She is beautiful, yes, but this is not why Bassam cannot stop watching her. It is her love for the boy. It is her love for her youth and her health and her freedom and her life in this world, and Bassam is stronger now than he was even one day before for he is not weakened witnessing this love; this is how Shaytan works among the kufar. He seduces you to love this life they love too well. The whore April, Bassam had felt alone with her, by himself while being with her. The same aloneness that had infected him back home before he’d been guided back to Allah. As if he were not loved. As if he were not protected. As if he would not continue to live after his own death. How could he have felt these things? Him, a shahid, Insha’Allah.
Again, it was the yielding, the yielding to the mushrikoon. And it was Khalid who, through the Creator, saved him. It was the body of his brother lowered into the grave that brought him back to the Judge and the Sustainer.
When Bassam left home Khalid’s possessions were still in the room they shared. His Saudi clothes and the clothes of the kufar, Levi’s blue jeans and shirts made by the Gap, his Nike shoes and hat like Karim’s. Above both their beds, their mother had hung woven tapestries, and behind Khalid’s, pinned to the back, was a carton of Marlboros.
Ahmed al-Jizani, how angry he would be to find those. How hurt. When Bassam was still asleep in this world, he believed his father to be a true believer. He never hurried his ablutions or skipped any of the daily prayers. He prayed inside the mosque—the mosque he built—not simply on the Day of Gathering but all the week long. He demanded his daughters be covered, even at home, that his sons never smoke or find music, that one day they make the pilgrimage to Makkah as he had.
But this is the same man who built housing for the kufar to live in while they attacked our brothers and sisters. This is the man who took so many dollars he converted to riyals, thinking the money was clean now, pure, as if he had not sinned against the Ruler and the Judge and his own people.
On the table beside Bassam’s empty cup is the notebook he bought yesterday afternoon in the books and supplies store crowded with the kufar. The pen, he purchased from Cliff at the fuel station store in Boynton Beach, a black Bic he pulls the cap from now.
“Bassam?”
“Mansoor.”
“Mansoor.” Tariq has been watching the young women, his feet tapping beneath the table, and he has smoked two cigarettes quite fast. Last evening, before the final prayer, he lay on the bed and pressed the remote button until the movies appeared: Family, Comedy, Drama—Adult; he held the remote control in the air, the sound off, his hand slightly shaking. In this land of the far enemy, there have been so many opportunities to see these films—through any video store, for sale behind shop shelves not far from the eyes of kufar children, and in hotels like this one, an expensive one they have not stayed in until now, and so this, their first real opportunity. Bassam’s heart had begun to beat more quickly.
“Tariq, don’t. We must prepare ourselves. Soon we have to wash and pray.”
“You went to that club, Bassam. You were there a long time.”
Bassam remained quiet. He did not want Tariq to go any further and he did want him to go further.
Then Imad’s knocking came and Tariq turned off the television and they prayed together in Imad’s room upon the carpet. He had brought incense and it burned sweetly though the room was nonsmoking and Bassam was distracted in his prayers and hoped there was no alarm, no way of their knowing.
There is the sounding of a horn, the laughter of one of the young women in the light of the sun. Tariq drops his shortened cigarette into his teacup. “Mansoor, we should go to the gym with Imad. Where is it?”
“The hotel. The exercise room.”
“We should join him.”
It had been more than two weeks and Tariq is right, but with such little time left, Bassam cannot justify it. “I am as strong as I will ever be, Tariq. You go. I must write to my mother.”
Tariq looks at him. “Isn’t your will enough? Let our actions speak for themselves, Bassam.”
“Go see Imad, Tariq. I will try to join you later, Insha’Allah.”
“When is Amir coming?”
“Tonight, Allah willing. Tonight.”
A young black kafir walks by their table, her brown skin exposed between her shirt and jeans, a glittering jewel attached there. Tariq stands quickly and leaves and twice he looks back at the young woman as she enters the café. He is not troubled by his desires. Before sleep last night, he lay in bed reading the Book in the lamp’s light. Bassam was nearly asleep in the bed beside his, entering a dream where he sat on the pebbled ground of Mount Souda in the firelight. The whore April stood on the other side of the fire. She was fully dressed and her hair was long and shining and she was smiling at him, the moon full and high over her shoulder.
