Love, InshAllah Read online

  My friend Fatima and I met some of the boys in the parking lot in front of the Indian restaurant. Piercings and saris, dyed hair and kurtas, sunglasses and cholis . . . this punk wedding entourage was a real-life, slow-motion musical montage.

  Yusuf met us at the entrance, looking at me silently. He was dressed in a gray kurta top, cut to fit him perfectly. He sat next to me during dinner. He kept looking at me and grabbing my leg under the table so no one could see, rubbing it up and down. “You should really stop looking at me and eat your food,” I said, blushing.

  A few minutes later, I was fidgeting. My sari was coming undone under the weight of the sequins and my lack of grace. When I mentioned it to him, he said he wanted to help me unravel my sari later that night at the hotel.

  While the rest of the wedding party was having late-night drinks by the pool,Yusuf and I snuck out to go skateboarding in front of the hotel. He jumped on my skateboard and skidded away on the black, moonlit pavement.

  “Be careful!” I shouted. He wasn’t a skater, was too broad to be nimble, and hadn’t been on a board in ten years. I chased after him on foot, caught up, and stood in front of him, slightly out of breath.

  “Give me a kiss,” he said. I looked up and he gave me a quick, closed-mouth peck on the lips.

  “I wait for two days and that’s all I get?” I teased.

  I leaned up and in for more. This time, he kissed me deeply. Open mouth, tongue on teeth, breath on breath. His wide hand reached around my waist and scooped me in, pulling me close and tight. It was the kiss I had been waiting for. I didn’t want it to stop, but he pulled away.

  “Not here,” he said, looking toward the hotel entrance.

  I bent down, grabbed my board, and skated to a far-off, empty corner of the parking lot that was illuminated only by dim streetlights and moonlight. I looked over my shoulder. He was chasing me. I squealed and jumped off the board as he reached for my waist. My board rolled away but I remained behind, held in his arms.

  We kissed, the endless kind of kiss where the world stops to revolve around you. My hands roamed, trailing his neckline and tracing his tattooed arms. I craved him, even though he was right there in front of me. It had been four weeks since our last kiss, and my anticipation was finally being fulfilled.

  “I could probably kiss you like this forever,” he said into my lips.

  “I don’t mind. I could forever, too,” I responded.

  We reexplored each other under the streetlight. He was the perfect height for me to lean my forehead into his neck, rest my cheek on his chest, and wrap my arms around his waist. His kisses were even better than I remembered. We would have stood there longer if we hadn’t been interrupted by his band members’ voices. They were looking for us. I grabbed the board and, with Yusuf chasing on foot behind, skated farther away.

  Everyone else had gone to bed, so we snuck into the backseat of my car. It was dark outside, but we still felt like we could get caught at any moment. The energy in the car was explosive, the windows steamed immediately.

  The lyrics “Why won’t you milk me all through Hijrah? Am I burning up your oil fields? Subhanallah, lehnga utaar . . . ” kept running through my mind. And I knew listening to Yusuf’s album would never be the same again.

  I left the hotel the next morning without a proper good-bye. I had to hit the road to go back home to Los Angeles. But I knew the punk entourage would be close behind: They had a show in L.A. three nights later.

  As I drove down I-5, I felt changed. Complete. After only forty-eight hours, I had fallen in love with each of the people I had met in this so-called scene, individually and as a collective. It was a space where connections were instant. We had prayed together behind the punk venue and prayed together to honor a marriage. At the intersection of prayer, punk, and love, I had finally found my people.

  My parents had never understood why the intersection of being Muslim, an activist, and a punk was so important to me. Growing up, I led a life of duality—the secret life of a punk-rocking activist combined with the home life of a pious Muslim daughter. As the oldest of three daughters to Bangladeshi immigrants, I was the guinea pig who wasn’t allowed to do anything. Sleepovers were out of the question, and when I became a teenager, the only way I was allowed to go to a punk show was if my mother waited in the parking lot while I was in the pit. And Allah forbid that my dad ever found out about it—I would have been kicked out of the house had he known I was crowd-surfing, with the hands of boys holding my body up.

