Ali Eteraz - Native Believer

“Just drive yourself.”

“I can’t. Don’t have a license. Not even a permit.”

“I thought these things were only kind of illegal.”

“The cops out here sit at the intersections waiting to jump on us. It’s discrimination.”

Farkhunda went off to look for Ali Ansari. When she saw he was in the middle of prayer she let out a moan. She threw the keys to the ground and sat on the sofa, staring at her phone, waiting for the inevitable call from home.

“Get up.” I swept up the keys and her wrist in the same move and dragged her to the car. “I’ll take you. Just tell me the directions.”

We flew through the winding streets. The atmosphere had a subdued morbidity to it, the trees looming, the streets disappearing into fog-filled turns, the stop signs having been decapitated by rapscallion children. The fear of Farkhunda’s authority figures only added to the trepidation in the air.

“Your mom is kind of bossy then?”

“It’s my sister. She’s a bitch.”

“She’s protective?”

“She’s religious. She used to be normal. But when my dad got taken, she changed. Now she thinks women represent honor and other shit like that. And we should be covered head to toe and we shouldn’t date or talk to boys or eat anything but halal. It’s all her Islam. It’s too much.”

“What do you think women represent?”

“Whatever the fuck we want. Just like men. We are equal.”

“But Tot doesn’t treat you like an equal.”

She turned to me with a pitying expression, the kind of know-it-all smugness that teenagers tend to assume. “Do you think I don’t cheat on Tot? At the end of the day, no one treats each other equal. What matters is whether you are getting shamed in the process or not. Islam shames its women. That’s why I don’t believe in it. It’s built on the idea of sin. That your fuck-ups have a greater meaning. They can’t just be fuck-ups. Sin doesn’t let you forgive yourself until others forgive you.”

I grew somber. “I hope that one day no one has to live in shame.”

Her face was jaded. “Won’t happen. The world is Shameistan. Anyway, there’s my sister, my executioner.”

I looked in the sister’s direction. It took a moment to register that it was Sister Saba. I immediately lowered myself into the seat.

“What’s the matter with you?” Farkhunda said.

“Your sister. I know her.”

“You’ve met her before?” she nearly yelled, putting out a hand to help me steer. “I didn’t know you were one of the fundamentalists. By your age the fundamentalism disappears. They call it Salafi Burnout.”

“I’m not a Salafi,” I said. “I’m not even sure if I’m Muslim.”

“Of course you are. You have a Muslim name. That’s all you need to be Muslim. Anyway, I don’t know why, but you knowing my sister is kind of hot. Isn’t it?”

“Is it?” I said, peeking over the wheel, slowing the car even further, rotating my eyes in her direction.

Farkhunda put her tongue in her cheek and nodded. “Remember earlier? When Tot dropped me and parked on the other side? You do the same. I’ll just go inside and come back. Over there, around the corner. Got it?”

“But why?”

She popped her mouth with a finger and told me I wouldn’t regret it.

I pulled over as much from shock as excitement. Farkhunda patted me on the thigh and ran out to mollify her sister. I drove around the house and parked under a couple of oaks. The branches moved a little in the breeze. Otherwise the morning was still. In the calm I fell into a nap.

* * *

She came into the car an hour later, dressed in flannel pajamas, an off-shoulder sweatshirt, and teddy bear slippers. I had regained enough composure to remember that she was just sixteen and that I wasn’t up for that, no matter how tempting the vessel. Getting declared a sexual deviant and having my name published on a website was the last thing I needed. Perhaps the only thing being worse than a Muslim in America was to be a pedophile.

“You’re sixteen.”

“18 PA 6301, section D, subsection 2,” she replied.

“What?”

“I know you’re worried about my age. That’s your loophole.”

“I don’t understand.”

She rolled her eyes. “In Pennsylvania, if a minor is between sixteen and eighteen, then it’s a defense for you to say that you thought she was over eighteen. A lawyer told me that.”

“Did you suck him too?”

“Of course not,” she spat. “He was non-Muslim.”

I pressed my lips and accelerated out of the neighborhood. Farkhunda pulled out her phone and gave directions. It was a forty-five-minute drive to where she wanted to go. I didn’t bother asking where we were headed. We were well outside the suburbs soon.

With the sun out, spackling light upon our windows, we came upon a wide grassy clearing. Farkhunda put a hand on my arm and had me slow. She pointed to the right and I gasped. A large white-domed structure in the center of the field, set off by hedges, surrounded by evergreens, shone like a star in an emerald universe. There was a garden near it with a freestanding wooden structure for vines. A crescent and star protruded from the top of the structure.

This was the mausoleum of a mystic named Bawa Muhaiyaddeen. He had come to the United States in 1971 and established a Sufi order that drew hundreds of followers. By the time he passed away, the group had enough resources to field a mosque in Overbrook and to build this mausoleum to perpetuate his legacy. Farkhunda said that some of the great American translators of Sufi poetry had been inspired by the saint. I said that I hadn’t been aware that such a place existed. She told me a story about Bawa’s spiritual predecessor, Abdul-Qadir Gilani. Some highway robbers had taken him hostage when he was a child in Iraq and searched his pockets for money, only to be thwarted because his mother had sewn his money on the inside of his clothes. The robbers were about to leave Gilani alone when they proceeded to ask him if he was hiding any money. Gilani was so truthful that he told them it was sewn to his clothes. The robbers were sufficiently impressed by his honesty that they immediately converted to Islam and renounced their crime. The moral of the story, Farkhunda said, was that when you are held up by criminals, you should volunteer to get naked.

We got out of the car and stepped onto a private road. Taking off her slippers, Farkhunda ran ahead, the dewy glinting grass crushed under her feet and springing back when she moved off. I ran after her. The building was farther than it appeared. I was winded from the chase.

By the time I came upon the door, Farkhunda was on her knees. She had a couple of keys in her hand and was picking out the one that might allow us to get inside. She said the keys were jealously guarded by Bawa’s fellowship, but awhile back someone from the GCM had dated someone who knew the locksmith who serviced the mausoleum. As a result, the shrine had become a reliable place for GCM members to have early-morning or late-night hookups, provided that the caretaker didn’t show up.

It took a couple of tries before the door opened. We were let into a large room with four Persian carpets. In the space where they met, there was a central grave covered in a black sheet. The sheet was stitched in gold and contained an inscription I didn’t understand. The symbol of the Sufi order, a rose with a six-pointed star in the middle, was etched on each corner of the sheet. The ceiling above the grave opened into the octagonal underside of the dome. Its interior was painted a cool green color. Koranic inscriptions and Allah signs hung on the walls and gave the room an even more sacred atmosphere.

Farkhunda stood and offered a prayer before the grave. Both hands up; quiet invocations. I was puzzled by her behavior. She had held herself out as a sinner, yet here she was, engaged in supplication. I could only stand back and watch. Perhaps belief wasn’t a declaration or a negation. Perhaps it was a disposition, an inclination, one that emerged in each person at their own accord, like an exhale.