Midnight and the Meaning of Love

by Souljah, Sister

  I was not disappointed, just determined. I already knew that just because a man is an Arab does not mean that he is a Muslim, and just because he says he’s Muslim does not mean that he’s true.

  “Sura two, ayat one eighty-four,” the elder Arab man said as he stepped outside his carpet business and onto the sidewalk where I stood.

  He was quoting from chapter two of the Holy Quran, the 184th line. I knew it well. It commanded all Muslims to observe the Ramadan fast except if they were sick or traveling. It also said that Muslims who could not fast because of travel or illness should make up the fasting days before the beginning of the next Ramadan fast. Or if a believer could not fast due to illness, he should feed one Muslim a charitable meal each day of Ramadan instead. He then handed me a flyer written in Arabic. I read it. It advertised a free meal to Muslims fasting during Ramadan at sunset each day, and posted the location. “Sponsored by Jeddah Carpets,” it read.

  “We have set this table at a nice halal restaurant as a form of zakat since my son and I are unable to fast during Ramadan. This is what is required from us as believers.”

  “Sura two, ayat two sixty-four,” I responded. From the change in his facial expression, I could tell that he understood. “I’m not searching for charity. I was looking for like-minded men from our faith, but thank you.” I left with a distaste for men who try and pay their way out of Ramadan.

  In a phone booth I used my phone card and called Haki, the Kenyan college student who lived in the Harajuku hostel where I once stayed. His hospitality was the opposite feeling of the father and son of Jeddah Carpets. His face had not popped into my thoughts when I reviewed the short list of adults I knew here in Japan. However, it did when I was in the carpet store. Haki had said to me a few times, “If you need anything at all, just ask me.”

  “Habari gani,” Haki picked up my call.

  “Salaam,” I said. “It’s Mayonaka who stayed there at the hostel a few weeks ago.”

  There was a pause. “Oh yes, brother. How is it? You are still here in Japan, yes?”

  “I’m still here—,” I said, and he interrupted.

  “I mentioned to you once before that it’s a difficult place to leave. What can I do for you?”

  “Haki, listen carefully, I got a situation,” I said.

  “As the Englishman says, ‘I am all ears.’ Strange saying, isn’t it?” he joked.

  “I’m in Osaka right now. I don’t know who you may know out here, but I need to buy a ticket to board the ferryboat from Osaka to Busan, Korea,” I explained.

  “The loan department is the only department I cannot help you with, my brother. Remember college students have all had our accounts emptied out by our universities.”

  “Haki, I can help you with that. I have money. I can pay out thirty thousand yen over the cost of the tickets to the person who buys the tickets for me. They won’t sell them to me directly because I’m underage.”

  “Is there something that the Japanese will not sell?” he asked, sounding seriously surprised.

  “It’s not the Japanese. It’s a Korean-owned cruise line.”

  “Hmm … I know at least three students in Osaka. I’ll have to try and reach them. It’s exam time for me. Man, I wish I was there, even I could use the thirty thousand yen. When do you plan to travel?”

  “Tomorrow afternoon. The payment is for the person who can put a rush on it, show up with his passport or any official form of identification. He has to be twenty years or older.”

  “Twenty or over,” he repeated. “Isn’t it strange, the clash of culture?”

  “What?” I didn’t know what he was talking about.

  “Back home in Kenya, a boy becomes a man at age fourteen. At fourteen, I am no longer allowed to remain in a house under the same roof with my own mother. My father would forbid it. My people would look down on it. At fourteen my older brother, who already had his own house and me, built a house for me on the property that my parents own. My father gave me a plot of land there. I could have married at that instant and taken my new bride into the house that I built. As you can see, I didn’t. I opted to focus on my studies. But it was my choice as a man.”

  “Word up, a big difference,” I acknowledged. At that moment I appreciated Haki’s like-mindedness.

  “When I first arrived in Japan, everything was crazy for me. It took some getting used to. Japanese men were still dressing in short pants.”

