Children of Dust_ A Memoir of Pakistan - Ali Eteraz [117]
Ignoring my work as a legal associate, I wrote more, researched harder, and spent more time on the Internet. Echoes of every bomb blast reverberated in my heart. The wails of those who were victimized by Muslim monsters haunted my soul. Islam was being destroyed, and I couldn’t sit idly by. My life became one of resistance and tension. It had no room for mundane matters. Not for laughter. Not for love. Not even for calm and relaxation. I was part of something greater than history. There was a civil war within Islam and I had every intention of my side’s winning.
I put everything into this war of ideas and I paid for it dearly.
I lost my job, my apartment, all my money, and my family. And apparently I was losing my war as well: the voices of violence were outshouting the voices of reason. Finally, in despair, after many nights consorting with Khayyam’s beloved, I forswore the faith of my ancestors and told people I wanted to have nothing more to do with Islam. In my delinquency I bought a one-way ticket to Sin City, USA—viva Las Vegas!—where I lived in a ghetto, wrote poems to dark goddesses, and intoxicated myself upon ghazals. Roaches scurried through my chest hair at night, and in the morning I was wakened by boys throwing rocks against my window. It was an inglorious and miserable crash.
Once I was in Vegas, the only activity I engaged in was to park my car at the Stratosphere at the northern end of the Strip and then walk all the way to Mandalay Bay. On the way I would pass the domes of the Sahara, the gardens of the Alhambra, the sinking ship in front of Treasure Island, the burning water of the Mirage, the sad facade of the Aladdin, the dilapidated visage of the Sands, and the pyramids of the Luxor. I repeated the walk the next night, and the next. My eyes were sunken and my soul was morose.
My torpor would last approximately three months.
One night, when I was at the end of my walk at Mandalay Bay, I was suddenly fixated on two robotic camels munching on fake date palms in a plastic oasis at the end of a long escalator. Their appearance was so sudden and perplexing that I couldn’t stop looking at them. I sat down on a bench facing them, the better to take them in. Then the camels spoke to me. “Go to the Middle East!” they said.
The camels, with their pronouncement, touched off an idea in my head. Suddenly I came up with a way to resurrect the reform, and myself.
That was when I had told Ziad I was heading over.
3
The next morning at breakfast, Ziad and I had omelettes with cilantro and tomatoes, along with Moroccan mint tea with the leaves still in. We took a kettle and our little green cups out onto the balcony overlooking the city.
To the right a palatial new building was under construction. I could see dark-skinned Indians and Sri Lankans going up and down ladders. The Arab foreman sat in his SUV talking on his cell phone.
To the left I could see the dome and minaret of a mosque. It struck me, now that it was bright out and I was refreshed from sleep, that I was in a Muslim country—and not just any Muslim country, but an Arab Muslim state. It was a stark reminder of the fact that the wheels of history had made their revolutions, and Islam, which began with Arabs but then got passed to Persians to Mamluks to Spaniards to Ottomans and Indians, had once again come back under the protection of the Arabs.
“Doesn’t the call to prayer happen publicly anymore?” I asked, turning to Ziad.
“Five times a day,” he replied. “Every single mosque in the city.”
“How come I didn’t hear anything this morning?”
“In the new houses the windows are soundproof.”
“So what’s the point of the public azan?”
“Gotta maintain the illusion of this being an important Islamic country.”
“What if I—”
Ziad read my mind. “If you want to wake up for the morning prayer? You need to do what you do in the West.