Hope & Other Dangerous Pursuits (3 page)

“Look what I got for you,” Larbi said, handing her some magazines he'd bought on his way home.

“Thanks, Papa,” Noura said. She took the magazines from him, and when she stepped aside to drop them on her desk he saw her friend, a girl who sat on the chair by the window, her hands folded on her lap. She wore a gray, pilled sweater and an ankle-length denim skirt, and her hair was covered in a headscarf. Noura introduced her as Faten Khatibi, one of her classmates at the university in Rabat. Noura was supposed to have gone to NYU, but her scores on the standardized TOEFL exam were not high enough, and so she had to take a year of English at the public university. She was going to apply again in December. The delay had left her somewhat depressed, and the feeling was compounded by her loneliness—most of her friends from the private French lycée she'd attended had gone on to universities abroad.

Larbi stepped into the room and cheerfully extended his hand to Faten, but Faten didn't take it. “Pardon me,” she said. Her eyes shifted back to Noura and she smiled. Larbi dropped his hand awkwardly by his side. “Well.” There was unpleasant pause; Larbi could think of nothing to say. “I'll leave you two alone.”

As he went toward the kitchen to get a drink, Larbi heard the key turn in the lock. His wife, Salma, walked in, her leather satchel on one arm and a set of laundered shirts on the other. “Sorry I'm late,” she said. “The judge
took a long recess.” Larbi took the shirts from her, dropping them on a chair in the foyer. He asked her who Noura's friend was. Salma shrugged. “Someone she met at school.”

“She's not the type of girl I've seen her with before.”

“You mean she's not an enfant gatée?” Salma gave him a little ironic smile. She had little patience with Noura's friends, private-school kids who spent most of their time worrying about their clothes or their cars. Years ago, Salma had disapproved of the idea of Noura's going to a French school, and Larbi himself had occasionally felt guilty that his own daughter was not part of the school system he helped to administer. Yet he had insisted; his daughter had so much potential, and he wanted her to succeed. Surely even an idealist like Salma could understand that.

“I just don't want her to mix with the wrong type,” he said.

“She'll be fine,” Salma said, giving him that woman-of the-people look she affected from time to time and which irritated him supremely—just because she took on several cases every year for free and was active in the Moroccan Association of Human Rights didn't mean she knew any better than Larbi.

F
ATEN BECAME A REGULAR
visitor in Larbi's home. He grew accustomed to seeing her hooded figure in the corridor and her shoes with their thick, curled soles outside Noura's door. Now that Noura spent so much time with her, Larbi watched Sunday-afternoon football matches by himself. This week his beloved FUS of Rabat were playing their archrivals, the Widad of Casablanca. Salma, for whom football was only slightly more exciting than waiting for a pot of tea to brew, went to take a nap. When Larbi went to the kitchen at halftime to get a beer, he heard Faten's voice. “The injustice we see every day,” she said, “is proof enough of the corruption of King Hassan, the government, and the political parties. But if we had been better Muslims, perhaps these problems wouldn't have been visited on our nation and on our brethren elsewhere.”

“What do you mean?” Noura asked.

“Only by purifying our thoughts and our actions …”

Larbi walked a few steps down the hallway to Noura's open door, which she promptly closed when she saw him. He retreated to the living room, where he smoked his Marlboros, drank more beer, and barely paid any attention to the rest of the match.

Immediately after Faten's departure, Larbi knocked on Noura's door to ask what their conversation had been
about. He stood close to her, and she wrinkled her nose when he spoke. His breath smelled of alcohol, he realized, and he stepped back.

“Nothing, Papa,” she said.

“How can you say ‘nothing'? She was here for a while.”

“We were just talking about problems at school, that sort of thing.” She turned around and, standing over her desk, stacked a few notebooks.

Larbi stepped in. “What problems?”

Noura gave him a surprised look, shrugged, then busied herself with inserting a few CDs in their cases. On the wall above her desk was a silk painting of a peony, its leaves open and languid, its center white and pink. Larbi stood, waiting. “She was just telling me how last year some students didn't even sit for final exams, but they passed. I guess they bribed someone on the faculty.”

“What would she know of such things?” asked Larbi, frowning.

Noura heaved a sigh. “She has firsthand experience. She flunked last year.”

