American Taliban: A Novel

by Pearl Abraham

  John nodded. She was right. In the heat of the moment, she couldn’t have known. So they hugged, so they made up, so they were cool again. But summer was over, he was moving back to D.C., though he had to get out of D.C. She was going to Hawaii. And they were only eighteen, too young, Barbara would say, to commit to each other, and after all this, especially after all this, he couldn’t disagree.

  BROOKLYN, NEW YORK—SEPTEMBER 2000

  THEY SAW THREE APARTMENTS. The first was a furnished flat on the ground floor of a brownstone, with a backyard patio, which John especially liked. Then they drove downtown, took the freight elevator to the third floor of an old factory renovated for residential living, and followed the Realtor into a large light-filled space with industrial-sized windows, high ceilings, revealed ducts and pipes. Best of all, John noted: it had concrete floors, which was awesome. He could grind at home. When his cast came off. Which was awesome. But the concrete didn’t thrill Barbara. She thought the place too hard and too cold. Not a place I’d call home, she said.

  She liked the third place, a luxuriously furnished large one-bedroom in a doorman building on Brooklyn Heights’ promenade with views of lower Manhattan.

  No way, John said. This is just too, way too over the top.

  He saw himself—his new self—best in the ground-floor brownstone apartment, which was furnished, offered easy access with no stairs, and was located conveniently near Atlantic Avenue and only blocks from the school.

  You don’t think it’s molelike? Barbara asked.

  John weighed the mole description and liked it. Reading and studying is molelike. It’s a good fit, he said. Besides when I’m not reading and studying, I’ll be out doing things. Like skating the Brooklyn Banks as soon as this comes off.

  All right, then, Barbara said, and the Realtor produced the paperwork for the brownstone apartment.

  AT THE SHARIA SCHOOL on Montague, their next stop, ten wide brownstone steps slowed John down. Barbara took one of his crutches to allow him the use of the handrail and walked beside him patiently as he lifted up his casted leg one clumsy step at a time.

  Inside, she admired the high carved dome, the circular entry hall, and the stained-glass windows. I’m very glad when visitors take pleasure in the architecture, the headmaster said, materializing suddenly out of nowhere.

  He introduced himself as the Sharia’s maulana, put his palms together to greet Barbara, then shook John’s hand.

  This was once a synagogue, he explained. Now it’s our own beautiful and spiritual setting for learning.

  His skin was dark tan, he had a black beard, and he was dressed in almost all white: white tunic, white pants, and a white turban, but with a long buttoned black Nehru jacket and black dress shoes. Barbara, John saw, was finding the getup super attractive. She was all smile and nod. She was entirely charmed.

  The maulana gave them a brief tour of the school, opened doors to classrooms, ushered them in, and they stood for a few minutes, listening. On one blackboard, John noted what looked like conjugations. The students were studying Arabic grammar. In another classroom, students were taking turns reading aloud, in what sounded to him like good accents. Barbara, he noticed, wasn’t paying much attention to the scholarship; she was noticing cultural things. Is this an all-boys school? she asked when they stepped into the maulana’s office. I haven’t seen any women.

  Our late-afternoon and evening classes do have some female students, the maulana said, but the formal study of this language seems to attract more men than women. Perhaps because women are good with language and tend to learn their mother tongue at home, he finished, totally flattering Barbara.

  There was a knock on the door.

  Excellent, the maulana said, clapping his hands together. John, the maulana said. I want to introduce you to one of your new colleagues. Khaled has agreed to help you out your first weeks.

  John stood on one crutch and shook hands with Khaled, who sized him up and smiled. They were about the same height, but compared with Khaled’s dark hair and skin, John seemed pale though he’d spent most of the summer in the sun.

  They exchanged e-mail addresses. Just let me know when you’ll be here, Khaled said.

  THEY TOOK A CAB back to Manhattan, to NoHo, to the little café where Noor worked. The taxi pulled up to a blue-and-white-tiled entrance on a busy sunny sidewalk crowded with people smoking, gesticulating, waiting in line. John watched from the window, delaying, until Barbara nudged him out.

