The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf (9 page)

"Nuh uh," Khadra challenged.

"Yeah huh, she is too. She's Lionel Ritchie's cousin. He grew up right in her hometown, Tuskegee, Alabama. She's known him since he was a baby."

After which Khadra ran home to get dressed.

She was thrilled when Ebtehaj seated her at her own dresser mirror, where she made up her face every day before Wajdy got home. Then he'd lift her hand to his lips and say, "Thank God for the blessing of Islam!" Little compacts of make-up and circles of blue eye shadow and small plush jewelry cases stood in neat rows. The kohl came in a brass vial with a filigreed stopper. It had been a gift from her own mother, who had died when Ebtehaj was fifteen.

"Like this," her mother said, sliding the metal applicator into the vial. It came out with a fine dusting of kohl. "Khadra, what are you doing?" Ebtehaj giggled. Her daughter was blinking rapidly and trying to roll her eyes backward into their whites. "You don't have to do that to put on kohl, Doora."

Khadra basked in her mother calling her by her baby nickname.

"Just-here, you hold the kohl rod-now slide it through so it touches the rim of your eye. There."

She looked at herself in the mirror. She saw a magical creature, something from the stars, a Princess Leia.

"And what about earrings?" Ebtehaj said, stepping back and surveying her handiwork.

"Gold hoops," TEta, who'd been overseeing, said. And stepping up, she opened her palm and supplied them.

"TEta! They're perfect!" Khadra cried when she put them on, turning her head to see in the mirror. Time to move up from turquoise babygirl studs!

Hanifa wore gold hoops too, and a long poly-orlon dress like Khadra's, with bottom ruffles and yoke ruffles and eyelet and rickrack, only she filled out her dress more-she was already wearing a bra. The Haqiqat sisters, Insaf and Nilofar, came paisleyed and bangled and bespangled in ghararas of green and saffron, tangerine and purple. Tayiba arrived as Khadra and Hanifa had never seen her before, elegant from her silver beaded hair to her feet in blue satin pumps. She looked like a model.

But Zuhura-Zuhura was stunning. Her braids, gold-beaded in dazzling constellations, clicked pleasantly when she turned her head. Her lower lip had a mauve sheen that matched her eyeshadow. Her body was plump and glowing with health, as if she'd just stepped out of a sauna. Her gown was cobalt blue woven with bronze so that it seemed to be a different color with every shift of light, like a night sea with schools of fish under the surface.

Flowers arrived from the fiance, deep red coxcomb and fragrant tuberoses, and were set around Zuhura's seat. Tall vases of pussy willow cut from the Dawah Center backyard graced the guest tables. Rose petals were scattered in the bride's path by well-wishers, Aunt Khadija's idea.

"Bismillah, bismillah, " Aunt Fatma said, kissing her fingers and waving them in a circle around the bride-to-be to ward off the evil eye. Ebtehaj and other ladies kept on the look out for grown-up girls who might make good matches for the bachelors they knew, friends of their husbands and such.

Khadra was glad she'd brought her camera, her first, a cheap 110mm she got for Eid. She snapped pictures of Hanifa and Insaf and Nilofar and was about to take one of the bride but Aunt Ayesha shook her head.

"Here," Aunt Ayesha said. She handed Khadra a chunky black box. It was one of the new instant cameras! "This way, no film clerk sees us without hijab." Giving Khadra a packet of instant film, too, she said "You figure it out for us." She did, excited at the chance to use this new kind of camera.

"Dag!" Hanifa exclaimed, peering over Khadra's shoulder at the first picture as it developed before their eyes.

The henna artist knelt upon a carpet of rose petals at Zuhura's feet, drawing the arabesques on her palms and soles that gave the party its name. Guests sipping sugarcane juice clustered around to get a look at the emerging designs. Tayiba henna'd after the bride, followed by their Kenyan cousins from Chicago, and then Khadra and Hanifa were permitted to henna their hands.

Hanifa's design smeared because all she wanted to do was dance. She whirled like she was melting down to her "heart of light." "Come on!" she called to her friend, laughing, out of breath, but Khadra shook her head and was careful with her hands.

At prayer time, the women rustled back into their headscarves, the hairdos giving them funny shapes. First, though, there was a bit of a shuffle at the bathroom, those whose ablutions were broken hastily remembering to renew them and emerging with wet elbows, dabbing with paper towels at mascara slightly running. Tayiba made the call to prayer in a strong and tender voice.