“You see, Bassam.” Tariq’s voice, Tariq leaning on one elbow to read something from the Qu’ran. “This is from the Al-Imran sura, Bassam: ‘Women are your fields: go, then, into your fields whence you please. Do good works and fear Allah.’ Brother, Insha’Allah, we are shuhada’. Do you think the Creator cares if we turn on this television and watch what other men do in the fields?”
“It is haram, Tariq. I know you know this.”
“The Holy One knows all. Why would He have this available in our room if He did not want us to see what awaits us?”
Bassam said nothing. Nor could he say anything, for he wished this to be true. And perhaps it was. They were not real women but only those on film far away who could not actually tempt them. But no, no. “We must rest, Tariq. Close the lamp. We will need our strength, Allah willing.”
There was the closing of the Book and darkness, then quiet. Autos drove by in the streets below. Far down the corridor, the soft ring of the elevator bell.
Go, then, into your fields whence you please.
April who calls herself Spring, he can’t stop thinking of her. The coarse hair above her qus, the baby’s scar there. Her eyes as she sat beside him uncovered. Brown and warm. Her voice as she asked about Khalid. As if she truly wished to know.
Her screaming later in the parking area among the men. Her screams.
EARLY SUNDAY MORNING, they sat on towels on the damp Adirondack chairs under the mango tree sipping hot coffee each of them had made in their own kitchens. Jean’s garden was a glistening profusion of green and white, of flaming red and orange. It smelled earth-sweet and fertile. She’d slept badly, Franny in her dreams, though she could remember only her presence there, nothing else.
April crossed her legs. She was barefoot, her toenails still coated in the polish of her work. She’d brushed her hair but had put on no makeup, and her eyelids looked swollen.
“I can’t stop thinking about tomorrow morning. What will they be inspecting anyway?”
“I don’t know—drugs, alcohol, a gun in the house.”
“I would never have a gun in my house.”
“Nor would I allow it.”
“Or drugs.”
“I didn’t say you do. Please, you’re getting defensive again.”
“I’m sorry.” April said it automatically and Jean didn’t believe her. She lowered her cup and rested it on the arm of her chair. “Why not tell them you’re going to quit?”
“I plan to.”
“Are you?”
“What?”
“Going to quit that job?”
“Yes. In about six more months.”
“Why not now?”
“I don’t have enough yet.”
“Money?”
“Yes.”
“For a house?”
“At least one.”
“That’s a lot of money.”
April nodded. She sipped her coffee and squinted at the bougainvillea vine. A phone rang from inside, a muffled electronic ring coming down through the mango leaves. “It’s yours, April.” But she was already out of the Adirondack, running up the stairs in a way Jean never could.
It wasn’t F
ranny, it wasn’t the people watching her, it was Louis, his voice low and hoarse like he had drunk too much the night before and hadn’t slept. April was breathing hard, could feel her heart beating in her hand around the phone, his first words a language she couldn’t quite decipher.
“Really, Spring. How is she? She all right?”
“I don’t know. Why are you calling me?”
“New policy, hon. Sorry, but no more mothers. Come clean out your locker, Spring. I’m here till noon.”
April lowered the phone to its charger. She stood in her immaculate childless home. It smelled of Pine-Sol and coffee and a new start. She felt kissed and she felt slapped. Of course he was knocking her off rotation and out of the building. He’d have to get rid of Retro now too, and Sadie, and that Chinese girl who had two kids and lived with her sister. No time for mothers. Time to purge himself of mothers. And how fucked to get fired by a man she paid. And what about tomorrow? Would this be good? Or would they expect her to have a job? She had fifty-two thousand dollars in her account, and there were a few thousand more from the foreigner. Yesterday she’d driven in the blowing rain by her bank but couldn’t deposit it. Not before Franny was back. It would feel like an exchange then.
