Children of Dust_ A Memoir of Pakistan - Ali Eteraz [122]
“This is incredible!”
“It’s a new technology,” Ziad said, “and it generally works pretty well, but I guess the police must have figured it out and started cracking down.”
“So they took that boy’s phone?”
“Yup.”
“Let’s follow him!” I said.
“Why?”
“That’s a recruit! We’ll tell him about our idea. How we’re trying to usher in a culture of autonomy and freedom that opposes the vice police. We won’t say we’re reformists or anything. Just concerned Muslims.”
“First of all,” Ziad said. “I’m not a reformist.”
“All right. I’ll talk to him.”
“Second of all, it’s just a bad idea in general.”
“Come on,” I urged. “Let’s just get him interested in the think tank. Don’t you see? This is a sign. Right before us we see repressive Muslims in action! It’s people like the vice police who give tacit and explicit support to all the authoritarian and extremist Muslims of the world. That boy is our ally!”
“I don’t think that boy would want to work with you,” Ziad said.
“Why not?”
“Because, look,” said Ziad. “He’s already gone and purchased a new phone.”
Turning, I saw that the boy had gone up the escalator to another floor of the mall and, with his new phone extended, was walking around looking for girls on the network map. The mall police, oblivious, patrolled their route underneath.
It upset me that there had been a resolution and it hadn’t involved me.
7
I found out that my designated sculptor was going to be overseas for a while, so I had to consign myself to waiting.
However, in the meantime I got a promising lead with respect to the shaykh. Rashad, one of the shaykh’s young supporters in England, who wrote to me occasionally, was going to be visiting mainland Europe for a few days and was willing to talk with me there. He extended me an invitation to meet him in Vienna, and when I arrived he came to pick me up from my hotel in a limousine. He was about my age, in traditional Muslim clothing, and his head was covered. He gave instructions to his driver in Arabic.
Soon we were seated in Rashad’s favorite Viennese restaurant. After making some small talk about the weather and our favorite philosophers (Nietzsche and Heidegger, respectively), we ordered our meal and began discussing reform.
“I read your seven-part series on Islamic reform in the Guardian newspaper,” he said.
“What did you think?”
“It was different,” he said warily.
“You didn’t like it?”
“It was an information overload. Muslims aren’t ready for all of that. Religions change slowly.”
“That’s why I want to meet with your teacher,” I replied. “He has a better sense of the tenor of Islam than I do. He’s in step with its rhythm.”
When our food arrived, we ate in silence for a few minutes, appreciating tastes and smells.
Eventually Rashad broke the silence. “What do you want to talk about with him?”
“I just want to ask him some questions,” I replied. “I want to have an honest discussion with him so that we can place issues of reform and moderation before other Muslims and show them that there’s nothing reprehensible in being tolerant and egalitarian. I want to talk about how he went from being a youth who was involved in fundamentalist groups to someone who is quite critical of them. I want to know what battles he has with extremism. I want to know if the Islamists trouble him, and how he responds. What sort of narrative is he building that other Muslims in the world can adhere to? Where does he stand on the separation of mosque and state? Things like that.”
“These sound like interesting subjects,” Rashad replied, “and we do talk about them regularly. I’ll speak with him and try to arrange a meeting. Perhaps someday soon you could just go over to his house and hang out with him and his family.”
“That would be wonderful,” I said excitedly, imagining a salonlike atmosphere in a large desert home. I could see myself discussing the finer points of Islamic history with an erudite teacher of moderation, tolerance, and liberty. I imagined the shaykh being something akin to Islam’s John Locke and smiled