by Umm Zakiyyah
“Mostly they’re just stubborn,” Abdur-Rahman said. “Maybe not Liz, but the rest of ‘em are.”
“Oh, Teddy,” Faith said with a smirk, “leave your sisters alone.”
“Truth is truth, Mom. I think Liz is the only one with her head on straight.”
“She’s the one who’s married?” Alika asked.
Faith shook her head. “No, Liz is the youngest. She’s a freshman in college in North Carolina.”
“She coming home for the summer?”
“She’s considering it. But she has this internship a DC company is waving in front of her. I think she’ll take that.”
“What’s she studying?”
“Psychology is her plan so far. But she wants to go to med school and become a psychiatrist.”
“Is that what you did?”
“No, I did my doctorate in psychology. I’m not really interested in the medical field.”
“Mom hates blood.”
Faith grinned. “I like it under my skin, and that’s how I like it on other people.”
Alika laughed. “But you won’t be exposed to a lot of blood with psychiatry.”
“But you still have to get through medical school, which includes a lot more blood than I care to see. Besides that’s not my forte.”
They were silent as the birds fluttered their wings and the hamster scurried in the cage.
“You ever consider working as a social worker for the Muslims?”
Faith narrowed her eyes in thought. “I’ve considered it, but I’d rather wait until I’m more openly Muslim.”
Alika knew what she meant. Faith’s dark hair was colored with gray strands and hung below her ears, where it was neatly tucked and curled up slightly toward her earlobes. Right then, Faith looked like the average American woman. With a khimaar on her head, her innocent white face and dark brown eyes would be transformed to reflect an unwelcome foreigner.
“You find it hard for others to accept?” Alika asked.
Faith placed a hand on top of the other and massaged the back of it mindlessly as she considered the question. “I don’t think it’s so much hard for others as it is for me. I’m still adjusting to the title Muslim woman. It hasn’t sunk in yet, I guess. So most of my colleagues don’t know.”
“I haven’t told anyone either. But I think I’ll tell my father first.”
“Why not your mother?”
“I think it will hurt her too much.”
“You have any siblings?”
Alika paused. It was always an awkward question for her to answer. Most times she simply said no. What did it matter that she had three brothers and four sisters from her father’s second wife who lived in Nigeria? No one would ever meet them. Besides, what would she say if someone met her mother and asked about the other children? It would break her mother’s heart to have to give complete strangers a window into the reality in which she lived, a reality that she had managed to deny for more than twenty years. “I’m my mother’s only child.”
Faith nodded, but Alika could tell Faith caught the evasiveness in her answer. “Then it probably would be difficult for her to accept.”
“What about your father?”
Abdur-Rahman’s question startled her, and she turned to him too quickly, her eyes slightly widened that he would actually ask about her father’s other children. When she met his gaze, she realized that he only meant how would her father deal with the news of her conversion.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, lifting a shoulder in a shrug. “I think he wouldn’t mind as much.”
“Has he traveled much?”
“His mother is from Nigeria, so he goes there often.”
Abdur-Rahman nodded. “Then he probably won’t mind. Islam is pretty common there.”
“Yes,” Alika said, “but the Christians and Muslims aren’t exactly the best of friends. And they’re very family oriented. I don’t think they’d take it too well.”
“You’re close to your family there?”
It was Faith’s question that made Alika realize she had said they instead of he. “Yes. I go there a lot. At least I used to.”
“Is that where you got the bulk of your research about the African and African-American relations?”
“Yes.” She was relieved the subject had moved to why she had come. “I took advantage of my trips there.”
“Do you think that made it easier for you to accept Islam?”
“My trips or my research?”
“Your trips.”
Alika ran a hand over the soft of the white khimaar she had chosen to wear today, considering the question. “It was more my research than my trips, honestly.”
“Really?”
“I was interviewing an African-American Muslim someone referred to me, and he ended up telling me more about the impact of Islam in his life than his struggles with race.”
“That must’ve been something.”
Alika laughed. “Yes, it was. I was really moved.”
“Have you been able to interview other non-African-American Muslims?”
“Not indigenous Americans. I’ve interviewed some biracial ones though.”
“Well, I’m honored to be the first.”
Alika smiled, now reaching into her bag to pull out her notebook and pen. “And I’m honored that you agreed.”
Zaid pushed thoughts of Zahra’s words from his mind as he settled himself behind the steering wheel of his Camry and started the car. He didn’t want anything to ruin his meeting with Aminah. He had thought that, out of everyone, Zahra would be the one to support him. She was friends with Aminah’s sister-in-law Tamika, and she openly admired their family. But perhaps that made her too close for comfort. He had called his cousin that morning for support, having not told anyone in his family about the meeting. He did not expect a browbeating. He had only wanted her to make du’aa, a special supplication to Allah that everything would go smoothly.
“I cannot believe you are going through with this,” she had said to him in Urdu after he told her about the meeting. “You know what your mother and father will say. They will never support it.”
“I didn’t think they would. But they have no basis for their opposition.”
