Ali Eteraz - Native Believer

I started that day. Qasim and I corresponded via e-mail and had webchats. He was a young man, in his midtwenties, dressed in a white kandura and a red Ferrari hat. His goatee was exquisite, almost painted on, styled more meticulously than the eyebrows of any housewife stalking Rittenhouse.

I worked from home. Qasim worked on the fly. I noticed that he streamed to me from his cell phone while driving around Wazir City, the reflection from the skyscrapers tessellating upon his face. One time he picked up a pair of women while we chatted, Russian by the look of them, and had them in the car with him while he raced some teenagers along streets with domes and minarets in the background. He told me that the Waziri Highway, which linked the only two major cities in the city-state, was the new Autobahn. It had a bridge that was the new Golden Gate. It had an airport that was the new Heathrow. Everything about his world seemed to possess novelty. It was as if their wealth had allowed them to elude the passage of history.

Eventually we got to his business idea. It was a health-and-fitness DVD that he’d recorded, with the Russian girls as background models. The name of his system was Salato. The name was derived from salat, the Arabic word for prayer. The o at the end had been added because yoga ended in a vowel and so did other exercises Americans enjoyed, such as Zumba and Tai Chi. He already had thirty thousand copies of the DVD ready to order. Now he needed press, exposure, word of mouth. He believed that gullible Americans were the best market for a new exercise craze, provided that there was enough noise to accompany the product.

“Creating noise is what I do. Why don’t you overnight the DVD?”

Qasim pulled away from the phone for a few seconds, turned it around, and returned to the camera. “I just uploaded it to your e-mail. Follow the link to download.”

“Your Internet is that fast?”

“Where do you think I am? In bin Laden’s cave? Hell, even his cave turned out to be a bungalow. You guys need to update your stereotypes about us.”

I heated up some nachos and cheesy salsa, poured myself a soda, and headed into the living room to watch the exercise routine.

The video began with a panoramic shot of a beachside resort, glittering teal swimming pools, a placid artificial lagoon. The thrum of Arabian guitar permeated the air. The camera came to a stop at an elevated space between two large golden fountains. Qasim stood in front, dressed in a shirt and loose trousers, and the Russian models were behind him in traditional black robes with sequins down the front. From the fall of the light it was evident they only wore underwear beneath. The production quality was high. The sound was excellent. It was evident Qasim worked with a script.

He started the viewer off on a small stretching routine and gave a short history lesson about the emergence of the Islamic prayer. “Official sources claim that the Prophet Muhammad took the full-body method of prayer that was already known to seventh-century Arabs, modified it, and from there over the centuries it spread to a billion people. So already we’re part of a long history, a long legacy. Think of all your historical brothers and sisters. We are all going to join together as a community of exercise.”

After stretching, he explained the various positions. Salato began in the standing position, hands folded. Then you bent forward with both hands on your knees. “Already you’re cracking the kinks out of your cartilage,” Qasim exhaled. Next, one stood back up, and in the same motion knelt down to the ground, folding both legs underneath the torso. “It’ll be uncomfortable at first,” he said. “But that is just your decadence complaining.” Seated like this, one made two prostrations, head to ground, before standing back up. “You should already feel the spine aligning.” Once you were back on your feet you repeated the aforementioned process again, up to four times, depending on what time of the day you were exercising. Qasim pointed out that there was a small chart available, at an extra cost, which revealed how many repetitions to make at what time in the day. Or you could pay out a little more and receive a small wristband that emitted a wail and reminded you it was “time to Salato.” Due to the history of Salato, where all the leading practitioners had been men, Qasim advised that the routine leader should always be male. For the sake of tradition.

Now that the explanations were over, Qasim began in earnest. The camera zoomed in on his crisp goatee. His head filled the screen. “Normally one would be reading portions of the Koran during each movement,” he said. “But we’re simply going to focus on clearing our minds, focusing on the breathing, and exhaling the power word, Hu.” He demonstrated this for a moment. Then his voice took on an exhortative tone. “This is Salato! I am your Exercise Imam! Now say it with me! Hu! Hu! Hu!”

The Russian models nodded, smiled, and knelt.

It took me two days to come back to the DVD. It felt disconcerting to have fallen from watching films of Isabelle Adjani to this. But maybe the cosmos was speaking to me. Had I not always retained an interest in the film industry? A dream that I’d tucked away after Marie-Anne’s attempted novel failed to materialize and took with it my own creative zeal? Well, marketing a kitsch infomercial-cum-documentary-cum-fitness-DVD might not lead me to the Oscars, but one could classify it as film work, broadly defined. It might serve as a gateway into other kinds of film promotion.

I decided to put together a PowerPoint presentation. This particular software program told us everything there was to know about how to persuade. With its bullets, tracks, columns, grids, it was chock-full of martial vocabulary. Even the name seemed to suggest that persuasion was an act of enforcement.

Once I told Qasim that I had a presentation ready for him, he became so excited that he said he’d be on the next flight to Philadelphia. Such things should happen face-to-face, he explained in his e-mail.

In the postscript he asked that I get in touch with Mahmoud so he could be present at the meeting as well. I asked Marie-Anne why it was necessary to bring Mahmoud in. She simply said that Mahmoud tended to get offended if his influence over a deal was not explicitly acknowledged. No one who ran a venture through him ran the risk of challenging his wrath.

* * *

Getting ahold of Mahmoud wasn’t easy. He was a very busy man, though it was unclear why or how, especially as I hadn’t found anything he had written, or even anything in terms of television or radio appearances. He seemed to be known without any effort. The best I could infer was that he was a sort of fixer or liaison who connected people in government and media and other important public institutions. A socialite and a promoter in his own way. But I failed to understand what he got out of it all or how he had attained his station.

I wrote to tell him that I was Marie-Anne’s husband and that Qasim wanted him present for our initial meeting. He replied a week later and said he could stop by on his way to New York from DC. I suggested a couple of hotel conference rooms. But Mahmoud vetoed that option; he said Qasim wouldn’t be comfortable with the possibility of someone hearing about Salato and stealing the idea. He recommended our place as the more suitable venue. I cleared the meeting with Marie-Anne, who was so happy to see me in the flow of work that she said she would come back from Virginia early and be present at the meeting as support.

* * *

On the appointed day I finished tinkering with the presentation and cleaned up the apartment. Outside an airy sleet settled over Philadelphia. The drops lacked volume. The ice was imperceptible, only visible against the reddest of brick, and even then seeing the drops required the assistance of the meek bulbs glowing in the alcoves.