American Taliban (15 page)

You lost me, Noor said, but I can see how easily you could break an arm and a leg. How did your mother ever let you get into this?

It’s not as bad as it looks, John said. Besides, it’s great for kids. It gives them something to focus on. And you don’t practice these tricks until you’re really balanced on wheels, and can skate and ollie in your sleep.

What’s an ollie?

One of the most basic maneuvers. It made grinding on streets possible. And it’s the basis for all other tricks.

This was the Brooklyn Banks, and John wanted to perform. For himself, or for Noor, he didn’t know which, but he wanted to.

Here, he said, watch this low one, in slow motion. He popped his board up, jumped, bent his knees, dragged his front leg, then replaced his feet on the board, landed, and rolled away.

You make it look super easy.

I’ll teach you, John said, but first you have to learn to roll.

Noor shook her head. Not for me.

He looked at her and understood that, unlike Katie, Noor had no desire and no need to test herself this way. Though she would support his ambitions, she herself would avoid physical risk. He paused to feel how much he missed Katie’s enthusiasm for the new, her fearless embrace of the difficult, her risk taking for the sheer thrill of it. With Katie, he could share the thrill, and he could expect her to compete against him, top his stunts, his experiences.

Seeing his disappointment, Noor offered her little brother. You can teach Ali, she said.

Okay, John said. That is if your parents okay it. We’ll have to get him a kid’s size board. We can take him to Five Borough Boards.

John took Noor’s hand and led her to another group. Watch closely, John said. They’re practicing backside one-eighty ollies.

How many tricks are there?

Six basic ones: the manual, the ollie, the backside ollie, the pop-shove-it, the frontside pop-shove-it, and the heelflip.

Noor was due to begin work in half an hour, and they walked up to Prince and Mott. She went into the café, came out with two hot chocolates, and they sat on the curb in a patch of afternoon light, blowing into their cups to cool the milk.

Before he left, she touched his cheek, right left right left, then breathed words into his ear, which left him in ecstasy.

Skateboarder-scholar, she whispered. I can’t believe I even know you.

MUHAMMED, FAIWAL, JAMAL, OR KAMEL
. These were the Muslim names Brother Gabirol recommended to John, but after standing in front of the mirror and trying each one, he found they didn’t work for him, and he determined to stick with Attar or remain John.

Gabirol suggested that Khaled serve as first witness. As second witness, John considered Mr. Bint-Khan, Noor’s father, since as a woman Noor couldn’t perform this service. Barbara, he knew, would criticize such gender inequality, but feminism was new, and these were ancient traditions. When he asked Noor how Muslim women felt about feminism, she explained that ideas of equality weren’t as black and white as Americans believed. Besides, she said, Islam only seems discriminatory to a Westerner used to Western freedoms. Behind closed doors, Muslim women are powerful. Samina agreed with Noor.

The Prophet’s wives, Samina explained, determined on the veil as a way of heightening their stature, something Americans seem unable to get.

Western-style feminism, Noor said, at least in Islam, would require our women to relinquish their special place in Muslim life. It’s true they might gain something, but they’d lose more. At least that’s how my mom explains it, but then she believes that Muslim life offers more freedom than anyone will ever have in America. Me, I’m in between.

He found himself going back and forth on his idea of Noor’s father
as second witness so often, he finally discussed it with Brother Gabirol, who thought about it, then advised against Mr. Bint-Khan.

If it were the right thing to do, you wouldn’t have doubts, he said. And it’s probably not a good idea to involve the father of a girl with whom you have a fledgling relationship. This is too important, a life-changing decision.

John objected to the word fledgling. It’s more than that, he said. I’ve come to really really like her.

All the more reason to remain independent then, Gabirol said. If this relationship does continue to develop, and should you come to marry the girl, you might appreciate the fact that her family had not participated in your deepest beliefs. The decision to make the shahada is a deeply personal one, not based in earthly love of a woman, but rather in a more celestial, higher love.

