Children of Dust (19 page)

“I don’t know what that means,” I typed honestly.

“Maybe you should ask someone who knows.”

I called Moosa at his work.

“Pakhtunkhwa
is an honor code,” he informed me. “It basically means that you’re going to die. Who told you about it?”

“Some guy that’s been after Bilqis.”

“That sucks,” Moosa said. “Well, can I get your Quran MP3s before you’re killed?”

“This is serious,” I said, frustrated by a new obstacle between me and Islamically sanctioned sex. “Mother fuck me!”

“I don’t think Islam allows that,” Moosa quipped. “Although Khomeini said that if you were walking along your roof and fell down and your penis entered your mother, it wouldn’t be considered incest under Islam.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” I said. “But what if before pulling out you thrust a couple of times, because during the fall you became disoriented and thought you had entered your wife?”

“Good question. I’ll have to ask a scholar about this.”

“Anyway. Back to the important problem at hand,” I said.

“I think you should scare this chump away.”

“Threaten him?”

“Yeah.”

“With what? Punjabis aren’t warriors.”

“Tell him that you challenge him to a
bhangra
duel,” he suggested.

“What if he says that dancing is un-Islamic. Then he’s got another way to diss me.”

“Point taken.”

“God,” I said—almost a prayer. “I really don’t want to die yet. I’m still a virgin.”

“Look at the upside,” Moosa said cheerily. “In Islam a murdered man is a martyr. That means you’ll get seventy-two girls in Paradise.”

“But I don’t have any sexual experience. I wouldn’t be able to please them.”

“All right, then why don’t you tell this guy that his code of honor is
haram
because it’s rooted in un-Islamic tribalism.”

That seemed like an amazing idea. Declaring things un-Islamic was always the safest way of winning an argument.

“It’s not a permanent fix,” Moosa cautioned, “but it should put him on the defensive.”

“This whole Bilqis thing is getting out of hand,” I said. “You know that book by Kurban Said that we read?”

“
Ali and Nino
? The one about the Muslim guy and Christian girl in Azerbaijan?”

“Yeah. I should just kidnap Bilqis the way Ali did Nino.”

“You don’t have a horse, though. I think it’s tradition to use a horse.”

“We could rent a Mustang.”

“This is going to be so cool,” Moosa yelped. “Can I perform your service?”

“Definitely. But after my service, where will I go to get it on with my wife? Didn’t the Prophet say in a
hadith
that you have to play with your virgin?”

“He did. How about you rent one of those sleeping cars in an Amtrak train? That way if you get followed you can evade her family.”

“What if during wedding night she’s on her period?”

“I keep telling you to read Imam Ghazali. He says that if your virgin is periodic you should put a silk cloth on her privates and rub her until she orgasms. It’s an Islamic duty for a man to pleasure his wife.”

“Our scholars really knew their sex, didn’t they?”

“There’s a reason we should follow their precedence!”

“Yeah, man,” I said after some reflection. “I’m not going to abduct anyone. It’s illegal. Besides, I’ve got midterms coming up.”

“Me too.”

After hanging up, I turned back to the computer and started chatting with Yahya the way Moosa had suggested. I brought up all sorts of Islamic references and chose three of my favorite Islamic sayings. They would demonstrate that I was a scholar, not a fighter:

• The ink of the scholar is holier than the blood of the martyr.
  
• Search for knowledge even if it takes you to China.
  
• God loves nothing more than a pious youth.
  

Invoking Islam had the intended effect. Yahya became nervous. “Do you study Islam or something?” he asked.

“Yes,” I typed. “I’m becoming a scholar.”

“Damn. I had no idea! My bad, bro! I thought you were just some player going after Bilqis. I see that I was very wrong. I’m sorry for misjudging your character.”

“Not a problem,” I responded, smiling to myself, and then I proceeded to type out some pointers about better etiquette.

That night, buzzing on the power of Islam, I decided that I wasn’t going to wait three years before telling my parents. If Islam could defeat vengeful ex-boyfriends, it could definitely persuade my parents.

G
uess what? I’ve found a wife.”

Back in Alabama for spring break that freshman year, I told Ammi and Pops the news over dinner. We were having
qeema
with
roti
and a side dish of curried zucchini.

“Excuse me?” said Ammi.

“He thinks someone actually wants to marry him,” Flim said, ever the younger brother.

