Mariam Sharma Hits the Road

by Sheba Karim

  “Sissy that walk!” Umar cried.

  As she started to sashay around the bed, Umar announced, “As-salaam alaikum, Brothers and Sisters. Our next queen likes to slay the infidels—on the runway, that is. She prefers it haram with her cherry on top. May I introduce you to America’s hottest new queen . . . Sharia Law!”

  Ghaz struck a pose, lips in a pout, one slender arm curved around her head, hip thrust forward, and we all burst out laughing.

  “Salaams, everyone, I’m Sharia Law,” she purred. “Every Republican legislator’s biggest wet dream.”

  “Work it, Sharia!” Umar said as Ghaz attempted an acrobatic leg split that ended with her splayed on her back, wincing.

  “That part of the act needs work,” Umar noted.

  I helped her up. “You’re obviously not going to go to IANA as a drag queen. So what, then?”

  “Think about it. What will no one expect the shameless naked billboard girl to be wearing?”

  “Versace,” Umar replied.

  Ghaz threw one of the bed’s silk cushions at him. “I’ll wear hijab! I don’t think anyone will recognize me then.”

  “Ah.” Umar nodded. “I see.”

  “So we’re really going to this thing?” I said.

  “Seriously, though, why do you want to go?” Umar asked Ghaz.

  “I don’t know,” Ghaz said. “To check it out. I’m curious to see what’s up. I haven’t been since I was little. I may be an atheist, but I’m a Muslim atheist. And I’d say Mars didn’t have to go, except I want company, since Umar can’t hang out with me.”

  “Can we discuss this further over brunch? I’m starvation nation,” Umar declared.

  We went to a breakfast joint across the street and had the most decadent brunch of my life: eggs Benedict po boys, stuffed French toast, bananas Foster. By the end of it, I was wishing my jeans waistband was made of elastic. If brunch was like this, I both anticipated and feared dinner.

  Back in the room, we began to get ready for the convention. As Ghaz rummaged through her suitcase, she let out a shriek, holding up a bottle of Big Bertie’s Hawaiian BBQ sauce she’d found amid her clothes. “Very funny, Umar!” she cried. “What if it had opened?”

  Umar grinned. “Meet the new face of Big Bertie’s distinctive BBQ sauce collection: Sharia!”

  Annoyed as she was, Ghaz couldn’t resist. “Big Bertie’s sweet and tangy Hawaiian BBQ sauce,” she said, caressing the bottle, “is guaranteed to get you lei’ed.”

  Umar and I groaned appreciatively.

  “You guys are clowns,” I said.

  “You love it,” Umar replied.

  He was right. I did.

  As Ghaz got ready, Umar and I lay on the bed, Umar searching Yelp for the best restaurants in town. I was impressed he could even read about food after the meal we’d consumed.

  “I can’t make a decision,” he declared, tossing his phone aside. “There are too many good places to eat.”

  “Hashtag firstworldproblems,” I said.

  Umar reached across me for the book on the nightstand. “The Brothers Karamazov. Hmmmm.” He flipped through the pages. “Not exactly a summer beach read, is it?”

  “My dad gave it to my mom a long time ago,” I explained. “I kept it out because I’m going to leave it in the guest lending library downstairs.”

  “Oh.” He gently flipped the book over so it was faceup on the bed, smoothing out its cover. “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’ve been holding on to it because I felt like it was a piece of him, but I don’t need to carry it anymore.”

  He nodded. “I really admire you, Mars.”

  I paused, waiting for a punch line, but there was none. “Thanks. If only Doug could say the same.”

  “Okay!” Ghaz cried, turning away from the mirror, one of Umar’s scarves, a pale gray cotton, covering her hair and pinned tightly around her face. “Does it look okay?”

  “Sister!” Umar exclaimed. “Masha’allah, you look so beautiful, so pure.”

  “Jazak Allah khair and shut the hell up,” Ghaz replied.

  It was true. I wasn’t sure about beautiful and pure, but she did look pious, and decidedly non-billboard.

  “I don’t like having my ears covered,” she said.

  “Can you hear okay?” I asked her.

  “What?” she said.

  “Can you hear?” I said, louder, and she started laughing.

