The Taqwacores (22 page)

Down the street further I saw one of heroic Pulaski with sword and cape like a lion’s mane flowing behind him. Just the word is funny to me.
Pulaski.
There’s a town named after him up north of Syracuse on the I-81.

I walked past a wig store and the Christian Science reading room, then noted a tag on one of the boarded-up storefronts reading BULLET 716 accompanied by a bullet with motion lines behind it. I still had to defecate bad. HUD office. I also had to urinate. LaFayette Court. From there it wasn’t far at all before National Fuel, 455 Main.

I went in, signed my name and sat in the expanse of open chairs. Posters hung in various spots so all could clearly read the two vital messages: 1) if you leave and your name is called you must sign in again, and 2) no public restrooms. I wondered how long it would take.

In maybe fifteen minutes they called my name. I sat down in the guy’s cubicle, signed whatever he gave me.

I walked out of there refreshed and bursting power, despite the physical discomfort of all my waste still inside me. Now responsible for something, my name would go on bills. My legacy in the history of that house had been sealed.

 

 

That week I sat by Amazing Ayyub as Jehangir gave khutbah.

“It feels good to be back,” Ayyub whispered.

“Don’t talk during khutbah,” I replied in his ear.

“Oh. Okay. Sorry bro.”

“Islam is fuckin’ surrender,” said Jehangir to the jamaat. “That’s it. Being aware that you don’t run the show, staying mindful of it in everything you do. Is surrender getting up off the toilet halfway through a poop to go look in your Bukhari and see how Rasullullah wiped his ass? Maybe, brothers and sisters. InshaAllah. But to me, surrender can be laying outside at night to see shooting stars-you know what that means, right? That’s another eavesdropping jinn knocked out of heaven. So lie on your back, watch and get scared, real-real scared but not of Jehennam or anything like that; get scared because this universe is being controlled by Somebody besides you. Know that, realize that, dwell on it. And then you’re not scared anymore because that Somebody loves you in a way you can’t even begin to comprehend.

“When Somebody’s administering this creation and it’s not you, what can you do? Surrender your shit. Take your hands off the wheel a second, see how it feels. What can you worry about? Insha‘Allah, Mash’Allah, Subhana Allah, la ilaha illa Allahu Hayyul Qayyum. Fuck it. Allah’s arranging things beyond all our grasps. The earth isn’t spinning because you told it to. Your intestines aren’t digesting by your command. You’re made up of a trillion cells that don’t ask your permission before offering their rakats. And we think submission’s about applying a strict discipline to our worship? We think surrender’s about not eating a pig? It’s not that small to me. I can’t fit my deen in a little box because to me, everything comes from Allah. Birds sing Allah’s Name. To say Allah’s in this book and not that one, or He likes this and not that... do you know Who you’re talking about? The Allah that made you from a clot and clothed it with flesh, you know it, you’ve heard it. The Ayat ul-Nur and this business with the lamp, niche and olive neither East nor West? It’s about people. I do zikrs counting your names on my knuckles: Yusef, Amazing Ayyub, Umar, Rabeya, all
of you.
We’re
the Nur, and Ghazali can eat a dick.

“Allah’s too big and open for my deen to be small and closed. Does that make me a kafr? I say Allahu Akbar. If that’s not good enough then fuck Islam, you can have it. Imam Husain said, ‘he who has no religion, let him at least be free in his present life.’ So there you go. Now let’s pray.”

Then he turned his back and led us.

 

 

“We’re putting on a show,” he told me from the front porch’s recliner. I sat on the steps. It was the last day of October and he was dressed like Hulk Hogan, the post-1996 Hollywood with black penciled three-day beard and heavy blonde mustache, dumb sunglasses, black bandana, black feather boas and a toy championship belt that he’d strum like a guitar when someone put on Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Chile” mouthing along
Well I stand up next to a mountain/and I chop it down with the back of my hand... ”
I’ve been calling my boys out West, y‘akhi, and they’re comin’ like a big fuckin’ caravan of taqwacore punks. These guys are nuts but they’re sincere. Al-hamdulilah, because if they weren’t such spiritual-types I’d never afford this shit.”

“When’s the show?” I asked.

