Children of Dust_ A Memoir of Pakistan - Ali Eteraz [64]
As soon as we settled into our room, he started grilling me about Islam. “Do you eat halal?” he asked, “or are you wack?”
“I eat halal.”
“Real halal? As in slaughtered in the Islamic way? Or just so-called halal, when you say bismillah over the meat like wack Muslims?”
“Real halal,” I said, suddenly wary of this “wack” category that inspired so much animus in my roommate.
“Are you a player?” he asked. “Are you going to have girls here?”
“No girls. That would be wack,” I said, testing to see if I had picked up the lingo correctly.
“Good.” He nodded approvingly. “Tell me: are you going to join the Muslim Students Association?”
“Of course I am. Are you? Or are you wack?”
He laughed at the competitiveness filling the air. “I already know where the next MSA meeting is. Do you?”
“No,” I conceded, realizing that he had won.
“How often do you pray?” he asked.
“I pray all five times,” I said aggressively, though it was completely untrue.
“Me too,” he said, nodding. “Let me ask you: do you shake hands with women?”
At first I thought it was a trick question. Didn’t all human beings shake hands with each other? Certainly I’d shaken hands with people all my life. Then I realized that Moosa wouldn’t have posed the question unless the answer was no.
“Come on!” I said, taking on an incredulous expression. “I’m not wack!”
“Me neither,” Moosa said. “Touching women you aren’t married to is haram.”
“I agree.”
“Do you lower your gaze?” he asked, continuing the inquisition.
I had no idea what he meant. Was this a code phrase that good Muslims used to identify the wack ones?
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t know?”
I shook my head.
“The Quran says that you shouldn’t look at women you’re not married to. If you happen to glance at one, it should be only one look. So when you catch yourself looking at an attractive woman more than once…”
“…you lower your gaze,” I concluded, putting it together. “I get it now.”
“Right. If you don’t lower your gaze, you’ll go to hell. I’m surprised that you didn’t know that. Haven’t you ever seen that T-shirt that some of the sisters wear? On the front of the shirt it says, ‘I know I’m hot,’ and on the back it says, ‘So lower your gaze because hell is hotter.’”
I shook my head. “Never seen those. But that’s creative.”
“Yeah. I saw one last year. I was looking at a pair of breasts in a mosque, and the shirt really put everything in perspective. Like, what is looking at a hot girl with mangolike D-cups when the punishment for looking at them is an eternity in hellfire? Fi nari jahannum.”
“I’ll keep my gaze to the ground.”
“I’m just looking out for your afterlife, brother!”
Once we’d established that we disliked homosexuals, weren’t wack, and indeed executed Islam perfectly, we struck out to try to socialize with people. I suggested that we meet up with a Pakistani girl named Kyla I’d been chatting with on AOL; she was also on campus as a freshman. I figured this would be safe since she was Pakistani, and all the Pakistanis I knew were good Muslims—in other words, not wack. We made an appointment to meet Kyla at the student center near the security guards.
As we got approached we could see her waiting.
“That a pretty short skirt she’s got on,” Moosa said, turning to me. “That’s pretty immodest!”
I immediately regretted setting up the meeting. “Let’s go back,” I said in a concerned voice.
“Can’t. I think she’s seen us.”
Sure enough, Kyla waved and came toward us. She was the height of wackness. Low-cut blouse. Lots of cleavage. She kissed cheeks when she greeted. She took my wrist and pulled me close for a hug that I couldn’t prevent.
Moosa was more adept: he avoided her sin-trap by backing away and saluting from a distance. He never did come any closer.
Kyla said she was delighted to meet other Pakistanis.