by Umm Zakiyyah
“She talked to Zaid, and it sounds like they got into an argument.” Tamika and Sulayman sat on the couch, and Sulayman’s eyebrows gathered.
“An argument? I didn’t even know they talked.”
“It sounds like it was only once.” Tamika bit her lower lip, and Sulayman could tell something was on her mind.
“What did she say he said?”
“That she shouldn’t think of herself as Black.”
Sulayman laughed in disbelief. “That’s not his decision to make.”
“I know. That’s what I told her.”
He shook his head, feeling himself getting upset. But he reminded himself to not get emotional. It had been difficult coming to terms with a sense of identity as Allah tested him with being two races at once in a society that allowed only one, but he couldn’t expect Zaid to understand that. Sulayman had many Pakistani friends, and he knew that in their country, a person was not classified by race, but color. The color differentiation in their culture was similar to most countries comprised of people with different shades. In some countries dark and brown skinned homogenous people carried separate labels, Black and Colored. Amongst African-Americans, the color differentiation—light-skinned, dark-skinned, high-yellow, red-bone—was such an epidemic that Sulayman often resented his people’s extreme emphasis on Black-White problems, when a subcategory of racism infected intra-racial relations amongst Blacks themselves. Colorism. He doubted the word was even in the dictionary. But that was just evidence of how blinded the society was from this disease infecting people of color, even as the country made strides toward racial equality and color-blind relations. They had a long way to go, and the color complex amongst Blacks was proof of that.
“But the brother probably doesn’t mean it like she’s taking it.”
Tamika met Sulayman’s gaze with her forehead creased. “What other way could she take it?”
“Zaid is thinking of black as a color, and Aminah is thinking of it as a race. That’s a big difference.”
His wife nodded and relaxed her expression. “Maybe I should mention that to her.”
He shook his head. “It probably won’t make any difference. Because there’s still the underlying implication of what he’s saying.”
“Like what?”
“The darker someone is, the less attractive they are. Aminah won’t like that.”
Tamika shook her head. “Yeah, I remember her saying something like that when you were driving us from Milwaukee.”
He was silent momentarily. “I don’t remember that.”
“It was when you were sleeping in the car, and we were talking on the park benches in the rest area.”
His eyebrows rose. “You talked about that?”
“I was just saying how surprised I was that Omar didn’t ask about her, since she looked better than me.”
He laughed and gathered his eyebrows. “What would make you say something like that?”
Tamika started to laugh herself. “I know. That’s what Aminah was asking.”
“What’d you say?”
“Because you just assume light-skinned people look better.”
Sulayman averted his gaze from his wife, recalling how African-American girls in his high school often complimented him on his light skin and “good hair.” He was a “pretty boy” to them, and, as such, the cream of the crop. Since his sister covered in hijab, she was not subject to as much unwelcome, and welcome, attention as he. But that didn’t stop people from speculating. To Sulayman’s surprise, this only made Aminah more determined to never uncover her hair, even if she were with only female students. She loathed their superficial fixations born from colonial mentality. Given her and Sulayman’s recently kindled interest in racial films and books, Sulayman knew she attributed their definition of beauty to the “White is right, Black is wrong” thinking, which was introduced to this country during slavery. Not even the white people aboard the ships could have foreseen the irreversible damage caused by black people being stolen from their land and packed like sardines into boats, sailed across the ocean by European immigrants who needed someone to build the “discovered” New World, even as Native Americans had lived there for centuries.
Sulayman decided against inquiring if that thinking attributed to Tamika’s attraction to him. He didn’t want to know. And he didn’t want to find out if it would disturb him, or stoke the flicker of vanity that lurked in his own heart. He had not recovered completely from actually believing there was something to his light skin, something innate, something natural about its attractiveness, as if it had been a gift that God endowed upon him. After all, the Creator did not distribute gifts equally. He gave more to some than He did others, and this was humans’ test upon the earth. What reason did Sulayman have to doubt that he had been one of the favored? He hadn’t imagined, even as late as early high school, that there was any relation between his good looks and the racist world he had been thrust into.
