by Umm Zakiyyah
And may the last ones understand my words better
Than those who listen to me directly.
O People, no prophet or messenger will come after me,
And no new faith will be born.
Reason well, therefore, O People,
And understand my words which I convey to you.
I leave behind me two things, the Qur'an and my Sunnah
And if you follow these you will never go astray.
Be my witness, O Allah,
That I have conveyed Your message to Your people."
—Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. From “Last Sermon”
Chapter Eight
On the afternoon of Sunday the eighth of June, Ismael sat opposite Abdul-Quddus in his masjid office. They had prayed Thuhr an hour before and had been talking with the door closed for ten minutes. Ismael explained to the imam his concerns thus far and that he feared this was not something Sarah was ready to partake in. But he also felt there was a chance she might agree if Ismael approached everything correctly and gave it time. The problem was that when he had spoken to Sarah, he was unable to convey the seriousness of his situation because he had presented it as more hypothetical than real. It ended up, ironically, becoming a joke, but she did reveal that she would leave him if he ever did marry someone else. Ismael wanted to know what Abdul-Quddus would do, if he would try to convince his wife if he were Ismael.
“To answer your question, Brother Ali,” the imam said, leaning back in his chair as he rubbed his beard, “I’d have to say no. I wouldn’t do it.” He sighed. “But that’s coming from me, as a friend, not as the leader in this community.”
“You wouldn’t try to convince your wife, or you wouldn’t marry someone else?”
“I wouldn’t do either.”
Ismael’s forehead creased. “But—”
“Think about this,” Abdul-Quddus said, leaning forward. “You and I are different people. But you asked me what I would do, and my answer is I wouldn’t do it. If you were someone else, I wouldn’t say this, but given that I know you personally, I feel comfortable being straightforward. And I feel I have an obligation to be. I’m concerned about your family, particularly Sister Ali, which is why I gave you and Sister Alika the ultimatum I did.”
“If I shouldn’t do it, then—”
“I didn’t say you shouldn’t do it. I said I wouldn’t.”
“But why not?” Ismael asked, feeling himself grow defensive. “Don’t you think it’s time we set an example for this sunnah here? Too many Muslims already think like the society.”
“We live in this country, and we have to respect this culture.”
“But not at the expense of Islam.”
Abdul-Quddus smiled. “Respecting the culture is Islam.”
“How is it Islamic to leave sisters single because of the society?”
“I never said we should never do it, Brother Ali. I said, we should respect this culture. And part of that is not blaming American Muslims for how they think. Our religion teaches us to behave with wisdom, in a way that allows people’s hearts to open on their own. If we don’t respect this culture, even if we do practice polygamy, it won’t be successful.”
“I think it would be good if someone like you did it. It would show the people that it can be done properly.”
The imam chuckled. “What makes you believe it would be good if I did it?”
“You’re the imam. People would respect it more coming from you, and many people would expect it on some level.”
Imam Abdul-Quddus shook his head, smiling. “I agree. But I have a lot at stake.”
“What’s at stake when you’re following the Sunnah?”
“Brother Ali, can you imagine the pressure that would be upon me, an American imam, if I did something like that?” He laughed. “I couldn’t make a mistake. Because if I did, no one would be able to do it after me. Just imagine the arguments between husbands and wives. The wives would point to me, saying even the imam couldn’t handle it, so what about you?”
“But now they can say, even the imam wouldn’t do it.”
“True.” He nodded. “But I’m willing to accept being the example for what I know rather than open myself up to something I fear I can’t handle. In that sense, I’m following the command in the Qur’an.”
“Who doesn’t fear they can’t handle it?”
“Fear is of different levels, and given what’s at stake for me, the fear is very practical and real. Besides, I don’t have the time, or the energy, to take care of two wives.”
Ismael sighed as he considered what his friend said.
“Another thing is that polygamy is outlawed in this country. I’m not willing to take that risk.”
He listened.
“I am not telling you what to do. I’m sharing my own feelings. I don’t doubt you would strive to be as just as you can. But you cannot forget about the family you already have. Too many brothers convince themselves they are following the Sunnah and lose their current families in the process. It’s not worth it, Brother Ali. If your wife will leave if you do it, don’t do it.” He paused. “Although I suppose there’s little harm in trying to convince her to understand your needs. But if she doesn’t agree, I don’t suggest you pursue it further.”
Ismael nodded and a grin formed on his face. “I thought she didn’t have to agree.”
Abdul-Quddus laughed. “She does if you want polygamy and not a divorce.”
Ismael sat scratching one side of his face then smoothed his beard hair down with the palm of his hand. “Do you think I handled it wrong?”
“With Sister Alika?”
“And my wife.” This was something that had begun to bother Ismael’s conscience.
Abdul-Quddus drew in a deep breath and picked up a pen. He began to tap it lightly on his desk as he considered Ismael's question. “I don’t like how it was done. But I don’t think you handled it wrong.”
Ismael felt the guilt he had been fighting come back to him, and he linked his hands on his lap and let his gaze fall there as he reflected on the imam’s words. He shook his head. “I just don’t know how I could’ve done anything differently.”
