Ali Eteraz - Native Believer

The meal was mostly Mahmoud talking. He didn’t have a moment to just genuflect, to relax, to give in to the lethargy and boredom that might bedraggle others. This was really the first time I had been alone with him, and I tried to make an effort to get to know him. Family? Children? Permanent residence? He was agnostic about all those things. Like bees around a hive, his thoughts, his comments, always seemed to circle back to the question of how to most effectively present the case for America to the world at large, particularly to the Muslims who didn’t seem to buy into it. “They must be made to see,” he liked to say, “what we already know about ourselves.” He treated this project like it was a mission, like a celibate man who has been trained his whole life to do a singular thing, as if the slightest mismanagement would bring cataclysms raining down. I wanted to know what motivated him. Was it like me, a generalized adoration of the founding principles of the Republic, or was it something else, perhaps some irascible character flaw, such as the need to be liked, or perhaps some hidden scarring that he kept bottled? But he gave nothing away. He was as tight as his black skullcap.

After the meal we went for a walk in the direction of the Federal Courthouse, circling around Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, toward the National Public Radio building. I looked in the direction where Candace had projected the verse from the Koran. I didn’t bother telling Mahmoud about the performance and my subsequent response to it; he didn’t need proof of my loyalties.

We sat on a bench and stared through the windows where a radio host was chatting with a guest. It was like a silent film. Depending on the kind of music added to the background, the host and the guest could be made into anything. Perhaps that was how it was for most of us. We were noiseless things defined mostly by what played behind us, and we had never figured out how to make our own music.

Something about witnessing the silent interview caused Mahmoud to start speaking about himself. He said he came from inside Islam. But unlike those who came from Islam and wanted to restore it to prominence, he regarded it as something that had prominence once, but couldn’t be allowed to have prominence again. His reasons were complicated. He asked me to follow his train of logic.

“If you consider the last fifteen hundred years of Islam, do you know what you see? You see that for a majority of the time Islam was imperial, dominant, superior, in control. The Golden Age. But you know what I see when I hear the Golden Age stuff? I hear a lie. Islam wasn’t supposed to be about a caliph, about influence. It was a thing made up by an orphan to bring some sense to the world, to reject the greedy capitalism that he was surrounded by, to free the slaves, to focus on an invisible deity in the sky in an effort to distance himself from the crass materialism of the living, breathing idols draped in gold. At least that’s what it started out as. That was early Muhammad. But then later Muhammad, as well as his followers, all jumped the shark. They lost sight of what was beautiful about their message. They decided to become caravan raiders and invaders. And from their betrayal of themselves an entire jihad state emerged out of Arabia. It created corporations. It enslaved nations. It turned itself into an idol. It became what it wasn’t supposed to be. The Golden Calf. The America of its time. So what I want is to take the Muslims back to that feeling of despair and dispossession that Muhammad must have felt to first come up with this thing called Islam. Take everything from them. Render them orphans. My hope is that if the Muslims get to start from scratch all over again, they might not become the greedy monsters they became last time.”

“Tough love then.”

“The toughest. But it is love. All I know is that I want to make sure Islam never again becomes anything other than a movement of the spirit. No Islamic bombs and no Islamic finance and no Islamic fashion and no Islamic world. Just the believer and her God. I can give that to the Muslim through America, the überinfidel, whose job it is to regulate the believer.”

“Doesn’t that make you an infidel?”

“Sometimes the true believer has to become an infidel.”

“Well then,” I said, “I hope I can help you get to where you desire.”

“Tell me about the trip to Madrid.”

“It was excellent. I clicked with the students.”

“I heard you told them how you got fired from your job.”

“I got carried away.”

“Not at all,” he said, plugging his ears for a moment as a pair of bikers roared past, American flags foisted on their antennae. “It is exactly the kind of confession that gives you legitimacy.”

“How do you mean?”

“You told them that you were discriminated out of a job. And yet there you were, standing in front of them, talking about how well America treats its Muslims. It’s a very convincing presentation. I would want you to play that up in the future.”

“In the future?”

He wanted to send me out again. There was Canada and Ireland and Austria and Malaysia and Indonesia. All those spots were open. Quick five-day jaunts. He would even link them together so I could hit them all at once. Leila could go with me. We made a good team. I was relaxed; she was intense.

“I could use the money,” I said. “Marie-Anne and I are still trying to make the down payment on our condo.”

“The place I saw near the art museum?” he asked. “Lovely place. You spruce it up and it would be heaven.”

“No need for heaven,” I said. “Just something that will make people jealous.”

He clapped me on the back. That’s what he liked about me: I offered no flights of fancy. No idealism. I was a merchant and merchants made good followers.

“Let’s just say I gravitate to authority.”

“Yes,” he said, “I’ve met your wife.” He stood up and shook my hand, the other arm gesturing toward a cab. “I’ll send you the paperwork as soon as I get back to New York.”

I dropped him off at his hotel and went to buy new luggage.

* * *

Three days later I was on a plane. I could only smile at my position. This was the life of a jetsetter, I thought. Home one day, an interregnum to sort out and pay the bills, and then back in the skies again, accruing miles, living in high-end hotels, impervious to the trepidations that haunted when you were on land. There was a glamour to all of it. Not referring to the hustle-bustle and the physical toll of the travel. But the ability to look superciliously upon those who never got to leave their stations. The sense of pride a race car driver had over a man riding a rocking horse in his living room.

I looked down at the bounteous and blue water below. The world spread out before me like a personal playground. And to make it interesting — I glanced at Leila sleeping — I had a pretty little girl with me who many people confused for my girlfriend. It didn’t seem it could get any better. Suddenly I no longer missed Plutus, where my life was tied to my desk, where all the glory was given away to our clients. At Plutus people spent their entire careers trying to find ways to set themselves apart from the crowd, to be recognized as having a distinct skill set. With this touring gig I had made that move without even needing to try. I was glad that there was a War of Ideas in which I could fight. It was a safe war, but one which still rained glory.

The five-country tour started in Canada. We met with a group of hand-selected Muslim students from the University of Toronto and York University who grilled us about American foreign policy, including torture and extraordinary rendition. We took them out to a hookah bar and told them how our foreign policy wasn’t exactly what we wanted it to be but how in the course of a war certain sacrifices and judgment calls had to be made.