by Ayad Akhtar
“Did you ever see each other?” I asked, not realizing—until Nathan didn’t reply—that the question might have been a delicate one.
He stared at me for a long moment, his eyes full, still, unblinking.
Just then, the Arabic music playing over the speakers stopped, revealing a mosaic of sounds underneath: spoons stirring porcelain mugs, the quiet talk between patrons, the beeping of the cash register downstairs. The sudden absence of the music felt naked, revealing. Nathan looked away, taking a sip of his coffee. His gaze was covered with a thin, wet film of what seemed to me like longing and regret. I wanted to ask him again if they had seen each other, but I didn’t.
All at once, the music returned.
“I should get going, Hayat,” he said, checking his watch. “I’m glad we ran into each other.”
“Me, too.”
“You want this?” he asked, indicating the piece of baklava before him. “It’s great. They make it with orange blossom water here.”
“You don’t want it?”
“Kind of lost my appetite.” Nathan got up and reached his hand out toward me. I got up as well. “Good luck with everything. And you know, if you want to get in touch with me sometime, I’m at Mass. General. In the radiology department now.”
“Okay. Thanks…Um, Nathan, you know…There’s something else I should tell you …”
He held up his hand, looking at me with what felt like knowing tenderness. “Whatever it is, Hayat, don’t worry about it. It’s okay.” He smiled. “Good luck at the Atlantic. I’ll be looking out for your name.”
“Don’t hold your breath,” I replied.
He turned and walked to the railing. After a last, lingering look, he went down the steps.
I sat upstairs at the coffeehouse a little while longer, finishing the baklava Nathan had left me. I was stunned that he and Mina had stayed in touch. And I sat there revisiting Nathan’s pregnant silence around whether he’d ever seen Mina again. I wanted desperately to think that he had.
I packed my pad and pens into my bag and got up. As I made my way down the steps to the street, I felt awake. Outside, a brisk March breeze blew, sharp against my face. Instead of heading for the subway to return home, I turned to walk toward the river. I wove my way through the campus buildings and the old homes lining Brattle Street and Mount Auburn, an ease in my body as I moved. The alertness I was feeling tingled even along my limbs, and the ground itself—strong and solid beneath my feet—seemed different to me.
As I walked with the wind, verses from the Quran I’d not recalled or thought about for more than ten years echoed inside me, unbidden:
Have We not opened your heart
And removed your burden?
Have We not remembered you?
Truly, with hardship comes ease,
With hardship comes ease!
And so when you are finished, do not rest,
But return to your Lord with love…
I crossed the road at the river’s edge and found a bench along the joggers’ path. The Charles River was thick and brown, full from days of rain, its surface rolling and choppy in the breezy day. The trees across the river were bare. The ground around me was covered with brown grass only recently showing from beneath a winter of heavy snow. Joggers came and went in both directions, the shuffle of their sneakers on the wet pavement sounding an even pulse. I sat down. Behind me, a bare linden tree reached out and over the bench, its bud-covered branches defining the form of a canopy that, in a couple of months’ time, would provide ample shade from the summer sun. But for now, that sun was nowhere to be seen, hidden as it was behind the sheetlike gray of an overcast sky. Low against the horizon, billows of slow-moving dark blue clouds drifted, pregnant with rain. It was a picture of power and grace, and it filled me with quiet wonder.
All at once, I felt a swell of gratitude.
Gratitude for what? I wondered.
I remembered the afternoon of the ice cream social when Mina first taught me to listen to a still, small voice inside, hidden between and beneath the breath.
I breathed in deeply and exhaled. And into the silence at the end of my breath I quietly intoned my question.
Gratitude for what?
I listened for a reply.
I heard a passing car’s wet tires on the road. And then a jogger’s rubber soles lightly squeaking on the pavement.
I breathed again and listened more deeply.
The branches lightly creaked and swayed in the breeze. The river softly coursed at the bank’s edge.
I kept listening. Another breath. And then another. And then again.
And finally I started to hear it. It was only this:
My heart, silently murmuring its steady beat.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank: My extraordinary agent, Donna Bagdasarian, for her devotion to this book. The inimitable Judy Clain for her brilliant editing. Arzu Tahsin at Orion for her incisive comments. Marc H. Glick for support that seems to have no limit. Nathan Rostron and the whole team at Little, Brown for their enthusiasm and commitment. Don Shaw and Michael Pollard for more than I could list.
I have had so many important readers: Foremost, my brilliant brother Shazad. Nicole Galland, who helped me to shape this story from earlier drafts. Larry Levine, Jason Shulman, and Seymour Bernstein, who offered sage and illuminating commentary. Marisol Page and Poorna Jagannathan, who asked the questions that helped me find the ending. Martha Harrell, Dan Hancock, Elise Joffe, Ami Dayan, Sean Sullivan, Brett Grabel, Shane Leprevost, Jeremy Xido, and Nadia Malik, all better friends than I deserve. Stuart Rosenthal, Marcia Butler, Aja Nisenson, Barbara Stehle, Oren Moverman, Firdous Bamji, Alexa Fogel, Nicole Laliberte, Amina Chaudhury, Siddhartha Mitter, Andrew Dickson, Aisha Ghani, Kiran Khalid, Faraaz Siddiqi and the Siddiqi family, for their time, energy, and intelligence.
The verses of the Quran cited in the novel are my own personal interpretations as seen through the eyes of the fictional characters I created. I wish to acknowledge the work of Marmaduke Pickthall, Muhammad Asad, Abdullah Yusuf Ali, and Andre Chouraqui, whose interpretations of the Quran were inspirations.
Finally, I would like to thank my remarkable parents for their endless love and limitless support.
About the Author
Ayad Akhtar is an actor, playwright, and novelist. He lives in New York City.
Contents
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue: 1990
Book One: Paradise Lost
1: Mina
2: A Still, Small Voice
3: The Opening
4: A New World
Book Two: Nathan
5: Love at First Sight
6: The Dervish
7: Jews and Us
8: Independence Day
9: The Hypocrites
Book Three: Portrait of an Anti-Semite as a Boy
10: The Mosque on Molaskey Hill
11: The Turn
12: Fever Dreams
13: Acts of Faith
Book Four: Mina the Dervish
14: Sunil the Absurd
15: The Farewell Begins
16: Nikah
17: The Long Unraveling
Epilogue: 1995
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2012 by Ayad Akhtar
Cover design by Julianna Lee, Cover photograph by Marc Yankus. Cover © 2012 Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), p
rior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
Little, Brown and Company
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017
www.hachettebookgroup.com
www.twitter.com/littlebrown
First e-book edition: January 2012
The Hachette Speakers Bureau provides a wide range of authors for speaking events. To find out more, go to www.hachettespeakersbureau.com or call (866) 376-6591.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
ISBN: 978-0-316-19282-8