“There’s a girl named Bilqis that I met. I want to marry her.”

Pops cleared his throat ominously. “How old is this lady?” he asked, unwilling to attach a name to her.

“Eighteen—and I’d prefer it if you’d use her name: Bilqis.”

“I see. Is this lady older than you?”

“A little, yes.”

“This isn’t a good idea,” he said.

“Why?”

“Where we come from, men are five years less mature than women.”

I couldn’t accept such a trivial rebuke. I looked toward Ammi for support, but she didn’t say anything.

“How old are you again?” Pops asked me.

“Seventeen.”

“The thing about marrying young,” continued Pops, “is that it takes away your ambition. Better to
become
someone before you marry.”

This was the moment: I knew I had to invoke Islam in order to acquire mastery of the situation. “You people are aware that in Islam marriage is considered half the faith, right? There’s a
hadith
about that point. I can show it to you in the books.”

“Islam is between you and God,” Pops said. “Why are you involving us?”

I was surprised by this statement. Until now Islam had been between all of us.

“Because I need your help. You’re my parents. It’s your Islamic duty to help me out. Bilqis’s parents require that you call them to make arrangements and do everything in the Islamic way.”

“I don’t agree with that approach,” Pops said, pushing food around on his plate. “I think they should call us.”

“They won’t, though. Bilqis said her family doesn’t like Punjabis.”

Pops scoffed loudly. Then Ammi scoffed. They were both insulted.

“You say you want us to abide by Islam,” Ammi said, “but
they
aren’t being very decent, are they?”

“Don’t want Punjabis? We don’t want them!” Pops thundered.

I stood up. “But I want
her
!”

“Forget it. We have dignity.”

“Do this for my Islam. If I don’t marry, I’ll end up fornicating!” I stomped to my bedroom, convinced that my parents weren’t taking me seriously.

I could hear Ammi and Pops arguing loudly in the kitchen, blaming each other for my hasty—and clearly faulty—choice in a potential mate. When they started blaming Bilqis for trying to steal their son, I was so upset at hearing my beloved’s name besmirched that I stormed back into the kitchen and upturned the dinner trays. I flipped one tray too hard and everything splattered on my chest. My dignity shot, I retreated back to my room.

For a couple of hours the house was almost silent. Occasionally Flim could be heard walking up and down the hall, but that was it. Eventu
ally Ammi and Pops must have reconciled, because they came to my room together and knocked quietly.

“This Bilqis must be very pretty,” Pops said once they were in and seated on the narrow bed.

“She is.”

“You know who else is pretty?” Ammi asked. “Mountain girls. From Kashmir. Your father has a friend who has a daughter. Such rosy cheeks.”

“I don’t want a Kashmiri girl. I want Bilqis.”

“This Kashmiri girl I’m telling you about looks like that actress—the one with the rosy cheeks.”

“I prefer Bilqis.”

“Son, let me tell you a story about mountain girls,” Pops said, taking over. “I had this uncle. Big guy. He died before you were born. He was scary. One time he threatened to beat up a guy and the guy defecated in his own clothes. Anyway, this uncle’s first wife died, so he went to Peshawar and he paid a Pathan and bought a young wife. Do you remember the stone-faced widow that lived near Dada Abu?”

“Are you suggesting that we
buy
Bilqis?”

“No. I’m suggesting that we buy a mountain girl that looks better because the dollar-rupee exchange is pretty good these days!” Pops said with a wink.

I realized that I was being mocked. My love trivialized. My feelings stomped upon. I actually began crying. Then I pulled myself together and made one final appeal to Islam. “Why can’t you do things properly? Just call her parents, please. Where is your Islam?”

“So you want to do things the Islamic way?” Pops asked.

“Nothing more.”

“There’s a verse in the Quran which says that if your parents punish you, accept it, without so much as saying ‘Uff.’”

“I know it,” I said.

“Good. Because your punishment for getting into this stupid relationship is that you’re going to transfer out of your college in Manhattan for a college in the South.”

“No!” I exclaimed, horrified.

“You’ll do it this summer,” he said firmly. “I don’t want to hear the slightest rebellion from you. The Quran prohibits you from disobeying your parents—and remember, you claim to be very Islamic.”

“How can you do this?” I pleaded. “Please. This is despotism!”

