American Dervish: A Novel

by Ayad Akhtar

  “How are those brains doing, Doctor?” Souhef asked playfully as we approached the mosque steps. He stood above us, a cigarette between his lips, glancing at Nathan, then back at Father.

  “Fine, Adnan,” Father replied, curtly.

  “Mashallah,” Souhef responded, laying his right hand—which was bandaged—against his heart. I was surprised at the warmth of his gesture; I wondered if he had noticed Father’s coldness, or if he was just ignoring it. “So tell me, Naveed—are you any closer to discovering the secret of life?”

  “Didn’t know there was one.”

  “There is, brother. There is,” Souhef replied with a wry smile, drawing on his cigarette.

  “Guess we’ll have to wait until we can lay you out and figure out what’s going on in that brain of yours, Adnan.”

  “Won’t be worth your while. Nothing up there but air. Air and homesickness,” Souhef said, his mouth leaking smoke. He glanced at me, smiling.

  I smiled back.

  Just then, three men passed us. They climbed the steps, each placing his right hand on his heart to greet the imam: “Assalamulaikum, Imam.”

  “Valaikum-salaam,” Souhef replied with a short nod.

  The men stopped as they got to the top of the stairs, looking back at Nathan. Nathan nodded. “Assalamulaikum,” he said.

  Surprised, the men broke into bright smiles. “Valaikum-salaam,” they replied, lingering at the door. One of them nodded again, reiterating his greeting. Nathan repeated his own. The men nodded some more and finally went inside.

  I noticed Souhef studying Nathan intently.

  Father cleared his throat. “Adnan…I’d like you to meet my colleague at the lab, Nathan Wolfsohn. Nathan…Adnan Souhef, the imam here at the Islamic Center.”

  “Pleasure to meet you, sir,” Nathan replied, nervously offering his hand. The imam showed his bandaged hand. “Excuse me, brother,” he said, putting his hand to his heart instead.

  “What happened to your hand, Adnan?” Father asked.

  “I was fixing the sink. I hurt it.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “A nasty cut, Naveed. But it’s fine. It actually served as inspiration for me. For today’s khutbah…”

  There was an awkward pause as Father didn’t respond.

  Souhef turned to Nathan. “So what brings you to us, brother?”

  “I have an interest in Islam,” Nathan began stiffly, as if repeating something he’d rehearsed. “I have interest in your way, sir…in the way of submission as I understand it.”

  Father looked out at the parking lot, embarrassed. My gaze followed his. On the lot, the rows of parked cars shimmered and shook in the waves of heat coming up from the hot asphalt. The bitter odor of softening tar filled the air. “More people every time I’m here, Adnan,” Father said, turning back to Souhef. “You’ve got a good racket going…”

  “Racket?”

  “You know…operation.”

  Souhef stared at Father without replying. Father stared back. The tension between them was palpable.

  “If Allah is pleased, brother, then we are, too,” Souhef responded remotely, his lips closing around the filter of his cigarette as he pulled in more smoke. I noticed that though I was covered in sweat—and so were Nathan and Father—there wasn’t a sign of perspiration anywhere on the imam, not his face, not his hands. Souhef finally turned away from Father, exhaling. “Brother Nathan. Is your interest in our way curiosity or something more? I hope you don’t mind if I ask…”

  “No, I don’t mind, Imam,” Nathan replied, still nervous. “Umm—actually, to be honest, it started as curiosity. But the more I’ve learned about Islam…the more personal my interest has become.”

  “I see.”

  “I hope it’s okay if I’m here,” Nathan added.

  Souhef smiled. “Of course, you’re welcome to join us, brother. Just be sure to remove your shoes downstairs. Naveed will show you…and please take a place at the back of the room for the prayer.” Souhef took a final drag, smoking the cigarette down to its filter. “What’s your tradition, brother?”

  “Well…I was born into the Jewish faith.”

  I noticed a sudden feline glint in Souhef’s eye. “People of the book,” he said.

  “Thank you, Imam,” Nathan said.

  Souhef continued: “We all come from Ibrahim. Our Jewish brothers from Isaac. Muslims from Ishmail…”

  Nathan glanced over at me.

