American Taliban (19 page)

Not today, Yusef said. I promised my sister a ride. See you tomorrow, at the lecture.

A sister. Yusef had a sister. He would ask about her. Did she pray?
Do Muslim women pray? Do they attend classes? Do they even exist? He was living, it seemed to him, in an all-male world. In the bazaars and streets of Peshawar only the too-young and very old variety of females appeared. Barbara, he knew, would be appalled. Where were the women who would give birth to the next generation of students? Where were they hiding the beautiful women of Yusef’s tales? How did Benazir Bhutto, a woman, become president of this country?

MAULANA SAMI AL HAQ
of the Haqqania Madrassah system had a reputation as an inspiring speaker, and John looked forward to this outdoor event, his first. Morning classes were suspended so that students and faculty could attend, and Islamia’s main field had been furnished with a stage, microphones, and rows of benches.

He was walking with Zaadiq to the al Haq event when Yusef rumbled up on his bike and handed John a folded piece of paper. Your story, he said.

The seats filled quickly. Sitting beside Zaadiq, John spotted Khaled on the east side of the field and waved. Then he read Yusef’s two-line story, handwritten in English, all uppercase.

Anarkali was a favorite in the harem of Emperor Akbar, Yusef wrote. One day Akbar caught her exchanging a smile with his son. Jealous, he had Anarkali walled up alive.

John got out a pencil from his backpack. Why, he penciled at the bottom of the page, is illicit love the theme of all your stories? And why are the lovers always doomed? He passed his question to Yusef, who was sitting three rows back.

Because, Yusef wrote back, human love is only temporary anyway, unlike the love between God and the soul. Okay. Here’s another story, minus the doom:

One day, before they were married, Jahangir handed his beloved Nur Jahan two of the royal pigeons to hold. When Jahangir returned for his birds, one had flown. He was surprised. But how did it fly? he asked. Like this! Nur Jahan laughed and let the second bird go. Jahangir was enchanted.

I like this one, John mouthed, giving it a thumbs-up.

SINCE THE LECTURE
was open to the public, it was delivered in English. Al Haq opened with a quote from the Qur’an and translated: If
you doubt what We have revealed to Our servant, produce one chapter comparable to it.

It has come to my attention, al Haq said, that a group of academics have sinfully allowed themselves to ask who wrote the Qur’an.

The unbelievers ask: Why was the Qur’an not revealed to the Prophet in a single revelation? The Sura answers, We have revealed it thus so that we may sustain your heart. We have imparted it to you by gradual revelation.

He was dressed in an all-white tunic and pants, with a long off-white vest over them. And he used his hands as he spoke, turning his palms up to ask a question, facedown to make his point.

Unlike the Jewish and Christian holy books, al Haq said, the Qur’an knows itself. It is self-aware and fully conscious. It recognizes itself as a book, as a holy text, as glorious and wise and clear and the book of truth; indeed, it knows itself as the Qur’an. It also knows that there will be interpretations and misinterpretations. It understands that it is sometimes clear, sometimes obscure. It knows and predicts that the unclear parts will attract the skeptics, those whose hearts are infected with unbelief, and it responds to these doubts and questions in advance: no one knows its meaning except God. According to some of our great moo-dar-ress, every verse can be understood in sixty thousand different ways.

The Qur’an speaks of its own origins, its source. Sura 32 opens with: This Book is beyond all doubt revealed by the Lord of the Universe. It goes on to tell its own origin story: Proclaim what has been revealed to you from the Book of your Lord… You have received the Qur’an from Him who is wise and all-knowing.

Let no one convince you otherwise, al Haq concluded, coming round after a long series of digressions. Such holy all-knowingness cannot be said for the Hebrew books, nor the Christian, which have multiple authors and inherent contradictions. Their Bible does not and cannot know itself, therefore it has nothing to stand on, no firm grounding, no certainty.

But aren’t all books based on books that came before them? John wondered. Even the Old Testament, the supposed first book, was made up of earlier ancient songs and texts.

