“I’ll tell you another thing about the Masjid of Manassas,” he said.
“Okay.”
“Did you know that the first White House of the Confederacy was built by Zelda Fitzgerald’s great-uncle?”
“No, I didn’t know that.”
“Montgomery, Alabama. I saw it. But anyway, back to the Masjid of Manassas. I had a Confederate ten dollar bill that I had bought over’n West Virginia, right? At an antique shop in Berkeley Springs. And I concocted myself a plan to smuggle my Confederate tenner into the Masjid of Manassas just to leave it somewhere safe so it’d be in the masjid forever but secret where nobody’d ever find it.
“So I was telling this girl about my plan, right? How I had to find a safe place in the masjid where no one would ever look. And you know what my girl says?
“She says, ‘tape it to the ceiling.’”
I went to bed at maybe two-thirty. The party still went strong downstairs but I was tired enough to block it out. I fell asleep thinking about Pakistan; not the geographical location, nation-state or cultural tag but the word itself.
Pakistan.
I had noted the word coming up several times that night. Some people said it like my parents:
Pock-ies-taun.
Others said it the way kafrs say it:
Packiss-tan.
My own pronunciation fell somewhere in between.
I woke up to a blast of sunlight from my windows, feeling as though I had slept a long time but it turned out to be just a little after nine. Knowing the time had long passed, I heaved myself out of bed regardless and took out my prayer rug. Walked over to the bathroom, lifted the seat up and urinated without fear of anyone being awake to come in on me. Went back to my room and stood at the back of the rug, heels on the little tassels.
And I prayed unwashed.
Did not really feel like going downstairs, as I was sure some leftovers from the last night’s goings-on were still on our couches feeling the damage. Well, not really
fieling
it. But they were still there. I submitted to my bed and slept ’til noon.
When I finally came downstairs I found only two Muslims in the living room, too wide awake and pleasant to have been vestiges from the party. At first glance I only knew that the girl was Muslim, as she wore a spotless white hejab outlining her face in a long oval. The guy could have been anything until I heard him justify the killing of apostates.
“It’s like treason,” he said boldly.
“How?” she replied gently. “How can someone’s relationship with their Creator constitute—”
“You have a hard time understanding it because you were brought up in this Secular Western way of thinking.”
“Oh really?” Her hands were covered in elaborate henna designs. Neither of them noticed me standing at the edge of the living room.
“You see,” he answered, certain there was no successful argument to what he’d say, “every society has its own concept of treason. In England, if you sexually violate a female from the Royal
Family, it is considered high treason. So with this in mind, you have to look at—”
“But that makes no sense. Polluting the royal bloodline makes raping a princess more criminal than raping just some common girl? That’s completely ridiculous. You’re backing up ignorant, irrational behavior with more of the same.”
“No, it’s just to say that each society has its own understanding of what it means to belong to a community, and what it means to be loyal or disloyal to that community. Now, with Rushdie; he owed a certain respect to his community and he did not live up to that obligation. To the contrary, he took the religion in which he was raised and subjected it to complete and utter desecration. Now the difference between Rushdie and a kafr is that we must expect more of Rushdie. He knows his religion and how to push the buttons to get a response. He writes this horrible book insulting the character of Rasullullah Sallaho alayhe wa salaam, and tearing down Islam itself which is the center of everything in our life.” The guy pronounced Islam as
Islaam.
“I disagree,” she answered with a slow shake of her head. “I’m an English major, so I’m looking it at it from a literary perspective. If you look at W.K. Wimsatt’s Intentional Fallacy, okay, basically you can’t judge an author’s message because the author himself—or
her
self—doesn’t even know what the real idea is behind their work. We all have so many subconscious elements to our behavior, a big chunk of what an artist puts on the page, canvas or whatever is accidental. So to look at Rushdie’s art, his fiction, and say you have therein a justification for his murder is completely ignorant of what it means to be an artist.”
“Just as I said,” he replied with polite bravado. “You’re conditioned by Western secularism. We’re discussing a religious issue and you bring up kafr theories! Can you find support for Wimsatt’s Intentional Fallacy in the sunna?” He turned his head and
saw me. “As-salaamu alaikum,” he said with the same debating tone.