  Come on, she said, and led the way. A waitress, a girl with wavy dark hair, side parted and bobby pinned, listened to Barbara’s inquiry, looked up, saw John, and smiled.

  You must be John’s mother, she said, and wiped her hand on her apron before offering it to Barbara. I’m Noor. And you’re the real-life John, she said.

  As real as I get, John said.

  Noor glanced behind her, at the tables. Let me see what I can do. Give me a minute.

  Barbara turned to John. Pretty, she mouthed.

  A smoker, seeing John on crutches, offered his perch on the little bench out front, and before John could decline, Barbara intervened. He’ll take it, she said. Thank you.

  It’s a lovely spot, Barbara said, and wandered away to look at the shopwindow next door.

  John leaned back, felt the sun on his face, a warm September glow reflected in the red brick across the street.

  Noor returned and perched beside him. How are you?

  He moved to give her space. Don’t, she said. I can’t stay. Did you find an apartment?

  John nodded. On Nevins, on the ground floor, which is necessary until I get this thing off, he said, pointing to his fat dirty white leg scrawled with colorful Katie & Co. signatures. He wished now that he’d waited to meet her without it. On wheels, she would have known him as he was and wanted to be known.

  I’m sorry about this, he said, but it’s coming off in a few weeks.

  But that’s how I knew it was you, she said.

  She smelled of apple or rose or currants, but intermingled with garlic and something else.

  And then Barbara appeared, carrying a tiny bouquet of almost black hothouse roses. I had to have these, she said. They’re exquisite. The entire shop’s exquisite, including the girl behind the counter.

  Nathalie, Noor agreed. She looked over her shoulder into the café. Your table’s ready.

  They followed her to a tiny corner near the window. It’s a little quieter here, she said, handing them menus. Can I bring you a pot of Moroccan tea?

  Yes, for me, Barbara said. John, a hot cocoa?

  John nodded without taking his eyes off Noor, off her thin face, her prominent nose, her wide dark eyes. Her skin, he thought, was light cocoa, cocoa with plenty of milk. Desert skin and hair, desert Bedouin eyes, with the depths of sand and caves. He was thinking like a book, in clichés, and he was ashamed of it, but he couldn’t help himself. Noor was as deep and brown as Katie was clear and blond. And somehow, though he was only one man, the same man, he found both beautiful.

  When Noor stepped away to place their order, John exhaled and stretched his good leg, glad to watch from a distance, relieved to have her probing black eyes and inquiring brow, which sent him into meltdown, preoccupied elsewhere. He looked up to see Barbara smiling into her menu, looking too pleased.

  She decided on the stew. John asked about desserts.

  I’ll bring you something, Noor promised, and soon returned with a Persian bird’s nest, made with honey, apricot, and pistachios, she explained. In truth it goes best with tea. I’ll bring an extra cup.

  John broke off a piece and tasted. Not bad, he said. Though it’s not chocolate.

  Barbara tried it. Not a bad start to a romance.

  Mom, John said. We’re chat-room buddies. I thought you liked Katie.

  Barbara nodded, but she made no effort to hide her smile, and John wished she weren’t there, or that he were anywhere but here, that he had waited until his cast was off and come alone. Who in his right mind brin
gs his mother to a first meeting with a girl?

  ————

  BACK HOME IN D.C., Barbara took to self-dramatizing. On the phone, in the street, at the supermarket, in the diner, gym, wherever she met someone who had the misfortune to ask how she was. In response, she would plunge into a run-on:

  John Jude is moving to Brooklyn, and though I love New York, and it really isn’t so far away, and this move will give us more reason to spend weekends away, still, Barbara lamented, my baby’s leaving home and he’s only eighteen, and he’s not fully mobile.

  He’s perfectly self-sufficient, Bill pointed out. He was fine this summer.

  She nodded, she agreed, he had been fine, but still she went on. It was the end of an era: they had raised a son, and now he was moving out, into the world, into the lives of other men and women. Would they love and protect him as she had?