Brother Gabirol suggested a devout Muslim entirely unknown to John as second witness, someone Gabirol would approach for the service, and John agreed. With Gabirol watching, he rehearsed the movements and recitals of the salaat, including the seven Qur’anic verses that he’d committed to memory. Gabirol declared himself impressed and offered John two possible dates: one, the following Friday, when the entire congregation would be gathered for prayers; the second, a weekday evening, in a private, small ceremony performed in the small chamber, off the main hall of the masjid.

John opted for the private ceremony, with only the two witnesses and Gabirol. Privacy, he knew, would make him less self-conscious, more focused on meaning rather than performance. Sufism and Islam had come to him largely privately—he hadn’t participated in congregational services so far—and he would keep it that way. At least for now. Also, for a public initiation, he would have to invite the Bint-Khans, and if he invited them, he’d have to also invite his parents, which meant he’d have to tell his parents, but he’d decided to tell them about it only after the fact. This would be his decision alone; he would deal with their response to his decision after. Besides, he knew that Bill wouldn’t relish the ceremony. He’d question his son’s motivations and integrity, and worry about the future. Barbara also would hate the idea of her son submitting to anything or anyone, but she’d think of the event as an experience, an opportunity to observe another culture and religion. That is, if she were allowed to attend. It occurred to him that as a woman, she might not have full access to the ceremony, and Noor’s explanations wouldn’t satisfy her.

With the date set for the following Wednesday, John found himself moved to urgent prayer and meditation. He reread Corbin on creative, concentrated prayer, studied his Arabic, and repeated the la illaha il’allah hundreds of times a day, until he felt himself in a kind of trance, eyes straight ahead and staring, unseeing. He dropped off his tunic and pants at a local Chinese laundry. Wednesday evening, he would attend class as usual. And after class, Khaled would drive him downtown to the masjid.

NOT WANTING TO RISK
dirtying his freshly cleaned white clothes, John brought them with him in his backpack, still wrapped in brown paper. So he enters the small bathroom at the masjid. He washes his hands and face, changes into his clothes. So he emerges minutes later, hair glistening, face shining, garments spotless, barefoot. He is ready. Thus Brother Gabirol introduces John to his second witness, a distinguished elderly man named Maulana Ismail. Thus they shake hands. Thus he kneels on a prayer rug. Gabirol kneels in front of him and places his right palm, thumb to thumb, against John’s right palm. The maulana and Khaled kneel on either side of him. Thus they form a protective circle around him, a ring of safety, and he feels good, he feels safe, he feels this private ceremony is right. Brother Gabirol looks at him inquiringly. He is ready. He nods. Thus Brother Gabirol closes his eyes. Thus John recites. He articulates the verses, with pauses for the apostrophes. He tries for the throaty
h
, the correct number of breaths. He gets it right only sometimes. He uses his closed fist on his chest to mark the breaths. Subhan allah wal-hamdu. La illaha il’allah et Muhammed rasulu. He brings his forehead to the floor and repeats la illaha il’allah, he breathes, he repeats, he hears behind his own words and breaths and beats Gabirol’s words and breaths and beats. Thus he keeps going, thus he recites five hundred times. Thus he feels himself transported, afloat. Thus he isn’t here on his knees. He is elsewhere. He is in another place and another time. An ancient place, an older
time. He is with Ibn ’Arabi in Mecca, and he feels older than himself. He is on wheels, grinding, circling the Ka’ba, perambulating, chanting, shouting with great joy, la illaha il’allah, la illaha il’allah, la illaha il’allah. Thus he understands that this is what it’s for. JOY. Self-celebration. He is with Ibn ’Arabi. He feels rather than hears Brother Gabirol rock back on his heels, and reluctantly he returns from far away to his place on the rug, to his prostrated, perspiring body. He is in Brooklyn now. The room is overheated. A trickling moist sheen covers his skin. He smells an odor he doesn’t recognize, something herbal or medicinal, but burnt, burnt parsley. He begins his five hundred first recitation, and Gabirol, who is keeping count, nods. John raises his head, turns toward his right, toward the maulana, and greets him with as salaamu aleykum, then to his left, toward Khaled, who replies wa aleykum as salaam. Gabirol stands. Gabirol places an embroidered white mantle over John’s shoulders. Allahu ak-bhar, Gabirol announces, and they repeat after him, Allahu ak-bhar, Allahu ak-bhar, Allahu ak-bhar. Thus John believes. Allahu ak-bhar.

