A Good Country

by Laleh Khadivi

  Most spoke Arabic, and many more spoke French. A few spoke German and a few spoke British English. Rez listened to the English testimonials and he got stuck on one, a tall skinny teenager with a faint mustache and patchy beard, who explained that he answered the call. He said his years in England had taught him to question himself, the smell of his mother’s cooking, his name, and his family’s customs until the questions turned into disgust, and he couldn’t stand the sight of himself.

  So I started doing drugs, you know, marijuana and some coke to fit in, to get by, and this took me further and further from the call. Alhamdulillah, my sister brought me to it, sat me in front of the computer, and told me which imams to watch, showed me what was happening in Raqqah, what was possible for us, if we wanted it. If you are watching this, you are lonely. Like I was, confused. Let me tell you what my life is like now. I have never felt so much respect. Now I have a purpose, first and above all to Allah and to my community and to a future of peace for all followers. I live in a city where I can make a good living and love a woman who honors me. Before my life was not my own. I lived under so much suspicion I was sure I had done all the evil they suspected me of. Now I am myself.

  He went on about the propaganda about the New Country in the media, the violence, the news of radicals and gangs of Muslims. Rumors. Don’t believe them. The western media is full of these rumors to distract us, to stop the rush of believers. This is the only place of peace I have ever known. God willing we will be victorious over the forces of Assad and begin our work to build new roads, new hospitals, new schools, and centers for the elderly. For this we need more brothers, more sisters, more devout hearts.

  Rez watched it again and was about to watch it a third time but his computer chimed and he saw a dialogue box open at the bottom of the screen.

  Hello brother. Hello sister. Are you interested in joining the Caliphate? My name is Daoud and I am here to answer your questions and provide you with any guidance you might need.

  Rez pulled back. It was like on porn sites or when he hacked into a movie site or got illegal downloads of music: pop-ups, text messages, Gchat sessions with people he’d never met. Those were easy enough to ignore, but this put Rez on edge. He stared at the question mark at the end of the sentence Are you interested in joining the Caliphate? Another line popped up beneath it.

  As-salaam alaikum. Don’t worry brother, I’m not a bot, just checking to see if I can help you out.

  Rez paused the video and looked out at the night. The moon dropped to another part of the sky and the pool was still and navy now. He closed the computer and went to sleep.

  He had rich dreams. First he was in the ocean, surfing a big day at Old Man’s, which was a medium day anywhere else. Other people were in the water but he didn’t know any of them and he surfed without competition or aggression. He had the good feeling in him, the dropped-shoulder, slack-jaw sensation of acceptance, of a life at the mercy of the enormous ocean, much greater, much truer, than his small self. In the warm water he let himself be swallowed, taken in. He paddled around the afternoon sea and watched the sun glint off the water and looked back at the hazy shore, in the dream as it had been so many times in waking life.

  He woke clearheaded and hard and ignored his desire and jumped from the bed into the shower and knew the time of thinking, of listening and waiting, was over. He dried his body and took a long look at himself in the mirror. The face they called a monkey yesterday. A face they called brother. A solid face. A face inherited from his father and from the father of his father and maybe even further back. The nose, the eyebrows, the eyes themselves, all part of long look through time, across lands and wars and bodies and oceans and love, and he dressed and put on shoes and left the empty house without knowing the time and walked in the direction of Fatima’s house, an hour walk at the least, his body light and ready, quick almost, in these first steps on the path of his own choice.

  31

  Maybe they enjoyed college. What they learned allowed them a good life.

  His father talked and drove, drove and talked, and Rez sat in the back, daydreamed, and ignored him while his mother sat in the front and did the same. They drove the windy roads up the highest hills of Laguna and the voice in the car told them where to turn in a patient and calm voice. His mother had dressed up and his father had put on a tie and Rez wore a clean polo and pants and school shoes but didn’t look in the mirror to make sure it all worked.

  The house, small and modern and expensive and made entirely of glass, was vaulted high up above the sea. When they stepped into the entryway, the ocean was everywhere beneath and ahead of them, like a new kind of ground. For all his years going to parties at the homes of rich friends, Rez had never felt this high, this much like flying. He waited in the line with his parents to meet the hosts, unable to take his eyes off the living room windows, the ocean huge, the line of the horizon closer somehow, the beams of the sun, long set, aimed up, dim and yellow into the dusky sky, just like a child’s drawing. All the surfaces of the house were stone and gray and angular and so were the hosts, architects, in their fifties, clean cashmere and linen, glasses without rims, white white smiles. They welcomed the incoming freshmen and their families with kind handshakes and sincere pauses over the foreign names, which they listened to and repeated before they pointed everyone in the direction of the drinks table, where a man in a crisp black shirt listened and poured and listened and poured.

  Rez’s father went first, made the introductions, Saladin, but you can call me Sal.

  And this is Rez then?

  The man looked at Rez with his hand outstretched, his soft eyes buried in the soft face. Rez put out his own hand.

  Reza actually.

  Please excuse me. Reza. Nice to meet you. Welcome, you and your family should make yourself at home. There are drinks there and a table of hors d’oeuvres in the dining room. Please.

