Children of Dust_ A Memoir of Pakistan - Ali Eteraz [115]
1
It was midnight in Kuwait. The desert, dark and forbidding, stretched to the stars. The airport, looming large ahead of us, was an oasis of light. The plane touched down with a soft skid and a bounce.
I emerged onto the tarmac and inhaled the warm scent of Arab sand. In the blue luminescence I could hear the whisper of the ancient poets: Dhul Rumma and Antara, al-Mutanabbi and Labid—their ghazals and their couplets, their odes and their quatrains. As I walked into the terminal, the faint sound of Quranic recitation coming from a young man’s headphones served to remind me that, still, it was the verses brought by Muhammad that were supreme in this land where poetry was born, or, if not born, spent some of its formative eons. I suddenly felt tiny—as if the three decades I had been alive were not even a moment in a world that seemed eternal.
I entered the arrival lounge looking for my family friend Ziad. Amidst the robed locals and bulky American contractors, I found him easily. He was a tall, dark-skinned bald guy, with a strong mouth and straight nose. He wore blue jeans and a University of Vienna T-shirt. His shoulders were broad, and below his shirt sleeve I could see a calligraphic verse tattooed on his arm.
After we collected my luggage we got into an SUV—a Jeep—and sped out onto a highway that cut through the barren landscape, the road empty at this hour. The vehicle droned on the black asphalt. We went under a series of overpasses, and the moon blinked on and off.
Ziad asked me about the nature of my trip. He thought I was in the Middle East to find employment—that was, after all, what I’d told him when I asked him if I could crash with him.
“So what kind of job are you looking for?” he asked. “Do you want to go back into the legal field?”
“Let’s not discuss this right now,” I said, straightening up. Truth was I had no intention of looking for a job. “How about we talk about the beauty of the night? This is such a haunting drive.”
“Is your résumé up to date? You did some contract work for a law firm recently, right?”
“Come on,” I said. “Is this really necessary?”
“If you aren’t here for a job,” Ziad said, “what are you going to do for the next few months?”
I chewed on my nails. I pinched the bridge of my nose with my thumb and index finger. My contacts felt dry and scratchy. I could feel little particles of sand going into my throat and cutting into my larynx.
Then all my anxiety blew off and was replaced with bravado.
“You don’t know who I am, do you?” I asked in a loud voice.
Ziad looked perplexed. “I don’t follow.”
“Who am I?” I asked, poking my chest emphatically. “What’s my name?”
“Amir,” Ziad said.
“No,” I said. “No, no, no. You want to try that again?”
“Not really,” Ziad replied.
“Ali Eteraz,” I said. “That’s my name.”
“Ohhh, riiight. Ali Eteraz!” Ziad’s voice became sarcastic. “You mean the anti-terrorist, anti-extremist, anti-Osama Islam blogger and activist who has written such essays as ‘Open Letter to Reformist Muslims’ and ‘The Hoor’s Last Sigh’?”
“Yes,” I said, pounding my hand on the armrest. “That Ali Eteraz. The one who is going to foment an Islamic reformation in the Middle East.”
Ziad blinked hard, bit his lip, fiddled with his cruise control, and sprayed water on the windshield. He didn’t say another thing till we got to his apartment.
2
Ali Eteraz—which meant “Noble Protest”—was my newest manifestation, the latest phase in my attempt to satisfy my congenital covenant with Islam. Ali Eteraz was the force that shattered the abracadabra of silence that had cocooned me after the towers fell in New York, that had kept me cushioned from reality during the several intervening years of law school in Philadelphia. Ali Eteraz was the one who made me lift up my head and take stock of the world at a time when I was happy simply to play my video games, make my money, and try to start a family. It was Ali Eteraz who got me involved with Islamic reform—an underground movement involving Muslims around the world who challenged the theocrats and terrorists that