“Maybe she didn't work hard enough.”

Noura looked up at him and said in a tone that made it clear that she wanted him to leave after this, “The kids who passed didn't, either.”

“She can't blame her failure on others.”

Noura pulled her hair up into a ponytail. She took out a pair of lounging pants and a T-shirt from her marble-top dresser, flung them on the bed, and stood, arms akimbo, waiting. “I need to take a shower now.” Larbi scrutinized his daughter's face, but it was as impassive as a plastic mask. He left the room.

Salma was still napping when he entered their bedroom. He sat on the bed, facing her. Her eyelids fluttered. Without waiting for her to fully awaken, Larbi said, “Noura can't see this girl anymore.”

“What?” Salma said, opening her eyes. “What are you talking about?” She was already frowning, as though she was ready to analyze the situation and construct the right argument.

“I don't think it's a good idea. I caught them talking politics just now.”

“So?”

“Don't give me that look of yours, Salma. You know exactly what I mean. I don't want her involved in anything. If someone heard them talking that way about the king at school, there could be trouble.”

Salma sighed and got up. “I think Faten is good for her, frankly. Noura needs to know what's going on around her.”

“What do you mean?”

“The world doesn't revolve around fashion and movies.”

“She can look around for herself! What does she need this girl for?”

“Look, Noura's going to be leaving at the end of the school year anyway, so I doubt they're going to see each other after that.” Salma adjusted her dress and tightened her belt. “You're making a mountain out of a seed,” she said. She was the sort of woman who liked to end discussions with a proverb.

Larbi shook his head.

“By the way,” Salma said. “You won't believe who called this morning. Si Tawfiq, remember him?”

“Of course,” Larbi said, getting up. He had already made up his mind to help him with his niece's situation. “I'll give him a call back.”

A
S WEEKS WENT BY
, Noura seemed to be increasingly absorbed by her books. One Saturday afternoon in October, Larbi asked her if she wanted to go to the theater. The performance was by a stand-up comic who'd been banned for a few years and only recently allowed to perform again. The show was sold out. He thought it would be good if she took a break from all that studying.

“I have to write an essay,” she said. The soft sound of Qur'anic chanting wafted from her CD player.

“You're missing out,” Larbi replied. This wasn't the first time Noura had declined an outing. The week before, she had turned down an invitation to go to a tennis finals match, and two weeks before that she had refused to join them at the betrothal of her second cousin. She had always been a good student, but he didn't understand why she worked so hard now. This was supposed to be an easy year, to improve her English. There would be plenty of time to study next year in New York. “Come on,” he said. “Spend some time with your father for a change.”

“Fine, Baba,” Noura said.

On the way to the theater, Larbi glanced at Noura in the rearview mirror. “You're not wearing makeup,” he observed.

Salma laughed. “Don't tell me you cared for her eyeliner.”

“I'm just saying. It's the theater, after all.”

“Why should I paint my face to please other people?” Noura said indignantly.

Salma pulled down the passenger-side mirror and stared at her daughter in it. “I thought you liked to do it for yourself.”

Noura bit at her unmanicured nails, tilting her head in a way that could have meant yes as much as no, then shrugged.

The comedian's routine was a mix of biting satire and musical numbers, but although everyone around him laughed, Larbi found he couldn't relax. He wanted to talk to Noura, though he feared she would again say it was nothing.

The next day, Larbi waited for his daughter to leave for school before slipping into her room, unsure what to look for. The windows were open and the sun was making tree spots on the floor. Larbi sat on his daughter's bed. It struck him that it was made, the crocheted cover pulled neatly on all sides. She had always been messy, and he'd often joked that he'd need a compass to find his way out of her room. Now he felt silly for finding her sudden neatness suspicious. Salma was right, he worried for no reason. He got up to leave, but the garish color of a paperback on the nightstand caught his eye and he reached for it. It was a book on political Islam. Leafing through it, he saw that the print quality was poor and that the text was littered with typographical errors. How could Noura bother with this? He tossed it back on the nightstand, where it hit another tome, this one a leather-bound volume. Larbi tilted
his head sideways to read the spine. It was
Ma'alim fi Ttariq
by Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian dissident and member of the Muslim Brotherhood. He doubted that Noura, who'd been schooled at Lycée Descartes, could even read the complicated classical Arabic in a book like that, but its presence on her nightstand made him look frantically around the room for other clues. Next to her stereo he found a stack of tapes, and when he played one it turned out to be a long commentary on jurisprudence, peppered with brief diatribes about the loose morals of young people. He couldn't find anything else out of the ordinary.