  Thanks.

  Rez felt his father look at him for a long second and then move toward the drinks table, taking Rez’s mother by the elbow.

  The families, eight or nine of them, walked around and spoke to each other politely and Rez saw nothing hot about the girls and nothing interesting about the guys, who seemed preppy and a little straitlaced. He walked around behind his parents and overheard conversations and tried to open his eyes wide and friendly or lift his eyebrows or even smile when someone looked at him. The host and hostess, both class of ’78, gathered them in the living room, welcomed them, and explained why they were such devoted UC Berkeley alumni: it was responsible for their marriage, for their successful careers, their community of friends. Even though they had no children, their association with the school had given them such fulfilling lives. They were happy to answer any questions about campus life, freshman year, parent involvement, and participation in the Orange County alumni chapter, when the time comes. The room laughed politely and a few hands went up. Rez let his eyes wander to the ocean, let his mind drift. The sea was dark now, the sky a little less so above it, and in the far distance a few boats, an oil rig, the outline of Catalina. God’s view, he thought, this is how God must see things. But these people aren’t God, just rich. He felt himself grow frustrated that money could buy such magnificence, money and not devotion or commitment or a generous heart. His mother coughed gently next to him and he looked at her with the small paper plate neatly on her lap, her few hors d’oeuvres arranged in a line. Why was he thinking about God?

  Everyone asked questions, parents and freshmen, about the dorms and the commons and visitors and the Cal Bears and drugs on campus, and Rez grew impatient. Who cares? College was just like high school, except you didn’t have to go home every day and your mom didn’t cook for you. It was another controlled environment with expectations, rules, and achievements. His job was the same. Do well. Don’t embarrass his family and don’t strike out in any way that would draw attention. This exercise in college seemed like a pause, a trick. Rez raised his hand. The old man called on him.
r />   Yes, Reza?

  About student life, specifically services for Muslim students on campus. Is there a mosque? Are there halal foods offered? What sort of support is there in case of discrimination, harassment, you know, because of recent events?

  It felt good to bring it up, to make the room uncomfortable, and Rez kept his gaze and posture steady as students and parents shifted and throats cleared. Without looking Rez knew his father was staring at him, the heat of the look burning Rez’s cheeks and forehead, and he tried to keep from withering. The host admitted he did not know the exact details but was certain all religions were equally supported on campus. His wife spoke up.

  As you might know, Cal has one of the most progressive and accepting student bodies in the nation. It is a point of pride.

  Yes, Rez replied. Now they all stared at him. His parents, other parents, the students-to-be.

  Let me be in touch with student life and I will make sure to e-mail you more information. Does that work for you, Rez?

  Reza.

  Oh, I’m sorry, yes. Reza.

  Rez made sure to draw his lips tight in a face of dissatisfaction and responded in a cheery voice, Thanks. And I’m sure I’ll find out more when I get there.

  Hell to pay. Rez always liked that phrase, though no one he knew used it. For the rest of the evening he prepared himself: once they were in the car, there would be hell to pay. His father would probably drop his mom off and then drive Rez back to that abandoned dirt road in the desert and punish him one last time, for this one last fuck-up. But now they were still stuck at the polite party and Rez’s mom was talking to a tall woman about sculpture classes and she looked as lively and engaged as Rez had ever seen her, and in an instant he knew that if he left, if he went to Raqqah and became a man and started a new life from which he could never return, from which he would forgo the attachment to his mother, it would be all right, she would be sad, but she left her own family too, a long time ago.

  They drove home with the classical radio station on and nothing else. When the garage door opened, Rez’s father kept the engine on and told Meena to get out. Rez felt the little boy bloom in him and slumped in the backseat with the old fear and reminded himself only ten days more and this would be the last of these times.

  They drove south on Highway 1 until they got to an upscale supermarket. His father parked and they went into the store together and Rez watched him buy a six-pack of beer and some pistachios. Then they drove to the parking lot of a construction site, a future luxury hotel with views of the harbor and ocean, and Rez wanted to relax; the beer, the parking lot under bright lights, the proximity to home, read like signs that everything was going to be all right, no great violence would take hold of his father tonight. But his father was not a drinker, and Rez watched him grab the beers and step out of the car and he followed him with suspicion until they both leaned up against the hood with bottles in their hands.

  I always wanted to do this.

  Do what?

  Drink beer with my father. Do something with my father as a man, two men together, instead of a father and his son.

  Rez looked at his beer but didn’t take a sip. It had been weeks since he’d drunk or smoked.

  My father was strict. All the fathers of that world were. In this country you and I are allowed to see each other as people, not just who is in charge and who isn’t.

  Rez wanted to reject him, reject these words—for the whole of Rez’s life this man had been in charge, held the power of the fist, of the word, over the quivering soul of himself as a boy, as a teenager—but he could not, as his father then and his father now were two different people. Since the night in the desert, his father’s anger and violence had recoiled, pulled themselves back like a tongue, and Rez lived with a much meeker man who took the massacre in step, took the demotion at his lab in step, said nothing about Rez’s SAT scores or final grades and spent most evenings by himself in front of the classic movie channel, a dreamy look on his long thin face.

