Marcia Talley: Tomorrow's Vengeance

‘Do you mean the clothing you wear? The hijab?’

Safa blushed. ‘That is part of it, but more importantly, should I need one, I must have a woman doctor, and, when the time comes, women who tend to me.’

After I was diagnosed with breast cancer, a male surgeon and a male oncologist had pretty much saved my life, so I was glad the Episcopal Church didn’t place such demands on its women.

‘What do you do about daily prayers?’ I asked. I knew that devout Muslims pray five times throughout the day. We’d once had an airport pickup where the cab driver arrived at the crack of dawn and asked to use our bathroom so he could wash his feet before his sunrise prayer. With some pride, he’d showed us the Qibla app on his iPhone which featured a compass programmed to determine the direction of Mecca from anywhere in the world, even the cab parked in our driveway. What would Mohammed have thought of that? I had marveled at the time. I had a Daily Office app on my iPhone, but had only consulted it twice. The cabbie’s devoutness put my half-baked efforts at regular daily prayer to shame.

‘Ah, prayers,’ Safa repeated. ‘This was a real plus, especially for Masud. Calvert Colony built a musalla , a place where we can practice salaat .’ She waved a hand in the direction of the gardens, where a modest building that I had taken for an oversized, elaborately decorated garden shed was nestled in a grove of young crabapple trees. ‘There are only three Muslims in residence now, and I am the only woman, but two more couples will be moving in as soon as the new block of town homes is finished.’

‘I hope you don’t mind my asking, but you look so, so…’ I paused, searching for the right word, not wanting to insult her.

‘American as apple pie?’ she finished for me.

I felt my face flush. ‘Yes.’

‘So, you noticed!’ A laugh bubbled out of her. ‘Until I went to college, I lived in McKinney, just north of Dallas, Texas. I met Masud when I was in the Peace Corp teaching English at a lycée in Tunis.’

I’d majored in French at Oberlin College, so I knew she meant a secondary school of some sort, most likely for girls, in Tunisia. ‘ Donc, vous parlez très bien le français, n’est-ce pas?’

‘ Oui, et je parle aussi l’arabe . And once the language barrier disappeared,’ she continued in English, ‘my eyes were opened and I became fascinated with the culture. It was ever so much richer than anything I had experienced before. I was totally sucked in. About halfway through my first year there, I was invited home to dinner by one of my students. Her family pretty much adopted me and treated me like a daughter.’

‘Is that when you started wearing the hijab?’

‘After a while, it seemed the natural thing to do.’

‘Don’t you find it confining?’

‘Not really. For me, it is a religious act. The hijab tells the world I am a Muslim woman.’ She smiled. ‘It saves a lot of time, actually. In social situations I usually don’t have to explain, “Sorry, I don’t drink,” or “I don’t mean to be rude or anything, but I am a Muslim woman so I don’t shake hands with men.”’

‘I see your point,’ I said. ‘Like wearing a wedding ring says “hands off” to jerks at professional conferences.’

‘Exactly. In Tunisia, Western women are fair game. You wouldn’t believe the cat calls I used to get while walking to work. Harmless, mostly, but still.’ She turned to me, beaming. ‘I can teach you a very useful phrase: Rude bellick, Allah bish yhizz lsaanik! ’

‘Is that the Arabic equivalent of “Your mother wears combat boots?”’

She flashed me a charming, gap-toothed grin. ‘It means be careful or God will seize your tongue!’

I laughed out loud. ‘I’ll have to remember that next time I’m in Tunis.’

‘After I began wearing the hijab, Hannah, nobody bothered me. I was safer in the streets of Tunis than I would have been in downtown Dallas, that’s for sure. I actually felt liberated.’

Safa’s hands suddenly flew to her throat, her fingers rapidly working to adjust the hijab where the fabric folded under her chin. ‘You must excuse me,’ she said, standing up. ‘Masud’s waiting. It’s time for me to go.’ Her eyes flicked sideways.

Where the sidewalk curved around a miniature Japanese maple a man stood, smoking. Masud was not particularly tall but he was dark and handsome, with abundant salt-and-pepper hair combed straight back. He was dressed in black trousers and a short-sleeved white shirt, the collar open. The fabric of the shirt was so sheer that I could read the label on the pack of cigarettes tucked into his breast pocket: Camels. Unfiltered. The only brand with a picture of the factory on the label, my late mother, a lifelong smoker, had always joked.

If Masud had been wearing a bow tie, I thought, as I watched him exhale a stream of smoke into the humid summer air, I might have mistaken him for a handsome waiter.

‘Of course,’ I told Safa. ‘I’m meeting someone, too. But I’ve enjoyed our conversation and I hope we run into each other again.’

Safa bowed slightly. ‘I hope so, too, Hannah.’

After an awkward pause while I considered whether to extend my hand or not, Safa turned and glided down the steps to join her husband. As she reached the bottom step, Masud dropped his cigarette butt on the sidewalk, ground it out with the toe of his sandal, turned abruptly and strode down the path on his own. Safa, like a well-trained puppy, followed several steps behind.

Until he spoke, I’d forgotten about the elderly lumberjack. ‘Litterbug!’

‘Well,’ I said, turning in the old man’s direction, ‘at least the butt is biodegradable. Have to give the man points for that. No cellulose acetate filters to screw up the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem.’

‘Send that goatherder back to the desert.’ He folded his arms across his chest and closed his eyes, effectively putting an end to our conversation.

Hoping, for Safa Abaza’s sake, that this wasn’t the prevailing attitude at Calvert Colony and, as we used to say, a preview of coming attractions, I left the old guy to his snooze and headed inside to track down Naddie.

‘Today’s 55-and-over retirement communities are not your grandmother’s nursing home. You walk into a stunning lobby with beautiful lighting and carpeting, and there’s an art gallery and a restaurant, just like a fine hotel. Some offer everything from entertainment centers with theater seating, videogames and computers, to state-of-the-art gyms with personal trainers where residents can take age-modified Zumba or belly-dancing classes. Some communities have dog parks so that family pets can also feel right at home.’

Annapolis Gazette , March 28, 2013, Section B, p. 2.

Directly over a pair of tall walnut doors, whose frosted windows had been replaced with leaded glass, hung a modest sign painted in incised gold capitals on a tasteful blue shield: ‘Blackwalnut Hall.’ Below, in smaller font, visitors were instructed to kindly check in at reception.

I straight-armed my way through the door, stepped into the lobby and slammed on the brakes. What had once been a dark, claustrophobic gallery where bygone priests had sat, smoked and read such runaway bestsellers as the Spiritual Exercisesof St Ignatius Loyola , had been transformed into a bright reception area. Light poured into the space from floor-to-ceiling windows, in front of which a double-wide staircase with carved wooden balustrades curved gently up to a mezzanine.

To my right, just beyond the reception desk – which remained where it had always been – an enormous stone fireplace rose like a rockslide, dominating the far end of the lobby, its chimney disappearing into the open rafters. Clustered around the hearth were conversational groupings of comfortable, overstuffed furniture, arranged on oriental carpets the size of your average three-car garage. All around, large, high-quality landscape oils in elaborate gilt frames decorated the wainscotting, which had been painted a warm vanilla.