by Kyell Gold
He scowled at the Qu'ran quotation, but bowed his head. "I have not always behaved my best. Why bring this up now?"
Now Halifa rose. "Because we are at a turning point in our lives. I believe that you and I may part ways with the sale of this store and the changing of this block."
Aziz stopped, even his tail, and looked at her. She stood a little shorter than he, with a simple yellow dress and the brown-bordered scarf around her neck. Her fur, a darker gold than his, contrasted well with the dress. He saw her in that moment not merely as his wife, but as a lovely, independent cheetah with her own life, doing good where she saw the opportunity. He felt a rush of unworthiness. "'May'?" he said softly. "Is that what you want?"
"Is it not what you want?" she countered, and he bowed his head.
"I'm sorry," she went on, "that it took this long for me to speak my mind, that I waited. It was easier not to cause trouble, and both of you were so angry. I should have tried to reconcile you before now."
"No," Aziz said, not because it was untrue but because he didn't want her to bear the blame. "We would not have talked. Might not even now."
"You will eventually. The wounds are not as raw as they were three years ago, are they?"
"The scars are still there." His claws raked down his arm, parting the fur and stinging his skin.
"We can live with scars. I'm not saying you should forgive him for the things he said, nor that he should forgive you for the things you said." She held up a paw to still his protest. "I'm saying that those things are in the past. We can move forward from them."
"The Qu'ran, the hadiths, those are all part of the past, too," he said, and then recalled her quotation and softened his tone. "Should we move on from them as well?"
"Now you're just being argumentative," she said.
"Not at all." He faced her across the rug. "You want to keep the parts of the past that you like and throw away the parts you don't. But you don't get that choice. The world changes and moves on, and you can only keep what you can hold onto yourself. The things we hold onto from the past define how we move forward."
"Then why are you holding on to this anger against Marquize?" He flattened his ears at the name, as though she'd summoned his spirit. If she noticed, she ignored it. "I know what happened to your uncle. It was terrible and tragic, and you should not have been made to watch it. That also is a scar you carry with you--one you choose to carry with you."
"Choose?" The word burst out, Qu'ranic proscriptions forgotten. "You think I choose to have that memory? I would do anything I could not to see it again!"
"You choose to carry it. You let it define how you treated your son. You view it as part of the world instead of part of the culture in which we grew up, a culture we left behind. We live in a new place, with new customs, and that part of our lives is over, Aziz. Now we are moving again, and again you have a chance to change."
It isn't that easy, he wanted to yell, but this time he stilled his words before they could emerge. If he took her advice, if he thought through their situation, then what conclusion would he come to? Had he simply been accepting that part of his life and his history for all these years, not approaching it from a new perspective?
His uncle, his son--both were gone, but one was not beyond his reach. And what of himself in all this? If he reached out to his son, would he gain some understanding of himself and thereby some peace? He'd thought that simply living according to shari'a law, acknowledging his desires without acting on them, would be enough for him. But if he could accept his son's actions...
One thing at a time. He exhaled and stepped forward to take Halifa's paw. "If I wanted to read what you have been reading," he said, "where would I start?"
14
Semantic Reading
Armed with Halifa's readings, Aziz returned to the Devos Musjid Al-Islam the following evening. If anyone challenged him, he could say he was reading the scriptures to resolve some personal issues.
At the door, he paused. He could go pray in his store. But to run away from his community...that was what Marquize had done. He could prove he was stronger. So he pushed open the door and walked in.
Nobody challenged him. Those who met his eyes smiled and nodded in greeting. He didn't see the red fox at first, not until he had already washed and was kneeling for prayer. And then he lost himself in in the familiar, welcome words, reminding himself that he was part of the world just as everyone else, and that everyone had desires to fight and challenges to meet.
Afterwards, everything was as it had been. Aziz stood with the rest of the males, some talking, some examining the community board. The red fox was talking to two others, but not looking at Aziz, and then he broke away, and Aziz, on impulse, moved to intercept him.
"Oh," the fox said when he saw Aziz. "Salaam."
"Salaam." Aziz took a breath. "You were in my shop yesterday."
"Yes. You gave me a fair price." The fox wouldn't meet his eyes. "Is there a problem?"
"Whatever you might have...overheard," Aziz forced the words out. "Is my personal business. I'm reading scripture and searching for answers myself. Nobody else needs to know."
At that, the fox looked up and his eyes widened. "Sir," he said, "I would not presume..."
"You were looking at me," Aziz said before he could think to leave the situation alone. "And talking to a pangolin and another."
"I was telling them about your store." The fox gave an earnest smile. "Recommending they give you their business. I didn't say anything about what," he flicked his ears, "I might have heard."
"Oh." Aziz's ears flushed, and he bowed his head. "Please accept my apologies."
"No, no!" The fox reached out and took his paw. "I understand how it must have looked. I wasn't sure how to handle it."
"My name is Aziz." Aziz turned the grasp into a formal clasping of paws.
"Marris."
"Thank you very much for your referral."
Aziz released the fox's paw and turned to go, but the fox hurried up alongside him. "Would you step outside a moment?"
