American Dervish: A Novel (10 page)

“You okay there, Chief?” Father teased.

“Yeah…fine.” Nathan set the bottles on the table by the grill and brushed himself off. “You might wait before opening those.”

“We can handle it, Chief.”

Nathan nodded. “Hey, Hayat,” he said, stealing another quick glance back at the patio.

“Hi, Dr. Wolfsohn.”

“Call me Nathan, Hayat.” He smiled. “I’ve told you that before…”

“Okay.”

“Nathan. This is Sonny Buledi. Sonny Buledi, Nathan Wolfsohn. Sonny is a psychiatrist at the Medical College,” Father said. “Nathan and I work together at the hospital.”

“Nice to meet you,” Sonny said, extending a hand.

“Likewise.”

“Sonny was just telling me a horror story about some of these local Pakistanis here in town,” Father said, rearranging the pieces of chicken on the grill with his tongs. “They don’t like Mr. Buledi very much…”

“I could live with that,” Sonny said, “if it wasn’t for the way they treat my children. We were at a dinner a few weeks ago for the Medical College…The Naqvis were there…”

“Anil Naqvi, the anesthesiologist,” Father noted for Nathan’s sake. “You know him, right?”

“I know who he is.”

“And the Naqvi kids were calling Satya and Otto
zebras.
Because their mother is white and I’m Pakistani. Can you believe that?”

“Of course I believe it,” Father said. “Praying all day long. Nothing to show for it. They’re hypocrites.”

He pronounced the final word with relish as he poked at the meat on the grill.

“What does that mean, Dad?” I asked.

“What? ‘Hypocrite’?”

I nodded. I’d heard him use it so many times.

Father lifted the tongs, pointing them at me. “When a person pretends to be something they are not, that’s a hypocrite. Like Chatha, pretending to be a good Muslim, but who is really just filled with poison for others.”

Sonny nodded, clearly agreeing. “Speaking of poison, you know what else Otto told me? One of the Naqvi kids was talking about how to blow up a church by filling it with gasoline and lighting a match.”

“
What?
” Father was incredulous.

“That’s the message the Naqvis are sending their children. That churches should be destroyed because Christians are
kuffar…
When I heard Otto say that word I just exploded.”

“Revolting,” Father muttered under his breath.

“What does it mean?” Nathan asked, looking back from the patio.

“Unbelievers,” Father responded.

“At this point, I just tell them all I’m an atheist,” Sonny said. “Just to be sure they stay away. Keep them as far from me as possible.”

It wasn’t the first time I’d heard Sonny say he was an atheist. But that afternoon, I heard it anew, understanding—I thought—for the first time what it really meant. Not just that he didn’t believe in God, but almost more important, that he thought there was nothing more to life than what we were living now. For if there was no God, then there was no afterlife. And if there was one thing I’d learned from my new studies in the Quran, it was that the penalty for not believing in the afterlife was dire:

When the Trumpet finally sounds,

It will be a terrible day for the Unbeliever.

I will visit calamity on him!

For he who thought and planned,

Woe to him!

Inflated with pride, he said:

“This Quran is nothing but magic,

Nothing but a tale told by a mortal!”

I will throw him into Hell’s Fire!

And what will make you see what this Fire is?

It leaves nothing and spares nothing.

Burning to black mortal skin!

As I stood there looking at Sonny, I felt moved. There was nothing in his round, pleasing face—or in the warm, intelligent eyes peering over his glasses’ wire frames—to explain how such a likable man could have come to such an extraordinary and unfortunate conclusion.

“How long do you grill the thighs?” Sonny asked Father.

“Now
there’s
a worthy topic…Depends on the heat. But in this case, maybe four minutes each side. Not too long. You want to make sure you don’t dry them out.” Father picked at the chicken again with his tongs. “Still pink at the bone. Another couple of minutes.” Father glanced over at Nathan. “What’s going on over there, Chief? You look confused.”

“Confused?” Nathan asked, looking abruptly away from the patio. “No… just enjoying the afternoon.”

