Children of Dust_ A Memoir of Pakistan - Ali Eteraz [59]
The girls at school weren’t an option, unfortunately. Shortly after I started at my high school in Alabama, a girl named Mary had gotten my home number and called up to talk, only to have Ammi tell her, “It’s against my son’s religion to talk to you.” Word of her comment had gotten around so most of the girls at school had ceased considering me in a romantic manner. In order to elicit any interest from members of the opposite sex, I would have to publicly negate my devotion to Islam—a step I couldn’t take.
I thought back to Amal. She was someone I could pursue. First because she didn’t go to my school, and second because she was Muslim, meaning that the burden of my sin wouldn’t be borne by me alone. We’d both end up in hell, whereas with a non-Muslim girl I’d be the only one to burn.
I went to Saleem to ask his advice about how to meet her. “Suppose I want to get to know Amal?” I asked.
“Ask for her hand in marriage,” he replied. “Then you can start fucking her.”
I wasn’t quite ready for that. “How about I just send her flowers?”
“Why would you do that?” he replied. “Save the flower money to get some handcuffs or something.”
I dropped the subject because I didn’t want to tell Saleem that I needed to have my emotions involved. Something like that would make him think that I was gay. Instead, I got myself hired part-time at the Starbucks where I’d first seen her, hoping to run into her again. On the way home every day I drove past her school and her neighborhood. I never saw her, though. Not once.
Eventually I realized that if I planned it right I’d be able to see her during Sunday school at the mosque. There was a moment before the noontime prayer when the girls came out of their classroom into the parking lot to get some fresh air.
The next Sunday, just before prayer, I broke away from the brothers and slithered around the edge of the mosque into the shadows. After a few minutes the girls emerged. They streamed out in their blue and salmon and pink hijabs, dillydallying before ducking through a side door. I saw all of them—girls, real girls, the flesh and the fashion of the faith—and I smiled broadly. Their soft clothes rippled on their bodies. The frilly bottom of their white petticoats stuck out beyond the hem of their long skirts. They lifted their hijabs and held an edge in their mouth while pinning back their crescent bangs. I gazed at the curvature of their waists and breasts and hips. They were beautiful, unbesmirched by the world around them. Sinless in a world of sluts. Virgins waiting to be wived.
Then I saw Amal, one of the last to emerge and thus at the edge of the group.
She was taller than I remembered, and thinner. She was in a long brown robe that hid her figure and wore a matching tan hijab. I was glad to see that she wasn’t wearing gloves, because I’d heard of an old wives’ trick which said that you could tell the shape of a woman’s body by looking at the shape of her middle finger—though not at this distance. I squinted, then tried to catch the sunlight in such a way as to be able to perceive a silhouette through her clothes. As I approached, I tested the air with my nostrils to see if I could pick up her perfume. Nothing but the smell of the nearby paper mills. I looked down to see if her second toe was bigger than the big toe, because that was said to indicate whether she was domineering or submissive. What I saw so surprised me that I forgot to compare toe lengths: she was wearing nail polish. The fact that a seemingly pious girl would do something that was forbidden by the Salafis gave me a slight hope that she might be willing to engage in some subterfuge with me. Then I remembered that the prohibition regarding nail polish didn’t apply when a girl was in her periods.
Suddenly the girls noticed me and the whole flock sidled away.
Thwarted, I grew angry. The nearness of these girls that couldn’t be touched, even approached, even befriended, upset me. Why did I spend my life in conformity with Islam? Wasn’t it supposed to be so that I’d have more in common with other Muslims? Have