But that much money would look good to them, wouldn’t it? Then she’d say she was through dancing and was looking for something else even if she couldn’t be, not yet. There was the Pink Pony in Venice. She could get in there, though it’d be harder. Wendy had talked about it. The porn playing on widescreens on the walls while you danced, and because of bitches like her the VIP rooms were full-contact and men expected hand jobs or blow jobs and got them for cheap.
She’d heard of a classier club up in Tampa, a national chain. Gold was in the name. Something Gold. The phone was ringing. April lifted it and pressed it carefully to her ear.
THE HUMIDITY WAS back in the air. Yesterday’s rain had evaporated from the asphalt but the sandy dirt at the shoulders was darker and so was the green in the wire grass all the way out to the industrial park, the chain-link fence around it glistening silver in the sun. Just beyond it people were leaving the Methodist church. The men were in short sleeves and ironed pants, the women in bright skirts and dresses. One of them stood on the top step wearing a straw sun hat decorated with flowers. She was talking to the minister in his flowing robe. Lonnie wanted to ask April how she was doing. He wanted to reach over and rest his hand reassuringly on her knee. But he was surprised to find he felt awkward.
When he’d called she told him Louis had just 86ed her and she didn’t want to be alone with him in the club while she emptied her locker, would he go with her? He’d quickly showered and shaved, pulled on a T-shirt and cutoff jeans and his Tevas. She was waiting for him in her driveway. Her hair was pulled back. She wore a maroon sleeveless blouse and khaki shorts and the only makeup was something on her eyelashes. She smiled at him. It was Spring’s smile, the one she’d give him after every shift when she pushed money into his hand, thankful. But this was the woman he’d driven to the hospital and back home where he’d pushed past newspeople for her to run inside, had sat with her and shared food with her—this was April. And as she climbed into his truck, she seemed like someone entirely new. He hoped he looked good to her sitting behind the wheel.
He pointed at the one-story church as they passed. “You ever go?”
“When I was little. You?”
“Never.” He laughed. “We’re a couple lost souls, aren’t we?”
She didn’t say anything.
His face heated up. “I’m quitting.”
“The club?”
He nodded.
“Right now?”
“Looks like it.” Rising up ahead on the other side of the boulevard was the yellow Puma sign, its black silhouettes of two naked women looking tawdry and pathetic under the sun.
The screen door was propped open by a cinder block but the exterior door was locked. Lonnie had to rap on the glass awhile. He and April stood in the Dumpster stench together and finally Louis came to the door and opened it. He stood under the fluorescent glare of the kitchen in a graying T-shirt. It hugged his gut and was wet in the center of his chest, his legs pink and freckled beneath baggy shorts. He was breathing hard.
“You two come together?”
“Yeah, I gave her a ride.”
“Good, you can help me clean this fucking dump.” He glanced at April. “I’ll be out front when you’re done.”
Lonnie followed him into the cooled air of the club, his adrenaline kicking in low, like a pocket had opened and he was forced to rise and drift toward it and close it. The houselights were up. Louis had stacked all the tables and chairs against the stage and along the walls. In the middle of the worn carpet was a commercial rug cleaner, beside it a jug of something blue.
“This thing’s costing me by the fucking minute. I’ll get up on the stage and you hand me the tables first, then the chairs.”
“I can’t, Louis.”
“Yeah you can. On the clock. We’ll take the boat out after. Have some drinks.”
“I quit, Louis.” It was like throwing the punch they never saw coming, Louis’s stunned look, his freckled hands at his sides, useless.
“You’re shittin’ me, right?”
“No. I appreciate everything you did for me, Lou, but I need a change.”
“What? More money?”
“No, I just need to do something else.” He turned and walked past the rented rug cleaner and the dusty stage.
“You better not be going to the Pony, Lonnie. Tell me you’re not going to the fuckin’ Pink Pony.”