THEY WERE FLYING BRITISH AIRWAYS
, New York–London, London–Islamabad. Pakistan’s newest, most modern city would be John’s first view of this world. More than sixty languages, his guidebook informed him, are spoken in Pakistan, but English is the official one, used in business, government, legal, and public discourse.

You’ll have no problem, Khaled said. Even at Islamia, lectures open to the public are in English.

At Barbara’s last fund-raiser, a young Pakistani writer working at his country’s embassy described Islamabad as an Islamized version of D.C. air-dropped into the foothills of the Himalayas. Be sure to visit Mr. Books, he’d said, Islamabad’s best bookshop.

On the plane beside Khaled, John read about Islamabad’s Zero Point from which all distances are measured.

Zero Point. A film of the universe’s history run in reverse would show the universe contracting to a dot, eventually disappearing back to the beginning, before time and space, to a primal zero, the birthplace of the universe, when the big bang banged and burst forth a fury of galaxies, stars, planets, our nonstop cosmos. In the beginning was the point. In the beginning, some 15 billion years ago, before time was timed, on day zero of the world.

He would grind to Zero Point, a sacred spot, and begin again in the womb of the world. He would join an ongoing race of scholar-adventurers, men who have surrendered themselves to the life movement
of the universe. He would be this century’s Richard Burton, Sir Richard Burton, speaker of twenty-nine languages, translator of the
Kama Sutra
, editor of
A Thousand and One Nights;
Sir Richard Burton, explorer of wild Sind, of Baluchistan and the Punjab; fearless Richard Burton, first European to make the famous pilgrimage to Mecca; the great Sir Richard Burton who described the mystical fana al-fana as a merging of the creature with the creator; Lieutenant Burton, secret service agent in western India; Captain Richard Burton, Sufi initiate; Murshid Burton, who could move the name of Allah through his body; Gnostic Burton, dervish and wandering holy man; Devil Burton, amateur barbarian and frequenter of brothels. All of which would make Barbara both proud and unhappy at once. But she would come around. She and Bill were cool parents, and John was determined to prove himself. In his own way.

He circled Zero Point on the map to mark it. From there, he would set out with his backpack, his skateboard, and guidebook and, for the rest of life, use it as a measure of distance traveled. Though he would have only twenty-four hours in Islamabad, not enough time to see enough, he would grind to Zero, pray, then go forth and learn the difference between nothing and something, absence and presence, meaning and chaos. From Zero Point, he told Khaled, he would skate forth to Islamabad’s main drag, into the Blue and Green Areas, and cover ground quickly.

I hate to bust your bubble, Khaled said, but Zero Point is just a signpost that gives the mileage and kilometers to surrounding cities. You’re overinvesting in it.

Khaled planned to spend a good part of his first twenty-four hours catching up on sleep. This will be the best accommodations we’ll have for a year, he said. Definitely our last night with air-conditioning.

During his last visit to Pakistan, Khaled had signed on for a five-week retreat in the hills. After weeks of hard physical conditioning in a dusty camp, he said, I just wanted a hot shower and a real bed. My aunt picked me up. She claims I slept for thirty-six hours straight.

Barbara was paying for their night in Islamabad, and they were staying at the President, a three-star hotel popular for its all-night café, which John knew Khaled would enjoy.

If I’m up early, Khaled said, I’ll pray at Faisal Mosque. It’s huge. It can hold like fifteen thousand people.

John looked at a picture of the mosque in his guidebook. Though it was made of aluminum and heavy concrete, it looked as light and
airy as a cluster of Bedouin tents, somehow afloat in the blue blue sky. The rooflines were white and taut as wind-filled sails. It’s beautiful, John said. Poetic. He traced a path from Zero Point to the mosque. He would check it out on wheels.

He continued reading his guide all the way into Islamabad.