American Taliban (9 page)

Noor smiled, but only slightly. She wasn’t a girl who laughed needlessly.

So what are you reading besides Hitti? she asked.

Poetry. I’m into this Sufi poet, Ibn ’Arabi.

Noor reached into her green schoolbag, brought up a thin black notebook, opened the flap, and recited,

John joined her, though he stumbled here and there for the next word. Their translations differed. John’s had a camel in it, Noor’s a caravan. Still, they finished together.

Noor’s lips were slightly parted now, and John brought his fingertips to his own, then reached across the table to hers. And they were warm, they were yielding. So he lifted himself up on the arms of his chair and touched her lips with his.

That’s for knowing it. I hoped you would.

She drew her black eyelashes down, obscuring her eyes, and said nothing, but out of the corners of her eyes, she glanced right then left, without moving her head. To see if anyone had seen? John looked. It didn’t seem to matter to anyone. Seated at this tiny table in the growing bluedark, they were as good as alone.

He told her about his new CD, recorded in Morocco. I got it in the mail last week. It has a rendition of the poem, in French. Mon coeur est devenu capable. I’ll play it for you.

I’d like that. She picked up her cup. You can taste now, she said.

Cinnamon, he said, sipping. And nutmeg. And something else.

Cardamom, Noor said. Good?

John sipped again. Surprisingly, he said.

I’m glad you like it, Noor said, because I love it. The secret spice
that no one guesses is a pinch of white pepper, not black, white, which is different. She reached into her backpack again and brought out a small glass vial sealed with a cork stopper. My own mix, she said, and removed the stopper, and passed the vial under her nose.

John leaned forward to sniff.

Careful, Noor warned, holding back. If you inhale or exhale hard, the cinnamon powder will rise up and choke you. Just let the fragrance come to you, kind of on its own. John leaned back. Ready? she asked. And passed the vial under his nose in an arc.

She was right. The smell arrived, in time.

He wondered whether she’d had boyfriends, whether she’d had sex. Did Muslim girls make love? She’d sort of allowed him to kiss her, though she’d also worried about being kissed, or being seen kissing. Islam, he knew, was against premarital sex, but so were Christianity and Judaism, all traditional faiths. He looked at her. She was most likely a virgin, he thought, and for now, with the cast on his leg, she found him safe. Maybe. With Noor, unlike Katie, he wasn’t certain of anything.

I read somewhere, he said, that Muslims read poetry more than they read the Qur’an, which is amazing. In the United States, where supposedly church and state are separate, and freedom of choice is law, the New Testament is the most read book. According to statistics.

It’s complicated, though, Noor said. In Arab culture, poets are sort of like spokesmen or journalists or even oracles, like the Prophet. They write about politics, and if they take a stand against a leader or an issue or something, they have a huge influence. Even the Bedouins honored poetry. It’s why the caliphs and clerics always want to cut off the poet’s tongue.

They honor poets by cutting out their tongues? John asked.

Noor laughed. It’s an expression. It means subsidizing the poet as a way to avoid his bite; it’s kind of a bribe.

He wondered about her background, her parents. Khaled seemed modern, Noor less so. Or maybe it had something to do with her being female.

Eye-na al-Hahm-maam? John asked.

Noor pointed him toward the back of the café. When he returned, she insisted on walking him home.

His apartment was only a few blocks away, and they walked slowly. After a short silence, John asked whether she would go with him to the Brooklyn Banks to watch the skating. After my cast is off.

Sure, she said.

Great. You’ll get a better idea of who I am when I’m not crippled.

You’re not crippled, Noor said, just temporarily challenged.

They laughed.

John invited her in, but Noor declined.

LATER THAT NIGHT
, pausing for the nth time on the same sentence, replaying every moment of the evening in his head, John realized that if he had asked Noor out for tomorrow night instead of Saturday he would not have had to wait so long. At the very least he could have suggested that she meet him again after classes on Wednesday and walk back with him to hear the CD. She might think I don’t like her, he thought. But when he pulled his laptop into his lap and checked his e-mail, he found one from her, wishing him good night, and felt better.

He wrote back: miss you already. can’t wait until saturday. how about tomorrow? and also wednesday, after class. john

He waited ten minutes. When there was no reply, he decided that she might be asleep already, or in bed, reading. In his inbox, there was a message from Katie, and though he hesitated over the feeling that the double pleasure of e-mail from both girls on the same night might be a double infidelity, disloyal to both Noor and Katie at once, blue-eyed, white-blond, born-to-surf Katie, his first love, whom he still loved, he finally couldn’t hold out and opened Katie’s letter, too.

HIS ARABIC LANGUAGE BOOK
provided stickers with words printed on them. For this morning’s vocabulary lesson, he was required to paste eleven new words to their corresponding items in his apartment and learn them. On crutches, he made his way to his ah-ree-ka, where he spent a good part of the day reading, said the word aloud, ah-ree-ka, rolling his r’s like a Mexican, and pasted the label on the sofa’s arm where he would see it. Then he attached the label miss-baaH to the lamp beside his ah-ree-ka. On the other side of the miss-baaH was a koor-see for the occasional guest, though now and then he, too, sat in it. Covering the square of floor space outlined by his ah-ree-ka, miss-baaH, koor-see, and taa-we-la, on which he kept his books, laptop, and glass of water, was a small sahzh-zheh-da, a kind of cowhide thing, not the Persian carpet the word evoked. On the door to the patio he stuck the label baab. On the clock in the kitchen, a saa-ra, on the telephone, a teh-lee-foon, and on the picture hanging in the hallway, a ssoo-ra. On the tiny window in his bathroom, he stuck a neh-fee-da, and on the shower curtain, a see-taa-ra, though it was surely meant for a regular window curtain. After which he hobbled from object to object and named each one aloud, as if it was for this that he was here, in order to say: ah-ree-ka, miss-baaH, koor-see, taa-we-la, sahzh-zheh-da, baab, teh-lee-foon, saa-ra, see-taa-ra, ssoo-ra, neh-fee-da, ka-naba, haa-tif, to say these things and forever name them.