“December twenry-first.”

“Where?”

“The Intercontinental. You know, that place downtown.”

“How many bands?”

“A shitload.”

The next day it snowed. Buffalo had the ingredients to be a good writer’s town: the whole dying-industry, working-class grit. Jehangir Tabari said it reminded him of Pittsburgh and Detroit. Said he knew a guy they called Pittsburgh, who actually hailed from Karachi and had never seen the yellow Allegheny bridges.

I told a girl in one of my classes that I’d drive her to the airport. Jehangir went for the ride and sat shotgun. The girl came with a friend who insisted on seeing her off. They were both freshmen; this was their first college snow.

“Remember that hippie guy in front of Pano’s?” one asked the other.

“Oh my god! That guy was insane! Remember that guy in the Princeton hoodie?”

“Oh my god! That guy was nuts!” They laughed out their words. I had no shot with either of them. I was the good guy that would give rides to the airport in a pinch. That was my role. They thought Jehangir’s hair was cool.

First time I ever flew, it was December so now all airports give me a nice Christmas-ish feeling.

“Cute girls,” said Jehangir, sounding almost mournful. “They’re at the height of their power, too.”

“What do you mean?”

“Youth, y’akhi.” I looked over, having never imagined that Jehangir Tabari could feel old. But right then he
looked
old, like something had worn him down without any of us noticing. “Yusef, you ever hear of Marie Laveau?”

“Nope.”

“Marie Laveau, the Voo-Doo Queen of New Orleans. People go to her tomb leaving coins and food or whatever. You mark an X on it in red brick and tuck a tulip in your hair, it’s supposed to do something.”

“Like what?”

“Win you true love, I don’t know.” I could sense him going through the motions, effortlessly trudging along with no spark in his voice at all. “Ever read Buzz Sawyer?”

“Who’s Buzz Sawyer?”

“He was a redneck truck-driver who got all into Sufism. A real tobaccy-chewer, you know? And an American Sufi saint. He drove big rigs all over the country in his faded blue jeans and big belt buckle and John Deere cap with a flannel shirt and plastic vest, all alone for thousands of miles at a time doing Sufi mental exercises in his cab, like reciting Holy Names all the way from New York to Colorado.”

“He sounds interesting.”

“Those poets like Rumi, they wrote love poetry that appeared to be about human passion but really expressed their longing for Allah. Buzz Sawyer, he wrote these really lusty poems about truck-stop whores who would CB truckers and fuck them at prearranged meeting points. It gets quite dirty actually but that’s his expression of the same idea. He’s really searching for his Beloved.”

“That’s awesome.”

“He’s out there right now.”

“Wow.”

“He was a Sufi of the Uwayysi Mashrab. You know what that is?”

“No.”

“The Way of Uwayys. You know who he was?”

“No.”

“Uwayys-i-Gharan, a shepherd in the time of Rasullullah. He never met Muhammad personally, but received guidance from him through telepathy or something. So it became like a whole big thing: following not a physical teacher, but the spirit of Muhammad himself.”

“Oh.”

“Uwayysi Sufism. No school, no shaykh, no tariqa. It’s just you out there on the road by yourself.”

“Makes a lot of sense.”

When we got back Jehangir dug around in his room and found a Buzz Sawyer poem that he had photocopied right out of the book he had borrowed. The piece was untitled.

“Buzz Sawyer had mixed feelings about being a Muslim poet,”
said Jehangir.

“Why?”

“Because Prophet Muhammad said, ‘it’s better for your belly to be filled with pus than poetry.’”

“Oh.”

 

 

While watching Conan O’Brien it occurred to me that we were in Ramadan. It’s easy to forget when you keep odd hours. We all fasted but when you wake up at noon and go to bed at four in the morning, I’m not sure if it counts. At any rate, when the sun was up we didn’t eat. Umar did it hardcore, getting himself up before the sun rose every day. At least it was winter and the days were short.

“There’s a gate in Jenna that opens only for those who fast,” he explained.

I miss when things were easy. Before I moved into that house, my concept of Islam was quite simply defined. I knew what it was and what it wasn’t, even if my actual lifestyle lurked somewhere in between. At least I was aware of it.