“Enjoying the afternoon?” Father repeated, perplexed. He looked over at the patio himself now, where Adrienne was giggling as she talked to Mina, stealing looks our way.

Father turned to Nathan with a wry smile. “Sneaky,” he teased.

“What are you talking about, Naveed?”

“No need to get touchy. There’s nothing wrong with it.”

“Wrong with what? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Nate. I wasn’t born yesterday. I don’t blame you…she’s a pearl.”

“Who?”

“Who do you think?” Father said sarcastically, shaking his head. “Her name’s Mina. She’s Muneer’s best friend from childhood. I’ve told you about her. She’s the one who’s been living with us.”

“Oh,” Nathan responded, blankly.

“She is a beauty. That’s for sure,” Sonny added.

“Yes, she is,” Father replied with sudden, uncharacteristic softness. He was looking down at the grill now. “She reminds me of my sister sometimes,” he said quietly.

“Huma?” Nathan inquired, with sudden concern.

Father nodded. I was surprised Nathan knew the name of the sister Father had lost to pneumonia when they were both in their late teens. He’d only spoken of her to me once. Losing her, Mother used to say, was the one thing he never got over and probably never would.

Father lifted his tongs abruptly and pointed them playfully at Nathan. “That woman wastes almost as much time staring at paper as you do. The two of you will get along…how do they say it? Famously?”

“Staring at paper?” Sonny asked.

“Naveed’s got a thing about reading,” Nathan answered. “That’s what he calls reading—staring at paper. I don’t know how he gets away with it. I mean, the man was first in his class in medical school…”

“Not by reading.”

“Then what?”

“Chief. When you need to get something done, you figure out a way.”

Nathan’s eyes lit up with a thought. “You cheated?”

“Absolutely
not.
”

“Then?”

“Let’s just say…I got other people to read
for
me…”

Nathan and Sonny laughed.

“Staring at paper,” Sonny muttered to himself as he shook his head.

“Am I right? Or am I right? Sonny?” Father was smiling, broadly.

“For the record, I don’t think you’re right. But that’s not really your point, is it?”

“Good man! Smart man!” Father said, now pointing his tongs at Sonny. He turned to me.  “Can you hand me that plate,
behta?
”

I gave him the long serving tray that lay on the table beside me. He started picking the pieces of chicken off the grill.

“The point is, Nate, you and Mina could actually enjoy wasting your time
together.
”

“Which is actually the recipe for domestic bliss, in my opinion,” Sonny added.

“Something I wouldn’t know too much about,” Father joked. He glanced at the patio. “They’re looking over here. Go over. Talk to her. Now’s your chance.”

“Maybe later,” Nathan said. “She looks busy.”

“She
is
busy. Busy with the
kabab
s that you should go and get from her. Tell her I was asking for them. There’s your excuse.”

Nathan laid a long look on Father.

“Go. Go on…”

“You’re something else, Naveed,” Nathan said, shaking his head. Then he headed off in Mina’s direction. I watched him as he went up to her and put out his hand. She held her own hands up with a shrug, both covered with the ground meat she and Adrienne had been fashioning into
kabab
s
.
Just then Adrienne got up, bringing over the very
kabab
s Nathan was supposed to have asked Mina for. With Adrienne gone, Nathan asked her another question. She laughed. Nathan pulled up a folding chair and sat down beside her.

My heart was pounding.

“Hey, Hayat!” I heard. It was Otto—Sonny’s round, freckled son—huffing over to the grill. “Satya’s gonna take us
ninja
exploring. Wanna come?”

“Go on,
kurban,
” Father said. “Play with your friends.”

I looked back at the patio. Mina twirled her head to one side. Nathan was talking. I turned my back on both of them and followed as Otto waddled away.

Satya Buledi was only a year older than me, but he was big for his age, tall, broad across the shoulders—he looked like he was already in high school—and with a striking head of straw-blond hair that gleamed appealingly against the darker, caramel hue of his skin. The girls apparently loved him.