  “Short pants?” I repeated.

  “In my country, only young boys wear short pants outside or as a school uniform. Once you are a man, you wear proper pants and shirts. Isn’t it? Yet the Japanese have what they refer to as teenagers! What is that? Neither child nor man, I suppose. Yet they are still dressed as little boys. The Japanese men at twenty, thirty, forty are still reading comic books and playing with their toys and ignoring their women. One Japanese fella I know, a grad student, was always talking about his girlfriend. As it turns out, she was some popular animated character who he fell in love with somehow. But he stupidly believed they were in a real-life relationship.”

  “Haki, thanks for taking my call, but I’m running low on time,” I said with an even tone. “Do you think you can arrange this for me?” I pressed.

  “I’m gonna make three calls. Call me back in one hour just in case I gotta track ’em down.”

  “Aight, thanks,” I told him. But he was still talking as I was in motion to hang up. I pulled the phone back to my ear.

  “Speaking of women, is it one ticket or two tickets that you need? First you said ticket. Then you said tickets. Which is it?” Haki asked.

  “It’s two tickets,” I confirmed.

  “I see … I had been meaning to ask you. I hope that it is okay to ask.” He spoke hesitantly for some reason.

  “What?” I pushed him to get right to it.

  “There was a beautiful African girl I saw you with. She was African and Japanese. Forgive me if she is your woman, but if she is not, how about arranging an introduction for me? She seems like the best of both worlds. It’s been lonely here for me. I mean, the rigorous studies and the differences in culture and beliefs and things. Brother, I’m not looking for a bargirl. You know that I know exactly where to find them! I’m looking for a good girl, a wife. Is she yours?”

  “She is my woman.” I told him, and hung up.

  I felt confident about Haki’s ability to complete the ticket transaction. If he was smart, he would locate a broker and offer him 15,000 or 20,000 yen and keep the rest as a finder’s fee. He had led me to find halal foods and Billy’s and the Senegalese. I should’ve thought of him before I ever considered the Saudi Arabians. Many of them are known for their riches and sometimes for their arrogance. Better yet, I should’ve searched out the neediest, most genuine Muslim man. That way I would be performing zakat to help him, while helping myself as well. I wouldn’t use the zakat as an excuse either. I would do it in addition to maintaining the fast, which is required of all able Muslims.

  Then that thought triggered a new idea. I pulled the flyer from my pocket and opened it a second time. I jumped in a cab and headed over to the free meal sponsored by Jeddah Carpets. I scolded myself for the whole ride. Allah had placed the answer directly into the palm of my hands. But I had allowed the messenger to distract me from the gift of the message. Of course there would be at least one willing Muslim adult at the Maghrib prayer, and the free meal for breaking our fast, who could also use the extra pocket money.

  * * *

  In the back room of a Lebanese restaurant, situated side by side with a Saudi hookah bar, twelve men, including myself, plus five women who stood behind us, made the Maghrib prayer. The small room was much warmer than the air outside. The thick and plush carpet was welcoming to both our bended knees and our lowered foreheads.

  When our prayers were completed, some moved through the curtain and into the empty restaurant, where a long table was set and marked with a placard that read in Arabic “Courtesy of Jeddah Carpets.
” Still in the back with six other Muslim men who remained there also, I peered into faces, but discreetly. There were African Muslims in the mix, I could tell, but none of them black-skinned like me. I was looking not for a common race but for a common faith and mind-set. I knew a Muslim, a true believer, would support and respect a young marriage like mine. It would not pour into their ears as poison. It would be familiar and, for many, expected. It was for these reasons that I sought out a Muslim in particular.

  I chose a brother named Ali. He was young but older than me, I could tell. He was wearing an Osaka University T-shirt and jeans. More important, he had arrived accompanying a visibly pregnant wife, which I believed might work in my favor.

  “May I talk with you for a moment?” I asked him. He nodded and stepped out of the circle of men he was quietly conversing with.