  If this is the end of a phase, Bill soothed, it’s also a beginning. John survived the skirmish with Katie, or whatever it was. He’s a resilient, smart boy. He’ll make you proud. He’s already making you proud. Look at all the scholarship he’s taking on.

  Oh, I know, Barbara mourned, and laughed, and laughed at herself for mourning and laughing. He’s wonderful and wonderfully smart. My baby.

  BETWEEN THE THREE OF THEM, even with John on crutches, and with Barbara serving as the lightweight brigade, they worked quickly, passing one another in the corridor, carrying on a conversation in passing: Barbara carried John’s laptop and Harman/Kardon sticks; the pillows and quilts; she left the box of books and the suitcase of clothes for Bill; she picked up a still-unopened white box, noted its nonheft and return address, wondered aloud as to its contents, and pronounced the strange name—Al-ma-Ha-laat, John corrected, meaning the store, he explained. I ordered some books and a dervish CD.

  Dervishes, Barbara thought. Long-haired gurus’d had their moment in the sixties and seventies, when she was coming of age, but were they making a comeback now, in this new millennium, this moneyed age in which Republicans were actually, unbelievably, looking good again to American voters? Perhaps it was just John being John, reacting in counterpoint. He found her socially conventional, he once said, and convention is an enemy to art and love.

  According to whom? she’d asked.

  According to—um—I don’t remember.

  Wait until you’re my age, Barbara said, and judge me then. At your age your dad and I were revolutionaries. In ’67, we traveled down to D.C. together. We marched.

  Bill brought in the cooler of drinks and food, opened a Coke, and stepped out the back door onto the patio. Not bad, he said.

  The doorbell rang. John’s first visitor: Noor, with a brown pita wrapped in paper and tied with bakery string. From her book bag, she withdrew a small bag of coarse salt.

  It’s a Middle Eastern custom, she explained. Bread and salt, for a new home.

  Lovely, Bill said, introducing himself.

  Barbara found a pretty dish to use as a saltcellar. From the cooler, she brought out cheese and a bottle of champagne and went to find glasses.

  I can’t stay, Noor said. But I wanted to ask you, John, when’s your first class?

  Monday afternoon.

  Shall I meet you at the Sharia after? We can go to a little place I know nearby.

  WHEN HE ARRIVED for his first day of classes, Khaled was waiting for him out front, smoking a cigarette.

  I appreciate this, John said.

  Khaled shrugged and squashed his cigarette with the toe of his black Pumas. He wore Levi’s and a bomber jacket, but his shirt was a tunic, Pakistani style.

  He took one of John’s crutches, and they made their way up the stairs slowly.

  The letters carved into the stone above our heads, Khaled explained, taking the tone of tour guide, spell the Ten Commandments in Hebrew: I AM GOD, DON’T STEAL, DON’T LIE, DON’T FORNICATE, and so on. Jews it seems need their codes carved in stone. The rest of us just remember them.

  Khaled had a weird way of drawing out his words, as if he didn’t care that much whether he said them or not, which John found interesting, though the bit of anti-Semitism was not. But maybe this was the usual thing people say about each other, and he was just overreacting in an overly politically correct American way.

  There were fourteen kids in his class, all male, between about seventeen and twenty-one, he guessed. Most of them wore some sort of head covering, in white or color. John wasn’t sure whether it was for religion or style. And though they all spoke English and appeared American, they also didn’t seem fully American; they were like some kind of hybrid. Maybe it had something to do with Brooklyn. They were urban, but not D.C.-style urban.

  They eyed him warily and kept their distance in an obvious way intended to make him feel it. When he took a seat in the desk nearest Khaled, several nearby already seated students abandoned their desks quickly for ones a row or two away. One student named Fawal intentionally dropped his pencil in front of John’s desk, and instead of bending down to retrieve it, he made an elaborate effort to keep his distance by kicking at the pencil with the point of his shoe. The others laughed, and John understood that Fawal’s performance was a statement or a hazing of some sort, which succeeded because he got his laughs.

  John didn’t catch what Khaled said to Fawal, but he heard the reply, which referred to him as a saa-eH, meaning tourist, and he understood that he’d have to prove himself a serious, nontransient student.

