Amsterdam 2012 (9 page)

“Why do we care so much about Israel?” Alex retorted “What has Israel ever done for us?
 
We give them a gazillion dollars in aid and they continue to kill Palestinians.
 
Why do we want to support that?
 
If they want a homeland, why don’t we give them part of Arizona?
 
They could have five times the land of Israel.
 
Do you realize how much money we waste trying to keep them safe in the Middle East?
 
What’s the point?”

My father’s face turned red with fury.
 
He had raised us to argue, to question, to read between the lines of newspapers, to flummox teachers with impertinence, and now his son was using those weapons against him.
 
He looked like he was about to explode.
 

“The point,” my father said evenly, “is religious freedom.
 
If America doesn’t defend religious freedom, then we are morally bankrupt as a country.
 
And as individuals.
 
Everyone
of us.”

My mother appeared to be engrossed in her eggplant,
smooshing
it onto her fork with her knife, English style, chewing thoughtfully.
 
She had a remarkable capacity to look oblivious.
 
Cynthia had stopped eating all together, her hands under her thighs, her eyes round with apprehension, on the verge of tears.

“I just think we should use the bomb and be done with it,” said Alex, attempting to strengthen his argument with repetition.

“Well,” said our father grimly, “if the republicans win the election, you may get your wish.”

“
Allahu
Akbar
,” said Alex, raising his water glass in a toast.

Cynthia began to whimper and dashed away from the table.

 
#

I realized I had paid hardly any attention to Cynthia since my return.
 
Her distress over our dinner conversation filled me with guilt.
 
She had always had a tendency to take family “discussions” to heart.
 
Now Dad was losing his temper.
 
It was too much for her.

I knocked on the door to her room.
 
She didn’t answer, but the door was ajar.
 
I pushed it open.

Sometimes Cynthia took my breath away.
 
It was hard to believe we were sisters.
 
She had long blond hair, huge violet eyes, a heart-shaped face with flawless skin, a tentative smile, a slim coltish body.
 
Her sweetness and vulnerability made her beauty almost painful.
 
I knew her looks would always set her apart, and that made me afraid for her.
   

She sat on a large cushion on the floor reading, dressed in billowy pants with a gauzy veil over her head.
 
A cascade of pink-dyed cheesecloth hung over her bed like a mosquito net.
 
On one wall hung a poster of a flying white horse.
 
Brocade and satin pillows covered the bed, larger ones on the floor.
 
On top of the carpeting was a Persian rug, the kind of knockoff you find for sale draped over hurricane fences on Jefferson Boulevard.
 
A potted palm tree sat beside a futon on the floor.
 
It was—in the mind of a thirteen-year-old girl—a perfect Bedouin tent.

“Hi,” I said.
 
“What are you doing?”

“Homework.”

I was surprised at first, but then remembered her school went year round, which I wasn’t sure was necessarily a good thing for Cynthia.
 
She tended to be too serious, and it seemed to me she was missing out on an essential part of childhood.
 
Summers had never felt like wasted time to me.
 
“What are you working on?” I asked.

She gave me a sly glance, cleared her throat, lifted her book as if to read,
then
shut her eyes.
 
“‘God brings forth the living from the dead, and brings forth the dead from the living; and God enlivens the earth after its death: and so will you all be brought forth.’
 
Isn’t that beautiful?”
 
Her eyes were aglow, her lips parted, her cheeks flushed.
 

A numbness shot though my body, my knees wobbled.
 
I pushed aside the mosquito net and sank onto her bed.
 
I got a gnawing nauseated feeling that was becoming upsettingly frequent—that the world was changing too fast, spinning out of orbit.
 

As soon as President Elliot
Gladwell
stepped into office, he proposed a number of policies that seemed at the time to be harmless liberal bullshit, a nod to the far left and to what had become a vocal Muslim minority in
Gladwell’s
home state of Michigan.
 
In an effort to promote “religious tolerance and cross-cultural understanding” and to “assimilate Muslims into American culture,” he recommended every American child receive a semester of instruction on world religions, emphasizing in particular Islam.
 
In order to get that accepted, he vigorously campaigned to allow school prayer.
 
Even staunchly conservative school districts adopted the new curriculum.
 
Evangelicals got their five minutes of prayer—children who objected were allowed to step out of the classroom—and all eighth graders learned about Muhammad.

Gladwell’s
Cultural Accommodation Policy included a number of other initiatives as well: liberalized immigration quotas for Muslim countries, federal funding for Muslim schools, requiring employers to allow Muslim employees time for the five daily prayers, protecting the right to wear headscarves in school and the workplace, replacing A.D. (
Anno
Domini
) with C.E. (Common Era) in government publications, and banning the use of terms which Muslims might find offensive, such as
 
Islamo
-fascism
,
Islamic terrorism
,
Islamists radicalism
, and
jihadism
.”
 
Using President George W. Bush’s 2001 Faith Based Initiative, he encouraged federal funding for Islamic religious groups to run prisons, drug rehabilitation facilities, and schools.
 
He also proposed that
Eid
Al-
Fitr
, the end of Ramadan, become a national holiday.
 