  Aside from her gray hijab, she had on her doily funeral dress, a black cardigan, her long necklace of pearls, and her cheetah-print Converse.

  “You look like the long-lost Muslim cousin of the Addams family,” Umar told her.

  “Oh yeah? And you . . .” She studied him. He’d used a little gel today, his hair cresting like a wave over his forehead, and had on fitted cargo pants embellished with dark leather and brass zippers, a simple black T-shirt, his green-and-black checkered scarf. “You look like AllSaints and Odin New York threw up on a member of Hamas.”

  I didn’t get the reference, but Umar said, “Ha-ha.”

  “Hey—what about me?” I asked.

  Umar threw his arm around Ghaz’s shoulder and together they assessed me.

  Ghaz had told me to dress modestly, but my long-sleeved button-down now had stains on it, so I’d paired my jeans with one of Umar’s shirts, navy blue ikat with a Nehru collar. It hung loosely off my shoulders, hit unfashionably past my hips.

  “Try tucking your shirt in,” Umar suggested, so I did.

  “Now you look like a dyke,” Ghaz pronounced.

  “A dyke with excellent taste in menswear,” Umar said. “But yeah, untuck.”

  “Should I change into my other pair of jeans?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Umar replied, “did you also steal your other pair from the closet of Bilbo Baggins?”

  “Umar!” I cried. “That is not helpful. And is this an Islamic convention, or a fashion contest?”

  “Fashion contest,” Ghaz said.

  “What?”

  “Ignore her,” Umar said. “You’re right, you don’t have to be fashionable for this.”

  “Do I have to stay if I don’t like it?” I asked.

  “Don’t you know?” said Ghaz. “You have to stay until you’ve been converted.”

  Thirty-One

  DESPITE THE STICKY HEAT, New Orleans had this energy that made you want to eat, drink, dance. Everywhere you turned there was music, good music, playing in restaurants, bars, and hotel lobbies, audible from the street. It was even being piped out from the speakers at the convention center entrance, foot-tapping jazz greeting the hundreds of brown people making their way across the plaza.

  “Someone’s definitely going to complain about the music,” Ghaz said.

  “Really?” I said.

  “You can’t have a gathering of this many Muslims without a few buzzkills in the mix,” she explained.

  After allowing Umar a five-minute lead time, Ghaz and I headed inside. A huge banner stating Welcome to the 52nd Annual Islamic Association of North America Convention greeted the attendees. The lobby was crowded with people hugging, mingling, talking on their phones, taking photos. Most people seemed either desi or Middle Eastern, and the attendance spanned generations, from tiny infants to senior citizens stooped over canes. Scattered amid the brown were a few African Americans, some in traditional African dress. There were a couple of women who read as white, all of them in hijab.

  As we ventured farther in, I realized how few women were showing their hair. Nearly every woman, and even a few little girls, wore headscarves.

  “A lot of floral,” Ghaz observed, referring to the patterns of the loose, flowing dresses popular among the women.

  Many of the female attendees were dressed up. They’d chosen scarves to complement their outfits, and wore nice shoes, long necklaces, bracelets over their sleeves, eyeliner, mascara, lipstick, blush.

  And here I was, in baggy jeans and flip-flops and an oversize shirt and no makeup
except clear lip gloss, my hair exposed. I had hoped to be wallpaper, but I definitely stood out.

  As I contemplated making a run for it, Ghaz put her hand on my back.

  “Impressions so far?” she said.

  “Has hijab always been so prevalent?” I asked.

  “It’s become more and more popular since 9/11. Come on, let’s find a program.”

  We continued past rows of booths, some religious in nature, promoting sharia-compliant investments and VIP hajj tours and Muslim charities, others secular, the Peace Corps and Boy Scouts of America. Soon, we came upon the convention’s social epicenter, a Starbucks outlet in the center of an atrium. The line for the counter was fifty deep, the surrounding tables abuzz with chatter and laughter.

  “Hmmm,” I said, observing the scene.

  “What?” Ghaz asked.

  “The women, they’re in different styles of clothes and scarves, but all the young guys kind of look the same.” I gestured to a large table of guys to our right. “Medium build, brown skin, black hair, some with gel, wearing button-down shirts and trousers. That basically describes every one of the guys at that table.”

