Laughing All the Way to the Mosque

by Zarqa Nawaz

  I dumped some blended curry chicken into a bowl, to the percussion of tiny fists pounding on the high chair tray.

  “I’m hungry!” Maysa repeated as she greedily grabbed the bowl.

  This phone call needed my attention but so did two children who wouldn’t care if I’d just won an Oscar. They were hungry. I heard an exasperated sigh on the other end of the phone.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, feeling that I was missing something.

  “You do realize that thousands of people apply for this coveted spot. This is an incredible honour.”

  “I’m really honoured. Really, I am,” I said, feeling guilty as I spooned curry chicken into Maysa’s mouth. But I don’t think I sold my enthusiasm.

  “You forgot to put your address and phone number on the application form,” he fumed. Oh.

  “How’d you find me?” I asked, amazed.

  “I phoned every Nawaz in the greater Toronto area and finally found your brother in Burlington. He gave me your number.”

  “It’s a good thing I kept my maiden name.” I switched Inaya to the other breast.

  “Yes, that was very kind of you.”

  Maysa spit out her food. “I worked hard making that,” I chastised her.

  “You could have fooled me,” said Mario.

  “Really, I blend curried chicken with lentils. It’s the only thing she’ll eat,” I said, indignant. “Oh! I forgot to add the lentils.”

  “I was talking about your film.”

  I paused as I dumped both curries back into the blender. “Wait, you’re saying my film is … bad.”

  “Those were not my exact words,” said Mario.

  “So what did you mean by ‘you could have fooled me’?”

  There was a three-second pause. Enough time to add some butter to my concoction and absorb what he had just said.

  “There are going to be filmmakers out there,” he finally said, “who are going to say, ‘My technically perfect film was rejected for this.’”

  I felt my face flush. I was officially offended.

  “What do you mean by ‘this’?” I said as I fed Maysa her improved curry baby food. Inaya detached herself from my breast, seeming drunk with milk.

  “It wasn’t exactly professional, was it?”

  “It was a student project,” I said, feeling a little defensive.

  “Let me rephrase then. There are students out there who are going to be upset that their technically perfect film was rejected so your film could be accepted.”

  “So why did you accept it?” I started to burp Inaya, who suddenly vomited a gusher of milk onto me. I was drenched. And a little devastated.

  “Because we’ve never had a submission that dealt with your topic before. We judged it on originality, not technicality. Despite its … shortcomings, it seemed to resonate at a certain level.”

  I tried not to take the criticism personally. It had been a shotgun film.

  “Think of a simple subject where you can make a quick five-minute film,” Terry, our instructor at the Ontario College of Art, had told us. “Remember, you’re not making a feature. You have to be able to finish it in one afternoon. You have forty-eight hours to come up with a concept, write it and pull everything together before you start shooting.”

  I was feeding Maysa her breakfast at my mother’s house, where I was staying during the course. As I looked at that morning’s Toronto Star, I noticed a row of black and white photographs: Muslim suspects who had been arrested for the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

  “Why would Muslims do such a horrible thing?” I wondered as I undid Maysa’s high chair and let her out. “Innocent children died in that attack.”

  She toddled towards my mother. “We don’t know the whole story yet,” she said, pulling Maysa onto her lap. “You become despondent so quickly.”

  “They wouldn’t be pulling Muslim suspects off of planes if there wasn’t any evidence,” I replied. “They must know something.”

  “Give people a chance,” said my mother.

  I was skeptical of my mother’s goodwill. The next day they arrested Timothy McVeigh.

  “See,” she said.

  “This makes no sense,” I replied. “How do you arrest people who bear no resemblance to the person who actually did it?”

  “Perception can be a powerful thing,” she said.

  I had found the perfect subject for my short film. Muslims certainly aren’t completely innocent of all wrongdoing, but what happens when we are? I was going to examine how strongly held stereotypes can colour people’s attitudes. I quickly wrote a script about two Muslim brothers who are asleep when a bomb explodes in their backyard. The neighbours turn against them and accuse the brothers of being Middle Eastern terrorists, even though the brothers have never been to the Middle East. Despite their innocence, they’re thrown into jail and left there. The real terrorists are two men from the Barbecue Anti-Resistance Front—BARF for short. The guys from BARF go around blowing up barbecues to bring attention to the cause of pollution in the environment and cannot believe their bad luck: Having chosen a barbecue owned by Muslims, they can’t get any attention.

  “Are you going to hire actors for the film?” asked my mother.

  “There’s no budget. I’ll just get volunteers. It’s how Steven Spielberg started.”

  “I don’t think it’s that easy to find people,” she said skeptically.

  “You’d be surprised at how many people secretly want to act.”

  “Use relatives,” said my wise mother. “They have to work for free.”

  I called up Muzammal to play one of the two brothers.

  “I don’t really have a lot of time right now,” he said. “Jawad and I are training for a kickboxing fight.”

  “Bring him,” I replied. “He can play your brother.”

  “But we don’t really look like brothers.”

  “Doesn’t matter. You’re both brown so it’ll work.”

  “I don’t know, we have a tournament in two days …”

  “Ummi says you have to help me.”