  So I learned early on how to keep secrets. As long as I was home in time for Maghrib prayer and in my room doing homework, my parents left me alone. Little did they know, I was listening to punk music and reading Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. They wanted me to become an engineer, but I went against their wishes and became a political activist. They wanted me to buy a status-symbol car, but I drove a hooptie ride while starting a nonprofit organization. And forget boys. They learned early on that with my piercings, colored hair, and “independence,” I wasn’t the biodata type. I dated throughout my twenties; I just didn’t tell my parents that. As far as they knew, I was a thirty-year-old Muslim virgin who had never kissed a boy.

  That weekend in Oakland was the first time I felt completely free to be myself. I could talk about Rancid lyrics and fighting against racial profiling in the same breath, and top it off with a “fuck that shit, inshAllah,” and no one would blink. Secrets? These were the people at the heart of living secret dual lives—with them, there were no secrets. They just knew.

  And Yusuf. He knew all my secrets and adored me for all my parts—whether punk, Muslim, or activist. Unlike any other guy I had dated, he understood me through and through. The last thing I wanted was to be his groupie. Maybe it was because of our three-year online friendship, but I felt connected to him. He wasn’t a one-woman man, but my heart pulled me toward him anyway.

  I was sitting on a sofa, wearing a summer dress, my bare legs on Yusuf’s lap. He caressed my skin, periodically kissing my knees and playing with my toes. It was 1:00 AM, and the band members were spread out across every spare inch of carpet in a friend’s two-bedroom Los Angeles apartment, sleeping.

  It was hard for Yusuf and me to downplay our chemistry. We were being silly, laughing at everything, as he kissed my knees. I’d never seen him act goofy before, and it was adorable. It was the first time that I thought there could be something more between us.

  “We have roof access!” a punker proclaimed, after returning from a quick exploration of the building. Sleeping under the stars sounded perfect.

  Yusuf and I went down to my car to get my futon and air mattress and take them to the roof. But when we got into my car, he pulled me in for a kiss. The attraction had been building. We sat there, getting our fill after having not kissed in two days.

  “We should go; they’re waiting for us,” I mumbled into his lips. “I’m going to miss you when you leave Los Angeles.”

  “I haven’t left yet. I’m still here.” He kissed my lips tenderly. “Come with us to Austin. You’ll love it there. It’ll be fun.”

  The truth was, I had been thinking of joining the tour and had even mapped out the drive to Texas on my laptop. But I hadn’t wanted to plan anything until I knew what the vibe was between us, and of course, I had been waiting for an invitation.

  He took my silence as hesitation and leaned back in his seat. “You have to work on your book. I know, I know . . . ”

  My original plan had been to work on a book as soon as I became unemployed. It was a reason, yes. But it wasn’t the reason. “No, no. It’s not that. It’s driving back solo from Texas. Let me think about it . . . But we should go inside now. Your friends are waiting for us.”

  We went upstairs and cuddled on the apartment-building roof, babbling incoherently while gazing at the moon. We talked about stars, palm trees, and planets. But the topic didn’t matter. All that mattered was that we finally got to lie in each other’s arms until we drifted off to sleep under
the Los Angeles sky.

  We held hands under the table like giddy teenagers. It was another 3:00 AM meal after another sweaty show; this time, the Muslim punks were at a Jewish deli. There were probably fifteen other people around us, but we were in our own little bubble.

  “Can we talk outside?” he asked. As soon as we were out of the band’s view, he grabbed me. “I like you. I really, really like you,” he said in a singsong voice.

  “Oh yeah? How much?” I teased.

  “Like . . . a whole lot.”

  “I’m not just another one of your groupies?”

  He hesitated. “Do you want to be one of my groupies? Why do you keep bringing that up?”

