American Dervish: A Novel Read online

  “Mom, I’m gonna miss my bus.”

  She looked up at the clock. “You have time. Five minutes. Finish your breakfast.”

  “I’m not hungry. I have to pack my bag. My homework.”

  “Finish your juice.”

  I got up from the table and gulped down the rest of my orange juice. Before I could leave, Mother reached out and drew me to her. “Meri-jaan, remember: The secret of a happy life is respect. Respect for yourself and respect for others. That’s what I learned from my father, behta, who you didn’t know…and he was a wise man. You could almost say he wasn’t really even a Muslim man. He was more like a Jew.”

  “I have to get my bag ready, Mom,” I whined.

  “Okay, okay,” she sighed. I kissed her on the cheek, then ran off to my room to pack my things for school.

  2

  A Still, Small Voice

  Mother was right. After the episode with Father’s car, she would have no trouble getting him to go along with her plan to bring Mina to Milwaukee. Now it was only Mina’s parents who needed convincing. Mother spent hours on the phone with Rafiq and Rabia Ali, assuring them that their daughter would be well looked after. She would have a place to stay as long as she needed to rebuild her life, and Mother promised to care for Imran, her son, like her own child. But it turned out the assurances Mina’s middle-class parents really wanted had more to do with their daughter’s honor than with her lodgings. For even Western-leaning Muslims like the Alis—Mina’s mother was a huge Elvis fan, and her father an avid consumer of Marlboros and Zane Grey—thought of America not primarily as a land of abundance and opportunity, but of sin, where souls went to be corrupted by the very liberty that so intoxicated the world’s imagination. For people like Mina’s parents, there was no more emblematic image of America’s spiritual corruption than that of the American woman, eager to shed her clothes in front of strangers, emboldened by freedom to cultivate her lust for pleasure and profit. That their daughter might become one of these was the only thing the Alis wished to avoid at all costs.

  Or almost at all costs, as Father would put it at dinner one night.

  “It’s a double standard,” Mother complained, as Father and I munched on chicken karahi. “Rafiq wants his sons to come here, but not his daughter. It doesn’t matter if they run around with white women, but God forbid she’s found looking at a white man.”

  “The sons?” Father asked.

  “It’s the only reason he’ll even consider it. If she comes, then she can sponsor her younger brothers.”

  Father smiled wryly. “So Rafiq is trying to figure out if the cash his sons will make him when they get to America is worth the price of turning their daughter into a whore…”

  I didn’t know what the word meant, but before I could ask, Mother leaped in. “Do you think you’re funny? Such a word in front of your own child?”

  Father glanced over at me. “The sooner he knows the way the world really works, the better.”

  Mother turned to me. “Cover your ears,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I said cover your ears.”

  “Mom…”

  “Do it, Hayat.”

  Reluctantly, I wiped my curry-covered hands and did as I was told, but it didn’t stop me from hearing what she said to him next:

  “Use language like that again in his presence, and I will have you thrown out of the house. Thrown out, do you hear me?”

  Father waited a moment before replying. “Is that a promise?” he finally said, blankly. Then he looked away with a shrug and went on with his meal.

  In the end, whatever the reasoning, Mina’s parents agreed to send her to us. We learned of the news when there was a knock on our door one afternoon. I opened it to find a middle-aged man, rail-thin, with searing blue eyes and a violet-colored birth stain spilling across his nose and right cheek. He held a clipboard in one hand, a thin envelope in the other.

  “Shah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Telegram,” he said, handing me the envelope.

  “What’s that?”

  “Cable letter. Could you just sign here?” He pushed the clipboard at me, and I signed my name.

  “What kind of name is that, anyway? Shah? You Iranian or something?”

  “Pakistani.”

  He grunted. It seemed like he wasn’t sure what I was saying. He looked at me now, his head tilted, suspicious. I noticed the thin silver cross dangling from a chain around his neck. “You people hate Americans, too?” he asked.

  “No.”