  “I am a student traveling with my young wife. We are trying to purchase tickets here at the pier for the ferry to South Korea. They tell me that I need someone twenty years or older to purchase the tickets for me; someone who has a valid passport or official identification. I need to travel tomorrow. If you are willing, I can pay thirty thousand yen for you to be the broker to buy the tickets on my behalf.”

  He stood staring at me, a powerful stare without blinking. “Which university do you attend?” he asked me.

  “I’m a high school student,” I said.

  He stood silently for a few seconds and then hummed. “A married high school student?”

  “Yes,” I responded. “Alhamdulillah,” I added.

  “Where are you coming from?” He asked.

  “Africa,” I said, purposely vague.

  “A huge place,” he commented, letting me know he was too smart for this kind of broad response.

  “I have an American passport, my wife has a Japanese passport,” I added, still dodging my origin.

  “Oh, so there is the trouble,” he said knowingly. “Her father and family have forbidden your union?” He asked.

  “Her father gave written permission for our union before our marriage and tried to withdraw it after our agid was completed and our marriage was performed and consummated,” I said. I had a feeling that this information, which I would normally have concealed, would move Ali into my corner.

  “La kadar Allah,” Ali said quietly, meaning “God forbid.” “Now you are running away?”

  “I am taking my wife to visit with her grandmother,” I said, and then added swiftly, “The ticket office will close today in one hour. It will reopen at nine a.m. tomorrow morning.” I pressed.

  As he paused for more than sixty seconds of thought, his wife gently pushed the curtain to the side, looking for him. She looked into his eyes and he into hers. She was holding a small plate with two dates and a few slices of fruit. He put his hand up, to signal her to remain where she was. When she released the curtain, he asked me to wait. Now I stood alone, as only three other men remained still talking among themselves.

  After five minutes I walked into the restaurant area not knowing if he had secretly diverted. He was there seated with his wife, who wore a hijab and long shirt properly concealing her neck and arms and breasts and hips—over her loose-fitting jeans. She looked my way with judging eyes. Soon they both stood up. Ali walked over.

  “My wife said that you are good. Somehow she feels certain. But she is a woman. So I must have some confirmation. How do I know that you are not a criminal? Maybe you have killed someone.”

  “If we all did our jobs as Muslims, everything would go as it should,” I assured him.

  “Meaning?” he questioned.

  “I am a Muslim man following my deen. I am married and securing my wife. You are a Muslim man, a husband, a student, right? Allah is the best knower of all things and Allah will hand out the punishment and the rewards, not you or me, right?” I told him. “So Allah will do his work and the police will do theirs, and you and I …”

  He turned away from me, and he and his wife shifted from the Arabic language that we had been speaking into Persian, which I did not speak. Silently I waited.

  “Show me your passport, and where is your wife?” he asked, turning back to me. As I pulled out my passport and Akemi’s, I said, “You will have to present these passports to purchase our tickets.” He looked at them quickly. “I also have our marriage documents on me,” I offered. His wife smiled approvingly.

  * * *

  Five minutes before the ticket window closed, Ali purchased a ticket for me. His wife, Samira, purchased a ticket for Akemi. They were Shia Muslims, originally from Iran. Both of them were graduate students at Osaka University. Ali was in engineering and Samira was studying medicine.

  Samira was captivated by my “love story.” She was also curious about “the Japanese girl,” as she seemed to have formed an opinion about them as a group.

  “Is she Muslim?” she asked.

  “Soon, inshallah,” I answered, “but not yet. She is reading and learning from our Holy Quran.”

  “She is willing?”

  “Akemi thinks Islam is beautiful,” I added truthfully.

  “Alhamdulillah!” Samira said, excited. “Will you both continue your studies?”

  “I see that your love hasn’t stopped the two of you from your studies.” I smiled. Then they both smiled. Just when I thought I had satisfied her curiosity, she asked me more questions.

