Love, InshAllah Read online

  We part, playing it cool but sure that we will meet again, and soon. I think about my new resolution and file it away to consider again later. Brian appears, smiling, and we stand for a minute before parting.

  “You’re going to marry that guy,” he says in that creepy, prescient Irish way he gets sometimes at last call.

  I laugh off the idea, still riding high from the thrill of the chase. But when I look down at the card, the black letters of his name dance with possibility.

  “I have a surprise for you,” Randy says one day, two months after we met. “I can’t tell you anything else besides: Wear shoes you can walk in. I’ll pick you up in an hour.”

  I once went camping in Armani jeans and clogs, attempted to cook a frozen pizza on the campfire, and was eaten alive by mosquitoes. I have no shoes appropriate for the sort of walking he means, but I gamely search for a pair.

  Wearing the most stable heels I own, I stride from the coed vegetarian cooperative where I live to his waiting BMW M3. The sight of the car makes me laugh each time I see it, remembering how my flatmate Marcy asked what kind of car he drove and I answered, “I think it’s a Honda.” I may not be interested in the type of car a man drives, but I’m beginning to like the soft black leather against my bare arms, the way the BMW hugs curves, and how Randy’s large, elegant hands handle the wheel expertly.

  While I have lived in Boston on and off for a decade, I have explored little beyond the reach of the red line between Davis Square and downtown. We have already driven past the areas I know, the city skyline dropping behind us as we arc north on Interstate 93.

  I’ve rarely met a native of the area. Most of my friends and colleagues are transplants like I am, drawn here by the creativity, diversity, and possibilities that colleges seed in the communities around them. I’m fascinated by Randy’s stories about growing up in a small, insular town only six miles away in geographical distance, but decades apart in practice from the politically correct campuses in the city.

  Randy lost his Medford accent in college, but he retains the town’s lack of pretension. He may work in the booming, money-drenched tech industry, ski in Austria, and dine on tapas at Dalí, but he can just as easily watch a Pats game while eating ribs with other locals. Used to peers who refuse to socialize outside certain scenes or neighborhoods, I find this quality of his attractive.

  Born in Chicago and brought up all over the United States, I spent my high school years abroad and am used to being in between countries, homes, and friends. I’ve never been able to point out “home” on a map, but Randy feels like home to me—he accepts all that I am, who he is, and who we are slowly becoming together. I love the way his roots gnarl deep and wide in one place, back to his immigrant Albanian grandparents. With him, differences feel complementary and strengthening, instead of being points of contention or weakness. He is grounded but open to new experiences, and, after years of moving between continents, I am adaptable but looking to build a deeper community.

  Maybe that’s why I’m not afraid of the critical difference between us: religion. After eight weeks together, I already have a certainty as solid as my bones that I will marry this man. What is uncertain is how we are going to get there, though that doesn’t faze me. Some of this unusual calm on my part is due to Randy’s easygoing and optimistic personality, but mostly I believe there will be a divine smoothing of our lives into one, somehow. If I just keep walking this unmapped path one day at a time, have faith, and stay as wide open as he is, we will figure it out, together.

  Today he takes me to the Fells. Stumbling in my ridiculous shoes over the forest floor gives me a chance to hold his hand, palm to palm, in the clean autumn air. Aside from our footsteps, there is little sound. Or, rather, the sounds are ones I have forgotten after living in the city: the susurration of the wind through the branches above, fiery leaves crunching underneath our feet, and rocks tumbling against each other as we climb. I would not have found this place without him—this breathing, green-and-gold forest—and I love him for sharing it with me.

  We stop in a clearing at the crest of a hill near the old stone watchtower and look at the city gleaming in the distance. Randy spreads a blanket and pulls all the essentials from the basket: bread and cheese, fruit and poetry. With any other man, Sonnet 116 would be only a carefully rehearsed step to seduction, but because he was a fellow English major, his gesture is also romantic and sincere. I relax into his voice, the cadence of the poem, and the sensations of the forest around us.