  “Fine, but you only have two hours.”

  “You should try the mosque,” said my mother. But I needed white people, so I decided to try my luck with the neighbours. A burly-looking man was cutting his lawn across the street, so I went and introduced myself. His name was Bret, which he had helpfully tattooed in large script on his forearm.

  “How’d you like to be in my film?” I asked.

  “No one’s ever asked me to act before,” he said. “It doesn’t require any nudity, does it?”

  “It’s not a porn. It’s about Muslim stereotypes. I’m looking for someone to play a police officer.”

  “Like Bruce Willis in Die Hard?”

  “Exactly like Bruce Willis,” I replied, never having seen any of the Die Hard movies.

  “Cool. You could make a porn with the same title.”

  “Again, I’m not making a porn,” I replied, wondering if I should have gone to the mosque like my mother told me.

  “Do I get a real police officer costume?”

  “Of course.” I mentally noted that I would need costumes.

  “Can you get me the kind where the pants rip off?”

  “You’re a police officer, not a stripper. But I may only be able to afford the hat,” I said. “We’ll just shoot you from the neck up.”

  A few doors down, an elderly man was playing checkers with his grandson on the porch. I introduced myself and explained that I was making a visionary short film that focused on the delicate balance of race relations.

  “Can my wife be in your movie, too?” asked Tom when I offered him the coveted role of Neighbour #1.

  “Sure. The more the merrier.”

  “And my grandson. He’s staying with us while his parents are vacationing in Cuba.”

  I looked at the little boy. He seemed excited by the idea of being an extra.

  “They can all be in it,” I
replied. I needed a crowd scene for when the barbecue blows up.

  “Are you supplying costumes?” asked Tom.

  What was it with the costumes?

  “I love what you’re wearing now,” I said, staring at his slacks. “Did you buy those at Hugo Boss?”

  “No, Value Village,” he replied.

  “We can’t compete with that. Would you be willing to wear them for the shoot?”

  He agreed, and after a few more uneventful recruitments I had just one role left: the reporter. I was getting a little desperate and contemplating the idea of my mother in pale face powder when I spied a woman coming home from work.

  “Excuse me,” I said.

  “Oh, I’m happy being a Christian,” said the woman as she unpacked groceries from her car. “But I heard that a Moonie family moved into number fifty-five—maybe they’d be interested in converting.”

  I realized that I had a script in my hand.

  “Oh no, I’m not a proselytizer,” I replied. “I’m a director casting for a film, and you’d be perfect for the role of the reporter.”

  “Really, me?”

  “Yeah, the moment I saw you, I knew,” I said, since what I was looking for was someone who had a pulse and both eyes aimed in reasonably the same direction.

  “I always wanted to act, but my mother discouraged it,” she said. “She said I needed a real job because actresses have to sleep their way to the top.”

  “Well, you don’t have to have sex with me to get this role. Plus I’m terrible in bed.” I didn’t really know why I was going down this road.

  “I could teach you a few things,” she said.

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” Beggars can’t be choosers. “See you tomorrow afternoon.”

  I returned home triumphant.

  “Did you find enough people?” asked my mother.

  “Yep. But you have some strange neighbours.”

  “They’re all white. What do you expect?”

  “Do you think that Aunty Noreen would let us shoot the film in her house?”

  “What’s so great about her house?” asked my mother, rather snidely.

  “What do you have against her?” I regretted the question immediately.

  “She buys store-bought samosas and passes them off as her own.”

  “Well, samosas are hard to make,” I said, trying to appeal to her sense of practicality.

  “And once she gave me a bag of her old shalwar kameez as if I’m some sort of charity case. But the worst was when she gave your father her homemade mango chutney. That’s too fresh if you ask me.”

  “But her house is amazing,” I said. “It’s full of antiques and hardwood. The more expensive the house, the more expensive the film looks. It’ll seem like we had a budget.”

  “I doubt the antiques are real. They’re probably replicas made in China, like her samosas.”

  “Please just call her,” I begged my mother.

  Two hours later, we sat on an overstuffed chintz sofa in Aunty Noreen’s perfectly appointed living room as she served us suspiciously perfect samosas on fine bone china. My mother gave me a knowing look.

  “Of course you can use my house, darling,” said Aunty Noreen. “What are friends for?”

  “You’re the best, Aunty,” I said, as the final piece in my film fell into place.

  Aunty Noreen picked up my script from the coffee table.

  “You know I got the lead for a big Bollywood film shooting in my hometown when I was just eighteen years old?”

  “Really? I didn’t know you were a Bollywood star.”

  “It fell through. My mother arranged my marriage for that very weekend and I had to back out. I would have been bigger than Aishwarya Rai,” said Aunty Noreen.

  “I’m sure Aishwarya couldn’t believe her good fortune,” said my mother sarcastically, sipping her tea. Aunty Noreen ignored her.

  “If you wanted, I could play the brother, except of course I’d be the sister.”

  “You’re just a little bit …” I didn’t know how to be diplomatic about her age.

  “You can play the grandmother,” said my mother as she dunked a biscuit into the tea. “Sorry, I spoke too soon, you’re not the right age for the grandmother. Great-grandmother would be more appropriate.”

