American Taliban: A Novel

by Pearl Abraham

  Short or long? John asked.

  Short, Noor said. I don’t think any professor could get away with assigning the long one. Isn’t it like nine hundred pages?

  I just started it, and I’m liking it, which makes me think I might want to read the longer one. I don’t know. It was on my reading list forever, but once I got started, it moved fast. It’s not at all like the boring textbooks I read for high school.

  Noor agreed to give Hitti a second chance. Really, I should like it, since it’s for a course in my concentration.

  Sounds like you know what you want to do after graduation.

  Journalism, Noor said. I want to be a foreign correspondent in the Middle East.

  The havaj arrived, and Noor took up her spoon and stirred. John picked up his cup, but Noor reached across the table and guided it back to the saucer. You want the mud settled before you start drinking, she said. And you?

  Um, John said, and released his cup. I guess you could say scholarship, but I don’t have a, like a career plan. That’s why I deferred college. So I can figure it out.

  Noor smiled, but only slightly. She wasn’t a girl who laughed needlessly.

  So what are you reading besides Hitti? she asked.

  Poetry. I’m into this Sufi poet, Ibn ’Arabi.

  Noor reached into her green schoolbag, brought up a thin black notebook, opened the flap, and recited,

  My heart is capable of every form

  It is a meadow for gazelles and a monastery for Christian monks …

  John joined her, though he stumbled here and there for the next word. Their translations differed. John’s had a camel in it, Noor’s a caravan. Still, they finished together.

  Love is my religion and my faith.

  Noor’s lips were slightly parted now, and John brought his fingertips to his own, then reached across the table to hers. And they were warm, they were yielding. So he lifted himself up on the arms of his chair and touched her lips with his.

  That’s for knowing it. I hoped you would.

  She drew her black eyelashes down, obscuring her eyes, and said nothing, but out of the corners of her eyes, she glanced right then left, without moving her head. To see if anyone had seen? John looked. It didn’t seem to matter to anyone. Seated at this tiny table in the growing bluedark, they were as good as alone.

  He told her about his new CD, recorded in Morocco. I got it in the mail last week. It has a rendition of the poem, in French. Mon coeur est devenu capable. I’ll play it for you.

  I’d like that. She picked up her cup. You can taste now, she said.

  Cinnamon, he said, sipping. And nutmeg. And something else.

  Cardamom, Noor said. Good?

  John sipped again. Surprisingly, he said.

  I’m glad you like it, Noor said, because I love it. The secret spice that no one guesses is a pinch of white pepper, not black, white, which is different. She reached into her backpack again and brought out a small glass vial sealed with a cork stopper. My own mix, she said, and removed the stopper, and passed the vial under her nose.

  John leaned forward to sniff.

  Careful, Noor warned, holding back. If you inhale or exhale hard, the cinnamon powder will rise up and choke you. Just let the fragrance come to you, kind of on its own. John leaned back. Ready? she asked. And passed the vial under his nose in an arc.

  She was right. The smell arrived, in time.

  He wondered whether she’d had boyfriends, whether she’d had sex. Did Muslim girls make love? She’d sort of allowed him to kiss her, though she’d also worried about being kissed, or being seen kissing. Islam, he knew, was against premarital sex, but so were Christianity and Judaism, all traditional faiths. He looked at her. She was most likely a virgin, he thought, and for now, with the cast on his leg, she found him safe. Maybe. With Noor, unlike Katie, he wasn’t certain of anything.

  I read somewhere, he said, that Muslims read poetry more than they read the Qur’an, which is amazing. In the United States, where supposedly church and state are separate, and freedom of choice is law, the New Testament is the most read book. According to statistics.

  It’s complicated, though, Noor said. In Arab culture, poets are sort of like spokesmen or journalists or even oracles, like the Prophet. They write about politics, and if they take a stand against a leader or an issue or something, they have a huge influence. Even the Bedouins honored poetry. It’s why the caliphs and clerics always want to cut off the poet’s tongue.

  They honor poets by cutting out their tongues? John asked.

  Noor laughed. It’s an expression. It means subsidizing the poet as a way to avoid his bite; it’s kind of a bribe.