  In the world of low expectations that is dating in one’s late twenties, where one steps lightly, never letting on that feelings might be running deeper than simple enjoyment, for fear of scaring the other person off or moving too fast, I realize I’ve been dating boys up until now. Dating a grown-up man who is not only unperturbed by, but the initiator of words and phrases like “I love you,” “girlfriend,” and “commitment,” is delightful. I’m playing catch-up to Randy’s maturity, trying not to sound stunned when the words roll out of his mouth.

  I don’t seek out large, green spaces often enough, which is another reason why today feels like a gift from him. It reminds me of one particular summer day when I sat watching the breeze blowing through an oak tree nearby. When I closed my eyes, all of my senses came alive and suddenly, after years of distance and doubt, I just knew that He existed, and realized that there must be more to everything around me.

  I share this story with Randy, and end by saying, “When I was a kid, I believed because I was afraid of punishment, or the judgment of other people. Then I didn’t believe much at all for a long time. But now I believe because creation resounds with Him. I’m so curious—I want to know the Being who created this beauty all around us,” I gesture, encompassing both forest and city.

  I feel a little nervous, as I always do when I’ve shared something intimate and a response is slow in coming. But Randy isn’t afraid of silence the way I am. Instead of filling the space between us, I focus on emulating his stillness, breathing slowly, and internally reciting my favorite dhikr, the opening verses of the Qur’an.

  “I like that,” he says, finally. “Not a God who punishes and demands, but One who creates, and wishes to have a relationship with us, too.”

  He smiles and continues, “You know, if we’d met a few years ago, I would have written you off as crazy. I couldn’t stand religion or religious people back then. I’m not sure what I believe in, but I’m curious, too.”

  “I still feel the same way about most religious people. They scare the heck out of me!” I laugh. “But the more I read, the sorrier I am that I ever took their word for it. I wasted years because I didn’t think I fit into their conception of Islam or God. And I don’t. But God is greater than all that. There are as many ways to Him as there are people on the planet.”

  With my hand nestled safe in Randy’s, we sit in the clearing until it’s time to go home.

  On the first day of the new year, Randy and I are shy with each other. The night before, he asked me to marry him and I said yes. There was no ring or bended knee, no parental knowledge or consent. And today it’s just the two of us, unable to stop smiling, feeling a little awkward, and wondering what this means for us now.

  I decide to call my dad, always the easier of my parents to approach. He met Randy briefly in November when the latter dropped off his digital camera to capture the arrival of our family’s first grandchild. Although I have not mentioned Randy to my father since then, I detect no shock when I screw up the courage to tell him that I have met someone I want to marry.

  “Is it that boy who came to the hospital?” my father asks gently. I blink in surprise. Once again, my parents know far more than they let on.

  “Yes, Abuji. I’ve known him since September, and . . . ” I hesitate, unsure how to talk to my father about a boy, something I have never done before. “He is a good man—gentle, loving, and kind. I want to be with him, but I also want your consent and blessing.”

  My father is silen
t for a few minutes. My face is slick with anxiety as I wait for his answer.

  “Beta, I have only two requests,” he says finally. “First, that he loves and cherishes you your whole life. And, second, that he studies Islam and considers converting.”

  The second request is not a surprise, but the openness with which my father has greeted this news is. No one in my family has ever married a non-Pakistani, or considered someone who was not born Muslim. What a long way my father and I have come from the night we sat on the porch a decade ago and he told me I had to marry someone who was not only Pakistani, but of the same clan and caste as ours. I know that both of my younger sisters’ being spoken for makes it easier for him to bend, as does the looming threat of my spinsterhood. But I am humbled by my father’s love, by his willingness to consider and make room for his daughter’s happiness, in spite of the censure he and my mother will face from some of their friends and family members.