Tayiba's mother graciously invited Khadra's mother to lead. Ebtehaj declined three times, inviting Ayesha to do it, and then finally accepted and stepped into the middle of the line of women standing pressed into each other's sides. "Allahu akbar," she began.

Khadra, wedged between bony Aunt Ayesha and plump Aunt Fatma, knelt as they knelt and went down with them into prostration on the floor, her nose and forehead pressed into the clean bedsheets. Around her were the overlapping rhythms of women's whispered glorias to the Lord on High ... and something else, a jarring noise, coming from outside. Slurb! Thwack! Plshshst! They might not have heard, if not for the quiet of prayer.

No one broke prayer. Ebtehaj continued in her imaming, as if oblivious, and even after she salam'd there was no indication on her face of having been disturbed in her glorifications. She had this: the ability to block out the assault of the world while engaged in prayer. But Khadra, as soon as she salam'd, ran to the window and lifted up a corner of the taped-up vinyl and pressed her hands around her face so she could see out into the night.

"Mama! Aunt Ayesha!" she cried. And everybody ran outside. Including Zuhura, who immediately transformed from a henna'd bride to a pre-law student activist, taking charge and calling out directions: "Don't touch anything! Don't step in the footprints!"

The struggling boxwood hedge at the entrance was slimed with rotten eggs and tomatoes. Toilet paper was everywhere. Markings in white spray paint were blazoned across the windowpanes of the clubhouse. Aghast, Khadra snapped pictures of them: FUCK YOU, RAGHEADS. DIE. They were signed: KKK, 100% USA.

The energy that was buried with the rise of the Christian nations must come back into the world; nothing can prevent it. Many of us, I think, both long to see this happen and are terrified of it...

-James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

The only Muslims on television were Arab oil-sheiks, who were supposedly bad because they made America have an energy crisis. Teachers at Khadra's school had to pass out purple-ink mimeographed worksheets that said "Switch off the lights when you leave the room!" And President Carter pleaded with Americans to use less gas. Nasty Arab sheiks appeared on Charlie's Angels, forcing the shy angel, Kelly, to bellydance.

"As if the oil in Arab ground wasn't our own national treasure, to use to develop our own countries," Wajdy harumphed. He got up to adjust the strip of aluminum foil coiled around the rabbit-ear antennae, then sat back on the couch in his checkered double-knit polyester pants.

"Not that they will, those degenerate Saudi princes," Ebtehaj said.

"Whoremongering on the French Riviera," Wajdy agreed.

Ebtehaj nudged him and said, "Language, Wajdy-the children" and then she got up and switched the channel to Carol Burnett and Friends.

Charlie's Angels was not appropriate viewing for Muslims even though Khadra watched it on the sly at Hanifa's. Khadra liked Sabrina best because she never wore bikinis but dressed modestly, and was serious and smart and respected herself. Sabrina was almost the Muslim Charlie's Angel, she and Hanifa agreed.

All the Muslims in the Timbers were glued to their televisions when Roots, the miniseries, came out.

When Umaru, Kunte Kinte's father, came on screen, Wajdy cried, "You see? They're Muslims! Umaru is `Umar.' It's Arabic!"

"Africanized Arabic," Jamal said, leaning back on the couch in his dashiki shirt.

"Yes, Arabic!" Wajdy repeated, not really listening to him.

Khadra hated Miss Ann the most. Because she was supposed to be Kizzy's friend. That girl refused to help Kizzy at all when she was dragged away to be sold. All Miss Ann would've had to do was say something to her daddy, the plantation owner. Stick up for Kizzy. Instead, she frowned and turned away. Some friend! When old lady Kizzy spit in old Miss Ann's cup? She deserved it.

The Lott boys started mocking Hakim and Hanifa as "Kunte" and "Kizzy." Khadra would've liked to spit in their cup.

The Lott boys were not the only kids in the neighborhood, of course. There were plenty of other kids. There was Ginny Debs, a white girl with bottle glasses who invited Khadra for a sleepover. Khadra was not allowed to go to sleepovers.

"Girls whose parents care anything about their well-being do not allow them to spend the night at someone else's house," her father said firmly. "It's depraved indifference," a phrase he'd picked up from Streets of San Francisco, a program he enjoyed now and then after the kids were asleep.

"Does she have a brother? How old? What is her father like?" her mother said. "Does he drink alcohol? Will he walk around drunk in his undershirt and try to touch you? No? How do we know he won't? We don't know, do we? We don't know anything about these people." Khadra was allowed to go to the party, but not to sleep over.