“Wa alaikum as-salaam,” I replied. I then turned to the sister. “As-salaamu alaikum.”
“Wa alaikum as-salaam.” I abruptly turned and walked to the kitchen.
“Who’s out there?” I asked Rabeya, sitting at the table with her morning paper.
“Bush is gonna kill us all,” she said.
“Yeah, but who’s out there in the living room talking about Salman Rushdie?”
“Oh, they’re from the MSA.”
“What are they doing here?”
“They’re waiting for Umar. Don’t know what’s up with that.”
“Oh.”
“They’re still arguing?”
“Yeah, about whether or not Muslims can kill apostates.”
“Ah... earlier they were debating whether or not women can be heads of state in Muslim countries.”
“Really?”
“I had to go out there momentarily, just to stifle him.”
“I’d expect nothing less.”
“I was like ‘asshole, Ayesha led troops in battle.’ He said that was only Allah’s way of testing the believers. Some people you just can’t argue with.”
“Damn.”
“Yusef, they weren’t in here five minutes before he pissed me off. He looked around at the beer bottles and shit and was like, ‘the MSA should be doing more to reach out to borderline Muslims like this.’ Borderline Muslims? What the FUCK is a ‘borderline Muslim?’ I think the girl was almost embarrassed to be with him.”
“I could see why.”
“When I was younger and someone would question the status of women in Islam, I’d always point to Benazir Bhutto. There: a female leading a Muslim country, while America still hasn’t had a woman president. It usually shut people up.”
“That’s cool.”
“I was naïve on several counts.”
“This might be a dumb question,” I disclaimed, “but is it hard reading the paper with... the uh, burqa?”
“A little. You know what really pissed me off about that guy out there?”
“What?”
“He was like, ‘women can’t hold positions of authority because menstrual cycles have too much influence on their emotional state.’ Can you believe that shit? God damn, Yusef. You think the testicles don’t affect a man’s mood at all? How about a guy who’s getting lousy head, or a guy whose girlfriend will only give it up like once a month, or a guy who’s stuck with an ugly wife and looks at all the hot young things hoppin’ around and just wants to kill himself, or a guy who’s so fucked in the head that he’s repressing all his desires and backing up the pipes just to end up mean like Umar... or fuckin’ Catholic priests who try so hard to stay asexual that their sperm spreads throughout their whole bodies like cancer poisoning them to the point that they touch little boys? Then there’s the guy who secretly wants dick but can’t admit it to himself, let alone society and so he turns into the biggest asshole hatemonger-homophobe, violent even. Eminem’s a fag, I’d bet you a million dollars. And how about a guy who’s so whacked that he forces women into nonconsensual sex because it makes him feel powerful? You think being a man doesn’t fuck with your head at all? Jesus Christ, c’mon.”
“Wow, I never even thought of that before.”
“We should be happy that Clinton cheated. God forbid that
Bush ever gets blue balls, he’ll be launching nukes left and right.”
I then heard a loud cry muffled by walls and floors.
“Is that Fasiq?” I asked.
“He’s outside giving the adhan, I think.”
We went upstairs and to the bathroom, watching from the window as with his back to us in trademark Operation Ivy hoodie Fasiq did the whole thing—even the turning left and right for
hayyal as-salah
and
falah.
“What are you doing?” asked Rabeya after the final
la ilaha illah Allah
.
“It’s Zuhr time, isn’t it?”
“No, not yet.”
“Oh. I thought it was Zuhr time.”
“Pretty soon, though.”
“Cool.”
We prayed in less than an hour. It was only Rabeya, Fasiq and myself. I led. Umar had left with his new MSA friends. Jehangir was still sleeping upstairs. At least he had made it to bed.
He came downstairs wearing a black ski cap.
“Booze and girls,” he said mournfully flopping down next to me on the couch. “Booze and girls, y’akhi, booze and girls, booze and girls, the biggest threat to my deen we’d all ever seen...”
“You missed Zuhr,” I said smiling.
“Sleep,” he added to his list. “Booze, girls and sleep.”
“I’ve prayed twice today,” I said.
“You just lost credit for it, bragging like that.”