Lonnie stopped and looked back at him, this unhappy rich man in shorts and a T-shirt, his mouth half-open like he’d just been pulled from his bed to be given this news. And it wasn’t unlike the remorse Lonnie’d begin to feel after laying somebody out, the questions he had about himself after. “No, Louis. I won’t be going to the Pink Pony. Good luck.”
And he meant it. The Pony part and the luck part, April walking out of the dressing room just as he entered the kitchen, a pair of jeans rolled under her arm, zipping up a purple bag in both hands as if it held a secret she may tell him once they were both far from here.
SHE IS UGLY and what she does is ugly and Bassam feels poisoned watching her, but he cannot move or speak nor is he breathing fully and his face burns with shame for the hardness he can only hope is not visible under his clothes. Tariq lies silently on his own bed, still and quiet as well. The shades are drawn and the room is darkened to the afternoon, the television’s screen so clear, the woman’s sounds turned low but so clear, her cries of pleasure.
She is thin and pale. Her nuhood are small and her hair is dyed the white-blond so many of these kufar prefer. Along her belly, close to her qus, is inked a man’s name: Joseph. On her ankle, a flower. On her shoulder one of the men grasps, is the cross of Mary’s son these ahl al-shirk worship as if their prophet were the Holy One and not simply one of His messengers. Stupid. Stupid.
But Bassam does not look at these inked markings. It is the man thrusting himself into the woman, the wetness of her, how deeply he can go, how fast. Bassam cannot believe how deep and how fast.
How does this not harm her? How does she enjoy this? This ugly whore Bassam cannot turn away from. And Karim, the only one among them to leave their home. His studies in England. The Zionist he boasted about lying with. Did he do it to her like this? Did he turn her over and enter her as a dog? Grasp her hair and pull? Did she scream like this one? Did she?
Enough.
“Tariq, turn it off. We must turn this off.”
“We pay for it. We should see all of it.” Tariq’s voice is high in his throat, like after racing or just before.
Bassam closes his eyes, his face a wash of heat, his shame softening him. His shame, and yes, his disappointment. This act as ugly as something animals do. How will it be any more beautiful done by him? Will he not be given back his human body in Jannah? Won’t his companions h
ave the bodies of women? How can he bring such ugliness to the highest rooms of the Creator?
The woman cries louder and she tells the man to push harder, harder.
“Tariq, please, turn it off. This is haram, brother. Please.”
“It is not haram, Bassam. It would not be here if the Creator does not deem it. Please, let me watch this in peace.”
Bassam stands. From the bedside table he takes his notebook and the pen from Florida. “Yes, Tariq. But we say ‘Asr in less than one hour. Remember this.”
Tariq says nothing and Bassam steps quickly past the television he disciplines himself not to view any longer. At the door he slips on his shoes. He looks once more into the room, sees only the television’s light moving upon the carpet and beds. Tariq’s feet, his long feet. From here, the woman’s cries sound manufactured.
He pulls closed the door. Checks that it is locked. He walks past Imad’s door; knows he is resting there. Resting after his long exercising. Perhaps giving supplications to the Holy One, the Protector and Sustainer, and again, a hot shame moving through Bassam’s blood and skin; how can he even begin to question what waits for them in the highest rooms? How can he even begin to think he knows the beauty there? The women, chaste and chosen for him only, lying upon soft couches in lush gardens watered by running streams.
On the street his legs are too light beneath him, the grip upon his notebook weak. In his head only the pale whore. He passes an old woman, her lips red with cosmetics, the wrinkles deep in her face. She walks slowly with a wooden staff to aid her and she smiles at him and he sees the man’s hands on her, the thrusting so fast and so deep into her old body. Bassam runs across the street. The blare of a horn, the yelling of the taxi’s driver. An Arab. His accent Egyptian. Living here among the kufar, becoming one of them. Three women now pass on the sidewalk. They are girls not yet in university and two reveal their bellies, their legs behind tight jeans and their nuhood bouncing to their walking and they laugh and do they know how they will be penetrated? Have they already done this? And was there love? When they sinned, did they think it was love?
The Garden of Last Days Page 36
