Ali Eteraz - Native Believer

One day, one of the Moorish men, in a floor-length robe with poof pants underneath, a red fez on his head, and beads around his neck, started following me around. He hadn’t quite yet become a shadow — remaining respectfully distant — but it was impossible to shake him. I made getting rid of him into a personal challenge. With my newfound familiarity with the alleys, as well as the cover provided by an occasional passing truck, I tried to double back so I could follow him. But he was an elusive foe, and just when I thought I’d pulled off my trick, the two of us came face-to-face in front of New Freedom Theatre on Broad Street. There was a production of a play by Langston Hughes set to take place. Young thespians sat on the porch and recited lines.

The Moor and I were about ten feet apart. He was not as young as I previously thought. There was gray in his hair and beard. His eyes were a milky brown and his teeth were yellow. Nearby, a stubborn bag got caught upon a rusted metal railing, the iron spear lodged in its mouth. A puddle of water lapped at the Moor’s feet like an obedient acolyte. There was a puddle near me as well, with motor oil passing over it, making it shimmer.

“You want your true passport?” he said.

“What?”

“It’s free, ancient, and accepted,” he sang. “Come on. You want your true passport?”

“No thanks.”

“Every African should have it.”

“I’m not African.”

“Yeah you are. Light-skinned African.”

“No. I am West Asian.”

“So you’re one of the Mooslims?”

“That’s what my wife says.”

“And what do you say?”

“I don’t know.”

He laughed. “Don’t matter where a man is from. He always got to listen to his woman. You sure you don’t want your true passport? Join the righteous nation?”

I told him I would have to pass on joining a new nation; I was having a hard enough time with the one I had.

The Moor clapped his hands and showed me his bare palms as if he had made something disappear. We walked down Broad Street together, all the way to Girard Avenue. The subway rumbled underground. This was where we parted. The Moor turned back to North Philadelphia, seeking someone else to invite to Moorish Science. I kept going, all the way to the art museum, to my wife, who had decided what I was.

I left the Moor behind, but my envy did not. He was from a people who, for all they didn’t have, had in their blood hundreds of years of overcoming; they had established ways of dealing with the exclusion that the people in the skyscrapers imposed. What was Moorish Science but the erection of an alternative sovereignty? Pretend that we don’t exist in this America? Then we will pretend that your America doesn’t exist either! Hell, America belongs to Morocco. Do you want your true passport or not? The Moor and Richard Konigsberg had much in common. They both had a second passport to fall back on. A communal identity that existed underneath their status as Americans. One that they could appeal to if being American wasn’t going well. I didn’t have any such backup.

I just had Marie-Anne.

There was a word out there for when you belonged to a single person.

* * *

The Moor’s pursuit put a stop to my aimless wandering. The next evening, when I went out for my walk, I headed straight toward Temple University, that oasis of familiarity in North Philly where the science took its mooring from Europe, from Benjamin Franklin, and from other men who didn’t grow beards or put beads in them. The universities had always been a kind of sanctuary and harbor for me. The universities had this way of claiming ownership of everyone inside of them such that the classifications outside their doors no longer applied. They weren’t bastions of democracy so much as sovereign protectorates where they could apply their own local despotism. In their case, the tyranny was aimed at keeping safe all those who could afford to be inside their walls. I wasn’t a student at Temple, but by my appearance I felt like I could fit in.

I found a bulletin board in the film studies department. I might have gone wrong with Salato, but the idea of promoting new film projects still made economic sense. I was also taking a great deal of money from Marie-Anne’s account, and every time we had a fight this left me humiliated. I might have become reliant upon her for housing and food, but my extra expenses I needed to cover on my own.

I walked to the kiosks and bulletin boards around the university and pinned my business cards all over. I forcibly channeled a sense of optimism during the task. Once I got paid for these projects I would be able to help cover some of our monthly bills. I might also gain a measure of revenge against Plutus. Any one of my clients, in five years’ time, could become someone of importance and pick me to do their promotional work. I pictured myself running into George Gabriel somewhere — maybe he would be in the audience of a panel discussion I was leading. I would flag him down and carry out a mundane conversation about business without making the slightest mention of the original episode. I would pretend that the reason he had let me go hadn’t so much as registered in my mind, which would be the best way to irk him. It would frustrate him to learn that he hadn’t been able to derail my life.

But such fantasies were premature. No one solicited me for a project. The phone didn’t chirp. E-mail remained dry. After a week of waiting I went back to the university and checked if perhaps the outdoor cards had been removed or misplaced. Not so. They were still there, stuck where I mounted them. The only difference was that they had dampened and become bloated in the rain. I set about replacing them with a new batch. After that I went to the film studies building and checked on the ones I had hung inside. All the cards were still there, in pristine condition, save two.

“It’s pretty lame to put a diploma on the back of a business card,” a male voice said from behind me. It was followed by the whir of a card flying past my head.

“I’m sorry?”

“Emory. Second tier. You can’t show off with it, man.”

I turned around to face the speaker. He was in a black trench coat cinched at the waist and a white turtleneck, paired with tan wool slacks falling lightly onto silver-buckled loafers. He wore his hair in a bun and his fingers were covered in a multitude of rings.

I smiled. University rankings were a coded way for Americans of a certain class to rib each other. It had been awhile since I had played that game. “It’s not second tier. It’s top twenty. One year it was top ten.”

“But it isn’t even Ivy.”

“Then why do they call it the Harvard of the South?”

“Because Southerners are dumb and think that Cambridge is in Atlanta.”

A class let out as we chatted. My eyes passed over a tall brunette. She was in hastily applied eyeliner and her ponytail was still wet from the morning shower; she wore flip-flops on undecorated feet. She reminded me of a young Marie-Anne. But there was one glaring difference: she seemed clueless to anything but her own presence. Marie-Anne, even at that young age, through just the exchange of a glance, had the ability to sniff out a person’s dungeons, to suspect that a stranger had catacombs. For a brief moment I missed her madly. It was a rare thing to find people in the world who could locate, much less suspect, your unspoken shame.

I saw another one of my cards in the man’s hand. “So are you interviewing me for a job or are you just bored between classes?”

“I picked it up a few days ago for my friends. We were going to get together in a little bit to decide if we wanted to call you up. Then I saw you adjusting the card and figured you were the guy.” He read out my name and came forward to shake hands. His arms were long and his eyes were suffused with a natural kindness. “My name is Ali. Ali Ansari. Like the Helpers.”