  In session, John listened hard, kept his attention on the instruction, but he also observed his colleagues who were very unlike the kids at John Harlan High. He wondered whether the difference was cultural, religious, or something else.

  Don’t mind, Khaled said, when he asked. They’re being totally uncool.

  Is it because I’m not Arab?

  No, Khaled explained. Muslims accept Muslims of any race. But they can tell you haven’t submitted to Allah.

  How do they know?

  Easy, Khaled said. By the way you walk, stand, speak, dress. A man who prays doesn’t stand so tall.

  What about you?

  I like difference, Khaled said.

  Though Khaled’s hair and skin were dark, his eyes were light, or lighter than the others. And he was taller; still, in his height and lank, he resembled John, and this sameness somehow encouraged their friendship. John wondered whether Khaled’s drawl was some kind of regional accent; without it, he would sound like an American kid, more or less. Maybe it was just something he was trying on for style.

  Were you born here? John asked.

  Yes, but I spent almost every summer in Pakistan.

  The students here are mostly Arab Americans, Khaled informed him. Their parents are assimilated or in a mixed marriage.

  Khaled, who spoke Pashto and English, was studying classical Arabic because he planned to study abroad the following year, at Islamia College in Peshawar, where his mother’s family lived and where his cousins attended classes. And he wanted to visit Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

  Living in and with a language, he declared solemnly, as if he were reciting a sentence he’d read somewhere, is the only way to truly learn it. The school recommends a year abroad for everyone. You should come with me.

  Right, John said. Think how welcome I’d be there.

  It would be different, Khaled said. There you’ll be their guest. Here you’re an intruder.

  So if Fawal suddenly started attending John Harlan High, John understood, they might have been friends. But here, at the Sharia, he wasn’t welcome because he was invading the one place in Brooklyn, or in America, that was all theirs.

  AS PROMISED, Noor was on the steps in front of the school, in a cluster of students, all talking at once it seemed to John. This was a scene, a kind of post-class ritual, and he was grateful to Noor for this early initiation. It was her way of granting him insidership.

  Some of the men smoked, but the women did not, he noted. Noor was talking to a girl named Samina who turned out to be Khaled’s girlfriend
. John introduced Noor to Khaled and was introduced to Samina, a student at Barnard, then Khaled and Samina hurried off to his brother’s house, where they were expected for dinner. The others also soon dispersed, and Noor led the way to the promised café.

  It’s really not far, she said.

  As long as you don’t mind my snail’s pace.

  He inhaled deeply, energized by the night, the new friendships, his first formal lesson in Arabic. Even the nonwelcome, which would take working through. He had the feeling that this was the beginning of his life. He was finally fully free of the prison of childhood, of well-meaning Barbara and her version of adult life.

  The café was tiny, with only a four-foot bar. Noor secured one of the small tiled tables outside, pulled out a chair for John, and went to order havaj.

  On her return, she took her seat, and though she slipped out of her red coat, she rewrapped the thin pink scarf around her neck. Her lips, fuller than any lips he’d kissed before, appeared sort of sulky, and he liked that. But did Muslim girls kiss? What would she do if he leaned forward and did it? And what about Katie? Couldn’t he meet a girl and just be friends? He forced his eyes away from her lips.

  She had on a girl’s pale blouse with a peter pan collar, a cardigan, and jeans, held in place by a glitter cowboy belt. Her shoes were red velvet Chinese slippers with a thin band at the ankle and embroidery at the toes. She was delicate and serious at once, both girl and woman, and it seemed he couldn’t help himself. It didn’t matter what his mind advised; his eyes returned to her lips. And sitting with her here, alone for the first time, he wished to be past this awkward newness, onto something deeper. Then he stopped himself. He had a tendency to rush the best parts of life.

  He took a breath and started slowly.

  How are your classes? he asked. I never got to ask.

  So far I think I like literature better than history, but that’s probably because the reading is better. For history I have to read Gibbon, or I should say parts of Gibbon, and for my class on the Middle East, Hitti.