Aminah was different, and if there ever were a time she relished in undeserved praise, Sulayman could not recall. She had to have been affected somehow, this was a matter of fact, but the exact manner of that infection Sulayman could only speculate. Perhaps, for her, she would forever be plagued with self-doubt and insecurity. Because, unlike others who shared her “fair” skin, she did not take her alleged beauty for granted or count it as the tipped scale in her favor in the balance of life.
Sulayman felt sorry for his sister and wished she would just let it go. If Zaid found beauty in her white skin, was that a crime? If he were to find her beautiful at all, which could only be expected of someone inquiring about marriage, what would he find it in, if not in what he beheld? Her skin was indeed white, and she was indeed beautiful, and she could not expect a person to believe that the former was not because of the latter—even if it were not.
But Sulayman understood her torment because he had experienced it himself. Although it did not leave him as indelibly scarred as she. He remembered in high school as he and Aminah studied Black history, how he found himself reflecting on his preference in women always being White, and if not White, then light skinned. And it became a source of shame. Was it possible that he, a victim of racial prejudice, was a perpetrator of the same crime? He had rationalized at first, saying one could not help having preferences, and he had a right to them like anyone else. He would not feel guilty for that. But there remained that incessant nagging. Why? Was it coincidence that the same preference was shared by every Black male he knew? It was one thing if this preference was from someone non-Black, but coming from people of color themselves, Sulayman found it too peculiarly common to be a coincidence or matter of natural preference. Unless he was to believe there was something innate—from Allah—in the creation’s preference for lighter skin. But that was too far-fetched to believe.
Sulayman’s studies left him with a self-knowledge and awareness that ignorance had blinded from him. He had even gone through a dangerous anti-White phase in his search for a sense of self and a unique Black identity. He kept a notebook during that period and wrote in it his reflections on this self-discovery, as he had previously recorded his thoughts on the vanity of Whites and Black people with light skin.
Knowledge matures not only the mind, but the eyes too.
You look upon a rock and see signs of life where none was before. You look upon the face of a woman and recoil from an ugliness where beauty was once beheld. And you look upon the face of another, and your heart longs for her in a way that ignorant eyes never could.
Aminah lay in her bed after talking to Tamika on the phone, although it was late afternoon. She still hadn’t replied to Zaid’s latest e-mail, the third consecutive one he had sent expressing concern that he had not heard from her since the e-mail she had sent shortly after they talked. Her e-mail was brief, and she simply told him the truth: “I have some things to reconsider. Please don’t call.”
She wore a white T-shirt and black shorts, and she could see her pale legs ben
t at the knee in front of her from where she lay with one hand behind her head, upon the softness of a pillow. She held out the other hand in front of her and spread its fingers under the dim light from the afternoon sun that was escaping through the closed curtains of her room. Even the stingy light illuminated her pale skin. She studied the blue veins that were slightly raised as they reached toward her knuckles, as if the veins that carried blood were rivers transporting goods to be carried to the spaces between her fingers. She pondered their conspicuous blue color that would produce a crimson red at a slight nicking of her skin. A change in color due to exposure to a world of oxygen, an element that defined the very vitality of human life. Yet, not long ago, it would have been the blue that gave her a license to life—at least the closest thing to “life” a Negro person could have.
When she first read about colored people’s Blue Vein Society and paper bag test, she was horrified and disgusted by how deeply infected Black people were by colonial mentality. Was their self-hatred so deep and their human sense so diluted as to establish a bona fide club based upon the clarity of blue veins beneath one’s skin? Or the hope that their melanin was so little as to afford them a tone no darker than a grocery bag? It made her sick—literally. And as a young teenager she had begun to hate the world around her and almost everyone in it, especially the ones who paraded the halls of school rejoicing in their superficial claim to superiority. Light skin, “good hair”—dark skin, “bad hair.” Was this really life?
“Why are you ashamed?” students would ask her when she refused to remove her hijab.