  Upon hearing my father’s request, Randy immediately stands up, takes down Charles le Gai Eaton’s Islam and the Destiny of Man from my bookshelf, and starts reading it. I don’t interfere, wanting him to find truth in it for himself instead of performing a conversion of convenience. I know that for a man journeying from agnosticism to faith, nothing less than belief will do.

  Six months later, Randy goes to the Cambridge mosque to convert and has a conversation with the imam that will impact him for years to come.

  “Your family is Christian and may have fears about your conversion, especially now,” the imam says. “Instead of debating or arguing with them about the merits of one religion versus the other, let your behavior speak for you. Let them see the change in you. Let them see that being a Muslim has made you a better son, brother, and man.”

  I sit beside him in the car, listening to him tell the story. There are tears in his eyes as he grips my hand tightly. I know he did this for himself, that it was a truth that spoke to him. But I also know that he did it for me, that he considered a faith he might not otherwise have in the aftermath of 9/11, because he met a Muslim woman and fell in love with her.

  I have broken down so many times on the roadside of belief over the years that his clarity feels holy to me. I know I didn’t do this alone. The factors of religion, parents, and culture were too complex for me to have sorted them out by myself. I know for a fact that an opening was created for us.

  Eleven months after Randy and I first met, I finally reschedule that flight to Pakistan to celebrate our wedding in Islamabad with my huge extended family. Randy and his mother will join me soon for the festivities.

  As I watch the continent slip by underneath me through the oval airplane window, I am stunned to find myself in this unimaginable place. I thought I knew myself so well the night we met, and had a list of all the values and qualities I wanted in a lifelong partner—headed by “Muslim,” though I wasn’t sure where or how to find one. Randy embodies all of these criteria, as well as many others I never knew to ask for but needed so very much. Such complementarity seems cosmic and beyond my control. And thinking about how I found my future husband while sitting on a bar stool immediately after making my resolution to stop dating non-Muslim men makes me certain that God is imbued with a sense of humor as well as infinite, loving mercy.

  On paper, we might never have chosen each other, but in life, we were made for each other. The woman climbing her way back to Islam found her soul mate in a self-described agnostic. In my choosing Randy, and in his choosing me, we chose to create a new home in and with each other. There is no map or chart by which to plot our course of brown and white, of American and Muslim, of Pakistani and Albanian; we are simply creating a blended road as we walk forward, hand in hand, together.

  A decade after we met, all I can say for sure is that my beloved’s search for the truth led him to embrace Islam, and through his beautiful embodiment of those values, he made my own path back to the Beloved easy.

  Alhamdulillah.

  Punk-Drunk Love

  Tanzila Ahmed

  A punk-rock circle pit is like tawaf around the Kaaba. It looks like circular chaos of pushing and shoving, but there is an internal order, love and spirituality in the perceived chaos. And—every now and then—some guy copping a feel.

  I’ve always been a sucker for a man with a Mohawk.

  The first time I saw him, on the West Coast, he was standing on the sidewalk outside his band’s hitched trailer. I had just driven eight hours from Los Angeles to Oakland to make it in time for that night’s show. The members of the three punk bands were unloading into the venue. I jumped out of my car and raced over to hug them. I’d built online friendships with each of them, so, though it was my first time meeting most of the band members, I felt like I knew them all.

  Yusuf was tall, with broad shoulders and Arabic tattoos lacing his muscular biceps. His hair was shaved on the sides, a shock of purple down the center, swept limp to one side. His jawline was firm, but his high cheekbones and intense, thickly lashed, dark eyes softened the effect. A pretty man all the girls wanted to get with and all the guys wanted to be. I saved his hug for last.

  Our eyes locked. I walked over, feigning nonchalance. We mumbled greetings. An awkward hug. He let go quickly, as if he didn’t want his bandmates to know. Were we just friends, then?