 

 

“Dude, dude bro!” yelped Amazing Ayyub with panic and a hand on the dashboard as Jehangir rolled to the first in a long line of stop signs. Jehangir wore a brown wool pakul, earning him looks from passerby who had only seen the hat on CNN Talibans. “Dude man, on campus you gotta make complete stops. The campus cops are everywhere, they’ll get you.”

“Okay.” Jehangir got up to the next sign slow and methodical, pressed his foot on the brake a full Mississippi, looked both ways
and moved on. It was barely a hundred feet before the one after that.

“It’s 4:20,” said Fasiq from the back seat.

“Gotta wait til the sun goes down,” Jehangir replied.

“Oh yeah.”

“Nothing can pass the lips,” said Ayyub. “That means Muzammil can’t give blowjobs, haha.”

“Ayyub, man,” said Jehangir. “That shit’s not cool.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Subhana Allah,” said Fasiq. “Once the sun’s down I’m getting SHIT FACED.” In fact, that was the purpose of our drive. We were on our way to the liquor store on Grant with the big white horse out front.

“Bro,” said Ayyub, “if you’re gonna screw around don’t do it on campus, it’s like a different government here man. It’s a fuckin’ police state.” We arrived at the liquor store and Jehangir parked in the bank’s parking lot across the street. Ayyub made a comment about how
ghetto
Buffalo was, then darted in front of a grimy bus, hopped on the store’s wooden white horse, and acted like he was humping it.

The entrance of the store looked like a classroom with school-style plastic desks occupied by sketchy old characters with eyes on the electronic gambling screen hanging from the ceiling. Alcohol is a foreign culture to me. Was then, is now, always will be. Fasiq grabbed his Beefeater like an old pro. Ayyub bought a vinegar sausage stick, the kind with the fiery packaging. He made a joke about the fire symbolizing Jehennam, the place Allah would send you for eating sausage.

Back outside on Grant, Ayyub gave a repeat performance of simulated bestiality, yelling in his special crazy voices. “Buffalo’s dead!” he hollered. “Once I buy my truck, I’m taking us all out West.” I thought about all the bums playing lotto sitting empty
and hopeless in their grade-school desks inside the store. Made me feel good to be a clean-livered Muslim. I’ll admit that religion can be dumb sometimes, but there’s really no positive argument you can make on behalf of liquor. “It’s so fucking COLD,” shrieked Ayyub. “What the shit are we doing in Buffalo? Our ancestors are from warm places, bro. I’m not meant for this shit.”

“If I ever see you drink,” Jehangir said with a handful of my jacket, “if I ever hear of you having so much as a spoonful of beer, so help me I’ll kick your fucking ass.”

“That’s fair,” I replied, unable to hold in my smile. I loved it when Jehangir got into his whole big-brother complex.

“It’s got me by the balls,” he continued. “But you’re still good because you don’t know what it’s like to be drunk.”

“Okay.”

“While you’re at it, stay off the pussy too. It’s like those fuckin’ potato chips, y’akhi. You can’t eat just one.”

“I’ll remember that.”

 

 

In Muzammil Sadiq’s dorm room, he and Jehangir considered possible bands for the taqwacore show as Propagandhi’s “Fuck Religion” played in the background. With nothing to contribute I eventually zoned out of the conversation altogether. My eyes stuck at the flag on his wall: rainbow stripes, red orange yellow green blue purple, with a shiny bronze star-and-crescent in the middle.

Dialogue floated through my head without any of it registering.

“Vote Hezbollah,” said one of them—I wasn’t involved enough to know which. “We gotta have those guys.”

“And Eight from the Ukil.” A pause as their name was written down.

“The Mutaweens.”

“Hell yeah, and the fuckin’ Imran Khan Experience.”

“Cool.”

“Probably the Zaqqums and Bin Qarmats, they’re both pretty good bands.”

“The Zaqqums are straightedge, right?”

“I think so. But they don’t really sound it.”

“Burning Books for Cat Stevens.”

“Yeah.”

“We got the Ghilmans down.”

“Get the Wilden Mukhalloduns too.”

“Right.”

“The Infibulateds.”

“Who?”