“Staghfir’Allah.” He rummaged between two cushions, found the remote and turned on the TV. Flipped through the channels real fast until stopping on Spike Lee’s
Malcolm X
at the spot where a Malcolm-led Harlem FOI storms the police station. I wondered how the movie looked through Rabeya’s eye-grid.
“I could dig on Malcolm the Tenth,” said Jehangir. “There’s a truth to that.”
“A truth to what?” I asked.
“Knowing you’re right. Knowing you’re a man. Being a soldier for it. Standing firm, standing tall, telling people off. Walking around all tough with index finger on your temple, thumb on your jaw.” He mimicked the trademark Malcolm pose. “Look at us, we don’t know who the shit we are. Look at
me:
drunk off my ass, chasing pussy, doing juvenile skateboard stunts, stupid haircut rebelling against everything because it makes me feel cool. Then you got these guys, you know they know their shit. At least they believe they know their shit, they believe it with all they got. Malcolm, man, sitting in a jail cell eating up books for sixteen hours of the day, copying out the whole dictionary by hand, all to be gunned down at his podium by dudes with sawed-offs. I’m just a little jerk-off punk, not a
man
like this guy. Tons of truth, y’akhi. More Umar’s truth than mine, but it’s legit.”
“With all respect to Malik Shabazz and everything he did,” said Rabeya, “he was a misogynist cock when he wanted to be.”
The next day Jehangir and I were riding with his friend Hannibal, Jehangir leaned back in shotgun and me stretched out in back, Method Man’s “PLO Style” on the CD player:
PLO style
,
Buddha monks with the owls... PLO style, Buddha monks with the owls... here comes the ruckus, the motherfuckin’ ruckus...
Jehangir sifted through Hannibal’s CDs, occasionally offering comment when he saw one of interest.
“Professor Griff!” he exclaimed. “Never thought I’d see that again.”
“Shit’s mad old, son.”
“Hell yeah it is.” Jehangir’s smooth transition to such a non-punk element had stunned me.
“When I was a kid,” said Hannibal, “my dad hated rap—still does, actually—but if I convinced him that a CD had redeeming political content, he’d never say no. You’ll see a lot of it in there, all the older stuff: Public Enemy, KRS-One, Intelligent Hoodlum—he calls himself Tragedy Khadafi now, though...”
“Oh shit! Brand Nubian, wow, this is fuckin’ vintage.”
“Yeah kid, like 1992.”
“Can we put this in?”
Hannibal took it, index finger and thumb on the outer edge, hitting a button with his pinkie to release
Tical.
Jehangir removed it for Hannibal to slide in the Nubian.
“Allah U Akbar” began with the opening of an adhan looped over and over:
Allaaaaaahu Akbaru’Allaaaaah,
until the beat slowly surfaced. For those beginning seconds Jehangir seemed almost illuminated. The muezzin resurfaced a few times in the song.
We elected for a late lunch at the Greek diner on Elmwood Avenue, favorite of college kids because it was near Buffalo State’s campus and you could get a relatively cheap breakfast any hour of day or night. Hannibal ordered their “2-2-2”: two eggs, two pancakes, and your choice of two bacon, two sausage or two ham. Hannibal forewent the third 2 and just had eggs and pancakes. Jehangir got an omelet of some sort and I went for a grilled cheese sandwich.
Hannibal was a kafr but his dad was Muslim, formerly in the Nation and before that a Black Panther.
“So my dad was saying how Farrakhan’s a Sunni now,” he told us, his tone at the end almost making it a question.
“I heard something about that,” said Jehangir. “He’s just after money from the Arab states.”
“Back a while ago he said he boarded a spaceship with Elijah Muhammad and WD. Fard.”
“Was it the Motherplane?” Jehangir asked. Hannibal laughed.
“I don’t know about that,” he replied. “But Farrakhan did some good in his time and place, even if he is a nut. And him going Sunni will at least get some of his followers off that white-devil stuff.”
“Still won’t help the yahoodas.”
“No, definitely not.”
“Did you hear about that old jail in the Carolinas?” asked Jehangir.
“Which jail?”
“There’s an old jail in the Carolinas where they used to bring slaves right off the ships. I can’t remember if it was North or South. It’s still there, it’s like a tourist spot now. But anyway, there’s ayats from the Qur’an on the wall, like two hundred years old, still right there.”