  He kept staring, and then he finally nodded. “Okay,” he said, satisfied. He turned and headed off toward the tan car idling in our driveway.

  At the kitchen table, Mother tore open the envelope. “Mina’s cable!” she cooed, delightedly.

  “What is it, Mom?”

  “When they send a message with the cable. From one office to the other. From one side of the world to the other, behta. When I was a child, Hayat, cable was how we sent messages overseas. Now, of course, phone is easier. But cable is still a hundred times cheaper than the phone in Pakistan.” She started to read. “She bought her ticket.”

  “What does it say?”

  COMING TO AMERICA STOP MAY 13 ARRIVAL CHICAGO STOP BRITISH AIRWAYS

  She handed me the gossamer-thin sheet. Everything was printed out in capitals, including the word “stop.”

  “Why does it say ‘stop’?”

  “Costs more to have punctuation,” Mother said, taking the telegram back. Then she looked up at me, her eyes wide with a sudden idea. “Let’s send her one back!” she said.

  “Where?”

  “Western Union.”

  And so out we went. Mother and I headed for the mall, where we stood at the counter and filled out the form to send a telegram. If the message was ten words or less, it would only cost six dollars. Every word after that was seventy cents. I couldn’t see how Mother was even going to get to ten words considering all she wanted to say was that she’d gotten Mina’s telegram.

  CABLE RECEIVED STOP SO EXCITED STOP INSHALLAH

  Mother looked at me. “What do you think?”

  Sounded fine to me.

  As Mother paid at the window, I spied the messenger with the stain across his face in back, milling about. He emerged from the back room and our eyes met.

  He nodded. I nodded back.

  Mina came in May, just as promised. On our way to the airport to pick her up, we got caught in traffic and arrived just as the plane was supposed to have touched down. Mother was frantic. Father pulled to the curb and Mother yanked me out of the backseat. We ran inside to the airline counter to ask about the flight while Father went to park the car. When the ticket clerk announced the plane had already landed, Mother yelped. Off we went down the terminal hall to Mina’s gate. But when we got there, the lounge was empty. Two stewardesses stood at the gate’s counter, and Mother went over to inquire. That was when I noticed a striking woman standing against the window of another gate lounge farther on. She was small and held a large sleeping child against her body, its arms dangling at her sides like ends of a stole. When Mother returned, I pointed. “Is that her?” I asked.

  “Miinnaa!” Mother cried out with joy.

  As Mina turned to us, I was surprised. Though she was just as beautiful as the photograph had promised, there was something different about her as well: a confidence, a magnetism.

  She smiled and I was struck.

  “Bhaj, you made me wonder if I ended up in the wrong city!”

  Mother laughed, her eyes welling with sudden tears. She took Mina by the shoulders and looked deeply into her eyes. The confident smile on Mina’s lips now quivered as her own eyes filled with tears. The two women hugged, melting together. Mina’s son—held between them—roused and moaned.

  Sniffling, Mother pulled away. She took the boy from Mina’s arms. “Hi there, sweetie…,” she cooed, peering into Imran’s face. “Welcome to America.”

  Imran laid his
head on Mother’s shoulder, falling back asleep.

  Mina wiped her eyes, smiling. “He likes you, bhaj!”

  “Everybody likes me.”

  “I wouldn’t get too carried away!”

  They laughed. Mina turned to me, blurting out in a bright tone: “So this is Hayat! He’s so handsome. Like a movie star!”

  Mother rolled her eyes. “And just as spoiled as one, too…”

  “You’re going to break some hearts, aren’t you, behta?” She was looking right at me. Again, I felt that surprise. There was something intense and alive about her gaze that the picture had only hinted at. She was dazzling.

  “What’s wrong, behta?” she asked, playful, her hand on my head now, caressing my hair. “Cat got your tongue?”

  I grinned sheepishly, nodding my reply. The cat had my tongue, indeed.

