Chapter 21 #2
I think of Jamie in Syria, walking along the crooked alleyways of Damascus, stopping at the stalls to look at what the merchants are selling.
He’d probably buy a rug that would be in the living room of the farmhouse and an arabesque painting of Quranic verses to hang in his room.
I wonder what he’d be like in my hometown.
I don’t know what I would be like. Maybe I’d be more myself, more saturated, borrowing color from the nature around me.
The seaweed giving me the green, the Mediterranean the blue, and the red from the pomegranates growing in our gardens.
I want this life for me so bad, it hurts to think of it.
There are just six people in the mosque, one of them being the imam. Some of them shed a few tears when Jamie tells the imam why he’s here.
Jamie’s trembling. I can see it from where I’m standing at the back of the mosque. His voice shakes when he repeats the shahada, the Muslim declaration of faith, his breath hitching.
My head spins from how this is actually happening.
That I’m standing here watching Jamie do this.
I feel a rush of strength, a comforting hug.
I’m not alone, and I see my identity through his eyes.
Something precious and wonderful to be proud of.
Everything that my ancestors achieved and gave to this world so I could stand here.
When Jamie’s done, the imam pulls him into a hug, and the rest of the people in the mosque all take their turn, patting his back and giving him their phone numbers if he needs help with anything.
They invite him to come in on Saturday, as the mosque becomes a school to teach Arabic and Islam to kids but also to others who need it.
They ask him to come during lunch, making him promise because they’ll be preparing a whole feast.
Jamie looks overwhelmed, his face a bright pink, and he keeps chancing looks at me like he’s seeking approval.
It’s endearing, and I can’t help the smile on my face.
The imam gives him a small booklet before he leaves, and Jamie shows it to me proudly.
“Your Islam for Dummies.” I smile.
Jamie doesn’t hear me, staring at the booklet like it’s a lifeline.
“Jamie?”
He looks up, blinking.
“This—did I really just do this?” he asks in a hushed voice. “In my school uniform? I’ve imagined this moment for years. I never thought it would be like this.”
I nod gravely. “You must now declare yourself as a Muslim to every TSA agent you come across as you’re entitled to an entire body check at airports.”
He grins. “Entitled?”
“Entitled. Subjected. Potato, potahto.”
We put on our shoes and Jamie skips down the steps, looking up at the sky.
The afternoon sun is syrupy, soft in her light, giving a magical air to everything around us.
Like anything is possible in this bustling city and that tomorrow may be promised to no one, but it’s ours for the taking. I think I’ll remember this day forever.
The roots of his hair are darker, the new hair growing black, but the blond curls look like the sun.
He swirls around, watching me where I am up the stairs.
“How do you feel?” I drink in his joy.
There are universes in his eyes. “Not sure. I don’t really feel like myself right now. This is an out-of-body experience.”
“Can I treat you to a cupcake while your soul hovers beside us?”
He glances at the thin air around him. “How about it? Yes? Thought so.”
I snort so loudly I startle a pigeon and immediately clamp a hand on my mouth.
He looks delighted. “Oh, I’m gonna need to hear that again.”
“Never.” My cheeks are warm as I climb down the stairs and walk past him.
We settle on cupcakes from an adorable bakery down the block.
A New York cheesecake–flavored cupcake for me and salted caramel for Jamie.
We sit side by side on a bench by the street, people passing us by.
It’s a sunny yet somewhat cold fall day.
We’re in a part of the city where the mural is in fragments all around us.
A group of people is taking pictures with Mama’s eyes and the pomegranate seeds on the ground.
One girl, who looks like she’s in her early twenties, is drawing abstract shapes beside Mama’s eyes.
I like them; they give the mural something different.
People adding their own twists to the art just makes it more beautiful.
“Bismillah,” Jamie whispers, and takes a bite. He nods empathetically when he sees my impressed expression. “Oh, yes. All the research.”
I cross my legs on the bench, pulling my ankles close. “You know you… you inspired me today.”
He blinks. “Seriously?”
I nod. “I don’t know if I’d have the courage to do what you did.