  “Do you want my house or not?” said Aunty Noreen, ignoring my mother.

  “I guess—”

  “We don’t want your house, you wrinkled old roti,” said my mother, slamming down her cup. “And these samosas aren’t even full of meat, they’re full of dried-up peas, like your house.”

  “Let’s not be so hasty,” I told my mother. “Or so mean.”

  “Your mother’s never been able to afford hardwood,” said Aunty Noreen. “It’s only ever been shag carpets for her.”

  “Your hardwood is the reason you need knee replacements,” retorted my mother as she dragged me out the door.

  “We’ll use my house,” she said on the way home. “Not every film needs a fancy house. Look at the house in Jungle Fever.”

  “That was a crack house,” I replied.

  “And my house is much nicer,” said my mother. “So stop complaining.”

  “Action,” I yelled the next afternoon.

  “Do we get to rehearse first?” asked my brother.

  “No, we don’t have the time,” I said. “Bret needs to get back to his bartending gig in about twenty minutes so we have to hurry. Plus we only have enough film for one take. Action!”

  Jawad and Muzammal stood outside my parents’ house in their shalwar kameez, frightened by the crowd of neighbours gathering around them. It was a Muslim witch-hunt.

  “Islam means peace. We have to pray five times a day—we don’t have time for violence,” Jawad told the reporter.

  “Damn those bloody camel jockeys. We should never have let you into this country,” said Neighbour #1 in a stunning turn that would have made Meryl Streep proud.

  “We should cut off your ears like they do in Saudi Arabia,” said Neighbour #2 while slapping his hands emphatically on his pants.

  “No, no, we cut off hands, but we have very strict rules for that. For example, if a thief stole because they were hungry …,” said Muzammal.

  The actor playing Neighbour #4 turned around.

  “I’m really not feeling it,” she said.

  “Don’t stop to analyze the script,” I yelled. “We don’t have the time.”

  “I can’t do my best work if I’m not given context.”

  “But you don’t have any lines,” I said, flabbergasted.

  “Does Saudi Arabia know you’re making fun of them?”

  “I’m not making fun of them, I’m making fun of the whole issue of cutting off hands.”

  “Actually, I’m giving it context,” said Muzammal.

  “I have to get back to work in fifteen minutes,” said Bret.

  Now I knew how Spielberg felt.

  “Your actors were a little wooden,” said Mario.

  “The neighbours,” I said. “Yeah, Bret ended up bailing on me so we had to use Neighbour #3. And I had to give the reporter role to Neighbour #4 to get her to stop analyzing the script.”

  “They weren’t real actors.”

  “Did you think they were?”

  “I just thought they were really bad.”

  “I had a day’s notice to pull the whole thing together,” I said. “According to my instructor, no one’s ever finished the assignment before.”

  “Congratulations on being the first.”

  “Do you think I should submit it to the Student Academy Awards competition?”

  “No.”

  “You’re a little judgmental,” I said, trying not to feel discouraged.

  “Actually, I’m a realist. So are you coming to the festival? Because believe it or not, we have press who would like to meet you.”

  I looked at my girls. Maysa was two and not yet toilet trained, and Inaya was still being breastfed. It wasn’t the greate
st timing, but then it never really would be.

  “I’ll be there.”

  Sami came home from work. I was upstairs, with Inaya in the crook of my arm, looking at my maternity wardrobe and trying to figure out if there was something appropriate for a film festival. Maysa sat nearby on the toilet, refusing to expel anything.

  “You smell terrible,” he said. “Like curdled milk.”

  I had forgotten to change my clothes. He held Inaya as I peeled off my shirt. I told him about BBQ MUSLIMS getting into the film festival.

  “But I won’t be able to come with you to Toronto,” he said. We were moving to Calgary, where Sami would be starting a psychiatry residency. He couldn’t take time off. “How are you going to handle two kids alone?” he asked, worried.

  “Who said I’ll be alone?”

  I called my mother.

  “Guess what?” I said.

  “You’re coming for another visit.” A year ago, I had stayed for two weeks with Maysa in tow, making and editing BBQ MUSLIMS. She had kept Maysa busy while I was busy. And now I would be back with another baby. She knew the routine by now.

  “I miss you and really want to see you,” I said.

  “Don’t give me that,” she said. “This is work-related.”

  “My film got into the festival. I just need to come for two screenings in September.”

  “Is Maysa potty-trained yet?”

  “Of course,” I lied.

  “And Inaya drinks milk from a bottle?”

  “Since the day she was born.”

  In September, I flew to Toronto with the girls the day before the screening. I pumped as much milk as possible and stored it in the fridge.

  “Don’t be long,” said my mother as I left.

  I was ushered into a theatre with five other filmmakers whose films had been put into the same group as mine. The theatre was small but seemed opulent. There was tea and coffee in urns that looked like they were made of gold and silver. I was carefully pouring myself an Earl Grey when someone came up behind me.

  “You made it,” said Mario, a suave-looking man with a well-manicured goatee and a black Italian suit. He shook my hand and gave me a badge to wear so I could access the other screenings.