There was a long pause, and Ismael met the imam’s concerned eyes.
“Brother Ali,” Abdul-Quddus said, “I don’t know either. The truth is, this is something that always feels wrong, even if it’s done right. I don’t know of any case of polygamy where I liked how it was done. It’s just not something we’re taught to embrace. On the other hand, I rarely see a case of monogamy where I like how it’s done either. But a mistake in monogamy, we overlook, and even expect. But a mistake in polygamy,” he exhaled and shook his head, “we don’t know how to forgive.”
The office grew silent, and the imam turned the pen in his fingers.
“But I couldn’t have told her in the beginning.” Ismael was talking more to himself than his friend. His eyes were narrowed, and he looked distantly at the wall behind Abdul-Quddus. “I didn’t even know myself. I had no idea when I sat down in that meeting room after work that my life would change so much.” He breathed audibly as he looked at the ceiling momentarily. “A coworker said a woman was doing multicultural studies and wanted to interview someone biracial. And I immediately agreed, thinking this was an opportunity for the Islamic perspective.” He shook his head, remembering. “The meeting wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. Some of my coworkers were there, and we had a really deep discussion and she wanted to talk again.” He paused. “I thought I was just following up on the interview when we spoke after that. It was so insignificant to me at the time, I didn’t even mention the meeting to my wife.” He sighed and scratched at his beard again. “Now I fear that will make it look worse. She didn’t even know about Alika’s thesis.”
Abdul-Quddus remained quiet, apparently unsure what to say, and Ismael met his friend’s eyes, seeing in them what he saw in his own for the past two weeks. Fear.
“Brother,” Ismael said in a
plea, feeling his heart pound and his throat go dry, “I don’t want to lose my wife.”
Sarah glanced at the clock and sighed. Aminah was in her room with the door closed, and had been in there all morning except when she came out to use the bathroom. Sarah walked over to her daughter’s closed room door and lifted a hand to knock. She paused as she thought she heard talking, and she put her ear to the door. Aminah was talking to someone on the phone. Sarah hadn’t even noticed that the cordless phone was missing when she had gone downstairs to eat. Hesitating, she walked away, not wanting to eavesdrop. She assumed it was Zaid, and if it was, then perhaps, that was good, although she found it strange that Aminah wouldn’t have said anything to her or Ismael if she intended to talk to him again.
Since the phone conversation a couple of weeks before, Sarah saw in her daughter’s eyes that Aminah was stressed. It concerned Sarah even more that Aminah had dug up her father’s Black history books and videos. The last thing Aminah needed right then was salt in her wounds, and that was all immersing herself in the country’s racist past would do. Years ago, Sarah had sat with her husband to watch Alex Haley’s “Roots” when they purchased it on VHS tape, but she didn’t make it through the first episode. It was too painful, and draining. She hated to be reminded of her history. Her Georgia family had been slave owners, and it was not something she was proud of. She had hated that Ismael watched all the episodes even though she refused to, and it bothered her tremendously when he went through a period of reading endless books on Black history and Black-White relations, particularly regarding miscegenation laws in the South. But she understood this was something she had to leave alone. She would never know how it felt to be Black and White at once, yet forced to be Black— abandoned twice by his White blood, first by society’s label and then by his own mother.
Sarah had sympathized with Ismael, as she now sympathized with their daughter. But Sarah too was a victim. Society had stolen her daughter from her through a meaningless label. It was unjust, these labels, as if society had a right to separate the very essence of her and her children simply because of the melanin the Creator had placed in their skin.
Who was to blame for the cruel acts of people who looked like her? It was unfair to levy blame based on White or Black. She was not to blame simply because she was White. She didn’t choose to be who she was. She had simply been born. Who could blame an innocent child for having white skin?
But she could not, even still, escape the guilt.
Sarah was nineteen years old and in college when she said something that would haunt her for the rest of her life. It was 1966, and for years she had listened to her father and mother heatedly discuss their concerns over forced desegregation in “our schools”. Sarah remembered being perturbed herself that “they” wouldn’t just leave Whites alone. It was as if they wanted everything Whites had and were never content with what they had themselves. The separate-but-equal Jim Crow law was an act of charity of immeasurable proportions in Sarah’s view. Blacks’ continuous unrest during the ‘60s was out of hand. Sit-ins, boycotts, the so-called “non-violent” protests were turning the country on its head. All of this because Negroes had been given the inch of freedom from slavery, and now they would take the mile.
When Sarah saw that there was a Black student in one of her college courses, she was disgusted. Not here too. One day she ended up sitting next to the girl, and that was uncomfortable enough. Then after class the student had asked something that shocked Sarah that the girl even had the nerve.
“Why do White people think they’re better than everyone else?”
