The Garden of My Imaan (18 page)

Conversations

I
’m going to do a three-panel display board with information about the basic beliefs and the five practices of Islam,” I told Winnie that afternoon. “And also something about the moon, because the Islamic calendar is a lunar calendar.”

“I’m wearing the
hanbok
dress my Korean grandmother sent me and I’m going to sing a song she taught me. It’s called the
Santoki
,” Winnie said. “It’s about a little bunny that lives up in the mountains. My Halmunee taught me all the words in Korean. And I figured I’d bring our menorah for the Jewish part of me. And driedels too. I bet those will be a hit with the little kids.”

“Sounds great! I’ll recite an Urdu poem about a boy named Bhaee Bhuttoo,” I said.

Our project was beginning to take good shape but I was worried about the white space that still showed on my display board.

“Ask Marwa,” Winnie suggested. “I bet you anything she has a few more ideas cooking in her head.”

“Oops, I forgot all about Arab contributions in math and science. It was Marwa’s idea actually and I guess that should cover it,” I said feeling a lot better. “And OCD says I should bring a prayer mat and wear the shalvar khameez outfit she gave me two years ago for Eid.”

“That OCD is one weird lady,” Winnie said.

“Actually, her idea’s pretty good but doesn’t she realize I’m a whole lot taller now?”

After Winnie left, I found Mom curled up on the sofa watching TV. Amma and my brother had gone to the dollar store and both Badi Amma and OCD were napping.

“Amma spoils Zayd too much,” I grumbled. “He doesn’t need any more junk. Do you know how cluttered his toy chest is already?”

“She did the same with you, or have you forgotten?” Mom smiled. “Don’t be too surprised to find some of that junk in the time capsule she’s putting together for you.”

I was supposed to open Amma’s time capsule on my sixteenth birthday. She was filling it with things that represented the milestones in my life.

“Winnie says her Halmunee could never think of such a cool idea—not in a zillion years,” I said.

Mom nodded. “I’ve met Winnie’s grandmother. She’s a tough lady.”

“Amma’s not a tough lady,” I said. “My grandmother is the best and the smartest and the most fun!”

I sat down with my mother and watched TV for a while. I hardly ever had her all to myself like this. It was nice.
And
, I said to myself,
it’s the perfect time to talk about the idea that has been wiggling around in your mind lately.

“I’ve been thinking, Mom,” I said in a casual voice. “What would you say if I wore the hijab?”

Mom’s eyes were still glued to the TV. “You mean during prayer? That’s silly, you already do.”

“No, I mean
all the time.
”

My mother looked over at me. “That’s an interesting question.”

“Well?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s kind of sudden, isn’t it?”

“Everyone talks about it, Mom. You see them everywhere now.”

“Yes, but what has that got to do with us?”

“I’m just asking what you might say.”

“Where is this coming from, Aliya? It is Nafees?”

“Oh, Mom, not Nafees. You know she’d stop the minute she could. Her parents force her to wear the hijab.”

“Is it Amal then? Or Marwa? And what about the incidents with Sehr and her sister? You still want to talk about the hijab?”

“It’s none of them and none of that,” I said. “I wish you’d just answer my question.”

“Okay then …” Mom sat up and turned to face me. “This is what I’d say. I’d try to talk you out of it. I’d tell you to reconsider and repeat my take on it. The hijab is a symbol of modesty—a good symbol, but a figurative one. We are
capable of maintaining a modest aspect in our lives in other ways. I thought you already knew my thinking on that.”

“I do, Mom,” I said. “But what if—”

“What if you were determined to wear it? I’d have to really pay close attention, wouldn’t I? Perhaps you’d show me what I was missing. Because ultimately it is a religious injunction that I’ve chosen to disregard. Who am I to decide for someone else?”

“Thanks for talking with me about it, Mom,” I said.

“It just surprises me to hear that you want to wear hijab,” she said.

“I don’t,” I said. “It was just a what-if question. You don’t need to jump to any conclusions.”

The idea had entered my mind a few days earlier when I was standing in front of our hall mirror, draping the scarf around my head. I imagined myself at school, in the middle of four hundred kids. Wearing the hijab in the face of ridicule was no small thing. But Marwa did it.

Not so long ago, Marwa shared with me her father’s views on her decision to wear the hijab:
It’s easy to do what our heart tells us. It’s a heck of a lot harder to obey our mind
. I understood those words a little better now, but Marwa was Marwa and I was Aliya. What worked for Marwa would probably not work for me. She wore the hijab with as much assurance and ease as if she were in the streets of Morocco or Lebanon. As for me … I don’t think so.

“Are you sure it’s just a what-if question?” Mom asked.

“Yes, it is,” I answered. “Honest.”

Khuda Hafiz, OCD

Just when we were finally getting used to having OCD around, she announced she was returning to Minnesota. Her bags were packed and waiting by the front door.

“Leaving already?” Badi Amma asked. “Stay, stay.”

OCD grinned. “You tell us, ‘Stay, stay,’ but our daughter tells us, ‘Come, come!’“

“I’m going to miss you, Choti Dahdi,” I said. I had to admit that after two months I felt much less uncomfortable around her.

“Aii. Don’t be so sad,” she replied. “We will return soon, Insha’ Allah! What are you packing for us to eat on the airplane, hanh?”

“It’s a kebab roll, Great-Aunt,” Mom answered.

“Halal?”

“Absolutely!” Mom said. It was a tuna kebab and fish was always halal.

OCD called Zayd and me to her. She pinched our chins and then kissed her fingertips. “Khuda Hafiz,” she said. Then, pointing to both Zayd and me, she added in her own English, “You, you … two, two … very, very good childs.”