When Noura came home for lunch he was waiting for her in the living room. “What's this?” he asked, holding up the Sayyid Qutb book.

“You were looking through my things?” Noura said, looking surprised and hurt.

“Listen to me. I'll only say this once. You're not to see this girl Faten any longer.”

“Why?”

“I don't like what she's doing to you.”

“What is she doing to me, Baba?”

“I don't want that girl in my house anymore. Safi!”

Noura gave him a dark look, turned on her heel, and left the room. When the maid served lunch, Noura said
she wasn't hungry. Larbi didn't mind. Better a sulking child than one who gets in trouble.

I
T WAS ONLY A
few weeks later, the day before Ramadan, that Noura made her announcement. Salma was shuffling back and forth from the kitchen, where the maid was roasting sesame seeds in the oven for the briwat pastries she would make for the holy month. Larbi was looking at pictures Nadir had sent of the apartment he'd just moved into with a friend, and he was more amused than upset to see no trace of the laptop the boy had claimed he needed.

“You're spoiling him,” Salma said.

“He's going to get a master's degree,” Larbi replied.

Noura walked into the dining room and sat down at the breakfast table. “I've decided to start wearing the hijab.” Salma reached for her daughter's hand and knocked over her cup of coffee. She pushed her chair away from the table and used her napkin to blot the stained tablecloth.

“What? Why?” Larbi asked, dropping the pictures on the table.

“Because God commands us to do so. It says so in the Qur'an,” Noura replied.

“Since when do you quote from the Qur'an?” he said, forcing himself to smile.

“There are only two verses that refer to the headscarf. You should take them in context,” her mother argued.

“Don't you believe that the Qur'an is the word of God?” Noura asked.

“Of course we do,” said Larbi, “but those were different times.”

“If you disagree with the hijab, you're disagreeing with God,” she said.

The confident tone in her voice scared him. “And you have a direct phone line to God, do you?” he said.

Salma raised her hand to stop Larbi. “What has gotten into you?” she asked her daughter. Noura looked down. She traced the intricate geometric pattern on the red rug with her big toe. “Those verses refer to modesty,” Salma continued. “And besides, those were the pagan times of jahiliya, not the twenty-first century.”

“God's commandments are true for all time,” Noura replied, her brow furrowed. “And in some ways, we're still living in jahiliya.” Larbi and Salma glanced at each other. Noura drew her breath again. “Women are harassed on the streets in Rabat all the time. The hijab is a protection.”

Salma opened her mouth to respond, but no sound emerged. Larbi knew that his wife was thinking of those young men with hungry eyes, of how they whistled when they saw a pretty girl and how they never teased the ones with headscarves. “So what?” Larbi said, his voice already loud. He stood up. “The men can't behave, so now my daughter has to cover herself? They're supposed to avert their eyes. That's in the Qur'an, too, you know.”

“I don't understand why it's a problem,” Noura said. “This is between me and God.” She got up as well, and they stared at each other across the table. At last Noura left the dining room.

Larbi was in shock. His only daughter, dressed like some ignorant peasant! But even peasants didn't dress like that. She wasn't talking about wearing some traditional country outfit. No, she wanted the accoutrements of the new breed of Muslim Brothers: headscarf tightly folded around her face, severe expression anchored in her eyes. His precious daughter. She would look like those rabble-rousers you see on live news channels, eyes darting, mouths agape, fists raised. But, he tried to tell himself, maybe this was just a fleeting interest, maybe it would all go away. After all, Noura had had other infatuations. She had been a rabid antismoking advocate. She'd thrown his cigarettes
away when he wasn't looking, cut pictures of lungs dark with tar out of books and taped them to the refrigerator. Eventually she gave up and let him be. She'd also had a string of hobbies that she took up with astonishing passion and then abandoned a few months later for no apparent reason—jewelry making, box collecting, the flute, sign language. But what if this was different? What if he lost her to this … this blindness that she thought was sight?