The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf (37 page)

Reason #2, the Iranian Revolution. How the Arabs were to blame for that was unclear to Khadra, but it had to do with them bringing Islam to Iran-excuse me, Persia-fourteen centuries ago, cf. Reason #1, "for bringing Persians Islam, which is one-hundred percent more primitive than Zoroastrianism."

Bitsy had been totally creeped out when she first saw Khadra in hijab. "You're not one of those fanatics, are you?" she said, her voice a little shrill.

"Of course I am," Khadra deadpanned. "I come from a long, proud line of fanatics."

"Don't even joke about that," Bitsy said, her face ashen.

"You should introduce her to your ex-boyfriend, whatsis name," her lawyer friend Maryam Jameela Jones said when Khadra had dinner at Maryam's parents' house. "They both hate Islam."

"Wouldn't work," Khadra said. "You're forgetting, she hates Arabs."

"Didn't you say he was Berber?" Maryam said.

"Yeah, part Berber. Mixed. But still Arab."

Maryam's parents were pillars of the Warith Deen community in Philadelphia. Her father, like Joy Shelby's, had served in the U.S. Army, and his medals hung over the fireplace, like Bou-Baker Shelby's back in Mishawaka. The Joneses were Republican. With Maryam, they believed in the death penalty and strong law-andorder measures.

"Shouldn't you be a prosecutor instead of an assistant public defender, then?" Khadra said.

Maryam shook her head. "They all deserve a good defense, and the innocent deserve to get off, but the guilty? I'm sick of seeing them get slaps on the wrist because the prison system can't handle them. You know the old-time shariah thing, cutting off the hand? I know that's defunct, and I wouldn't want it back-but I almost get it. It's almost less cruel-it's here you go, here's the consequence of what your hand hath wrought, over-and-done-with, now go back and live a new life. Instead of years in prison limbo with your life on hold while we the citizens pay your room and board-and you'll never forget. Never go back to crime. Neither will anyone else who sees your stump." She was, if anything, more conservative than her parents, advocating a reduction in affirmative action, and stricter immigration controls. "It's not an either-or issue, Khadra," she said when her friend gave her a look that said "Hey, I'm an immigrant." She went on, "I believe in equal rights for the immigrants who are here already, but we don't have to have our doors wide open to more people than our systems can handle."

Dinner at the Joneses' home was a formal affair, very different from the chaotic dinner scenes of Khadra's childhood. Here, you sat at a long mahogany table and waited for Maryam's mother to be seated. After she gave the signal, Maryam's father said the blessing. There was a sense of solid tradition at their house, a Muslim American life enduring in this way over the long haul. Yet there were things-the frugality, the family-and-God-centered life, and the ethic of hard and diligent work-that were the same here as back in Indiana.

One of the photos on the mantle was of a man with a delicate face that Khadra recognized as Elijah Muhammad. She was surprised that they kept it, even though they were no longer Nation Muslims but Sunni. There was also a photo of a young man in a bow tie, and a formal wedding picture, with a woman, obviously Maryam's mother, wearing a white satin khimar on her head and a slender white gown. On a cherrywood curio cabinet next to an original edition of Allan D. Austin's African Muslims in Antebellum America hung an oil portrait of a grand old woman in a formidable church-lady hat.

Maryam was successful and independent, and had recently become engaged to a schoolteacher named Latif. While they saved up to marry in two or three years, Maryam shared a spacious apartment in a gentrified downtown neighborhood with a white Catholic girl and a gay Latino Muslim man named Raul/Rasul. She knew him from college; they'd been in the Young Republicans club together or something.

"Wait-Latif doesn't mind that you share personal space with a man?" Khadra asked. The roommate was wearing a dark navy suit when she met him. He didn't act like what she expected a gay man to be like, but then she had rather limited experience other than on TV. He was kind of dour and serious. Kind of-well, straitlaced, frankly.

"I didn't say Latif doesn't mind," Maryam said, shaking out her neat dreads. "But it is what it is, you know? Housing isn't easy to find. This is what works for me, and Rasul is part of the deal, is all." She now gathered her tightly wrapped locks at the nape of her neck into a large jeweled hairclip.

"Plus, he's gay," Khadra murmured. A nineties Three's Company scenario, except the roommate here really was gay.

"If anything, the problem in this set-up is Deanna," Maryam said.

"Because she's not Muslim?"

"It would be okay if she wasn't, but knew enough about the culture not to do annoying things. She's-well, I don't mean to be stereotyping, but-she's the poster girl for clueless white insensitivity."

"Like what?"

"Like last week she put bacon bits in the potato salad. You couldn't tell because they looked like the red skin of the potatoes. Rasul had a fit. I didn't flip out-I just stopped eating it. Midmouthful. She knows we don't eat pork-she just wasn't thinking. She goes `Oh! Did I do that?"' Maryam rolled her eyes. "There went the potato salad. I was hungry, too."

"That's nothing you can't work out. Bitsy and I had bacon issues." Her own roommate went out of her way to eat as much bacon as possible, in reaction to the Arab-imposed bacon-ban oppression to which her people had been subjected for centuries. Once she'd ordered pepperoni on a pizza she and Khadra were splitting, and Khadra had paid up her half in advance with her last cash. This meant she was broke until payday two days later.