  I shrugged, unsure of what to say. I had mentioned it a few times already. I felt we had something deeper, but I needed to know if the feeling was mutual.

  “I like you, jaanu. I really, really like you. I’ve had this huge crush on you. I’d make up excuses to get you to talk to me online,” he revealed.

  My heart fluttered. I didn’t know what to say.

  He continued, “And I think you’re super cute. I didn’t think you’d be this cute. I knew you’d be hot, but you are so cute.”

  What could I do but lean up and kiss him?

  The last California show had just wrapped up. People were milling around the band’s trailer. I sat on the back of my car, devastated. The five days of L.A. bliss had come to an end. The guys were leaving the next day to drive twenty-six hours to their Austin show, and eventually back to the East Coast. I had a horrible ache in my heart. I had just found them. I wasn’t ready to be alone again.

  Yusuf came over to upload stuff into my trunk and saw me sitting there. I took a deep breath and asked, “What if . . . I came with you guys to Texas?”

  “I would love it. And we will totally help on the drive out there.” He kissed me quickly, and just like that, I was driving to Texas.

  “Can I ask you something, T?” he said, in a voice saved for serious late-night pillow talk. “Did you hook up with my brother?”

  It was chilly in LA. The post-Fajr sun was rising as we sat on the roof. My head rested on Yusuf’s little brother’s shoulder. He was nineteen, the youngest person on the tour; he was following the band for his college thesis and had gone from mild-mannered researcher to two-tone-Mohawked hype man over the course of the journey. He knew Yusuf ’s brilliance and downfalls better than anyone.

  I wasn’t sure how to respond to his question. Though we were now friends, he was still the younger brother.

  “Yes,” I responded cautiously. “Back in New York, when we first met.”

  “That’s what I thought,” he responded in a monotone.

  He talked about girls on the scene and how Yusuf went through them rapidly, whereas he was piously saving himself for love. I wondered if he thought less of me now. He questioned me more pointedly, asking for details. But I demurred.

  “He’s dating someone that he really likes now. It’s the happiest I’ve seen him with someone since he’s been divorced,” he revealed.

  My heart sank. It seemed implausible, since I had met Yusuf in New York City the weekend after he had broken up with his latest girlfriend, but what did I know?

  “Where does she live?” I asked.

  “In Washington, D.C. He’s really happy with her. I think things could work out with this one.”

  My gut wrenched.Yusuf and his brother lived outside Philadelphia; this girl was closer to him than I could ever be way out in California. D.C. was on the way home from the tour. He’d see her in a couple of days, after he left Austin, and I would be forgotten.

  “What do you want with him?” he asked protectively.

  “I don’t know. He chased me. He talked to me online for years. He pursued me.” I didn’t want him to think of me as just another groupie, but I also wanted to believe it went deeper that that: “I’m not looking for anything; I’m just open to what the universe sends my way and giving everything a chance,” I said, trying to convince myself.

  I thought back to my last serious relationship, two years earlier, with a black Muslim convert I had met at a Muslim spoken-word event in Los Angeles. We had dated for eight months, but I had never felt I was Muslim enough for him.

  Regardless, by our third date, he had been ready to commit, but I hadn’t been sure he was the one. And at the moment when I had finally trusted him and started falling for him, he had dumped me. I had waited too long.

  Ever since then, I had made a point of giving every guy who crossed my path a fair chance. I wouldn’t close off my heart anymore. I wasn’t going to pass up the chance to show that I could love—and be loved—again.

  We sat quietly as the sun rose in the sky. Maybe I was just some West Coast groupie, but who was I to ask for more? Our situations were complicated. We lived across the country from each other. Yusuf was on tour, and I had just lost my job. I knew about his six-month itch, his unwillingness to commit. He had told me he never wanted to get married again. I had known what I was getting into before I had gotten into it. But did that mean denying love when it was presented to me?