It’s not that I don’t want to be Muslim or wear my hijab.
I’d never give it up for the world. I mean, the hijab is more than a part of me.
It would be like asking me to detach my…
” I frown, trying to think of something profound. “My arm.”
Jamie laughs.
“You get the idea,” I say, and he nods. “I know it would be easier for me if I took it off. I could hide and blend in. But I can’t do it.
It doesn’t even exist in the realm of possibility for me.
It’s incredible how my main offense is wearing this piece of cloth on my head.
If I wasn’t wearing it, Braxton would be difficult, but it wouldn’t be like this.
” I blow out a puff of air. “But this is something I’ve known all my life.
I don’t come with negative biases a lot of people have toward Islam.
I separate the religion from the people.
But you… you’ve lived a whole life on the outside, and I just find it amazing you looked in. ”
“I read Malcolm X’s biography last year.
” He sets his cupcake down beside him. “What struck me the most is when he mentioned going to Mecca and seeing every single race and ethnicity standing side by side for prayer. That there is no difference between rich and poor. Between any color. What matters is who you are as a person.”
I get what he’s trying to say. “Because living in a society that judges you on how you look is a broken society.”
He nods, eyes clear. “It’s like the people there in that place embodied that knowledge. It wasn’t just words. It wasn’t something idealistic. It was real.”
“Our community isn’t perfect… and there are some bad eggs, but what he wrote is how it should be,” I say. “Muslims have to believe it. You’ll see it when you go to the mosque here. I imagine it’s the same in Muslim countries. I like to think it is. People striving for equality.”
He looks away. “I guess I was, and still am, a bit worried I might not fit in being a convert and all. Kind of like those first nights in Vietnam.”
“I don’t think so. There’s what’s right, and there’s reality.
What’s right is that it doesn’t matter if you’re a convert or born Muslim; there’s no difference between me and you, and you will fit in.
The reality is that this world treats us both very differently.
You can get away with a lot of things I can’t.
No one will ever know you’re Muslim unless you tell them.
And being white passing will give you privileges I don’t have.
But I will always fall back on what’s right, not what the world tells me is right.
” I smile, shrugging a shoulder. “Besides, you fit in with me.”
This time he does look at me, brown eyes molten like honey and warm like the earth.
Something stirs in my heart, like it did before on that bench outside Central Park.
The thought that occurred to me in Washington Square Park.
And I know what this could mean, but I don’t want to think it.
There’s no place in my life right now for whatever this is.
Even if, with him now being Muslim, I could let myself think about something like that.
But I do let myself say one thing. Just to see what it’ll do. “You know the first thing I thought of when I saw the color of your eyes was that I’d like to paint them.”
“Really?” he breathes.
I take a small bite from my cupcake to avoid answering. He lets it go but doesn’t stop staring at me like he’s counting every eyelash and freckle on my face.
“Are you going to tell your parents?” I ask, scratching my knee.
This sobers him up. “Not sure. Not now, though. They’re barely home, so springing this on them when the last proper conversation we had was which classes I’ll be taking this semester will give them a heart attack for sure.”
“Will you tell your bà ngo?i?”
He smiles, nodding. “Yes. She’s coming over during Christmas. I think I’ll tell her then.”
He inhales the last part of his cupcake, then says, “You have a sister, right?”
The familiar lump appears back in my throat, and I try to swallow through it. “Yeah. She, uh, she moved to Qatar last weekend.”
He sits up. “Oh.”
I stare at the gravel in front of me, feeling the heaviness of my phone in my pocket, where her messages live. Where she lives now.
“I’m sorry. I know what it feels like,” he says quietly.
I nod, biting my lip. “It’s hard living sometimes.
I have all these emotions, all these feelings and thoughts and conversations I thought I’d have with Mama, and now she’s gone.
Thoughts or conversations I wish I’d had earlier and there’s no place for them to go but inside me.
They just wander about lost. Now Amal’s moved to another country, and she left me to deal with everything.
And it’s just so lonely.” The cupcake sits like a stone in my stomach.
“Those murals are a lifeline for me. A way for those feelings to go somewhere.”