  “Guys tend to wear the same crap anyway,” Ghaz said.

  “Fine, but look at their faces. They all have short beards. Okay, on that one guy it’s more heavy stubble, but still. Why do they all have the same style of facial hair?”

  “Prophet Muhammad had a beard,” Ghaz explained. “So, I guess it’s, like, a nod to the Prophet, without growing it mullah-length.”

  “How long do we have to stay?”

  “We just got here! Are you really that uncomfortable?”

  “This is normal for you, but for me . . . we’re in a place where you and I can’t walk around wearing what we normally wear or even act like we’d normally act, and Umar couldn’t walk around holding hands with a guy. I’m not used to being anything but myself.”

  “You’re a rare brown bird, then,” Ghaz said. “Let’s at least get the schedule and see if there’s anything interesting. If not, we can bail.”

  “Hey look—there’s Umar.”

  He was at one of the tables drinking coffee with a few other guys, all of them with the same clean-cut, trimmed-beard look. Umar, with his clean-shaven jaw and hipster clothing, stood out a little.

  And so, for that matter, did Ghaz, with her doily funeral dress and striking features and statuesque figure.

  “Let’s go eavesdrop,” Ghaz suggested.

  “He’s not going to like that,” I protested, but she was already making her way toward him.

  Umar ignored us as we approached his table, stopping within earshot and pretending to be deep in conversation. A young woman in a bright purple headscarf joined them, saying, “Salaams, everyone!” After everyone had salaamed back, she declared, “Umar, you made it! Daanish told me you were driving all the way down here.”

  “Yeah,” Umar said.

  “How was the drive?” she asked.

  “Uneventful,” he replied, and Ghaz stifled a laugh.

  One of the guys asked the girl, “What do you think of the new Kanye drop? Right now we have four votes for awesome, two for lame, and one meh.”

  “Oh—I love that one track,” she said, and all of them immediately started singing it, one of them adding some impressive beatbox.

  After they performed a few lines, the girl said, “Did you guys hear there’s going to be a protest during the keynote? The keynote is some bigwig from US Immigration and people are going to protest the government’s deportation methods and policies. They’re making posters after Asr prayer. I’m totally going to do it, Insha’allah, it’s going to be great. You guys in?”

  “Hell, yeah,” said one guy.

  “Nah, my parents are here and they’d probably be upset,” said another.

  “What about you, Umar?” she asked.

  “Uh, maybe,” Umar told her.

  One of the guys said, “Hey, Umar, do you know those girls? I feel like they’re staring at us.”

  “Umar has that effect on women,” another guy said, and they laughed.

  Umar turned his head, shot us a what the hell are you doing look.

  “About that program,” I said, steering Ghaz away.

  You couldn’t get a program without a registration badge so Ghaz stopped a white convert and asked to borrow his. He was our age, with long blond hair and a long Jesus beard, dressed in a flowing white robe and tan leather sandals, like he’d wandered off the set of Monty Python’s Life of Brian.

  “Of course, Sister,” the white dude told Ghaz when she asked, putting his hand over his heart and bowing.

  Trippy.

  Ghaz returned with a program as thick as a magazine, listing over a hundred talks, panels, and workshops. I read over her shoulder as she turned the pages. Positive Thinking in an Age of Islamophobia. Muslim Women in Sports. Nurturing Spirituality within Marriage. How to Effectively Engage with the Media. Maintaining Your Faith and Focus in a Digital Age. Halal Capitalism. Collaborating Across Communities to Fight Racism. The Quran’s Most Beautiful Lessons.

  “Some of those sound pretty interesting,” I commented.

  Ghaz flipped to the next page. “How to Be a Zulaikha to His Yusuf,” she read.

  “For real?” I exclaimed.

  “You are so gullible sometimes! But Mars, look! There’s a panel called LGBTQ Issues and the Muslim Community. It’s in twenty minutes! We have to tell Umar.”

  Ghaz returned to the Umar’s table, standing several feet opposite and gesturing with her head for him to follow us. If Umar hadn’t already been regretting that we’d come to the convention, he surely was now.

  Umar excused himself and followed us to the escalator, waiting until we were all the way up before stepping on it himself. I found his theatrics a little ridiculous, but he clearly thought it was necessary.