  I snuck out and left without saying good-bye while everyone was still deep in slumber. I drove home to the ’burbs, wavering between going to Texas or not. I wanted to continue the adventure of the tour, but I no longer knew if I wanted to risk getting hurt. How real could Yusuf’s feelings for me be if he was seeing someone else? I felt like a fool for not knowing. And I would be a fool to follow him to Texas, knowing what I knew now. But in spite of that, I found myself thinking, What if?

  My house was on the band’s route to Texas. I texted Yusuf my address and told him to swing by before they left Los Angeles. I decided to go with my gut and make my choice when I saw him later that night.

  My little car wound its way east over starlit desert roads, with Yusuf at the wheel. I sat in the passenger seat while the band’s drummer slept in the back. We were like nomads caravanning through the late-night desert; the rest of the band was in the tour vehicle far behind us. When the entourage had stopped at my house earlier that evening, my heart had filled me with a longing to complete the adventure. I needed to know how it would end.

  “Tell me a story,” I asked, after I realized just the two of us were awake. I was having the kind of nerves you feel on a first date. We were facing twenty-six hours of nonstop driving before we arrived in Austin, Texas, and we were only on hour one. What if we ran out of things to talk about?

  It was the first time we had been together at length without interruption. Confined by the car, with the radio off, we talked. Yusuf wove together stories of his life from his days of being a writer in South Asia—tales of violence and music—and described his passions and goals.

  He was different—intelligent, thoughtful, sweet—when he knew it was just the two of us awake. I felt a fluttering in my gut. I tried to quell it, reminding myself about what Yusuf’s brother had said that morning, thinking about how risky the situation was. We drove through the night, until his words lulled me to sleep. As my eyes closed, I knew that I was done. I had fallen for him completely, in spite of the risk.

  We arrived in Austin two days later, at 3:00 AM. All nine of us crashed on a college kid’s living-room floor. All I wanted to do was to cuddle with Yusuf and sleep, but the local hosts were excited to have the band in their town and wanted to party. And, of course, Yusuf was the center of that party.

  I left them, found a corner, and fell asleep. An hour later, Yusuf pulled me onto the air mattress with him, wrapping himself around me.

  “T, I love you,” he whispered. Even though I had been half-asleep, I turned to look at him in the dark. My heart leapt to my throat, rendering me speechless.

  I waited a moment before I whispered back, “I think I love you, too . . . ” But by the time the words left my mouth, he was already asleep.

  The Austin show was my fifth and final one on the tour. I bounced, skanked, and sang along to every song, wilding out like a teenager. I
t was the most fun I’d had at a punk show, ever.

  Yusuf found me at the bar after the show. He looked dazed.

  “Are you tired?” I asked.

  “Yeah, but don’t worry,” he said, leaning forward to kiss me. “I have enough energy for you.”

  My breath caught, and nervous energy flooded me. I had gotten a hotel room for our last night together. I grabbed his sweatshirt, pulled him into a back corner behind a wall, and kissed him fiercely, trying to get a taste of what was to come.

  The drops beaded on Yusuf’s brown skin and soaked his purple hair as he turned his face toward the water. His wet body pressed me up slowly against the hotel shower’s tiles. Cheap yellow light shone off his slick skin. My heart raced as my soul was set on fire.

  My fingers ran over him. The light emphasized the muscles on his shoulders, biceps, and forearms. My hand trailed down his chest, his ribs, his waist, his hips, grabbing hold of him and pulling him closer. His calloused rocker fingers tenderly followed the natural trail of water from hair to neck to waist and below. He licked me. Sucked me. Bit me. I took it all in, took him all in, until my nerves, my knees, melted like the water around us and I could stand no more.

  We finally satiated years of attraction and weeks of tension. Skin to skin, lips to skin, teeth to skin, we melded together with a fierceness and urgency found only in the most intense of punk-rock circle pits.

  “I love your hips. And I love your thighs,” he whispered huskily, his voice cutting through the darkness.

  “What else do you love?”

  “I love your eyes. I love your waist. I love your fingers. I love your touch,” he continued as his fingers trailed lightly over me.