The cheetah eyed Marris warily, and then nodded and followed him out.
Others already stood on the sidewalk outside checking their phones in the warm Port City night. Marris took his out and gestured for Aziz to step a bit away from the crowd. "If you are reading scripture and you have questions, I know a group that might help."
"A group?"
"For people with questions about sexuality." The fox held his phone up and Aziz saw an address listed on it. "They're open to anyone with questions. I'm sure Mr. Samara would love to talk to you."
Warning signs forty years old flickered in Aziz's head. He looked around, but nobody was paying attention to them, nobody was watching to see whether he would accept the offer. He copied the address down quickly. "Are you...?"
"No, not me. But my sister had questions last year in college. She said they were very helpful. She still meets with them."
Aziz stared at the street name on his phone. "I don't know."
Marris put an encouraging paw on his arm. "Times are changing," he said. "You could still come to the Musjid here."
"If it survives the changes."
"As long as we are here, it will survive." Marris smiled. "And when we are not here, it will be wherever we are."
The address was deep in Cottage Hill, a half-mile past Founders, nearly to the other side of the neighborhood. Aziz walked past rainbow-flagged store windows and same-sex couples holding paws, but otherwise he would not have been able to tell that this was a gay community. The stores, small and bustling with cheerful clientele and clerks, looked very similar to the way he remembered Nassau Street in decades past.
Summer would not officially arrive for almost another month, but the streets steamed under the hot sun and it felt like the first day of the Port City summer. Bare chests and short skirts abounded, with sunglasses and one or two parasols to protect sensitive ears. Aziz liked the feel of the hot sun on his ears and kept them up
as he strode through the crowds of people out in the streets.
He'd worn a nice collared shirt, not as nice as the one he and Halifa had worn to the bank the previous day, but nice enough that he looked like a tourist in the busy Cottage Hill neighborhood, especially when he took his phone out to check the directions. But he didn't stop in any of the shops with signs up that showed where they'd been featured on TV, nor did he pause at the historic 1913 school building.
Ficus Street climbed the side of a gentle hill, and 299 was near the top. Aziz pushed his way up the pavement, panting slightly in the warm, humid air, and found himself in front of a two-story row house painted purple. There were no signs on it nor any indication that it was anything other than a residence, so Aziz checked the address again, and yes, that was right.
At the door, he found the name "SAMARA" on the listing and pressed the doorbell for it. A moment later, a short lion--young, his mane just coming in--answered the door. Aziz frowned. "Mr. Samara?"
"That's right. I'm Bakr. You're--oh, Aziz?"
"Aziz Alhazhari, yes."
"Oh, come in, come in!" Aziz followed the lion in and saw as he approached that the mane was not in fact coming in, but had been shaved down to a half-inch or so.
Bakr showed him into a small room with a Persian rug next to a fine polished coffee table bearing an ornate silver tea service, surrounded by a green couch and pair of armchairs with shiny worn patches on the arms. Around the room were landscapes of sand dunes and a family portrait of six lions of varying ages, as well as a delicately-crafted birdcage painted white, hanging from the ceiling, and a fireplace that smelled lightly of wood smoke.
"Does the smoke bother you?" Bakr said anxiously. "I can light incense."
"No, I'm fine, thank you." Aziz rested a paw on the green armchair closest to him.
"Please, have a seat. Tea?"
The mint smell overwhelmed everything else once he sat in the chair. "Please."
Bakr poured out two cups and then sat. "So, you said in the e-mail that you have a gay son...?"
"Yes."
The lion waited politely for a moment and then said, "Sometimes it's easier if I start by talking about the group here, and then you can talk to me about anything you like." Aziz nodded, and the lion settled back. "Officially we're the Cottage Hill Muslim Society, but online we're Queer Muslims of Cottage Hill. I keep wanting to make us Queer Muslims of Port City, but everyone says there are other groups, even though none of them is really well organized. Anyway. The point is, we're not a mosque or anything, though we do pray together often. We're a support group and a discussion group. We talk about the words of the prophet, peace be upon him, and we talk about our homosexual experience within our faith. We don't have any parents of gay Muslims, but I want to make sure we're welcoming to all."
"Peace be upon him," Aziz murmured in response. When Bakr looked expectantly at him, he said, "My son...three years ago he walked out of our house. He said he was gay, and we'd known that, but I had told him that the Qu'ran instructs us to accept the urges and never act on them." He sighed. "But Marquize was always wilful, and Islam never meant to him what it does to me and his mother. He told me that our faith was an archaic remnant of an ancient civilization, used all over the world to oppress freedom and hurt people."
"Ah." Bakr nodded. "We hear that a lot, but usually from outsiders."
"And," Aziz went on, "he told us that he'd been acting on his urges. That he had a boyfriend and had been engaging in...in relations with him."
"That must have been very hard."
"It was. I didn't handle it very well."
Bakr sipped his tea. "For him as well, I mean."
"What?"
"To tell you, his father, whom he respects more than anyone in the world, that he's betrayed such an important element of your faith? To lash out at your faith, something so important to you? He must have been very frustrated."