THE FOLLOWING MONDAY
, Yusef was waiting for him when he emerged from his last class of the morning, and John was relieved and anxious at the same time. Yusef’s stories, arriving as they had as handwritten notes, had convinced him that he was no longer welcome on Yusef’s bike, that his overeager penis, which stood erect at the least provocation, had embarassed or frightened Yusef.

Yusef slid forward on his seat, inviting John on, and even before he was on the bike, spooning Yusef’s bum, John felt his peter stand up. It was this, he realized, this constant prickly unfulfilled desire, that was exhausting. And he was confused by this desire; he’d been unable to sort it out. His mind warned against it, held back, told him that he was not attracted to men, to Yusef, at least not that way, but still his body responded, celebrated the opportunity, another adventure. He hoped that with time, with familiarity to the experience of close proximity, his body would grow accustomed to the physical contact and become less responsive.

Where are we going today? John shouted into Yusef’s ear.

A picnic, Yusef replied. He pulled into the petrol station to fill up.

You should get water, Yusef said.

John slid off the bike and entered the little market, a Pakistani-style 7-Eleven. He bought two tall bottles of purified water, a bag of banana chips, which Barbara had recommended as a source of potassium, and
a bag of pepitas, a snack of the region. He paid for the items and slipped them into his backpack.

If we’re going to have a picnic, let’s pick up some chapli kebabs, John said.

My oom made sandwiches, Yusef said, and lifted the lid on the black leather case at the back to show him.

Y’allah, Yusef said. I’m taking you to Takht-e-Bahi, a Buddhist monastery on the Peshawar-Swat Road, just south of the Malakand Pass.

It was a long drive, through mostly flat plains, beautifully bare, green where they were irrigated, brown elsewhere. Riding behind Yusef in the open air, John felt enlarged by the long perspective the open countryside offered. In the final stretch, they climbed a rocky spur about five hundred feet above the plains, the site of Takht-e-Bahi.

Yusef locked his bike in the car park and, holding John’s hand, led the way up the path to the Court of Many Stupas, named for the thirty-five votive shrines it once contained. They approached the main courtyard, surrounded by the silent stone walls twenty-five feet high with chapels built into the wall, their entrances facing inward. Corners and edges of cornices and pilasters were still traceable, beautifully broken in the way that ruins are. Yusef pulled John along to the steps that led the way inside, but a beggar stopped John at the first step, and another at the second, and John hung back, preventing advance. He’d reached into his pocket and come up with a handful of change. This foolish act produced twenty open palms, and with an indulgent smile on his face, John proceeded to put a coin into each hand. Which produced shouting. One beggar had gotten a five-cent piece, the other a ten, the next one a mere penny.

Yusef laughed. You have to place the same amount in each open palm.

But John had only a handful of change, in different denominations, and soon he ran out of change, and there were more steps, more beggars, more open palms, more shouting. He apologized, he shrugged, but the beggars wouldn’t give up. They pinched his shirt. They grabbed at his pants, and John panicked.

Yusef stepped down and pressed the beggars back. Ik sal amir, ik sal fakir, he said. Ik sal amir, ik sal fakir, he repeated, and the hands that demanded fell away, the word got out, ik sal fakir, interest waned, and the beggars moved off to seek elsewhere.

John swallowed his panic and wiped his forehead. What does that mean exactly? he asked.

A rich man this year, and a beggar the next. In other words, you’re like them now. And as a beggar, you’re not useful. If you don’t want to remain a beggar, don’t reach into your pockets again. He led the way up the stairs and around the walls.

This court, he announced, taking charge, as if it were an architectural drawing and he the architect. This court, he said, consulting the brochure, measures thirty-six meters by fifteen meters, that is, one hundred twenty feet by fifty feet. The walls are about nine meters, or thirty feet high. Inside, against the walls, are thirty chapels. The chapels once contained huge statues of the Buddha, about four times his original size.

They walked the paved north-south path from the main stupa on the north end to the monastery on the south side, went up the five steps, and stood in the center counting the cells. Fifteen in all.

This is where the monks lived, Yusef said, and led the way into one of the two largest ones. They were bare and small, with high walls and one small window too high for even the tallest monk to see through.

Scary, John said. Kind of like jail.

