Ali Eteraz - Native Believer

Next up were Ireland and Vienna, where the students were not as polished as the Canadians, most of them very recent immigrants from North Africa, Pakistan, and Turkey, and they were more interested in what life was like growing up in the States, whether we obsessed over Muslim sports figures like they did, and whether we had any doubts about our status as American. I flatly told them I loved being an American and felt not the slightest hesitation in saying it.

In Malaysia and Indonesia we went to Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta and met with three different groups of thirty-odd students and gave presentations at high schools. Most of the questions were about pop culture and the place of the American Muslim in that environment. This was where I shone. I told them about a filmmaker friend who was radically challenging racial stereotypes through his movies and about Muslim guerrilla reggae groups who were demonstrating that there was a place for everyone in the American cultural scene. I ignored the part about losing touch with these people. It was a presentation, not a confession. At the end of the trip I organized a makeshift spoken-word competition with Indonesian youths performing works written in English. Their poems had a Shakespearean tenor to them. He was the only Western poet besides Tupac and Biggie who they could name.

In every city I told the story about my firing. I talked about how my boss had seen the Koran on my shelf, placed higher than Nietzsche, and had discriminated against me as a result. I told them that even though in the beginning I had considered George Gabriel’s actions a slap in the face of my heritage, I had eventually come to realize that he wasn’t to blame. He was just unaware of what Muslims brought to America. I wasn’t resentful, I said, because I was a realist. If the blame rested anywhere, I explained, it rested with the men with Muslim names, acting under the aegis of Allah, who had created a schism between Islam and America by resorting to violence. They were responsible for the bad taste in the mouths of people like George Gabriel. “But there doesn’t have to be a schism,” I said with great passion in my voice. “And I am evidence of that.” In this manner I proffered myself as evidence of the possibility of bridge building, of the fact that if there was anyone to be resented, it was the terrorists and extremists of Islam, not the average American. Mahmoud had been right: my ability to make myself the Muslim everyman worked wonders with the crowds. By the time we reached Indonesia I was talking about the firing as part of my introductory spiel. My commentary seemed to evoke in the people we met a mystique in favor of American power. It must be a great entity indeed if even those who were wronged by it could become inclined to offer it forgiveness.

There was a kind of deception in being a moderate Muslim. It was less a philosophy and more of a position, a persuasion tactic. The trick was to lead the Muslims to believe that I was with them, from among them, that our connection was Islam, all the while putting before them a likable, even lovable vision of America, the same America that regarded them as infidels to the Enlightenment, as those who didn’t believe in our project, as those whom we needed to save. The triangulation came easier to me than to Leila, who was still quite young and needed to be able to believe that she was engaged in a reconciliation of civilizational proportions.

I had no similar misgivings. I was, simply put, an evangelist, channeling my strengths — in this case my appearance and my connection to Islam — as a way of proselytizing. I was an extension of the high priesthood that was formed in Washington, and which spread upon the world like a storm. The only way to assure the permanence of the Republic was by spreading its theology far and wide. It wasn’t anything devious we were doing. Every religion had a right to promulgate itself, to bring new members into its fold, to give its priests the opportunity to reach out to the skeptics, the disbelievers.

The question of what I am, it seemed, had been conclusively answered.

For the first time I wasn’t ashamed of saying my eight-lettered name.

During those five weeks, Marie-Anne was on her own world trip. In the Wazirate, for a possible sales pitch, and then to Doha, to sit down with an Al Jazeera broadcaster in studio. I thought it was bold of her to start doing media. She said the publicity would help her networking if she publicly discussed what MimirCo did.

We kept in touch as best we could. Her trip to “the Arabian Gulf”—as she had started calling it to appease her hosts — would take longer than expected because Mahmoud had arranged for a couple of extra meetings for her, one in Saudi Arabia and the other in the UAE, in addition to the one with the Waziratis.

I also kept in touch with Mahmoud, via e-mail, telling him about how well my trip had gone. The aim was to find out if there were any more paid junkets. He said there weren’t any immediate trips scheduled, but I was on the top of his list of people he would call up once there were. He also mentioned that he was in stuck in DC for a while because he was trying to create a Deputy of Muslim Outreach position. “But don’t tell anyone about that,” he said.

From the way he worded the e-mail, along with the compliments he had given me when he had been in Philadelphia, I was confident that he was creating the position for me. I let myself imagine what it would be like to get the offer. Maybe Marie-Anne and I would be able to move to Virginia. She would be close to MimirCo and I would get to dress up every day and go to Foggy Bottom, hobnobbing with diplomats, with ambassadors. I pictured the cuff links I might buy. In addition, I would have a massive flag pin, and it would be affixed on my chest every day. Eventually it would seep into me, permanently embossed upon the walls of my heart, so that even the angels wouldn’t mistake me for who I wasn’t.

The same morning as the e-mail from Mahmoud I got a message from Marie-Anne. It came with a lot of exclamation marks. Her appearance on Al Jazeera was confirmed at last and they were going to put her on live that evening.

On the appointed hour I took myself to the deli near Divine Lorraine. The place was mostly empty, just the old man who had accused me of being a spy from West Philadelphia. I sat down at the bar and ordered my usual chicken burger and proceeded to wait for the segment.

It was the same news program, with the same anchor that Ali Ansari and I had watched last time we’d been here. After a couple of unrelated segments the anchor brought out her main guests.

There was Marie-Anne, dressed in a loose pink tunic with a light scarf thrown around her neck. Her red hair shone in the studio light; her skin, heavily touched up, seemed a little murky, almost gray. The anchor greeted her by restating her qualifications and affiliations.

“I’m happy to be here,” Marie-Anne replied.

“Tell me what you think about that expert,” I said to the old man.

“The white woman?” He seemed to put the emphasis on woman and only gave a brief glance. “Why?”

“She may have something interesting to say.”

We turned back to listen. The anchor asked Marie-Anne a series of questions that revealed some of the campaigns she’d worked on. It quickly became apparent that Marie-Anne’s team had sifted a great deal of the video that led US troops to the doorstep of various militant groups around the world. Marie-Anne took the compliment in the anchor’s voice and tried to spread the congratulations to all the other people on the program. I was quite surprised by how candidly Marie-Anne spoke. She had never shared so much about the program with me.