  “You know our Quran, brother, don’t you?” Souhef asked.

  “I do, Imam. I’ve been learning.”

  “Allah’s greatest miracle.”

  “Indeed.”

  “The very sounds of reality itself,” Souhef added in an impressive tone. “The great song of the atoms and molecules crying out Allah’s praise.”

  “The music of the spheres,” Nathan added eagerly.

  Father rolled his eyes.

  Souhef nodded, smiling, and tossed the filter to the steps. He looked as if he were about to go inside when he paused. A gaunt man in an ash-gray suit was making his way from among the cars toward us. It was Ghaleb Chatha. I hadn’t seen him since that December night more than two years earlier, when he’d explained the curse on the Jews. He looked different: his beard was thick and full now, covering most of his pockmarked face, and his gray, lifeless eyes were bigger than I remembered.

  “Brother Chatha,” Souhef said warmly. Chatha stopped alongside Father, pressing his eyelids shut and offering the imam a slow, deliberate nod. He turned to Father, repeating the gesture, but with noticeably less warmth.

  “Naveed. Good to see you here.”

  “Good to see you, too, Ghaleb,” Father replied, without much conviction.

  “To what should we attribute this honor?” Chatha asked. There was something mocking about his tone.

  “To my friend,” Father replied, turning to Nathan.

  “I’m Nathan. Nathan Wolfsohn. Colleague and friend of Naveed’s.”

  “Ghaleb Chatha, nice to meet you.” Chatha greeted Nathan as he had the others, with a hand to his heart and a gentle pressing shut of his eyelids.

  “Brother Chatha,” Souhef began, “Nathan is here with us today because he is thinking of coming to the faith.”

  Chatha’s blank stare brightened with surprise. He turned to Father. “Good work, Naveed,” he said, impressed.

  “Nothing to do with me, Ghaleb. If I had my way…”

  Nathan threw Father a sharp look. Father took notice, and paused.

  “I’m listening,” Chatha said. “If you had your way…?”

  “Well…we would be out on the water fishing right now…”

  Chatha’s surprise had already passed, giving way again to that blank, almost lifeless gaze. “Then it was Allah’s will that you didn’t have your way today. And so you have your friend here to thank for that…” Chatha looked at Nathan and smiled. “Welcome,” he said.

  Nathan brought his right hand to his heart and—​like Chatha—pressed his eyelids shut.

  Chatha looked down at me, noticing I was watching him. He smiled, his lips parting to reveal small teeth. “Pleased to see the boy here,” he said to Father.

  This time, Father didn’t reply.

  “Whatever your beliefs may be,” Chatha continued, “it’s so important to be teaching the boy about our way of life.”

  Again Father said nothing. Another group of men, about half a dozen of them, approached the steps. They muttered salaams to us all as they climbed to the entrance, gazing back at Nathan, intrigued.

  “If you’ll excuse me, brothers,” Souhef said, “I have to see about getting the sound system ready for the khutbah.”

  Nathan responded with a short, self-conscious bow.

  “I’ll join you, Imam,” Chatha added. “I still have to perform my wudu.”

  The two men went up the steps—Souhef gliding with a grace that belied his heft—and at the top, Chatha opened the door for him. Souhef disappeared inside. Chatha followed
. Once they were gone, Nathan turned to Father with a startled smile.

  “I don’t know what you’re so happy about,” Father grunted.

  “That imam. He is so self-possessed. And kind. Not like the other guy.”

  “They’re two peas from the same pod,” Father said. “And as for Souhef being kind…”

  “He was kind to me…”

  “Let’s just say that he’s smart. You’ve no idea what they’ll be saying about him if he can get you to convert. That Chatha will pour the money down his throat like champagne on New Year’s Day.”

  Nathan wiped his sweat-covered forehead. “You’re such a cynic, Naveed. You really have to work on that.”

  “Don’t worry about me. You get yourself ready. We’re heading into the Middle Ages.” Father nodded, indicating the group of women in head scarves gathered at the door to an entrance at the other end of the schoolhouse marked WOMEN. Through the waves of rising heat, their sheeted forms hovered, like specters in a mirage. There were about a half dozen of them, all looking at us.

