The Garden of My Imaan (12 page)

The bell sounded and we walked back to the building. Marwa’s words replayed in my head the whole way in. She hadn’t sounded at all wishy-washy. She had sounded like a person whose mind was made up. Period.

“Well, good luck,” I said, giving her a thumbs-up. It seemed the right thing to do.

“Thanks,” she said. “Good luck to you too.”

Choti Dahdi

H
e called you a
what
?” Mom shouted, dropping her fork. The dinner table went silent.

“An alien,” I repeated. “That’s what he said.”

“Alien sounds like Aliya,” Zayd said. “She’d be a Martian if she were from Mars.”

“Be quiet, Zayd,” Amma snapped.

“See?” Mom said, turning to Baba.

“See what?” Baba asked.

“I can’t believe how casual you are about this.” Mom threw both her arms in the air. “Your daughter is bullied at school and you can sit there as placid and still as a pond?”

“People are afraid of what they don’t understand, Aliya,” Baba said. “They say and do stupid and—”

“And the innocent get hurt!” Mom interrupted, pointing at me. “It’s the people who simply go about their daily lives who get to feel the brunt of their anger.”

“Baba, could you talk to Mrs. Holmes about him?” I asked. “It’s not just me anymore. Austin has said mean
things to Marwa too.” I told my parents what she had told me in the school yard.

“See? Now we are outsiders?” Mom said. “And this is coming from the mouth of babes? I want the flag out of the attic and on our front door
today
!”

“Why?” Zayd asked.

“So people will see it and know we are patriotic,” Mom replied.

“If it makes you feel better.” Baba smiled. “Are you climbing up there or do you want me to go?”

“What sort of question is that?” Mom said. “Do I look like an attic climber?”

“I pledge ‘allegems’ to the flag every day,” my brother announced.

“You mean ‘pledge of allegiance,’ dork!” I corrected.

“Enough, both of you,” said Baba. “Aliya, I’ll make an appointment with Mrs. Holmes soon. I’m sure we can work this out somehow.”

We ate in relative silence for a little while. Baba and Mom always used a fork, but Amma and Badi Amma ate with their fingers according to their tradition. They said all foods had their special eating utensil—there was the fork and knife for steak, chopsticks for shrimp lo mein, and fingers for rice and
dhal
.

Amma pushed all the spinach bits from the rim of Zayd’s plate back on his rice with her finger, but he scraped it away again. “How will you be strong like Popeye if you don’t eat your spinach?” Amma asked.

“I don’t want to be strong like him,” Zayd replied. “Aliya, who’s Popeye anyway?”

“Aliya
Apa
,” Badi Amma said sharply.

“Popeye is an ugly cartoon sailor with big muscles,” I replied. “Don’t you know anything?”

Right in the middle of dinner, the telephone rang.

“Probably one of those fund-raising calls,” Baba said, but Mom was already up.

“It’s Choti Dahdi!” she mouthed from the far end of the room.

“She should have let it ring,” Zayd whispered.

Mom held the phone to her ear for a very long time. She finally told my great-grandaunt goodbye and hung up. “She’s arriving the day after tomorrow!” she announced.

My brother and I looked at each other in dismay. We knew what that meant. Choti Dahdi would stay forever and turn everything upside down. I’d have to move out of my room into Zayd’s. Mom would charge about like a windup toy, changing the sheets, washing towels, cleaning the bathtub and sink—all so Choti Dahdi wouldn’t screech about damp smells and globs of toothpaste.

Choti Dadhi couldn’t help it, Amma said. She was who she was: a little weird, a little annoying, and a lot snoopy, sticking her long nose where it didn’t belong.
Did we pray five times a day? Did we eat halal food? When was I going to cover my head with the hijab? Why did my knees show under my dress?
Her teeth clicked when she chewed and she never said “excuse me” when she burped.

And she would be arriving just one week before Thanksgiving!

Mom took the news particularly hard. “What will I do about the turkey?” she cried.

Our Butterball was already in the freezer and the boxes of Pepperidge Farm stuffing and cans of Ocean Spray cranberry sauce had been purchased. The turkey was fine for us and for my aunts and uncles and their families who lived nearby. But Choti Dahdi only ate meat that was halal.

“She will eat the
pulao
and
baghare baigan
and
kut
… That will be enough for her,” Badi Amma growled.

“It’s the turkey that worries me,” Mom said. “She’ll hit the roof when she discovers it’s not halal.”

“We’ll never hear the end of it!” Amma moaned.

“We could pretend the Butterball is halal,” I suggested.

“Eh? Kya Bole?” asked Badi Amma, but Mom and Amma looked like I had just proposed robbing a bank.

I backpedaled quickly. “It’s just an idea. Sorry.”