“They are your parents. That is a good enough basis.”
“No it is not. What happened to the Sunnah?” He was referring to the living example set by Prophet Muhammad as to how Muslims should implement the injunctions and guidance of the Qur’an.
He couldn’t see her, but he imagined her rolling her eyes. “The Sunnah? Do you really think upsetting your parents is what the Prophet would want you to do?”
“How can you say this? You know that my following the Sunnah itself is upsetting to them.”
“That doesn’t mean you should go out and marry someone they do not like.”
“They do not even know Aminah. How can they not like her?”
“She is American, Zaid. You know how they would feel if you even married someone who is not Behari.”
“But that’s not Islam, Zahra. You know that. This is culture. It has no place in our religion.”
“It has a place in our family. And family has a place in Islam. Think about that.”
Zaid was beginning to get frustrated. He started to say something, but his cousin continued.
“I want you to understand that this has nothing to do with Aminah or her family. I know they are good people and good Muslims. But you do not go and marry people because they are Muslim. Look what happened to Anjum.”
Even before she said the name, Zaid knew Anjum would be brought up. Her name was mentioned so frequently in Pakistani circles that one would think she was the object of admiration instead of condemnation. She had managed to become the epitome of the failure that awaited someone who went against her family’s wishes.
Like many Pakistanis, Anjum came from a relatively non-religious family. No one prayed or covered, and she was the first in her family to do either. When an American brother who had co
nverted to Islam came to her parents and proposed marriage, her parents refused on grounds he wasn’t Pakistani. Feeling that their decision was unjust, she went to the imam of the masjid who ultimately overrode their decision on grounds that they had no Islamic objection to the proposal, and the imam married Anjum to the brother under his self-appointed guardianship. Three years and one child later, the marriage ended, and Anjum was forced to go back home to live with her parents, who would care for the child while she completed her undergraduate degree that was interrupted by marriage and pregnancy shortly thereafter.
“Gi. Look at Anjum,” Zaid said. “If her family had accepted the brother into the family like Muslims should, maybe their marriage would not have ended at all.”
“Why not marry Shanaz?”
“I do not want to marry Shanaz.”
“She is religious.”
“Praying does not make someone religious.” He decided against saying he wanted his wife to wear hijab.
“Stop being so selfish.”
“I am not the one being selfish. Look at our family. We are being selfish.”
There was a long silence before Zahra spoke again.
“I was not talking about our family,” she said finally. “I was talking about Aminah. Think about what you are doing to her if you do this.”
Zaid drove silently as he reflected on what Zahra had said. He could dismiss everything she had argued, except her last point. He didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize Aminah. What if the pressures of his family were too much for her? He had already accepted what marrying her would mean for him, but what would it mean for her? He had warned her via e-mail about his family, but there was no way to really make her understand. Everything about his culture was so intricate, so intimately woven into the fabric of everything he did, everything his family did, that there was no way to pick it apart, examine it, and show it to someone else. Even a big sister wasn’t referred to by name. She was called Baji. How could an American understand that? It would be like asking her to walk in his shoes, see with his eyes, and feel the blood pumping through his heart. And that would be impossible.
Aminah would have to learn Urdu, Zaid already knew. But he hadn’t mentioned this to her. Most of his family didn’t speak English, and even those who could did not in family gatherings, or at home. It would be almost sacrilegious to do so, especially in the presence of elders who spoke only Urdu. Even if it were not disrespectful or unacceptable, he knew his family would not speak English for Aminah’s sake. They would make sure they did not, if for no other reason than to show Zaid they would not bend just because he wanted to be hardheaded, thinking his miniscule knowledge of Islam he learned at the masjid made him wiser than his elders who hadn’t attended such classes.
He hated the way they scoffed at his reading of Islamic books, attending Iectures, and spending his free time in the masjid. The only newfound love they approved of was his Qur’anic memorization, but even that approval was conditional. They urged him to dedicate more time to his job as a computer engineer instead of what they considered a form of extremism. To most of them, anything beyond praying five times a day was going overboard. It saddened him that Muslims had come to that. At times he felt that new Muslims understood Islam better than those who had Islam in their countries for generations.
Sarah heard the doorbell ring as she stood before the mirror in her bathroom tucking the fabric of her khimaar under her chin. She stalled as the muffled sounds of the front door closing a minute later and Ismael greeting the brother were carried up the stairs and through the open door of her bedroom and the closed door of the bathroom. She didn’t want to go downstairs right away. She had already put out the food, having planned to take her time. She doubted Ismael or Aminah welcomed her presence in any case.
At the thought of Ismael and Aminah planning this meeting behind her back, she felt the familiar knotting of anger in her chest. She placed her hands on the end of the cold white fiberglass of the sink to calm herself. Her eyes rested on the crystalline knobs bearing the red and blue circular labels to indicate hot and cold water on either side of the stainless steel faucet. Wudhoo’ calms anger. She turned the knobs and let the water run through her fingers before quietly saying, “Bismillaah.”