  “Does your wife speak Arabic? Why Korea?” She asked questions one after the other, softly and politely as Muslim women tend to do. Ali did not seem to mind her questioning me, or my responding. So I fed her a few harmless general facts about myself. I kept rephrasing the same information in different ways but thought it was important to keep her smiling and calm. It was clear that Ali trusted her, not me.

  “Akemi doesn’t speak Arabic! And she doesn’t speak English either! And you don’t speak Japanese! E wallah!” she exclaimed. “So the two of you are communicating through your eyes, your thoughts, and your gestures? How beautiful!” Samira said softly. “Praise Allah! He has given both of you something special.”

  “And our hearts,” I said. “We are communicating through our hearts.” And those were my last words before they each purchased our tickets.

  Afterward, I paid Ali the 30,000 yen. He embraced me. “There is an Islamic center in South Korea. Be sure and visit there in Itaewon. It’s a section of Seoul. There are many halal places and a mosque as well. There are good Muslims there, not many, but enough for a community.”

  “Thanks, good looking out,” I told him.

  “And you are right. Allah is the best knower of all things,” he said. Then we parted ways.

  * * *

  A well-suited, elderly Japanese man whose breath filled the entrance to my hotel with the stale of alcohol was being held up by a young Japanese female teen. She wasn’t robbing him. She was simply keeping him from stumbling while drunk. I moved past them before noticing my wife standing in front of the vending machine across the lobby. I walked up behind her and pressed my body against her back. She was wearing a sleeveless dress. She looked up and over her shoulder at me, with her mischievous smile.

  “What are you doing now?” I asked her. She placed her finger on the glass, pointing out some kanji letters. Softly she said, “Five thousand yen.” She didn’t reach for her purse, and I liked that she didn’t make the same mistake twice. I fed the machine the money and walked behind her up the stairs, enjoying the way the expensive black silk dress danced on her subtle curves. I was loving her pretty toes, the nails freshly painted black, and her bare legs in her expensive high heels. She could seduce me, but when we reached upstairs, I would have her change her clothes. From here on in, she would not seduce any other man, which I believe women do when they are uncovered outside of home. As my wife, she would conceal her magnetism. And she had so much of it.

  The hotel room door meter was just about to eat up the last two minutes of our payment. I pushed in the new key and it reset until the following morning.


  The scent of nail polish rushed up my nose when the door closed behind us. We both took our shoes off. Akemi’s clothes were in neat, high stacks piled up in the corner. I had to smile as I glanced around the room. Finally relaxed enough to really notice every detail, the sheer black curtains, revealing the blackened sky, and the clean black sheets pulled taut across the mattress. My wife had beautiful black eyelined eyes and wore an exquisite black silk dress and her petite feet and pretty black toenails were alluring against the tan bamboo floor. She is art, I thought to myself as I saw how she blended and decorated herself and everything that surrounded her.

  I noticed the one missing bottle of water and the uneaten onigiris. Right beside them and on the desk lay several crisp brand-new 10,000 yen notes, which were perfectly spaced and arranged like a circular Asian fan. I stepped over.

  With my eyes, I counted. There were thirty-five 10,000 yen notes, close to $3,500 US. I didn’t say a word, just turned and looked at my wife, who was leaning up against the wall looking back at me. We stared.

  “Come close,” I said to her. She walked over slowly and came up very close. She looked up into my eyes. I hugged her. “Where did you get all that money?” I asked, feeling her soft hair against my face.

  As I looked over and past her, I realized that I did not see her trunk or suitcase. The LV Cruiser bag was there though. I dropped my arms, put my hands on each side of her waist. I pushed her back a step gently. “What did you do?” I asked her.

  She pulled my study cards out from my pocket and flipped through them quickly. Then she eased my Japanese-English dictionary out of my pocket. She sat down on the floor in one of her yogastyle sitting ways, her minidress unable to cover her pretty bare legs. She arranged a few of my study cards on the floor with the Japanese side flipped up. I couldn’t read that side, so when she finished I squatted down and turned each of them over.

  “Akemi suitcase sell,” were the words she’d combined. I looked at her.