While some of these recommendations met with resistance, President
Gladwell’s
genius at appealing to both liberals and conservatives led to, if not the adoption of policy, the tolerance of practice.
 
He stressed his ideas were essential to prevent “the plague of terrorism from rooting itself in America.”
 

Apart from the instruction on Islam for eighth graders, extracurricular Islamic clubs became the rage.
 
Perhaps it was the rebellious nature of young teens, or the exotic allure of Arabic culture, but Islamic clubs soon surpassed Bible clubs across the nation.

I hadn’t paid much attention to President
Gladwell’s
Cultural Accommodation Policy—I had my head in my books, my activities,
my
boyfriend.
 
I didn’t bother to vote when I turned eighteen.
 
I didn’t care.
 
Now I saw my little sister was obsessed.
 
If Islam allowed images of the prophet, no doubt she would have had a dark-skinned black-bearded rock-star-gorgeous idol hanging on her wall.

I was speechless.
 
Cynthia batted her raccoon eyes made up with heavy eyeliner and mascara, the fashion among many Muslim women who cover their faces except for the eyes.
 
Cynthia was so sweet by nature—I didn’t want my first real conversation with her since I got home to be criticism.
 
I looked around for something innocuous.
 
“I like your flying horse,” I said.

“That’s
Buraq
,” she said reverently, “the horse that took Muhammad to heaven where God instructed him in the prayer rituals required of a true believer.
 
That
happened
about 622.
 
Muhammad later dictated the verses to a scribe.
 
The verses became the basis of Islam.”

“Why do you have a poster of
Buraq
on your wall?”

“He is a symbol of
al-
Isra
, the divine journey through the darkness to great enlightenment.
 
I love looking at him while I fall asleep.”

Something about this was making me hugely uncomfortable—her rote recitation of the
Quran
.
 
Her crush on a white horse.
 
I remembered the Born Again Christians I used to flee from.
 
I picked up a book of Islamic folktales that lay on her bedspread.

“You can read it if you want,” Cynthia said, returning to her
Quran
, her head tilted to one side, a gentle smile playing on her lips.
 
She looked pious as a novice—despite the harem pants.

I took the book and left.
 
This is great, I thought, my boyfriend is being held as a terrorism suspect, my brother is a Nazi, and my sister is a Muhammad groupie.
 

#

“How can you let her read that stuff?”
 
The next morning I confronted my mother in the kitchen.

“It’s just a phase, dear.
 
Don’t you remember when you wanted to become a Catholic nun?
 
You thought you were Saint Theresa.
 
You refused to eat and claimed you had mystical visions.
 
But you grew out of it as soon as James Ramamurthy asked you out.
 
Then you wanted to be a Buddhist.”
 
My mother tittered, which I didn’t appreciate.
 
“A lot of the girls are attracted to the romance of the flying carpets and magic lamps.
 
They’re all into the harem pants.
 
I swear it’s a relief from those hip hugger jeans and belly rings you and your friends were crazy for.”

“You might want to tell her the romantic part where Arabs cut off a girl’s clitoris,” I retorted sharply.
 
“Or
that women
are often gang-raped for something the men in their family did, and then are murdered to clear the family honor.
 
Or that a Muslim can divorce his wife merely by saying, ‘I divorce thee’ three times and take her children.
 
Or
that women
are not even allowed to leave the house without permission.
 
Or that—”

“Ann, stop.
 
You know as well as I do none of that has anything to do with the teachings of Islam.”

“Mom!
 
Europe is being swallowed up by Islamic extremists, and your own daughter is prancing around in harem pants.
 
Don’t you think it’s about time to start worrying?”

“What do you want me to do, sweetheart?
 
Forbid her?
 
She has to study it for class.
 
Don’t worry, Ann.
 
Cynthia isn’t going to become a Muslim anymore than you became a Catholic nun.”

More
don’t worries
.
 
It was beginning to make me feel a little hysterical.
 
“Don’t parents have the option of keeping their kids out of that religion class?
 
You could do that.
 
Cynthia recited
Quranic
verses to me by heart!”

My mother shrugged and turned on the faucet to wash spinach.
 
I left the kitchen.
 
My parents were diehard liberals.
 
In their eyes, President Elliot
Gladwell
could do no wrong.
 
Nothing I could say would change their minds.

#

“Mrs.
Aulis
, could we speak with your daughter please?”

Two men in suits came to our door.
 
They didn’t look much older than me.
 
I wondered when they learned to make questions sound like commands.
 
I wondered what had taken them so long.

My mother looked over her shoulder at me, fingers rigid with alarm.
 
“What’s this about?” she demanded, turning back to the intruders.

Neither man acted as if they heard her question, but showed her their badges.
 
“We would like to take your daughter Ann to our headquarters in Westwood,” said the taller one.
 
“We think she would be more comfortable answering questions there.”

“You are welcome to take Ann to Westwood.
 
I will have my lawyer meet her there,” my mother said firmly.

“Well,” said the shorter man, “I suppose we could interview her here, if you prefer.”