  “What are they looking at?” Nathan asked.

  “What do you think, Nate?” Father answered.

  “Me?”

  Father nodded.

  Nathan smiled and waved. Spooked, the women turned away, floating to the doorway and disappearing inside.

  Father clapped Nathan on the back. “Like I said, Nate. The Middle Ages.”

  Downstairs, the chanting was under way:

  Allah hu akbar, Allah hu akbar, Allah hu akbar…

  la illah ilallah…

  We were in the shoe closet—an alcove outside the prayer room whose walls were covered with shelves of shoes—and the rumble of men’s chanting voices came through the prayer room’s double doors:

  Allah hu akbar, Allah hu akbar, Allah hu akbar…

  la illah ilallah…

  Nathan stared at the closed doors, listening as he removed his docksiders. Behind us, a pair of young men hurried down the staircase and quickly slipped off their shoes. They pushed open the double doors, and the droning chant sharpened, its song clearer, more forceful:

  Allah hu akbar, Allah hu akbar, Allah hu akbar…

  la illah ilallah…

  Nathan turned to Father, wonder in his voice. “What are they doing?”

  “Dhikr. They do it before the prayer.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Nathan said.

  Father nodded, peering into the room, a hint of moisture collecting at the corners of his eyes. “Yes, it is,” he said.

  The dhikr—or “remembrance”—was what I recalled most vividly from the few times I’d been to a mosque. Before the services, congregants assembled in the prayer room, and by the time there were six of them gathered, the chanting would begin, a simple hypnotic tune that cycled between two deep notes…

  Allah hu akbar, Allah hu akbar, Allah hu akbar…

  … until the final syllables trilled along an arpeggio of higher pitches…

  …la illah ilallah…

  …only to end with a return to the chant’s first note, completing the circle, and beginning it anew.

  The chant would gain breadth and volume as worshippers arrived and joined the choir. And as the numbers grew—from a handful to dozens, or even hundreds on a religious holiday—an ample sound would take shape, hovering over us—ringed and round, magical—like the angels the Quran claimed watched over all our human actions. There was something vast and ineffable about this bellowing in praise of the greatness of the one and only God, a vivid, sensate beauty—I felt it against my ears, along my back, inside my ribs—capable of bringing tears even to the eyes of a person as hardened toward his faith as Father.

  The prayer room was filled with a hundred men, their seated bodies swaying in unison as they sang. The room itself—dark and capacious, cavelike, a sometime basement cafeteria transformed now into a Muslim prayer room—seemed to bulge and tremble with the holy song. Nathan looked over at me, shaking his head lightly in disbelief. “It’s so beautiful,” he muttered again. I nodded. Seeing Nathan so moved by the dhikr, I felt something in me soften.

  I smiled. He smiled back, friendship in his eyes.

  Father took a deep breath, murmuring to himself as he led Nathan to a place at the back of the room. I went over to the shelf where copies of the Quran were kept. There was only one left. I took it, then made my way to an empty spot near the center of the room. Holding the Quran to my chest, I joined in:

  Allah hu akbar, Allah hu akbar, Allah hu akbar…

  la illah ilallah…

  Eager, I swayed as I chanted. But there wasn’t much dhikr left that afternoon. By the time Father had taken his place beside me, Imam Souhef was already settling in by the mihrab. Father laid his hand on my knee. When he did, I realized: Mine was the only voice still singing.

  Souhef hoisted himself onto the raised platform from which he delivered his sermons. Sitting cross-legged, he untied the bandage wrapped around his right hand, then fiddled with the microphone on the stand before him.

  “Testing, testing. Can you hear me?” his voice blared, rough and tinny over the loudspeakers mounted on stands. Grunts and murmurs of assent rippled through the room. Someone coughed. Souhef adjusted the mike again, releasing a painful flare of feedback. “Excuse me, brothers,” he said, playing with the cord, and adding with a chuckle, “And sisters, too.” (The women two flights up, crowded into a considerably smaller prayer room—listening to his voice over loudspeakers—had, no doubt, heard the feedback as well.)