We raised our hands to our foreheads for a final respectful goodbye and wished her Allah’s protection. OCD followed Baba to the door, clutching her walking stick in one hand and the brown paper bag containing her halal fish roll in the other. Before stepping out, she turned and fixed me with a hard stare.

“Run!” she commanded me. “Run!”

“Do you want me to fetch something from your room, Choti Dahdi?” I asked, preparing to obey.

“
Nai, nai
. Run for
estoodent kunsul
next year, you hear?” she said, pointing her walking stick at me.

Oh.

“Insha’ Allah, Choti Dahdi!” I told her. God Willing!

As she went out the door, OCD shouted, “Come see us in
Minnipolice
!”

Winnie and I set up our displays. I was so jittery, I kept bumping into things. I bit my thumbnail, trying to focus.

“Take it easy,” Winnie said. “You’re going to chew up your entire finger at this rate.”

Winnie was dressed in her ceremonial hanbok and armed with a bunch of maps and dioramas. She set up her trifold board and neatly arranged her artifacts across from my display.

I tugged on my too-small shalvar khameez and spread out my prayer mat and prayer beads. My report was neatly presented in sections labeled Religion, Culture, and Traditions. Bollywood music played quietly. “I’m just afraid I won’t be able to answer the tough questions,” I said.

“What sort of questions?”

“Like, ‘Why do you hate America?’ and, ‘Will you go to heaven after you kill the infidel?’“

“Do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Do you hate America?”

“Are you crazy? Of course not!”

“Fine. Tell them that and if you don’t know the answer to other questions, just tell them that too.”

Kids from the lower grades started coming into the room, so I pulled my scarf from my pocket and put it on my head. I took a deep breath.

I needn’t have worried so much. The little kids stared at my shalvar khameez outfit and at Winnie’s hanbok. They were polite and asked easy questions. Only once did I have to tell someone to write his question down so I could find the answer and get back to him.

Marwa’s class came by later. She stopped in front of our displays and looked at everything carefully.

My scarf kept slipping off my head. “This is so frustrating!” I grumbled. I eyed her hijab, which always seemed to stay in place. “I can never seem to keep this thing on.”

“I can show you, if you like,” she said.

“Know something?” I said. “If I had known how, I would have added a hijab tying demonstration to my project.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of Austin standing in front of Juliana’s display. He seemed fascinated by the mirror box that was part of her project on learning
disabilities. It was supposed to show people the difficulties LD kids faced with schoolwork.

Marwa looked over in his direction. “He has dyslexia, you know,” she said. “He told me he’s just been diagnosed.”

“You’re kidding! He’s been so mean to you. Why would he all of a sudden go and tell you something so private?”

She shrugged. “Who knows?”

“I don’t get it,” I said.

“Neither do I, but I’m not complaining.”

“Just look at him shooting daggers at me,” I whispered. “He’s probably thinking I’m a circus freak.”

Austin stared so hard in my direction that I had to look away. Then he turned back to the mirror box.

“Hmm. He’s being awfully quiet over there. Did you bribe him or something?” I asked.

Her eyes angled away for a moment. “I … don’t know,” she said slowly. “My father told me to talk to his ‘good side’ first. He said that if that didn’t work, we’d definitely get the principal involved.”

“Austin has a good side?”

Marwa giggled. “That’s how I felt, but Dad said everyone has a good side.”

I didn’t think anyone cared if Austin had a good side. His bad side was enough to keep most people away. “What did you do?” I asked.

“Nothing special. I told him I’d like to be his friend.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it,” she said.

“And?”

“And he’s been pretty decent since,” she said.

This was a little too much to take in all at once. Could I get Austin off my back by saying something nice? The trouble was, I couldn’t think of anything nice to say to him.

Several kids had gathered in front of my project.
“Aa-ee-ay, thushreef la-ee-ay,”
I said in Urdu, just the way Badi Amma had taught me. The words meant, “Oh, come. Please do come! You are welcome!”

A couple of days later, Marwa thrust a small packet in my hand as we were leaving the cafeteria. “Open it,” she said.

I tore the paper apart and a square cloth, the color of a pink rosebud, slipped out. Marwa caught it before it hit the ground.

“Ready for Hijab 101?” she said. Before I could reply, she had formed the soft square into a neat triangle and draped it around my head with an expert flourish. “Hold still,” she commanded, and she proceeded to drape and pleat and pin and wrap and knot it. “There!” She stepped back to examine her handiwork.

“How do I look?” I fingered the soft beak at the forehead. Marwa made a circle with her thumb and index finger to show her approval. “You didn’t have to spend your pocket money on me,” I said. “You could have bought something for yourself.”

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “It’s a belated Eid present.”

The hijab felt snug and secure. I’d tell Mom that the long Indian scarf was all wrong for prayers. We needed proper scarves and then we’d never have to worry about them slipping down our heads each time our foreheads touched the image of the Kaaba on our prayer mats.

“Thanks, Marwa,” I said. “It’s really sweet of you.” I started to unfasten the safety pin since it was time to go back in, but then I stopped. Marwa was squinting at me.

“What’s wrong? Do I look completely funny?” I asked in alarm.

Before I knew it, her fingers were gently tugging, tucking, and fluttering around my head all over again.

“You look perfectly fine,” she smiled, her eyes following her fingers. “It just needed a little more tweaking.”

“I really don’t know how you do it …,” I began, trying to hold still.

“What do you mean?” She took a step back to re-examine her work.

“Well, I’ve asked this before, but I really want to know. Are you ever embarrassed to wear this thing at school?”

Marwa shook her head. “Why should I be? I wear hijab on my head and I wear sneakers on my feet for PE. It’s pretty simple.”

“It’s not the same thing,” I said. “Nobody notices sneakers. But a hijab … it’s way out there!”