  He wondered about her background, her parents. Khaled seemed modern, Noor less so. Or maybe it had something to do with her being female.

  Eye-na al-Hahm-maam? John asked.

  Noor pointed him toward the back of the café. When he returned, she insisted on walking him home.

  His apartment was only a few blocks away, and they walked slowly. After a short silence, John asked whether she would go with him to the Brooklyn Banks to watch the skating. After my cast is off.

  Sure, she said.

  Great. You’ll get a better idea of who I am when I’m not crippled.

  You’re not crippled, Noor said, just temporarily challenged.

  They laughed.

  John invited her in, but Noor declined.

  LATER THAT NIGHT, pausing for the nth time on the same sentence, replaying every moment of the evening in his head, John realized that if he had asked Noor out for tomorrow night instead of Saturday he would not have had to wait so long. At the very least he could have suggested that she meet him again after classes on Wednesday and walk back with him to hear the CD. She might think I don’t like her, he thought. But when he pulled his laptop into his lap and checked his e-mail, he found one from her, wishing him good night, and felt better.

  He wrote back: miss you already. can’t wait until saturday. how about tomorrow? and also wednesday, after class. john

  He waited ten minutes. When there was no reply, he decided that she might be asleep already, or in bed, reading. In his inbox, there was a message from Katie, and though he hesitated over the feeling that the double pleasure of e-mail from both girls on the same night might be a double infidelity, disloyal to both Noor and Katie at once, blue-eyed, white-blond, born-to-surf Katie, his first love, whom he still loved, he finally couldn’t hold out and opened Katie’s letter, too.

  From: Katie KatieOBX101@NCoptonline.net

  To: GoofyFootJohn GoofyFootJohn@adelphia.net

  Date: September 29, 2000

  RE: overheads

  Hey JJ,

  Just want you to know you are missing really truly awesome surf. Hurricane Ida hovering over the Caribbean brought walls of water, but unlike what we got at Cape Hatteras, these were nasty, and closed out on us like fiends. They crested and came down so hard and fast, we had no space at all, and we ate it. A lot. Even Jilly. We all came away with bad cuts and bruises, and Sylvie got a black and blue that’s now ugly yellow, but no broken bones, so we’re lucky. We’re all three working extra hours to save for Hawaii. We want to make extreme wave surfing also a woman’s sport. I think Jilly and Sylvie have become like dangerous addicts, so it’s my job to remain practical and keep us safe because someone has to. If you were coming along, I wouldn’t have to, which I would really appreciate so I hope you’re planning for Hawaii in the winter.

  Have you been to Brooklyn Banks yet? And when are you visiting OBX again?

  XOXOKatie

  HIS ARABIC LANGUAGE BOOK provided stickers with words printed on them. For this morning’s vocabulary lesson, he was required to paste eleven new words to their corresponding items in his apartment and learn them. On crutches, he made his way to his ah-ree-ka, where he spent a good part of the day reading, said the word aloud, ah-ree-ka, rolling his r’s like a Mexican, and pasted the label on the sofa’s arm where he would see it. Then he atta
ched the label miss-baaH to the lamp beside his ah-ree-ka. On the other side of the miss-baaH was a koor-see for the occasional guest, though now and then he, too, sat in it. Covering the square of floor space outlined by his ah-ree-ka, miss-baaH, koor-see, and taa-we-la, on which he kept his books, laptop, and glass of water, was a small sahzh-zheh-da, a kind of cowhide thing, not the Persian carpet the word evoked. On the door to the patio he stuck the label baab. On the clock in the kitchen, a saa-ra, on the telephone, a teh-lee-foon, and on the picture hanging in the hallway, a ssoo-ra. On the tiny window in his bathroom, he stuck a neh-fee-da, and on the shower curtain, a see-taa-ra, though it was surely meant for a regular window curtain. After which he hobbled from object to object and named each one aloud, as if it was for this that he was here, in order to say: ah-ree-ka, miss-baaH, koor-see, taa-we-la, sahzh-zheh-da, baab, teh-lee-foon, saa-ra, see-taa-ra, ssoo-ra, neh-fee-da, ka-naba, haa-tif, to say these things and forever name them.