Pops didn’t waver. “What did your Ibn Taymiya say? A thousand days of despotism are better than one day of anarchy? Don’t be an anarchist. Listen to your despotic father. That is Islam, after all.”

That night was torture. I felt stars crashing around my head, and the sliver of the moon sliced my arteries open. I opened a copy of the Quran and cried into it. Bilqis was to have been my wall between the secularity outside and the Islam within. She was supposed to be my protection. I felt vulnerable.

As I lay weeping, there was a soft knock and Ammi came inside. She took my hand and brushed my face. “Don’t worry about marriage. We’ll visit Pakistan for the summer and see if we can find you a nice wife there.” Then she kissed me and left.

When I returned to Manhattan I was terribly upset at having to give up Bilqis, though I did as my father ordered and called her to break things off. A day or two later it occurred to me that if I went to an Islamic country to find a wife, as Ammi had suggested, the girl wouldn’t need to be convinced to wear
hijab
as Bilqis had to be. In fact, I might even find someone who wore the full
niqab
.

The possibility of upgrading from Bilqis filled me with excitement. If I had a
niqabi
wife, my piety quotient would be off the charts—I could even take multiple wives without anyone batting an eye.

Another advantage in going to Pakistan was that I could take some time to investigate my lineage to the first Caliph.

Suddenly the world was conspiring on behalf of my Islam.

P
ops had to work so it was just me, Ammi, and Flim on the trip. We argued a lot during the planning stage about which airline to take. The clearest sign that a Pakistani immigrant had made it in America was when he returned in a foreign air carrier, but since we hadn’t, we ended up taking Pakistan International Airlines to Karachi.

As I looked around me on the plane, I saw that the greater part of the passengers were working-class—rugged and worn from driving cabs and filling tanks on turnpikes, serving as cooks in
desi
restaurants named Shalimar. They laughed and joked the whole way because they were going home. For them America was simply a work station. It could just as easily be Dubai, Australia, or England. They were going back with paychecks that were meager in America but in Pakistan ballooned from the exchange rate. They looked forward to giving their families a chance to buy nice things. Maybe an AC for an aged mother. Maybe wedding clothes for a niece.

Others in the plane were like us. The quiet and morose bunch. We were the ones that had gone to the United States in order to make money
and
make a home—and had found that getting a paycheck in America was far easier than feeling a part of the country. Now, neither
fully American nor fully Pakistani, we called ourselves Muslims and hoped that religion was enough to identify us in a world full of nations.

I didn’t like where I was sitting. There were three college-aged girls in front of me. They wore jeans and short T-shirts, and each time they reached for something, I could see a span of waist and bare back. Immodest sluts, I thought. Why couldn’t they be more like the girl sitting to my right? She was a pretty girl wrapped fully in a black
chador
. I wondered why the brazen types couldn’t see how much more grace the girl in the
chador
had. I almost nudged Ammi, seated to my left, and pointed at the modest girl as a potential wife.

My proximity to the slutty girls caused piety to bubble up protectively inside me. I went off to join the Islamic mile-high club and prayed in the corridor near the kitchenette.

When I returned to my seat, I pulled my book from my carry-on:
The Life of Muhammad
, by Martin Lings. I had read it many times before, but this time I was focused on trying to memorize the names of the forgotten companions—men like Najiyyah the camel driver and Abu Dujanah, who wore a red hat during battle.

After some memory work in that book, I also pulled out Muhammad Asad’s memoir,
The Road to Mecca
. It told the story of how Leopold Weiss, an Austrian Jew, converted to Islam after living with Saudi Bedouins and King Abdul Aziz at the beginning of the century. As I ruminated on the book, I recalled that Asad had eventually left Arabia and moved to Pakistan, where he became its first ambassador to the United Nations. Asad believed that Islam was the greatest force mankind had ever experienced. He thought that if Muslims could live their life guided by the “spark of flame which burned in the Companions of the Prophet,” they would always be successful.

Getting up again to stretch, I walked up and down the aisles and thought about the idea of Pakistan. There was something empowering about it. In a world where there were so few examples of Muslims making anything, the creation of a nation-state, yanked from the smoldering ruins of colonialism and two world wars, snatched from the British Empire and the Hindu majority of India, established in the name of Islam and then sanctified by a migration that was comparable to the Prophet
Muhammad’s flight to Medina, seemed like a massive accomplishment. Pakistan was an act of sovereignty carried out so that Muslims could pursue the purpose of life: worshipping God. Suddenly I felt honored to be a Muslim and honored to be going to Pakistan.