  You feel good about this next week? College? Moving out?

  Yeah. Great.

  You feel like yourself?

  Sure.

  Why did you ask the alumni to call you Reza?

  It’s my name, isn’t it? The one you gave me?

  His father looked out over the dark sea and then down into the hole of his beer bottle.

  You know that to be a Muslim in this country right now is not something to joke about?

  I wasn’t joking. A lot of my friends are Muslim.

  And they will have a hard time. They are having a hard time.

  And it’s not fair.

  No, it’s not. When I came to this country, I saw religion separate people. So many different beliefs, all against each other, and I thought, Why put my kid through this? This is going to make their life harder, not easier. We have Islam in our background, yes, in the way we eat or think sometimes, but it is not who we are. We are people first, then a family, and then Americans. That has served us very well.

  Rez kept quiet but his mind moved angry and fast. Has it? Has it served us well? Let you be a man who is spit on at the carwash? In public?

  He watched his dad take a long sip. It looked awkward, the way he held the bottle to his mouth, tilted his head far back instead of the bottle. Rez considered his father—maybe he’d never ever seen his true self, through the stress of his American self. Maybe at the rug seller’s house where he sat on the floor, comfortable in his skin, tongue, and thoughts, were the only times he let himself relax. Rez felt the anger seep away and his throat and mouth filled with a sudden sadness. For a second he wanted to tell his dad about this other country, where Rez and Arash and Fatima could live among brothers and sisters and make a state in their image, not at the mercy of money or the laws of people who dismissed them. To be in their own skin.

  It’s cool, Dad. It’s just something I’ve been thinking about. That’s all.

  Of course. This is a big change for you. Give it a week, once the classes and assignments start coming and you start soccer and meeting girls and friends, you won’t even remember this feeling now, you will be as solid as a rock. We are here and very proud of you. I am very very proud.

  Rez imagined himself not in one week but in two, or even three or four, not in college at all, but maybe in a distant desert, arrived in the New Country, welcome citizen with rights and responsibilities, no longer boy, no longer teen, but a good man with Fatima beside him, a good family to come. Rez looked at his father, and his father looked back, eyes warm and generous with love, and Rez had no armor, no argument against, and forced himself to swallow and straighten up and talk.

  Yeah, you’re right. In a few weeks I’ll be fine.

  I know it. Beginnings are bumpy. Look at me. I landed in this country and slept on the beach for a week! I took a chance, a single huge chance, and everything turned out fine.

  Rez blinked back the liquid in his eyes. For a moment, he was proud of himself too, many years the obedient son, not knowing who he was or where to go until told, now stepping into a new world, a foreign world, the chance at a bravery all his own. Rez took a sip of his beer and stared out at the open lightless sea.

  Yeah, you’re right.

  32

  The morning of the mosque visit he showered and dressed in a clean oxford shirt and ironed slacks and his mom asked, What’s the occasion? He told her lunch with Fatima’s parents and she said, That’s nice, and left him alone. Fatima laughed a little when she saw him.

  Fancy.

  Well. You know …

  They were both nervous and rode in silence down the 5 past small beach towns and the enormous military base, where Rez saw a line of tanks in the distance, rolling, on a military exercise. They drove through the San Diego suburbs and near the In-N-Out he’d stopped at with the apostles on the way to Mexico all those days ago. Rez felt a shake of embarrassment go through him and tried to change his thoughts and was glad when they pulled up to a clean white building with a
blue-tiled roof and a thin spire minaret. The Abu Bakr Masjid. The parking lot was lined with tidy tall palm trees and Fatima circled a few times before she found a spot.

  Busy.

  Friday prayer.

  She adjusted her scarf in the mirror and touched up the little bit of makeup she still wore, mascara, some blush.

  Remember, we are cousins. You grew up secular but your parents were born Muslim, they just don’t practice. And now you are curious about your religion, about Islam.

  That is true.

  It is?

  Yup.

  Her stare was long and flat and without any emotion Rez could easily read.

  He followed her down clean long hallways and watched as she greeted other women with Salaams and eager smiles. Rez did not recognize this happy public person. In all the years at school he’d never seen her smile in the halls, in class, at the assemblies, and now she glowed openly. All around him men and women did some variation of the same: saw one another, clasped hands, kissed cheeks, greeted each other with love. He stood a few steps away and she did not once introduce him.

  At the end of the hallway bright light shone through two separate doorways. Cubbies for shoes lined the walls and the sinks and towels were set up further beyond that. Fatima went to the door on the left and greeted an old black man whose prayer cap covered a bald head.

  This is my cousin. He is here to pray with us.

  Welcome, my brother. It is a good day. We ask that visitors sit in the back rows.

  Ok.

  The old man gestured for Rez to enter and he did but when he looked back Fatima was gone. He stretched his neck but there was nothing of her scarf or her shoulders. For a second he panicked, alone in the unknown world of belief, and stood in the entrance to the enormous room and watched men and boys sit down cross-legged and barefoot and quiet. And like the times before, Rez felt their powerful goodwill toward each other, toward him—the stranger—and he found a space against the wall and sat down and let his mind wander.