Satya was into comic books,
Daredevil
in particular, where he’d recently discovered
ninja
s
.
Ninja
s, he explained, were not like samurai. They were spies and assassins, and they didn’t fight out in the open or follow the rules of war. The most important thing, he said, pulling a napkin from his pocket, was that
ninja
s covered their faces. That way, no one could ever know who they really were. Satya tied the napkin to his face. Now we were all going to become
ninja
s together, he said, but
ninja
s
who fought for the good. He asked me if there were any wrongs in the neighborhood that needed righting. I hadn’t a clue, though I did tell him about the empty house at the end of the block that the neighborhood kids said was haunted. So we tied napkins to our faces and snuck through a succession of backyards to the home in question, though once we got there, Satya was disappointed to see through its windows only empty rooms filled with debris and dust.

“You said it was haunted.”

“I said some of the kids said it was.”

“Why doesn’t anyone live here?”

I shrugged. I had no idea.

“Well, whatever happened here—and it must have been something—it’s too late to fix now.”

Satya led us along bushes and across more yards, and had us slinking up on neighbors’ windows. There were lots of housewives preparing meals or lemonade in their kitchens, and a smaller number of husbands with their sons watching baseball in their family rooms. But that was about it.

On our way back up the road, Satya disappeared behind the Kuhlmanns’ house, a green-and-white split-level that stood across the street. He climbed up a tree, and—peering in at one of the bedroom windows—finally looked like he’d found something worthwhile.

“Hayat, you gotta check this out.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong…”

“So what is it?”

“A girl, and some guy. They’re making out.”

“That’s Gina. And her boyfriend.”

“No kidding. You gotta see this.”

“I wanna see it, too,” Otto whined.

“Stop eating so many Doritos, then,” Satya snapped. “Maybe then you’ll lose enough weight to climb a tree.”

“I’m not too fat to…”

Satya interrupted him: “Stay down and watch the kid, Otto. Hayat, you come up here…”

I looked over at Otto with a shrug, then reached out and grabbed the trunk, pulling myself up along the knobs.

“Make sure your
ninja
mask doesn’t fall off, Hayat,” Satya said.

Imran moaned down below that he wanted to climb, too.

“You can’t climb the tree by yourself,” Otto said to him. “You’re too small.”

I pulled myself up into the tangle of branches, finding the footing that led me to the branch where Satya was perched. In the window directly facing us, Gina was sitting on her bed with her boyfriend, kissing.

“She looks cute,” Satya said.

“She is,” I said.

I didn’t know Gina well—she was three years older than me—but she’d lived across the street from us for almost two years now, and for most of that time, she’d been going out with the stocky, curly-haired boy sitting on her bed. I didn’t know his name—Gina didn’t talk to me, or any of the younger neighborhood boys—but I knew they were together because I used to see him walk her home from school. My own school, Mason Elementary, got out before the junior high did, and there were more than a few times when I would be out on the front lawn and see them appear at the end of the street, Gina with her books pressed to her chest, that boy by her side, slowly pushing his bike along. And there were also times when, passing through the living room—which had a clear view of Gina’s garage—I would find the two of them standing in the empty bay, kissing.

One afternoon, as I watched at the living room window, Mother came up behind me. “Look at
that,
” she said with disgust, “the training of a white woman…How old is she?”

“I don’t know…Fourteen?”

“
Fourteen?
”

“I think.”

“
Fourteen,
” she repeated, “and look at her.”

Gina’s boyfriend was caressing her hair now as he stared into her eyes, the two of them looking lost in dreamy oblivion, enveloped in a sweet and perfect mist.

Mother continued, sharply: “Already
using
herself,
using
her body to get men. It’s shameless. They’re like animals…No…They’re
worse
than animals. Even animals have some self-respect.” Then she turned to me abruptly. “Go to your room. You don’t need to be staring at prostitutes. You’ll end up like your father. Go…go!”

Back in the tree, Satya had inched his way farther out onto the branch, trying to get a better view. Gina’s boyfriend was now reaching beneath her pink sweater as he pecked at her lips. “Check it out,” Satya said. “He’s going to second base on her.”

“Second base?”