Aziz breathed in the smell of mint, his irritation growing. Perhaps this had been a mistake. "He never respected our faith."
The lion inclined his head. "It sounds as though he was using your faith as the sharpest weapon he could. People lash out when they're afraid; the worse the lash, the greater their fear."
"That doesn't change the fact of what he said."
"No, but it helps you understand why he said it."
"I know why he said it!" Aziz's paw trembled; he set the tea cup down. "He's always resented our faith. Never wanted to be a part of it."
"Maybe that's because he felt rejected by it."
"How could he? He never gave it a chance!"
Bakr nodded. "Did you ever ask him how early he felt these 'urges'? Ever talk to him about them, or seek answers in Islam for them?"
Aziz shook his head, slowly. The lion sipped his tea again and then set down his cup as well. "Let me tell you my story. I knew I was gay from the age of thirteen. I also knew that most of those who practice my faith wouldn't allow me to be myself in it. Like your son, perhaps, I thought at first that I could be myself simply by refraining from acting on my desires. But as I grew older, I felt that that contradiction was not consistent with the fundamental philosophy of Islam. So I studied modern works. There are people who believe that the stories used to condemn homosexuality have alternate meanings, that it may have a place in Islam. After all..." He spread his paws and smiled. "It's love, is it not?"
"It's lust. Desire." But even as he spoke the automatic response, he remembered the tape, the embrace between Benjamin and Gerald.
The lion's eyes softened. "It's more than that, Mr. Alhazhari. It's our identity. It's a connection between two souls." He curled the fingers of one paw over those of the other. "The purpose of our making is to find joy in the way our Creator made us."
"The Qur'an says these desires are to be ignored." He felt stupid saying that over and over, as though it were a rock he clung to on a cliff while the lion extended a paw to help him up.
Bakr tilted his head curiously. "It doesn't actually say that. I have a book you can read that goes into exactly what the Qur'an and the hadiths say. There are many readings, and some people use their readings to justify persecution of homosexuals. But there are other readings, and if you read the books with love in your heart then you can find love in those scriptures as well."
Anger rose again, but Aziz quelled it. He was a guest in this lion's house. "That seems facile. You can't just read scripture to get the answer you want from it."
"No, of course not. But that applies to both sides. Here's an example. In the story of the Prophet Lut, peace be upon him, the people of Sodom are punished for their transgressions." Bakr held up a paw. "They wanted to rape the angels disguised as men. Some people say that their transgression is homosexuality. But a scholar has written that the transgression is their aggressive, violent nature. Do you see how it could be read either way?"
"The word 'sodomy' in English comes from that story."
"A Christian derivation." Bakr smiled.
Aziz stopped and shook his head. "It still feels like you're making up justifications to do what you want to do."
"I'm studying a holy text to determine how to be the best person. Isn't that what our religion is about?"
Bakr's smile felt sincere and warm. Aziz's fingers curled in on themselves, tightening. He forced them to relax and open. "There are rules to follow."
"Of course. But not everyone agrees on them. Love, though; don't you think that's worth it?"
He was twelve again, standing in a hot, smelly crowd of people jumping and cheering. "My uncle." His breath came ragged. "Back in Madiyah. They threw him off a roof."
Bakr's smile vanished. He reached out a paw, then drew it back. "I'm so sorry."
The crowd around him chanting. His own dread, wondering why he didn't feel the same joy they did, trying with all his will to view his uncle as a sinner, his death a good thing. "My father took me. He made me watch."
"Your uncle was gay?"
"No!" The word
exploded from him. "No! He had a friend--the son of Umar Surur, an important minister. The son, he was--he was homosexual. He seduced my uncle--made my uncle touch him." His imagination had supplied all kinds of vivid details at the time. "But my uncle wasn't--he was married, he loved his wife. He was killed as an example. As a warning to--" To the twelve-year-old who had begun to notice the bodies of the boys around him. "To all of us."
The lion bowed his head. "That's horrible."
"And you're saying--you're saying he died for nothing. That all those people who believed he was a sinner, who believed they were doing the right thing, who raised me, who gave me and Halifa money to come to this new country and helped us start a new life, that they were all wrong?"
Bakr looked steadily at him. "Forgive me," he said slowly, "but do you think they were right?"
It was a strange sensation, feeling the buried doubts surface after forty years. Grief and regret swelled in his chest and throat. "I--" He brought his paws to his muzzle.
"You were young." It was almost a question. Aziz didn't contest it nor respond, and Bakr went on. "You accepted what was presented to you. Those laws, those demonstrations, they were all to push someone else's reading of scripture onto you before you had a chance to read yourself and form your own opinions."
Still he couldn't speak. Bakr rose and returned with a small box of tissues, which he set on the table. That gesture, as kind and hospitable as it was, allowed Aziz to regain some measure of control. "I'm not going to cry," he said stiffly.
"This was just in case." The lion smiled. "I have talked to many people in your situation, having to rethink and reconsider the beliefs they thought were a solid foundation of their world."
Aziz shook his head. "I can't turn back to when I thought it was horrible and cruel rather than just. Those tracks are old and worn."