As she pushed up the sleeves of her outer garment and filled her left hand with water, she recalled when Sulayman wanted to marry Tamika. It pained Sarah to see her confident son defeated by insecurity. He would sit for hours in silence, she knew, hoping, fearing, and wanting all at once, tormented and confused by the desires of his heart and afraid he would be compelled to silence them, but even more afraid of their release. It was the planting of the seeds of what the world would call love. In reality it was but heart-felt hope that bordered on desperation. It was the natural human longing for completeness.
There was so much Sarah had wanted to tell her son, so much she was inspired to share from her own life, her own experiences. Her own heart. And soul. But she withheld, and it pained her to be a bystander in one of the most significant moments of his life. She did not withhold out of volition, but compulsion. She had no other choice. He was discovering the paradox of manhood, strength and weakness at once. He was confronting a deeply personal battle, and she, although his mother, was a woman, and thus on the other side. Had she offered her help, he would have withdrawn from her, and this she could not risk. He lived bearing the shell of strength, and he needed her to confirm that it was indeed there. So she did, and he continued to wear the mask of strength, unaware that his fragile heart was reflected in his eyes.
When Sulayman was breaking, and it tore Sarah apart to see him that defeated, he surrendered to the reality of man’s frailty, unable to continue carrying the burden of masculine strength. But it was not Sarah who would become his confidante in his need for reassurance of self. It was his father, a fellow sufferer in man’s battleground of life. Sarah ached to be of assistance, of benefit to her firstborn, and she felt worthless being compelled to silence instead of bestowing advice.
Sarah had mentioned her concern to her husband, saying she felt left out. But Ismael had reassured her that it was only because Sulayman was a man that he sought his father’s guidance instead of his mother’s. It was a woman he coveted, Ismael told her, and their son wanted to know how Ismael knew he should marry her. That she had not been completely forgotten reassured her, but she couldn’t help feeling slighted for missing this part of her son’s life.
“When Aminah’s ready to get married,” Ismael had said, “I’m sure I’ll be the one feeling left out.”
It had been consolation, not a promise. But Sarah had taken it as one. So she couldn’t help feeling betrayed as she turned off the water in her bathroom and stared at her water glistened face. For a moment, she considered calling her husband upstairs to remind him of his words, of his consolation that day, in hopes that the memory would force him to sit through the meeting plagued with guilt.
But she wouldn’t. She could not. She knew none of this was planned. Had she not been so busy planning the walimah, she would have seen what her husband saw, what any mother should have seen, a daughter in need. Maybe Ismael was right, Sarah thought studying the brown irises of her eyes. Maybe she just wasn’t ready to let Aminah go. She had only two children. And they had grown so fast, too fast. It was as if she were nursing them one day and sending them off to college the next. It wasn’t fair to hold someone in your arms, coddle them, kiss their foreheads and read them stories at night—make them a part of you, only to hand them to someone else, a stranger, unable to ever take them back.
No, even if it were Abdur-Rahman, Sarah would be unable to let go. She wanted Aminah to stay put, needed Aminah to stay put, if only for a little while. She couldn’t handle two leaving at once. It was more than she wanted to bear. Sarah wouldn’t have sensed Aminah’s sadness, her loneliness, even if she weren’t preoccupied. Because Aminah’s mere presence had soothed her own, precluding any awareness of sadness outside herself.
/> Ismael knew this, felt this, even before Sarah herself knew. He knew her too well. It wasn’t selfishness that inspired his decision to plan this meeting without her, but selflessness itself. She knew him well too. And more than anything, he valued her—them, their openness, their friendship, their ability to talk about any and everything without fear or shame. It was this that cultivated their enduring commitment to one another, their sojourn that had evolved to true, unadulterated love. He was protecting her from herself, and for that she should be grateful.
Yet, still, there was this burning sensation that, even so, he didn’t have that right.
“She’s beautiful,” Abdur-Rahman said to his mother after their maid showed Alika downstairs to the bathroom. His gaze had followed the path she had taken, and still rested there.
“Yes, she is.” Faith lifted her teacup from the table in front of the couch and took a sip.
“I wouldn’t mind marrying her.”
She laughed with the cup poised at her lips in preparation to take another sip. “I’m sure you wouldn’t.”
“I’m not joking.”
Faith sipped her tea and set down her cup, her expression now one of pleasant calm. She sighed. “I know, Teddy. But I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why not?”
She took a breath and exhaled. “For one, someone that beautiful is most likely already taken, or if not taken, battling a thousand proposals a day.”
“That’s always a possibility for anyone,” he said, now looking at his mother with his arms folded in his usual manner.
Faith was silent as she studied her son with a gentle smile on her face. She wanted to tell him that she sensed Alika was not the type to marry across racial lines, but she knew he would not understand what she meant. He would think she was being judgmental, assuming without knowing the facts. He often accused her of that, and perhaps, at times, he was correct. But Faith had lived long enough, met enough people of color, enough people, to know when a person was just being polite. She recognized it in her own race, in herself, so how couldn’t she detect a reflection of the same in someone else?