Sarah had stared at the girl’s brown skin and permed hair, and the familiar rage built up inside her as she thought that just a century before, she would have been a slave. And she stood opposite Sarah, who would have easily been her mistress. The Black girl would not even be seen with the books she now held so matter-of-factly against her chest. Sarah’s people had bent over backwards to give these people their human rights. And now this Negro girl had the audacity to stand here implying that even that had not been enough. Did she really expect them to now look at her as equal? At that moment, Sarah understood her parents’ fury after Blacks were given free reign to their schools, when they warned, “They’ll want everything now.”
“Because we are,” Sarah said, turning abruptly to go, conscious of her blond ponytail swinging in the girl’s face.
Sarah had even recounted the conversation to Kate that evening, and they both burst out laughing.
“I wish I had been there,” Kate said recovering from laughter. “I would’ve loved to have seen her face.”
Sarah now sat on the edge of her bed, tears welling in her eyes. She was a victim, she had often told herself. But there were moments like these when she wondered if that were true. A victim did not actively fight against others’ basic rights. A victim did not join school clubs to think of ways to keep “them” out. A victim did not look on the assassination of a peace icon as a good riddance for the Blacks. A victim did not say that it didn’t matter who pulled the trigger on April 4, 1968, King was killed by Negroes—if for no other reason than they had inspired the turmoil that set it off.
It was one year after that perverted thought that Sarah met Ismael Ali, then Ishmael Morgan, who was a Black student studying engineering at an Atlanta university. They met at a party that a friend of Sarah’s had convinced her to attend. To her family, the White host was a rich Southern do-gooder who was rumored to be wasting most of his inherited fortune on Negro civil rights. Sarah didn’t want to go because she knew her parents would not approve. They were not a racist family, at least in their estimation, but they didn’t approve of race mixing if it wasn’t for employing colored help.
Reluctantly, Sarah agreed to attend. She spent her time standing against the wall, uncomfortable in a room with so many colored people relaxing and having a good time. She didn’t like it, but she found herself observing their interaction with Whites with a curiosity she had never experienced before. For the first time in her life, she felt in her heart that there was something remarkably beautiful about it all, and she was in awe as she stood on the sidelines to watch the colorful party, one like she’d never seen before.
“Do you believe in God?” It was the first thing Ishmael said to her, and she would remember it as a turning point in her life, not in her cynical spirituality but in leaving her racist past.
At the time, Sarah had turned and found a light skinned Negro boy with green eyes talking to her, and she had simply turned her head back to the dance floor.
“No.” She moved a few inches from him so he would catch the hint. But she found it odd that she didn’t really feel the need or desire to keep a distance.
“Well, I do,” he said, with a reflective smile Sarah caught when she glanced sideways at him. “He’s the only One powerful enough to have done something like this.”
They were both looking at the Blacks and Whites laughing and intermingling, and she couldn’t help reflecting on what the boy had said. She really didn’t believe in God, but for a moment, right then, she did.
Tears of reminiscence still in her eyes, Sarah opened the drawer of the nightstand next to her bed and removed the now framed picture Ismael had given her of himself only three weeks after they met. She kept it covered and hidden, but she could not bring herself to throw it away. It was a memento, a symbol of a changing heart. It was black and white, and now Sarah saw the irony in the fact that there would be no photographs at all in this race-based country if it weren’t for at least those two colors coming together. The tears slid down her cheeks as she remembered the patience with which Ishmael pursued her, and her stubbornness in letting him, even as she agreed to meet him at least twice a week after the party.
They talked about God mostly, and Ishmael was intrigued by everything around him, even the strife. It was all a part of God’s plan, he always said. It was something terrible to make way for something beautiful. And Sarah would always di
sagree. It wasn’t that she really couldn’t see what he was seeing, but refused. Her heart was still attached to home even as her mind was moving on. Or perhaps it was the other way around.
She would always be indebted to Allah for putting Ishmael Morgan in her life, this she knew. She often found herself reflecting on Ishmael’s observation of the party, and she would wonder if his words were really describing what was about to happen to them.
“He’s the only One powerful enough to have done something like this.” SubhaanAllaah. That was so true.
Vanity, by its nature, is a selfish trait. It does not care from whence the admiration comes. Admiration itself feeds the lust for praise, even if the recipient is well aware it is undeserved—or even unjustly attained. If beauty is beheld, the possessor of it cares not if it is at the expense of someone else. And in most cases this only incenses the fire of vanity in one’s heart.
Sulayman watched his wife’s expression change from curiosity to concern as she listened to whomever she was talking to on the phone. He was trying to remain patient at the interruption, but the conversation had already been going on for more than thirty minutes. He wanted to ask her to call whoever it was later, but he couldn’t bring himself to say anything, so he just left the black leather couch in the living room and went to the kitchen to pass the time.
The phone had interrupted their conversation, and Tamika had just gotten home from her Islamic studies class only two hours before. Sulayman was enjoying their reflections on having been together exactly a year today. It was Saturday, the eighth of June when they were married in a private ceremony in Sulayman’s home last year, and Sulayman would remember it as the most joyous moment in his life.
“Aminah’s really upset.” Tamika appeared in the kitchen doorway just then.
Sulayman closed the refrigerator before taking anything out and walked behind his wife as she returned to the couch.