As the plane approached Karachi’s Jinnah Airport, I hurried toward to my seat to buckle up. As I zoomed past the bathroom, I met up with the gaggle of immodest girls that had been sitting in front of me, recognizing them by their giggles. I instinctively drew away from them—even the slightest touch against them would have to be burned off by hellfire—before noticing that they’d switched into modest
shalwar kameez
es with full
dupatta
s covering their chests.

I was pleased by their change. It was a testament to the positive influence that an Islamic state had upon misguided believers.

W
e stepped onto the tarmac and wilted in the heat. Karachi’s brownish pollution was palpable against my face. It singed the nose hair when inhaled and left an unpleasant taste on the back of the tongue. Despite the smog, old men—home at last!—puffed out their chests and inhaled deeply as they tumbled down the steps.

Inside the terminal we were greeted by my paternal Uncle Saad. He was a high-ranking officer in the military, which meant that he had an army of pages, servants, butlers, bodyguards, and drivers. At the airport he was able to press every porter, customs agent, visa inspection officer, and street urchin into service.

“Give your passports to me,” he said to Ammi. Then he turned to one of his servants: “Get these stamped! Hurry up, you slow sonofabitch!” He ordered another servant to intercept our luggage before it made its way to the baggage carts. As the servant ran off, one of the bodyguards made a backhand and pretended to slap him. Uncle Saad saw the soldier’s gesture and lashed out. “You fool! You think you’re big time? Go bring drinks. Pepsi. Don’t bring uncapped bottles like you did last time.”

Uncle Saad led us past long lines winding into the customs office and herded us toward a special corridor for families with “connec
tions.” As we passed the people we’d flown in with, now pushing against each other in congested lines, cursing and swearing, or sweet-talking the self-important officers, I felt a sense of superiority. I didn’t have to go through all that headache because I was connected to the military.

As I thought about it, though, that privilege made me uneasy; it filled me with guilt. Privilege was un-Islamic. I had read that the great Caliphs Umar al-Khattab and Harun al-Rashid used to dress up as common people and go through the city streets to feel part of the crowd. Similarly, one of the Companions of the Prophet used to put his servant on his camel and walk him through the streets. I’d read that Abu Bakr Siddiq had been so humble that he slept on the floor. The privilege and the hierarchy that the military imposed in Karachi seemed to contradict these stories from Islamic history.

This wasn’t the way that an Islamic country was supposed to work.

U
ncle Saad lived with his family in one of the designated military suburbs. It was a colony unto itself, with its own mosque, school, water treatment facility, market, and
tandoor
, and even the donkey carts that brought the vegetables served only the military. Uncle Saad and his wife were both educated and looked to Pops as a role model, because he had been able to get to America and was having his children educated there. When they saw me taking my books out of my bag the first afternoon we were there, they harangued me with questions about my “estudies.”

I was perplexed by the zeal with which they wanted to emulate academics in the West. I wanted to ask them if they knew that a secular education was corrosive and corrupting to Islam.

The house was approximately a hundred yards from the mosque, where the
azan
was sung five times a day to announce the time for prayer. Yet I noticed that no one in the colony went to make regular prayers. The mosque seemed to be little more than a decoration that no one had much interest in.

At the house the TV stayed on most of the day. Every channel was from either mainland India or Dubai. Many stations featured music videos with scantily clad girls or songs full of innuendo. The VJs were all Western in behavior and clothing, and everyone was trying to out-MTV one another.

One day Uncle Saad took us for a tour of the colony and then to his base, where he put special emphasis on showing us the Officers’ Mess—a sparse, English-style dining hall with antique tables, solid chairs, and finely engraved china with insignias etched into the bottom. I saw a table of wine glasses in a corner and asked him what it was for.

“Lots of the people on base drink,” he said.

“Is it just the high-ranking people who drink?” I asked, “or does everyone?”

He thought for a moment. “Mostly it’s just the top officers.”

The notion that the foot soldiers and lower-level officers didn’t drink gave me a modicum of comfort—it was nice that they weren’t getting westernized. I resolved to talk with some of the lower-level officers and ask them how they allowed themselves to serve Muslims who drank.

