Children of Dust_ A Memoir of Pakistan - Ali Eteraz [52]
For our next stop I took the delegates to an apartment complex at the edge of the river. We punched our way through the security system’s electronic address book in search of Muslim names. I knew that the complex was full of twenty-somethings from Muslim countries who lived together in large groups and didn’t pay much attention to Islam. Prime hunting ground.
We would knock at an apartment door, catching the oblivious Muslim students off guard, and let ourselves in while invoking “Islamic hospitality.” At one place, as we sat across from four students—all men—our appointed spokesman talked in broken English about the virtues of being humble, the necessity of following the example of the Prophet, the need for rejecting corruption, and the importance of turning away from the three Ws.
“Are you referring to the World Wide Web?” asked one of the students. “I assure you, we don’t surf the Internet that much.”
“What is this undernet that you are talking?” asked our confused spokesman.
“What are the three Ws that you’re talking about?” countered the now-confused student.
“I’m talking about Women, West, and Wideos,” replied the spokesman. “If you are doing any of these things…”
The four students, sitting compressed on a loveseat, with a huge stack of lusty Indian films behind them, looked to one another and then stood up to try to block the Tablighis’ line of sight.
“No, no, no! We don’t do any of those things! How can you even suggest that? You might as well accuse us of murder! We are modest Muslim men from Pakistan! We are just students. We are here to study.”
The magnitude of the lie embarrassed the Tablighi brothers and they excused themselves. They felt as if they had failed in their mission. Calling it a day, they dropped me off at home. I was thankful for the party-loving college guys.
Once we moved to Alabama another Tablighi delegation came for a visit, and once again, despite my repeated objection, Pops dropped me off to spend time with them. I was to make myself useful the first day and then accompany them on their mission work, via their automobile, the next.
This group was led by a young South African brother named Adil, who spoke fluent English with an accent that I thought sounded sophisticated. He said he was very happy to be in the blessed state of “Allahbama” and his final destination was the holy city of “T-allah-assee.”
I put my head in my hands at the prospect of the long drive, listening to Quranic recitation and discussing various passages from holy texts.
Adil had picked up a bunch of young Muslims—most of them my age—from around the country. I was shocked to find that, rather than being pressed into service by parents, as I had been, they’d actually volunteered to travel with him. They talked eagerly about the American version of the Tablighi convention, or ijtema, where they had purchased Medinan musk and well-crafted skullcaps, had collected tapes of Quranic exegesis produced by the wizened Israr Ahmed and his Tanzeem group, and had consulted with the elders about what qualities they should look for in future spouses. I didn’t feel a part of the group and wanted to get out.
My dissatisfaction increased when I learned that one of the teenagers was the son of a doctor we knew in the Northwest. I recalled that Ammi had been keeping an eye on his sister as a potential wife for me and wondered whether he knew about it. I considered arranged marriages an embarrassing and backward practice and stayed far away from him, just in case he was conspiring with my parents.
That evening, as the missionaries played ping-pong, drank big pots of chai, ordered and devoured a pizza, and then listened to Adil give a sermon from his sleeping mat, I stayed in the mosque library, biding my time, praying for a miracle that would get me out. Nothing.
In the morning, as the group planned their missionary activity, Adil decided that he wanted to visit the Blackamerican mosque that Pops frequented.
The mosque was a small, newly constructed house on stilts across from a cemetery in a blighted