Children of Dust_ A Memoir of Pakistan - Ali Eteraz [86]
“Forget it,” I said, feeling angry by the chador-girl turning into a secular whore. “Those are not the sort of girls I want.”
“What are we talking about here?” Uncle Saad chimed in, joining his wife.
“He’s talking about going to visit the desert,” Ammi said.
“Why would you want to do that?” Uncle Saad asked. “Tell your grandparents to fly out here.”
“I want to go to the desert,” I said firmly, “because I can tell you now that I’m not going to like any of these city girls.”
“You want to go to the desert?” Uncle Saad asked. “Then tell me—have you ever grown a beard?”
“I grew a scruffy one at college,” I said. “Pops told me to shave it off before we flew here. Why?”
“If you want to go to the desert,” he said, “you’ll have to grow a long one.”
“But why?”
“Those people over there: they aren’t like they used to be. If you don’t have a beard, they’ll beat you up.”
“I don’t understand.”
“They say that men should wear a beard,” he explained, “because that’s what Islam says.”
I found nothing wrong with that. “Well, they’re right,” I said. “Islam does stipulate that men grow a beard. If you don’t have a beard, you’re not a good Muslim. There’s a hadith—”
“If you aren’t going to like a girl here,” Ammi interrupted, with a bit of doubt creeping into her voice, “then maybe we should look elsewhere. Besides, your grandparents don’t seem interested in flying out, and I’m feeling guilty about coming all the way to Pakistan and not seeing them. Maybe we should go up north.”
I nodded eagerly. After hearing that in the desert the men were expected to grow a beard for religious reasons, it seemed like Sehra Kush was the type of place where people actually cared about Islam. I wanted to get there as soon as possible.
Within a week Ammi had purchased a niqab and the three of us were on a train.
I stroked my face and willed my youthful stubble to grow long like a true Muslim’s.
9
Neither garlands nor fireworks announced our homecoming. We were welcomed to Dada Abu’s house by a naked toddler named Usama who ran to the ledge above the courtyard and urinated on me as I entered. I should have considered it symbolic; instead I just purified myself with water.
Flim and I were quickly separated from Ammi as long-forgotten relatives streamed into the house and greeted us eagerly. Being able to speak Urdu, I was able to respond to them adequately, but they were disappointed by Flim’s incomplete grasp of the language. He was so young when we left Pakistan that he remembered only fragments.
“What has America done to this boy!” an uncle complained, and I felt a pang of shame for being an American.
Ammi, meanwhile, wasn’t feeling particularly sociable. Feeling dirty from the train ride, she wanted to freshen up, but the water had been shut off for three days. Except for a sun-warmed bucket of stale water, there was no clean water with which to wash up. She asked one of the cousins to go and purchase bottled water from the nearby pharmacy, only to find out on his return that the caps weren’t sealed. She made a disparaging comment about the desert’s backwardness, and I felt angry with her for insulting a place where people were not only religious but pious.
“You’d rather be in Karachi?” I asked.
“Yes,” she answered curtly. “They have bottled water there.”
“They’re irreligious there. I’d rather have a clean soul than clean water.”
“That’s fine,” Ammi replied. “Just know that you’re about to get diarrhea.”
“The Prophet lived in a desert just like this,” I reminded her sternly. “Things worked out fine for him.”
Ammi turned out to be right: I did get diarrhea. However, when I went to use the latrine in the ground, I didn’t indict myself for drinking bad water. Instead, as I squatted down I remembered the way I used to squat in the rooster position at the madrassa. It occurred to me that I should have embraced my childhood beatings, because they prepared me to be more adept at using a latrine. I exhaled a subhanallah. It was amazing the way Islam was everywhere.
After making sure that