O
ne evening a military van with two machine-gun-bearing Pathan soldiers in the backseat picked us up and took us all to the commercial area, to go to an open-air restaurant on top of a ten-story hotel that seemed to cater to upper-middle-class families. When the restaurant attendant realized that we were from America, he started throwing in English words, and everything became “simply the…” The
daal
was “simply the best.” The
naan
was “simply the fluffiest.” The
biryani
was “simply the tastiest.” His colonialized mentality disgusted me. He should have demanded that we speak his language, not the other way around. Muslims had to be proud of who they were.

As he led us to our seat, I saw massive piles of red
tandoori
chicken, and
kharay masalay ka gosht
, and chicken
jalfrezi
. At least the food is native, I thought.

We were seated across from a musical ensemble featuring a middle-aged guy with oily hair who took requests from the diners. He belted out old-school
ghazal
s as well as songs made popular by Michael Jackson and Frank Sinatra. I felt angry with him for bringing these Western songs into Pakistani society. Music itself was
haram
, and good Muslims ought not listen to it at all. But if people were indeed going to listen to music, then they should listen to their own and not try to copy the West.

I felt increasingly uncomfortable. Why was this establishment ignoring Islam? Wasn’t Islam why this nation had been created? Yet people’s attitudes, their definition of fun, the mix-gendered seating, the complete absence of Islamic rituals—all this was striking. It occurred to me that these people were thoroughly secularized, and that saddened me.

By the time we finally returned home from dinner, the Islam inside me was gasping for air. It seemed as if everything Karachiites did led them away from religion. Why did they pay so much attention to cricket, for example? It was a mindless sport that wasted the mind and kept people from worshipping God. Why did some of the programming on TV feature a mixture of Urdu and English—and more important, why had Pakistanis made English an official language? This was an Islamic country, wasn’t it? The only official language should’ve been Arabic, the language of the Quran.

That night I dug into my books and found the gleaming orange cover of
The History of Islamic Philosophy
, by Majid Fakhry. Just holding the book restored some of my security. Opening its pages, I read about Imam Ashari, who vanquished the Rationalists; and al-Ishraqi, the founder of Illuminationism, a non-rational Islamic theology; and al-Ghazali, who vanquished the Philosophers; and Ibn Taymiya, who showed that Muslims didn’t need logic because it was a Greek invention. I glanced through all the authentic Arabic and Persian scholars over history, and finding the name of Iqbal, the spiritual founder of Pakistan, at the very end of that list gave me a sense of comfort. It proved that Pakistan was part of the long, flowing river of Islam—indeed, its culmination.

I concluded that Pakistanis who weren’t true to this history weren’t being true to themselves.

T
he next night Uncle Saad took us to a big-time party at a superior’s house. The event was like something out of
90210
or
Melrose Place
. There were gleaming cars outside the enormous house, and servants in pressed uniforms ran around addressing every need. The event itself was in the garden, where food was served under white tents. Outside the tents there were countless round tables, laid out banquet style with fine china, and courteous waiters. The garden was stunning in its lushness, its damp geometry, and its crisply trimmed edges. Roses of all colors, as well as long rows of
chambayli
s and numerous other flowers, were banked against the main house, which gave off a golden luminosity from the chandeliers inside.

The main event at the party was a game of bingo organized by a couple of professionals. They passed out bingo cards to anyone who was interested and then spun a huge wheel with great aplomb. Uncle Saad quickly picked up a card for himself and began playing.

I wandered away from the table and went toward a corner of the garden where some young people were milling about.

As I got near them I stopped in my tracks. The guys were all wearing Western clothes—dress shoes, pressed slacks, and crisp, collared shirts with ties. The girls were variously dressed in tight chiffon dresses, backless
shalwar kameez
es, and knee-length skirts. I crinkled up my nose at their immodest attire.

As I turned away to head back in, I saw a face I recognized: it was the
chador
-clad girl from the airplane—the one I had found so beautiful in her modesty. Now she was wearing a pair of tight jeans and a skimpy tank top, cut off at the midriff to show off a diamond-encrusted navel ring. I could see one edge of her thong as she sashayed over toward the group of teenagers. She didn’t seem to recognize me but gave me a nice smile anyway.

Feeling almost ill from the encounter—I felt she had betrayed all of Islam—I went to look for Ammi, who was off chatting with my aunt.

“Why don’t we go to the desert?” I suggested. “We should go and see Dada Abu and Dadi Ma.”