voice, her eyes, her expression, pleading for me to hear her, to understand her. “Weren’t we? You were my best friend. Then you were gone, without even talking to me, and the next thing I know, I hear about you and some other girl. Then another and another. I felt so replaceable.”

  I’d gotten to my feet at some point during the conversation.

  “That isn’t how it was for me.”

  “I loved you, Anvar.” She said it like it was a secret.

  It was not a secret, though. I refused to say it like one.

  “And I loved you.”

  “But you broke my heart.”

  “And I thought you broke mine.”

  That drew a sad laugh from her, like a bird with a shattered wing trying to take flight. “We’re ridiculous. You’ve got more important things to worry about.”

  “There’s nothing more important. Look, we messed it up, but we can start over. We can give each other a clean slate.”

  “Don’t be a child. There aren’t any do-overs. There is no clean slate.”

  “What then? You’re not going to marry Aamir and we’ll just go back to being strangers? Or you are going to marry him and we’ll pretend everything is fine?”