  We had rendezvoused in New York City only four weeks earlier, at midnight on my thirtieth birthday. It had been a one-night make-out thing, with nothing defined the next morning. Though we’d never met in person before, we had felt as if we had known each other for years. I had interviewed Yusuf for an article on his band three years earlier, and we had struck up a deep online friendship that consisted of sharing lyrics and MP3s and having GChat conversations about life. For years, he had told me stories of his latest conquests over late-night IM sessions. I knew he wasn’t relationship material. He went through girls like candy, and I had no plans to be the flavor of the month.

  I sat at the bar alone, drinking my Red Bull on ice while the opening act continued in the other room. I was overwhelmed. I had been following Yusuf’s band since I had first written about them, six years earlier. They might have been a bunch of broke, punk misfits, but in my mind, they were celebrities.

  Yusuf found me. He grabbed a stool. My heart thumped. “You look great,” he said.

  “Do you like my hair?” I asked, playing with the pink tendrils. I had just been laid off from my day job, and dyeing my hair was my personal rebellion. I was untethered, collecting unemployment, and ready to play. I looked at Yusuf slyly.

  “The hair.” He looked down at my DIY T-shirt, with a profile of a Mohawked man sitting in prayer. “The shirt. All of it. You look awesome.” He paused, stumbling over his words, before they started spilling out. He talked about feeling lonely while driving cross-country. The overwhelming testosterone on the tour. The homoerotic cuddling. He talked about how it all made him long for female energy.

  His words tumbled out in continuous run-on sentences that blended into each other. I listened, awestruck, feeling as if one of our IM conversations was manifesting itself in real life. It was electric. But after a moment, we were interrupted by someone joining us. That was how it would be—stealing intimate moments when we could.

  “This is going to be the first time I’ve seen Yusuf’s band perform,” I whispered to my friend as we stood in the audience, waiting for them to take the stage.

  They were a Muslim punk band—though the moniker “Muslim punk” didn’t really fit. Instead of praising the Almighty, their lyrics were controversial, toeing the line between Islamophobia and orthodoxy, and having fun doing it. They were the marginalized, playing raucous music with political, in-your-face intentions and not giving a fuck. Punk, through and through.

  “Oh yeah?” my friend responded. “How are you feeling?”

  “It’s surreal,” I responded. As a Southern Californian teenager in the ’90s, I was the one brown Muslim girl crowd-surfing at the local punk shows on Saturday nights. On Sunda
y mornings, I’d don a headscarf and head out to the local mosque’s Sunday school. I was defiantly proud of being desi and Muslim in an Islamophobic and racist America, and to me, that translated into punk. If I told fellow punks that I was straight edge—meaning, I didn’t drink or do drugs—they didn’t bat an eye. And when I went on to work in political organizing because I wanted to make the world a better place for my people, that wasn’t just an Islamic value—it was a punk value, too.

  As the band set up, I stood near the back, feeling too old for the front-pit action. But when Yusuf jumped on the mic, it reminded me of those countless Saturday nights I had spent at punk venues as a kid. Only this time, for the first time, it was a band that was Muslim, desi, and punk like me. I sang along to all the lyrics and jumped right on in.

  “I wish I was sitting next to you,” his text said.

  I looked over in his direction. We were at a chicken-and-waffles place in Oakland. The entire entourage had stumbled here after the show. He was surrounded by people: his own band members, fans, and the members of the opening bands. There was no space for me, so I stayed put.

  Eventually, though, he came over to sit next to me. We talked closely and intimately. He leaned in for a kiss, but I paused before we made contact, and pulled back. “What will your band members say?” I asked, in a flirty, hushed tone.

  “It’s only a kiss on the cheek. That’s okay.” He leaned in, lips pressed up on my right cheek. Quick and tender, soft and longing. And that was it.

  The next day, we were at the Muslim punk wedding of the year—the bands’ national tour intentionally planned around it. My sari was gorgeous black chiffon with pink sequined flowers that matched my newly streaked hair. With my big black shades on, I looked the part of the quintessential California desi punk girl.