"What did you do?" Maryam said.

"I picked the pepperoni off my half and ate the damn pizza for two days."

"The desert island scenario, right? If you're on a desert island and there's no food but pork, and it's eat pork or die: pork becomes halal."

"Or in my case, the drippings, after I picked off the actual pork. My butt was broke! But my parents would have picked death," Khadra grinned. "You know why they won't buy fresh deli meat?"

"The slicer," Maryam said. They laughed simultaneously.

Maryam said, "I'm ready. Shall we go?" She was deeply religious but not a regular mosque-goer. She dropped in on one occasionally. Didn't think it was necessary to attach to a mosque scene at all, didn't find it troubling not to "have" a mosque. She had a zawiya at home, a clean, well-lit corner where her prayer rug was spread.

This friend mapped Muslim space in a way new to Khadra. Maryam's thing was service. Service to the poor is service to God. "That's the Sunna," she said. "I don't have to be working only with Muslims or on Muslim issues or Muslim this or Muslim that. By representing impoverished defendants, I'm manifesting Muslim values in my life. We don't need a ghetto mentality."

She argued with her father about this, since his position was that Black people should "Do For Self," following the philosophy of Elijah Mohammed. Patronize each other's businesses, build their own alternate institutions and networks. Not get co-opted by mainstream America.

"A Hoosier, huh," Latif said, shaking Khadra's hand when Maryam introduced them. "IU?"

"Yeah. For a few years," Khadra said.

"My brother went there."

"Yeah, huh?"

Latif picked up her bummed tone. "My brother didn't like it much either. He had his heart broken down there. The most gorgeous girl in the world, he used to call her. He was gonna bring her up to Philly, meet the folks."

Khadra said, "What happened?" imagining some typical American girlfriend-boyfriend break-up story.

"Oh," Latif said. "She up and dumped him. Her parents wanted her to marry a Kenyan guy or something like that. Someone from the Mother Land, you know."

Something stirred in Khadra's mind. "Kenyan?" she said.

"That's right."

"Are you sure she was from Kenya?"

"Yeah. Suddenly Tariq was into all things Kenyan. Put the flag up in his room and everything."

Khadra was silent for a minute, puzzling. How many Kenyan girls could there have been at IU in the mid-seventies? "What else did your brother say about her?"

Latif tried to remember. "Tariq talked about, he used to go out to rallies with her and holler and all that, but mainly just because he wanted to be with her. Tariq's not that political, see."

Khadra's head was spinning. Zuhura, whom I never really knew. Ya Zuhura.

Bitsy would never say what her Iranian name had been. "We changed it when I got my citizenship," she said.

"Why?" Khadra said, wondering who "we" was.

"Oh," Bitsy shrugged. "So we could do things like, you know, order pizza without the guy on the phone getting all confused, I guess."

There was a pause. You changed your name-your name-for the pizza guy? Khadra thought, but didn't say it.

"And job applications and such," her roommate continued. "Makes things just a whole lot easier."

"Why Hudnut?"

Bitsy shrugged. "We picked it out of a phone book at random."

I bet at random, Khadra thought. After you skipped the tries that landed on "Hernandez" and "Nguyen."

"But why `Bitsy?' Is that short for something? Elizabeth?"

"No," Bitsy said. "Nothing. Just Bitsy."

"What did your name used to be? Basima?"

"No."

"Beetah?"

"No."

"Banafsheh?"

"No."

"Berokh?"

"No."

"Can I borrow your canvas tote bag this afternoon? I'm going to the farmers' market."

"No. Get your own."

A letter came addressed to Fatima-Zahra Gordafarid.

"My God, Seemi, I think I know Bitsy's real name," Khadra said. "Look at this." The letter had a yellow forwarding label on it. Khadra rummaged through her desk for the lease. It was under a book of prints by Sebastiao Salgado: Photographer Activist. The old address on the letter, which you could still partially read under the yellow label, matched the "former place of residence" Bitsy listed on the lease.

"Whew. From a great name like that to Bitsy Hudnut?" Seemi said. "Fatima-Zahra Gordafarid. Whew."

Where are my lovers? Where are my tall, my lovely princes

-Naomi Long Madgett, "Black Woman"

Khadra was still working at the morgue job. One day she called Seemi from work. A local Muslim university couple, both professors, had been murdered recently and it was in the news-terrible, tragic-and there were Muslims in and out of the morgue. Mosque to morgue and morgue to mosque, to police station-the scene was hopping. Tense.

"What is it? What's wrong? Are you okay?" Seemi said, responding to the urgency in Khadra's voice.

"I'm okay, if I can catch my breath. Oh, my God. You'll never believe who walked in here right past my desk just now."

"Who?"

"I don't know."

"I'm going to come over there and murder you, Khadra," Seemi said.

"I don't know, but he's an African god." I'm holding out fora poet till the morning light ...

"Say an astaghfirullah for your blasphemy."

'4staghfirullah. "

"Good girl. Now go on."