  Tired, he relinquished his crutches and leaned back on his ah-ree-ka. He had been able to pick up other vocabulary on his own. He knew, for example, that his ees-me was John Jude Parish, that he was a talib who had signed on for da-ra-sa at a ma-dra-sa, that he was taking dars with a moo-dar-rees, but learning to read and write in Arabic script presented a greater challenge. For one thing he hadn’t learned a new alphabet since he was a child. And Arabic letters changed according to their place within the word, with variations on the form for initial, medial, or final placement, which meant learning to recognize three variations on each of the twenty-eight letters, a sum of eighty-four different calligraphic shapes. He had gotten the hang of reading right to left quickly enough, but writing the letters from right to left was more difficult, and he found himself etching them backward, from left to right, which Noor said was like writing the word cat on a page starting with the t.

  You’re avoiding the difficulty, his moo-dar-rees suggested. It’s a matter of habit, he explained, and though habit is difficult to break and reform, sometimes requires hundreds of repetitions to reform, it is possible with some effort and attention, and ultimately rewarding.

  This argument rang true, John could think of other habits he’d had to break in order to make progress, like unlearning a bad skating tic in order to master a new maneuver.

  Thus he practiced daily. He got out his yellow lined pad, and slowly, it was painstakingly slow work, he looped up and out calligraphically. A quill or fine paintbrush rather than a number 2 pencil would be a more appropriate tool for making these detailed shapes, he thought. It was super close work, with dots and dashes and lines and curves, and every filled page of etchings a calligraphic artwork worth framing or, at the very least, mounting with a magnet on his mother’s fridge.

  He covered a long yellow page with Arabic alphabet. He stood and stretched. And on crutches, he made his way to the kitchen to pin his fresh page of ah to ee on the refrigerator door, using the English A and Z. The pages accumulated. He was on his sixth page, filling two a day. He stood in front of them, read them back, aspirating the H in the back of his throat to extinguish a candle, gargling the kh, and kawing the q. He practiced the short stop for a glottal pause, a silent musical beat. Then he hopped back on crutches to his ah-ree-ka, rolling the r, ah-rrrrrree-ka, and sat down to fill another page, this time from memory, attempting to force memory.

  LATE AFTERNOON, HIS CELL PHONE RANG. Noor. He heard cups clattering, steam hissing, voices, and wished himself there, at a table, watching her.

  I got your e-mail, she said, but I shouldn’t go out again tonight. Instead, would you like to eat with us? My dad won’t be home, so it’s only my mom, my brother, and I.

  John wrote down the address on the pad near the teh-lee-foon and promised to be there before seven. He hung up. This was perfect. He had put in a good day’s work, and now he could enjoy his reward. He would read for another hour, then shower, then make his way to Noor’s house, exploring the streets on his way while there was still light. He probably ought to bring something, a small gift. He would ask Barbara.

  I’m so glad you called, she said. How was Dr. Kluge?

  John told her about his new removable lime-green cast.

  I’m not convinced that your doctor made the right decision, Barbara said in the way she had of questioning all authority, with the exception of her own. I worry that you won’t wear it all the time.

  John demurred. I, he declared, taking Barbara’s tone, am one hundred percent certain that the decision was a good one since it has improved my mobility by about fifty percent. I can bathe with less trouble and scrub off dead skin cells. You should have seen how scaly my skin was when the old one came off. Plus it stank.

  As long as you don’t do any more damage, Barbara said.

  Okay, Mom. Don’t get teary on me. I called to ask you for gift ideas. I’m invited to dinner at Noor’s house. What should I bring?

  How lovely, Barbara said. They might not drink alcohol so a bottle of wine won’t do. How about dessert? There must be a bakery on Atlantic. Why not stop on your way, and ask them to fill a cake box with an assortment of fancy cookies?

  Cookies? I don’t know. That’s not especially Middle Eastern.