Ashamed? Was that what they really thought? Was their life so absorbed in hair texture and skin color that if she didn’t want to participate, it was due to being uncertain of their approval? It made her sicker at the thought. At times she resorted to her sharp tongue. But Durrah was the one endowed with the power of words, Aminah’s endowment was of mind and heart.
But where did she belong? Where did she fit in amid the perversity of life? If she rebelled against the society, which was in fact her womb, where did that leave her after birth? Her societal womb measured worth by the color wheel, so where did an orphan child belong?
She often looked in the mirror and studied the paleness of her skin and wondered when she would grow to love that face. Why was she unable to see, or accept, the beauty others extolled? Was it guilt that precluded a confidence in her countenance? Or was it fear that she did, in fact, possess that confidence, self-assurance based on a superiority that had infiltrated her own heart?
So many drew parallels of whiteness to goodness and blackness to evil that somewhere in the dark shadows of her mind, Aminah feared she had accepted those parallels as truths. Religious texts described the blackness of Hell’s undying flames and the white radiance of pure faith. And somewhere down the line, someone had drawn an analogy between the repulsive blackness alluded to in spiritual texts to the blackness of a human’s skin.
Was it the savagery of Europe’s colonialism that drove the world of color mad in self-contempt? Or was it the dried ink on the pages of Christian scripture, penned by the hands of men? Cursed black. Such was the punishment of the descendents of Ham for bearing witness to a drunken stupor that only an ignorant or vile person could attribute to a prophet of God. Yet, it was there, on a page of the Bible, a book declared to be the inspired word of God.
Was it Black people gathering on Sunday to gaze at a graven image of their slave master’s face? White skin, blond hair, blue eyes—the image of the man who held the whip, which tore into the flesh of a black, sweat-dampened back of a slave who had been overworked in the sun. The image of the man who boldly raped a man’s wife right under the husband’s gaze. The image of the man who auctioned off human stock and branded their black flesh until it sizzled and burned like a cow’s hide. Yet, the same image offered by white hands as black people’s deliverance from all corruption upon the earth. He, the blond-haired, blue-eyed brother of the slave master wrongfully given Prophet Jesus’ name, was their Lord and Savior, their ticket to redemption from human suffering and the bridge to eternal bliss in the world beyond.
How could one emerge from such psychological torture unscathed? That would be more uncanny than the light skinned Negro who saw blue veins and paper bags as paths to a greater life.
No, Aminah could not be horrified or disgusted. There was no reason to be. But she could not escape the inevitable sorrow that knowledge of such a history had brought. If she were White, she would want it silenced, labeled “the past” and sealed away, locked shut in rotting files that could not be reopened. She would not want to bear the burden of a cruelty she did not inflict. But she couldn’t imagine being able to escape a sense of guilt that the historic context of current affairs would necessarily bring.
And she had not been able to escape it, even as the drop of Black blood ran through her veins.
At times, she, like other biracial Americans searching for identity, coveted the society’s embracing of a multi-racial whiteness, instead of being relegated the label of the oppressed race. But what would such a category achieve except another social caste, an extension of the blue-veined club and paper bag test?
Which was why she found it difficult to revel in what Zaid’s eyes saw as beauty. Certainly, his homeland had not been spared the torch of European colonialism. This made his reverence of her skin suspect, as if he were rejoicing in her passing the paper bag test. He, like Americans of color, was a victim of colonial mentality. A suffering that corrupted the perception of superiority in the mind of the colonized—a corruption that affected even what the eyes assessed in the superficial tones of human skin.
Aminah wanted to love her skin, see it as beautiful. And at moments she did. But there was always the distinction between dark and light that would invade her mind, and all hope would be lost. If her skin was a medium-tone, a honey brown like Tamika’s, she would have been spared the self-torment. She longed for a day when the world moved on to embrace the beauty of all colors on the wheel. Until then, what was she to think of her white skin?
Paleness was a sign of sickness in a human being, and the color blue of her veins too. Even an un-ripened berry’s whiteness was indicative of bitterness, unable to be consumed. Only when darkness reached its skin was ripe sweetness within. So why not look upon lightness as repulsive and darkness as beauty? How was it that skin the color of lustrous berries and sweet chocolate was loathed in favor of pale, colorless pigment in want of sun?