  His palms open and raised before him, Souhef offered the brief invocation. Finished, he looked into the Quran open in his lap and began to speak:

  “Brothers and sisters, please, if you have a copy of our holy Quran, open it to Surah Al-Baqara, ‘The Cow.’ Verses forty and forty-one.”

  The rustling of paper erupted in the room as those with books searched for the pages. Souhef waited, his eyes trained on a distant horizon, or perhaps—I thought—on the newcomer, Nathan, who was sitting quietly against the back wall. Finally, there was silence again. Souhef looked down at the page, his eyes narrowed and gleaming, like polished blades. He began reading, his voice loud and lofty:

  O Bani Israel!

  Remember how I favored you.

  Fulfill your promise to Me. I will fulfill my promise to you.

  Of Me alone stand in awe!

  Believe in what I have given. Confirm the truth you know. Be not the first to deny.

  Do not give away My revelations for a trifling sum.

  Of Me alone be aware!

  An uneasy swell rose from the crowd. “Bani Israel” was the Quran’s way of referring to Jews. Father looked at me, a crease appearing on his forehead. He looked back at Nathan. I tried to do the same, but my view of the back wall was obscured by Ghaleb Chatha, who I was surprised to find sitting directly behind me.

  Souhef continued, casually now, as if pleased that his declamatory reading had gotten our attention:

  “Yesterday, my fellow Muslims, I hurt myself. While fixing my sink in the kitchen, I was using a wrench to open the pipe. The wrench slipped in my hand. My wrist slammed on the corner of the cabinet. There was blood. It was very painful…” Souhef held up the back of his right hand, which showed a long, ugly gash dark with dried blood. “The first thought I had when I felt my pain yesterday was about my son. He was singing in the next room, making noise on a cushion with a toy. The first thought I had when I hurt myself was that it was his fault. That his singing made me lose my concentration or something like that…And this was why I was now in pain…So I shouted at him. I told him to shut up!”

  Souhef was pointing at us, but he turned his finger and pointed it back at himself.

  “Of course, I was wrong. My injury had nothing to do with my son. He was just playing, singing a song, being happy. If the wrench slipped, if I hit myself, how could it be his fault? It was not. But I felt it was. And I have no doubt everyone here has experienced a moment like this sometime in their life…”


  Nods, grunts of fulsome recognition followed.

  “I thought about that moment for the rest of the day. About my feeling of pain. About the moment of injustice with my son. And I want to share some of the things I realized.” Souhef paused again, now shifting in place. “Let me describe what happened again, what happened in me in that moment, so we understand it better: Brothers and sisters, the pain I felt in that moment when the wrench slipped, this pain felt unjust to me. In that moment, I felt I was a victim. A victim of something I didn’t deserve. And in that moment, my feeling of injustice made me look for someone to blame. But the only thing I could find was my son…because he was the only one around. He had been singing, playing drums on his cushion. I heard this noise in the moment of my pain. And I thought that my pain was the fault of the noise he was making. I blamed him. I shouted at him. I told him to shut up.”

  Souhef gazed down at his son—who was sitting in the front row—and smiled warmly. “You must be asking yourselves: Why is our imam so obsessed with this event? So he made the mistake of yelling at his son? We all make these mistakes. It was wrong. We know it is wrong. We don’t need our imam to tell us…

  “But brothers and sisters, please be patient as we investigate this moment, as we look more deeply into it.

  “When I hurt myself with the wrench, I felt there was injustice in that pain. I wanted to know who was the cause of this injustice. But that is a false question. The real question is different: Why did I feel that this pain was unjust? After all, the wrench just slipped! It was an accident! There is no question of justice here!

  “The soul has its own logic, brothers and sisters. And we must listen very deeply to this logic if we are to understand anything about what Allah wills for us.

  “Because that moment was painful to me, I felt it was unjust. And it is a simple fact of my nature—of human nature—that I do not want to feel pain. Any pain. And it doesn’t stop there: Not only do I not want to feel pain…I feel I deserve not to feel pain. I feel I deserve better than pain, nice things like kindness, happiness, peace, pleasure…but not pain…