  I know, Barbara interrupted. Halvah. Pick up a block or two. You can also look around; there are sure to be other special deli items. Olives, or a pretty spice. Stick to an edible. And take along your backpack, so you’ll have your hands free for your crutches. How far a walk is it?

  Mom, John warned. I’ll be fine. Thank you. How’s Dad?

  Oh, he’s well. Working hard, as always. He promised to read a draft of my paper, and though I’ll be delivering this Saturday, he still hasn’t gotten to it. Would you like to read it?

  Not really. What’s the subject?

  It’s for that conference on the nonvoting American; students are one of the major culprits, by the way. They tend toward apathy until they’re conscripted for war. My paper is on the complacency that peace and prosperity engender. By the way, it just occurred to me that you’ll have to cast an absentee ballot, since you’re not registered in New York. I’ll forward one to you.

  HE TURNED RIGHT on Atlantic, as Noor had instructed, walked slowly, stopping at the open vats of olives and pickles and spices, inhaling the fragrance of ground herbs. What were they? Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme, and then he couldn’t get the song out of his head.

  At the next store, he purchased a half pound each of vanilla and chocolate halvah. He watched the counterman wrap them up efficiently, first in wax paper, then brown paper and string.

  He paid for the halvah, leaned his crutches on the counter to slip off his backpack, but the man stopped him.

  Not necessary, he said. He tucked the two packages into John’s backpack while it was still on his back, zipped it up snugly, and clapped his hands.

  A good evening to you, young man, he said. With good appetite. Im’sh’allah.

  ————

  NOOR OPENED THE DOOR, and several feet behind her was her mother, looking him up and down, taking in his lime-green cast and crutches. She wiped her hands on a dish towel, but not, it turned out, in order to shake his hand because she didn’t offer it. She merely bowed her head to acknowledge the introduction. The rest of her remained quiet, unmoving.

  Ta-shar-rahf-naa, John said, showing off what he’d practiced. Noor’s mother smiled. Only her lips moved. Her eyes, her head, her shoulders, and arms remained still. She moved only what was necessary, unlike Barbara. She moved, John decided, like a kung fu guru.

  Marhaba, she said, and led the way in.

  He followed them into a kind of living room, but an unusual one, with low velvet cushions and bolsters, a brass tray in the center holding a teapot and tiny glasses. John thought this might be an indoor version of a Bedouin majlis.

  Noor’s mother spoke to Noor, in Arabic. Noor translated. My mom suggests unsweetened mint tea before dinner.

  John seated himself with some difficulty, laying down first one crutch, then
the other.

  I’m sorry, Noor said. Can I help? She offered her arm, but John declined, and managed alone, clumsily.

  This will be harder in reverse, he said.

  You have a new cast, Noor said.

  Yes, removable and lighter, but still clumsy, as you can see. The doctor promises to take it off entirely in two weeks.

  Im’sh’allah, Noor said, palming her hands, looking very much like her beautiful mother. Her beauty, John reflected, wasn’t yet fully developed, but it would deepen with age. For him, though, for now, at least, these early hints were enough.

  On her knees, Noor poured tea into two glasses and served first John, then herself. She sat with her legs tucked under her and held the glass cupped with both hands, warming herself as if she were cold.

  Only two more weeks, she said. You should get it covered with signatures before it comes off. Here, I’ll start. She handed him her glass, sprang up, and went to get a marker. After which she sat, chewing on the plastic tip, thinking. Then abruptly uncapped the marker, and signed in Arabic with a calligraphic flourish.

  John tried but couldn’t read it. He thought there was a my to start with, then was lost. I’ll have to decipher it when I get home, he said.

  Noor nodded. Good practice, she said.

  She sipped her tea. Before dinner the tea is unsweetened; after it’s sweet.

  Speaking of sweets, John said, and reached for his backpack on the floor at his feet. He unzipped the bag and brought out the parcels, one at a time.

  Noor sniffed. Mmmm, halvah. How’d you know?

  My mom’s idea, John admitted.

  It’s Ali’s favorite dessert, but he has to stop eating it, he’s getting fat. Here he comes now. He tends to announce himself with slammed doors.

  A stocky little boy came in, stopped, and stared.