  In our front yard stood three large gnarled trees, old and beautiful. They formed a row, the two trees on the outside leaning in toward the center tree, their tops converging, like three old women—Mother used to say—coming together to share their secrets. Mother had been told they’d been planted too close to the house, that we risked damage to the roof from falling limbs in the event of gale-strength winds, and she’d been advised to have them removed. But Mother loved the trees too much. She and Mina stopped at one of the trunks as Father carried Mina’s bags to the house. I was holding a bag as well, but I stopped to adjust my grip.

  Mina was holding Imran—who pretended to be sleeping, but was actually spying on me with one open eye—as she gazed up into the branches. “White oak,” she said.

  “Something like that,” Mother replied. “Elm or oak or something.”

  “They’re oaks, bhaj. White oaks. You can tell from the leaves.” Mina pointed. “Pink like that in spring. We used to have one at the center of the courtyard at Station School, remember?” Mother’s chin lifted ever so slightly, and her gaze clouded over. “Remember, it had pink leaves like that?” Mina asked.

  Mother nodded, moved. “I knew there was a reason I didn’t want to lose them.”

  Mina touched the trunk. “Must be a hundred years old.”

  “That’s what the tree man said.”

  At the front door, Father called out: “Green room, right?”

  “Yes, Naveed,” Mother called back. She turned to Mina once he’d disappeared inside. “How many times I’ve told him where you’re staying! And then he asks me again?”

  Mina chuckled.

  “Go on, kurban,” Mother said to me, “take that bag up to the green room for your auntie.”

  “Okay, Mom.”

  I hauled the bag along the walkway and into the vestibule. I climbed the steps to the first room along the upstairs hall, which we called the green room for its kelly-green carpet. We could just as well have called it the cartoon room, as its walls were adorned with four human-sized cartoon decals—Goofy, Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, and Snow White—that had been there when we bought the house. For weeks before Mina’s arrival, Mother talked about having the carpet replaced and walls repainted to cover up the cartoons. Father said he would take care of it, but never did.

  As Mina set her things down on the bed, Mother apologized. “I was going to have it recarpeted. Naveed promised me.”

  “But why?”

  “The color? It doesn’t give you a headache?”

  “It’s fine. I don’t want you to go to the trouble.”

  “It’s not trouble. Now that you’re here, we’ll do it together. You can choose the color. And we’ll cover up these stupid cartoons…”

  Mina looked over at me. I was standing by the closet with her things. “What do you think, behta?”

  Truth be told, I’d always liked the carpet’s color and the cartoons as well. They were an instance of something lively in our otherwise relentlessly somber home. But I had no chance to respond. Mother leaped in, answering for me: “It doesn’t matter what he thinks. What matters is what you think.”

  Just then, Imran, Mina’s four-year-old, lumbered groggily into the room from the toilet, his feet inexplicably wet, his shuffling steps leaving a trail of faint, darker prints along the harlequin green shade. He looked up, his eyes widening. His face broke into a sudden smile. He stepped over to the wall, stretched his arms, and pressed himself against Daffy Duck.

  Mother and Mina traded looks.

  “Or we could just leave it like it is,” Mina said.

  Mother nodded. “Now, maybe that would be best.”

  Mina and Imran were jet-lagged. They went to bed that afternoon and slept through much of the next two days. It wasn’t until midweek that we all had our first meal together. I got home from school that afternoon to find the house filled with the smells of the Lahori-style lamb chops, homemade naans, and bhindi bhuna. Sitting at the kitchen table with my homework, I watched Mina and Mother cook into the evening, trading tales in Punjabi—which I understood, but didn’t speak—laughing as they went. Mother was so happy. And there was Mina, living and breathing and hovering about at the very fridge where I’d spent almost two years staring at her photograph. There really was something miraculous about it all.

  That night, the splendid feast succeeded at putting even Father in a sentimental mood. At the end of the meal, he leaned back in his seat, a soft, satiated light in his eyes. He lifted his glass of lassi toward Mina and her son. “It’s good to have you here,” he said.