  We convened in an empty corner on the third floor.

  Umar shook his head. “You guys couldn’t be subtle if your lives depended on it.”

  “Stop complaining and look at this,” Ghaz insisted, showing him the program. “A queer Muslim panel! Maybe this will give you the answers you seek.”

  “Wow,” Umar said. “I think this is the first time they’re addressing this topic.”

  “And maybe one of the panelists will be a hot, gay, college-bound kid who loves Allah, his lota, romantic walks, ice cream, and dancing in his bedroom with the lights turned low,” Ghaz breathed.

  “Um, I don’t want to date myself,” he objected.

  “That is exactly who you want to date!” she insisted. “You, but a few inches taller.”

  “Can we not talk about this here?” he protested. “I’ll get to the panel first, you follow. After it’s over, we can meet by that big jester statue in the lobby.”

  No one was checking badges at the door so Ghaz and I were able to walk right in. Only a few seats remained, but we managed to find two where we could have a good view of Umar on the opposite side of the aisle, where most of the men were. He had removed his scarf and was rolling it into a rope across his lap.

  I hoped this panel would help assuage his guilt.

  The panelists took seats behind a long table draped in black cloth. One was a chubby-cheeked desi man with a short beard, the other a woman whose hijab extended, hoodlike, several inches past her forehead.

  The moderator, a young woman in a canary-yellow hijab, began to introduce the panelists. The chubby-faced man was a sheikh, an Islamic scholar. The woman was a chaplain who advised Muslim students at one of the UC schools.

  “Queer Muslims who are super religious!” I said. “Umar will definitely find this panel useful.”

  “They’re not queer,” Ghaz replied, her voice low and stiff.

  “What?” I said.

  “They’re not queer.”

  “Are you serious?” That was like having a panel called Women’s Issues in Islam and having no women on it. Or a panel called African American Engagement with Islam with
no black people. How could everyone in this packed room sit here and act like this was actually okay? Part of me wanted to walk out in protest because this panel was already bullshit, but I wanted to be here for Umar, especially now that someone else was speaking for him.

  “I should warn you,” the moderator began, “that we will be discussing some sensitive topics relating to sexuality. So, if any of you will be made uncomfortable by it, you should leave now.”

  No one got up, not even the parents who had brought little kids, one of whom was walking up and down the aisle like he owned it, sipping on a juice box.

  “For those of you who don’t know what LGBTQ stands for,” the moderator continued, “it stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual, and Queer.”

  Except it was transgender, not transsexual.

  It was safe to say this was off to a bad start.

  Ghaz sang into my ear, “I’m just a sweet transvestite, from Transsexual, Transylvania!”

  “What?” I whispered.

  She sighed. “Rocky Horror Picture Show? Probably the biggest cult film of all time?” and then shut up because the sheikh began to speak.

  “As-salaamu alaikum wa rahmat ullahi wa barakatuh,” he greeted the audience.

  When the sheikh wanted to emphasize something, he both raised and deepened his voice and brought his lips closer to the mic so the words resounded across the room.

  “ISLAM,” he announced, “has NEVER had a problem with homosexuality.”

  Well, that was rather promising.

  “ISLAM has always accepted that a certain percentage of the population will be attracted to members of the SAME SEX,” he continued.

  It was interesting that he referred to Islam like it was a single thing, not a diverse religion with many sects and more than one billion followers.

  “There is NOTHING aberrant in this attraction! You can be attracted to members of the same sex and still be a good, OBSERVANT Muslim.”

  I glanced at Umar. He’d stopped rolling his scarf, was listening intently.

  “BEING a homosexual,” the sheikh continued, “is not a problem in Islam. We should LOVE and ACCEPT the homosexual as part of our community. However, there is a distinction between the homosexual PERSON and the homosexual ACT. According to all the Islamic scholars—and anyone who says otherwise is playing interpretative GAMES with the text that DEFY logic—what has been universally accepted by all legitimate scholars, what is stated in the Quran through the story of Prophet Lut, peace be upon him, is that to ACT upon your homosexual URGE is a sin. It is a GRAVE sin. So, homosexuals who wish to be good Muslims and avoid sin must fight the URGE to act upon their homosexuality.”