“Tauba, tauba!”
Amma said, striking her cheeks alternately with her hand, shaming me. She sounded like Choti Dahdi.

“I guess I’ll go to Horowitz Kosher Meat Market and get a kosher turkey,” Mom grumbled. “But turkeys never go on sale there.” Kosher meat was something like halal meat, so she knew it would be acceptable to Choti Dahdi.

“Kya Bole?” Badi Amma cupped her hand to her ear.

“She’s getting a kosher turkey!” Amma shouted.

“
Hanh
?”

Choti Dahdi was causing a big tizzy and she wasn’t even here yet!

I packed up my clothes to take to Zayd’s room while Mom gave mine the once-over.

“Why do I always have to move?” I grumbled. “Why can’t she sleep in Zayd’s room or the basement?”

“You know the answer to that, Aliya.” Mom gave me her you’re-pushing-my-limits look. “She’s an old lady. Besides, she’s a relative and a guest and we honor and respect our elders in this house.”

I knew I couldn’t win this fight, so I tried to show my annoyance in a different way. “You’re so worried about the halal turkey. What’s she going to eat before and after Thanksgiving?”

Mom flapped out a freshly laundered bed sheet and I grabbed it by its other end. Together we placed it on my bed and tucked in the corners.

“Indo/Pak Mart sells other meats and it’s only ten minutes away,” Mom said.

“You could get a halal turkey at Zabeeha Meats,” I suggested.

“I am
not
driving fifty miles,” Mom said in a voice that told me the discussion had ended.

Thoroughly Mixed Up

T
he Bismillah sign on your door still loose! When in Allah’s name are you fixing?” Choti Dadhi demanded as soon as she stepped in the door before she even wished us her usual “Assalam alaikum.”

She was skinny like spaghetti and bent over like a fishhook. Her hijab came to a peak over her forehead, and a long tooth hung over her bottom lip like Strega Nona’s in the picture books. She clutched a walking cane in one hand and her prayer beads in the other. They were the biggest and shiniest crystals I had ever seen.

Badi Amma and OCD hugged each other. Then Zayd and I stepped forward, cupping our right hands to our foreheads to pay our respects and wish her peace.

“
Adab
, Choti Dahdi.”

“Assalam alaikum, Choti Dahdi.”

OCD returned our greetings solemnly. She pinched my chin with her fingertips, raised them to her own lips, and kissed them with a big smack:
um-mah
! Then she turned to my mother and said, “Your daughter become fat, fat. What you feeding, hanh?”

“What about you, Choti Dahdi?” Mom asked, trying to change the subject. “Are you hungry?”

“Not exactly. But we would eat ‘eespesheel K’ with banana slice and one percent milk.” She sat down at the table and waited for Mom to serve her. “The ‘sekeerity’ rang—bhaanh-bhaanh—for us in ‘Minnipolice’ airport,” she went on. “We told ‘sekeerity’ guard not to worry: It’s the ujjad metal in our knee!”

Zayd and I exchanged quick glances. Ujjad meant ‘horrible’ or ‘bad’ and we braced ourselves to hear it used a zillion times during Choti Dahdi’s visit.

Like it or not, our Choti Dahdi was here to stay.

On Saturday morning, OCD joined Mom, Amma, and me for suhur. Amma heaped scrambled eggs on my plate and told me not to leave a bite.

OCD’s tongue clicked in her mouth as she ate her cereal. “You have poor attitude about Ramadan one year ago, hmm?” she said. “Do you remember this?”

I shook my head.

“We fix you!” she said gleefully.

“How so?” asked Amma.

“With a nice, nice talk. Aliya say going without food and water for thirty days too hard,” OCD elaborated. “We ask her, ‘What is suhur for but to sustain you?’ We remind and remind that fasting is one of the five important practices of
Islam and a solemn duty for Muslim.” She looked over at me. “Do you remember we say this, hanh?”

I had no memory of this lecture, but I was too sleepy to argue.

“She was just a little kid,
Khala
,” Amma said, using the Urdu term for maternal aunt.

“Aii! She not so little. She quite big enough to keep good attitude about important matters of religion,” OCD said, slurping her milk.

Amma rushed us to finish. “Eat up, eat up,” she said. “Suhur time is almost ending.”

“When is she going to wear hijab, hanh?” OCD asked.

I looked up in alarm.

“We’re not going to talk about that now!” Amma cleared away the empty plates with an angry flourish. “Aliya, hurry and say your prayers before the sun rises.”

“Just asking,” OCD sniffed. “Why getting snippety?”

I spread out the prayer mat on the floor and performed the prayer.

“
Aii
! Prayer rug not pointing to Kaaba exactly,” I heard her mutter.

I bet you ten dollars Allah won’t mind
, I said to myself.