  Mina held his gaze, the same sly, enticing smile on her face that I recognized from the photograph. “Thank you, Naveed,” she said. “You’re a very generous man.”

  Father smarted. “Nonsense,” he demurred. “Anyway, I’m not the one you should thank. It’s Muneer. She would have broken my legs if I didn’t agree to it…But I have to say, I’m glad I did.”

  “So now we know,” Mother joked, “the way to your heart is through your stomach.”

  He flashed her a mischievous smile. “Among other things,” he said.

  Mother blushed, looking away.

  Mina looked away, too, over at her son. “Say thank you to your Muneer-auntie and Naveed-uncle.”

  “Thank you, Auntie. Thank you, Uncle,” Imran murmured.

  “You’re welcome,” Mother caroled.

  Father gazed warmly at the boy. “You’re welcome, kurban,” he said.

  I looked at Father, confused. Hearing him use that word for Imran stung, like an insect bite on my heart.

  “What?” he asked.

  “ ‘Kurban’?” I blurted out. “That’s what you call me.”

  “What does it mean?” Imran asked, dully.

  “It means the most important thing we have to give,” Mina said, turning to me with a smile. “The sacrifice of our hearts.” She reached out to brush the hair away from my eyes. “You’re my kurban, too,” she intoned, lovingly.

  A few weeks into Mina’s stay, I had my first experience of her deeper sense of things, what most called her intelligence, but which I think was actually something closer to a spiritual gift.

  She was sitting at the dining table, reading, a shaft of afternoon sunlight draped across her body like a brilliant shawl. I had a clear view of her from my place in the living room adjacent, where I was sitting and brooding over another ice cream social that was about to begin without me.

  Each year, on the Thursday of the last week of school, the Lutheran church next door to Mason Elementary—where I was attending fifth grade—transformed its adjoining lawn into a mini-fairground for what it called its annual ice cream social. There were booth games, a merry-go-round, and more than a few ice cream stands. They served turtle sundaes and banana splits and—everyone’s favorite—soft serve in a cone. Mason opened up the gym as well, where, as mothers and sisters and girlfriends in sandals and pastel-colored dresses ate ice cream, boys and their fathers played shirts versus skins in a basketball game everyone talked about for months before it happened. Ever since the second grade, I’d been trying to get Mother to let me go.

  “We don’t go to chu
rch, Hayat. We’re not Christians. We have to draw the line somewhere.”

  “It’s not church, Mom. It’s playing games and eating ice cream.”

  “At a church.”

  “Outside. At the school, too.”

  “The sign in front of the church says ‘Lutheran Parish Ice Cream Social.’”

  “Please, Mom.”

  “Hayat. Don’t be difficult.”

  “Pleeaase.”

  “Absolutely not. And that’s final.”

  She never budged. Though one year—at the end of fourth grade—wondering if perhaps she’d been too strict about the whole thing, Mother made a point of driving by the social as it was taking place. When she got home that afternoon, she was in a lather. “Not church, Hayat? Then why are priests walking all over? All eating ice cream like it’s that holy bread of theirs? Hmm? And right in front of a cross with suffering Jesus on it. What an idea!”

  That was that. There was no chance I was ever going to an ice cream social.

  So there I sat in the living room that last Thursday afternoon of fifth grade, still wearing the clothes I’d worn to school that day, moping as I stared at Mina. At some point she looked up and noticed me gazing at her.

  “Hayat?”

  “Hi, Auntie.”

  “Hi, behta. What are you doing?”

  “Nothing much.”

  Her brows crinkled. “What’s going on, Hayat?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Come here, sweetie.”

  I pushed myself to my feet and trudged over to the dining table.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  I didn’t know what to say. Telling her about the social wasn’t going to change anything. So what was the point?

  “You’re not sick, are you?” Mina asked, her hand to my forehead.

  “No,” I said, noticing the book before her. The Tropic of Cancer. The cover showed a large, gray menacing crab. Why is she reading about cancer? “You’re not a doctor, are you, Auntie?” I asked.