Tired, he relinquished his crutches and leaned back on his ah-ree-ka.
He had been able to pick up other vocabulary on his own. He knew, for example, that his ees-me was John Jude Parish, that he was a talib who had signed on for da-ra-sa at a ma-dra-sa, that he was taking dars with a moo-dar-rees, but learning to read and write in Arabic script presented a greater challenge. For one thing he hadn’t learned a new alphabet since he was a child. And Arabic letters changed according to their place within the word, with variations on the form for initial, medial, or final placement, which meant learning to recognize three variations on each of the twenty-eight letters, a sum of eighty-four different calligraphic shapes. He had gotten the hang of reading right to left quickly enough, but writing the letters from right to left was more difficult, and he found himself etching them backward, from left to right, which Noor said was like writing the word cat on a page starting with the
t
.

You’re avoiding the difficulty, his moo-dar-rees suggested. It’s a matter of habit, he explained, and though habit is difficult to break and reform, sometimes requires hundreds of repetitions to reform, it is possible with some effort and attention, and ultimately rewarding.

This argument rang true, John could think of other habits he’d had to break in order to make progress, like unlearning a bad skating tic in order to master a new maneuver.

Thus he practiced daily. He got out his yellow lined pad, and slowly, it was painstakingly slow work, he looped up and out calligraphically. A quill or fine paintbrush rather than a number 2 pencil would be a more appropriate tool for making these detailed shapes, he thought. It was super close work, with dots and dashes and lines and curves, and every filled page of etchings a calligraphic artwork worth framing or, at the very least, mounting with a magnet on his mother’s fridge.

He covered a long yellow page with Arabic alphabet. He stood and stretched. And on crutches, he made his way to the kitchen to pin his fresh page of
ah to ee
on the refrigerator door, using the English
A
and
Z
. The pages accumulated. He was on his sixth page, filling two a day. He stood in front of them, read them back, aspirating the
H
in the back of his throat to extinguish a candle, gargling the
kh
, and kawing the
q
. He practiced the short stop for a glottal pause, a silent musical beat. Then he hopped back on crutches to his ah-ree-ka, rolling the
r
, ah-rrrrrree-ka, and sat down to fill another page, this time from memory, attempting to force memory.

LATE AFTERNOON, HIS CELL PHONE RANG
. Noor. He heard cups clattering, steam hissing, voices, and wished himself there, at a table, watching her.

I got your e-mail, she said, but I shouldn’t go out again tonight. Instead, would you like to eat with us? My dad won’t be home, so it’s only my mom, my brother, and I.

John wrote down the address on the pad near the teh-lee-foon and promised to be there before seven. He hung up. This was perfect. He had put in a good day’s work, and now he could enjoy his reward. He would read for another hour, then shower, then make his way to Noor’s house, exploring the streets on his way while there was still light. He probably ought to bring something, a small gift. He would ask Barbara.

I’m so glad you called, she said. How was Dr. Kluge?

John told her about his new removable lime-green cast.

I’m not convinced that your doctor made the right decision, Barbara said in the way she had of questioning all authority, with the exception of her own. I worry that you won’t wear it all the time.

John demurred. I, he declared, taking Barbara’s tone, am one hundred percent certain that the decision was a good one since it has improved my mobility by about fifty percent. I can bathe with less trouble and scrub off dead skin cells. You should have seen how scaly my skin was when the old one came off. Plus it stank.

As long as you don’t do any more damage, Barbara said.

Okay, Mom. Don’t get teary on me. I called to ask you for gift ideas. I’m invited to dinner at Noor’s house. What should I bring?

How lovely, Barbara said. They might not drink alcohol so a bottle of wine won’t do. How about dessert? There must be a bakery on Atlantic. Why not stop on your way, and ask them to fill a cake box with an assortment of fancy cookies?

Cookies? I don’t know. That’s not especially Middle Eastern.

I know, Barbara interrupted. Halvah. Pick up a block or two. You can also look around; there are sure to be other special deli items. Olives, or a pretty spice. Stick to an edible. And take along your backpack, so you’ll have your hands free for your crutches. How far a walk is it?

Mom, John warned. I’ll be fine. Thank you. How’s Dad?

Oh, he’s well. Working hard, as always. He promised to read a draft of my paper, and though I’ll be delivering this Saturday, he still hasn’t gotten to it. Would you like to read it?

Not really. What’s the subject?

It’s for that conference on the nonvoting American; students are one of the major culprits, by the way. They tend toward apathy until they’re conscripted for war. My paper is on the complacency that peace and prosperity engender. By the way, it just occurred to me that you’ll have to cast an absentee ballot, since you’re not registered in New York. I’ll forward one to you.

HE TURNED RIGHT
on Atlantic, as Noor had instructed, walked slowly, stopping at the open vats of olives and pickles and spices, inhaling the fragrance of ground herbs. What were they? Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme, and then he couldn’t get the song out of his head.

At the next store, he purchased a half pound each of vanilla and chocolate halvah. He watched the counterman wrap them up efficiently, first in wax paper, then brown paper and string.