Yusef led the way back to the fifteen steps that led up to the main stupa, now merely a square base. Not much left of it, he explained. Cleaned out by thieves. Originally it had three bases like this first one, each smaller than the previous one, stacked. At the top, the stupa rested on pillars.

He walked up the steps to the first and remaining base and turned to watch John stumble. He laughed.

The half step, he explained, is intended to surprise and awaken the pilgrim. Reaching up for the expected full step, he doesn’t find it, and stumbles.

Nice idea, John said, but it probably works only once or twice.

Probably, Yusef agreed, but it wasn’t intended for the monks who used them daily. It was the pilgrims who needed awakening.

They fell in line behind the other visitors—pilgrims dressed Punjabi style in shalwar kameez of all colors and stripes—keeping pace with those in front of them, remaining ahead of those behind.

After touring the Assembly Hall, the Low Level Chambers, which housed the granaries, meditation rooms, and study, they stopped at the Court of Three Stupas to admire the sculpture collection, the Wall of Colossi, where six pairs of giant feet were discovered at its base, along with remaining fragments of the six statues of the Buddha. Based on the size of the feet, the statues are calculated to have been about twenty feet high, Yusef read aloud.

They were hungry. Touring had given them an appetite. So they made their way back to the car park and rode west, to the modern town of Takht-e-Bahi, to a small park famous for its peepul tree.

You know the one at Pipal Mandi in old Peshawar? he said. It’s said to be a descendant of the original peepul. These trees usually have legends attached to them, like the one in the Mahabharata. To prove himself as a warrior to Lord Krishna, Babreek offered to rope all the tree’s leaves with one arrow. After Babreek’s arrow had pierced every leaf, it hovered at Lord Krishna’s foot, and Babreek warned Krishna that if he didn’t move, the arrow would pierce it. It turned out that Lord Krishna had hidden a leaf under his foot.

Yusef withdrew a square of cloth, paper-wrapped sandwiches, and oranges. John unzipped his backpack and contributed the water and snacks.

Pepitas, Yusef said. To complete our meal.

We should give thanks, John said.

They folded their legs, Buddha pose, brought their palms together, and closed their eyes.

Yusef broke the silence. Let’s break bread.

They took their first bites cautiously, tasting, then rushed into their next ones.

Your mom makes a mean sandwich, John said through a mouthful.

They’re always better outside, Yusef said.

They ate in silence. John noted the blue horizon, the oily haze the burning sun made when it heated the molecules in the air. He was grateful for the reprieve of green shade.

Imagine, Yusef said, a monk’s life, roaming during the day, returning to his monastery at Takht-e-Bahi for the night, meditating on nothingness.

I could have been a monk, John said. I was born in the wrong place and time.

Really? Yusef asked, pointedly dropping his eyes from John’s face to his lower body.

John shifted, and waited for his blush to recede. He swallowed. Maybe that’s why I would have made a good monk. I would have made the greater sacrifice.

Sacrifice, Yusef said, is hard, and fighting your own desire is self-destructive. I watch you, from free America, struggle against what you really want. So who do you think’s freer?

Yusef stretched his legs to reveal his own aroused state. The mystics, he said, knew that indulgence is sometimes more effective than abstaining. Think Richard Burton. And don’t think indulgence is easy. For example, I’m willing to give it to you, but are you prepared to submit, because that’s the only way I’ll have it?

John looked into the distance, the landscape stark in desert browns, sparsely vegetated, and the people, dressed as they were in their shalwar kameez, could, with a minimum of squinting, appear as classically draped Greeks. He imagined Yusef as Caligula, claiming every virgin, male and female, branding them as his own, because this was what Yusef proposed, and John found, shockingly, that he wanted to submit, or rather his body wanted it, ached for it, but it was also impossible to admit to wanting such a thing.

Yusef propped himself onto his elbows and reclined unashamedly, and John found himself both drawn and repulsed simultaneously. His body ached to stretch out beside Yusef, to give himself to Yusef; his mind, however, shouted against it. Submission. A word that had no place in Barbara’s vocabulary, and she wouldn’t welcome it in his. About his newly discovered bisexuality she wouldn’t be critical, but she also wouldn’t love it.