"Be careful of impurities!" her mother called after her in Arabic from the door of the Debs' house. Ebtehaj was leaving her daughter at an American house for the first time. She took one last sizing-up look around the living room, yesterday's Indianapolis Star headlines ("Drunken boyfriend rapes woman's daughter, 12." "Junkie mother passed out while ten-year-old starts house fire") flashing through her head.

Ebtehaj whispered three Kursis for her daughter's safety as she slipped behind the wheel of the station wagon. The thought of staying parked outside the kuffar house until pick-up time crossed Ebtehaj's mind, but she cast a final doubtful glance at the door and pulled away.

Just as she did, Ginny Debs's mother was picking up the phone.

Her neighbor on the line said, "You know what you have in your driveway?"

Mrs. Debs looked out the window. "It's just one of the mothers dropping off her kid," she said.

"Hmmph," the neighbor said, and then hung up.

Livvy Morton, with her bangs rolled into a Lincoln Log across her forehead, was the next experiment in having American friends.

"Does she have a religion, this Libby, Liddy-what is her name?" Ebtehaj said, looking up from her leatherbound Volume Four of al-Ghazali's Revival of Religious Knowledge.

"Livvy. Oh yes, her parents are real strick." Khadra said. "They're, um ... a type of Christian, she told me but I forget. It starts with a P."

"Protestant?" her father said, pronouncing it protesTANT.

That wasn't it. "It rhymes with librarian."

"Does she have any morals?" her mother said.

"Oh yeah, definitely," Khadra said. "Her parents don't drink or smoke. They don't approve of dancing or rock music. And Livvy and her sister-she only has a sister, no brothers in the house-are not allowed to date. Not till they're seniors."

And so that was why Livvy wasn't popular and why she would hang with Khadra. She was not bottom-of-the-barrel untouchable like Khadra but uninviteable-to-parties unpopular. Mindy and JoBeth called Livvy a "virgin" and snickered whenever she passed them in the hall, pasty-faced and bewildered.

"Hmmph," Wajdy said, his head bent intently to his task of regluing the buckle onto his old black briefcase from Syria, using the nifty new super-strong glue. That Americans allowed their kids to do this thing they called "dating" boggled his mind. How could any decent father hand his daughter over to a boy and tell them, go on, go out into the night, hold hands, touch each other? Some profound perversion of the soul made American men accept this pimpery.

Livvy taught Khadra how to sing "Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog." See, first you turned your back to your audience, knees bent, hands on your thighs, beating time. Then you jumped around facing your audience and sang the first line, the title line, at the top of your lungs. Then you broke into dancing for "Was a mighty good friend of mine." Both Livvy and Khadra came from no-drinking families, so they skipped the line about the bullfrog always having some "mighty fine wine" for his friend. At the last, jubilant Joy to you and me." Livvy and Khadra would point to each other and shimmy their shoulders.

Out of breath from the dance and sweating, Livvy and Khadra went to the kitchen for cold water. Khadra banged the metal ice-cube tray on the counter. Ebtehaj, making fish sticks like she did when she was too busy preparing for Quran study to cook, right away set to offering Livvy food and drink. Khadra noticed her mother noticing how short Livvy's shorts were and how skimpy her halter-top. Wajdy came in from fixing the station wagon engine and washed his hands at the sink, nodding hello at Livvy and frowning slightly and tucking his head down.

Suddenly poor virginal Livvy, standing there on the mustardyellow diamond patterned linoleum of the Shamy kitchen, seemed very naked to Khadra. She was all thin bare legs and shivering goose-pimply arms. Like you wanted to wrap a warm blanket around her. Did Livvy feel it too? She crossed her skinny arms across her bare midriff awkwardly. Her mousy hair fell forward over her pointy shoulderbones.

"Let's go play chess," Khadra said. "It's in the living room."

"I don't know how to play chest," Livvy said.

This kind of surprised Khadra. She thought everybody played chess. Her father had taught her and Eyad when they were five or six.

"Do you have Monopoly?" Livvy asked.

"We're not allowed to have Monopoly," Khadra said. But she knew how to play; she played it over Hakim and Hanifa's house. Her father said it taught greed. Monopolies were haram in real life, and so was interest, so why play at them?

"Checkers?" Livvy suggested.

"Jihad lost three of the pieces. What about cards?"