Yet, of course, paleness was not always a sign of sickness. White was also indicative of purity, something free from stain. Even the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, preferred pure white garments for himself. And there was something innately beautiful in the soft whiteness of cloth untainted by dirt. And white chocolate was just as sweet as dark. And what mouth did not thirst for satiation brought by a drink of pure white milk?
But did any of this grant light or dark skin exclusive rights to the term beauty?
Beauty. It was such an abstract word. Yet poetic in its sound. A word that breathed, as if possessing a soul of its own. How was it then that humans had taken her life? Stolen her innocence and forced upon her a rigid definition of self? How could one give a definition for a word that, by nature, could not be defined? Were beauty’s rays not outstretched, warming the multitude of colors in the world? Was she only grazing the white and colorless people?
No. Beauty was beauty. It was that simple truth that made beauty, in fact, what it was—beautiful.
Chapter Nine
“Oh, Teddy’s just attached to his mother,” Ronald Blackman said, his brown eyes visible next to his laugh lines in the rearview mirror as he glanced at his son who sat behind him.
Abdur-Rahman smiled, shook his head, and glanced out the Range Rover’s side window from where he sat behind the driver’s seat. Ismael sat next to Ronald in the front, and Sulayman sat behind Ismael opposite Abdur-Rahman in the back. Ronald knew how to thoroughly embarrass his son, but Abdur-Rah
man knew it was harmless fun, at least in his father’s view. Still Abdur-Rahman couldn’t help feeling that sometimes his father went overboard. Ismael’s inquiry to Ronald, and indirectly to Abdur-Rahman, about his son getting married was more polite conversation than sincere interest, but Abdur-Rahman still felt uncomfortable with his father’s reply. Although Ronald was joking, Abdur-Rahman feared that similar jokes, if repeated often enough, would give Muslim women a negative image of him. Abdur-Rahman didn’t mind women assessing him first-hand and concluding that he was weird, but he found it difficult to accept them drawing a similar conclusion from hearsay, especially if his father was partly to blame.
“How old are you?” Ismael turned his head toward his shoulder to look at Abdur-Rahman, a look of amusement on his face.
“He’s twenty-nine,” his father said before Abdur-Rahman could respond. “Going on nineteen.”
Ronald and Ismael laughed, but for the brief moment Ismael and Abdur-Rahman made eye contact, Abdur-Rahman knew Ismael was not laughing whole-heartedly. It was as if he sensed, in that brief glance, that Ronald’s son was not enjoying this conversation as much as his father.
“Being attached to your mother is good,” Ismael said.
“Oh, I agree,” Ronald said with a laugh. “But finding a good woman is more important at this age. Isn’t that right, son?”
Abdur-Rahman met the reflection of his father’s eyes with a forced smile then returned his attention to the cars passing on the interstate. Although his father really knew how to get under his skin, Abdur-Rahman savored the opportunity to be in his father’s company.
Ronald was home from one of his book assignments, having arrived Thursday night to spend the last two weeks of June and the first week of July with his family before traveling again, and Faith thought Saturday was a good opportunity for Sarah’s family to meet him. They had decided that it was best for the women and men to have their separate outings, and the families of Ismael and Sulayman had stayed home with Faith for dinner while Ronald took the men out to a nice restaurant. Of course, Abdur-Rahman could not bring his pets along, so his mother had promised that she and the women would pet-sit them that night, although all that meant was the cages would sit on a nearby table in the room in which the women sat. Abdur-Rahman didn’t like keeping Freddie, Freda, and Charlie behind bars. In his room, they were free to roam and fly. But his mother had drawn the line there. She didn’t like the idea of birds and “rodents” having free reign of her home. So he had no choice but to imprison them when he greeted company or left them at home without him. He was grateful that his self-owned business afforded him the opportunity to bring them along to the pet store. Otherwise, he would have to get a pet sitter himself everyday.
