The Submission - Amy Waldman [106]
“That’s ridiculous!” Sarge roared. “They’re his rights—we all agree. But he can have the decency to choose not to exercise them.”
Mo wasn’t sure why hearing this in the presence of Thomas and Alice made him uncomfortable. Thomas, from friendship, from intrinsic loyalty, would never admit even to himself that he thought Mo should withdraw. Alice was a different case.
“Do you think he’s right, Alice?” Mo asked.
“Honestly?” Alice said.
“From you I’d expect no less.”
“If I were talking about anyone but you—any other Muslim, let’s say—yes, I do think he’s right. I also think he’s an asshole who wouldn’t know decency if it pissed on him, but that’s irrelevant. I know you want your design to heal, and I respect that. But it’s not healing, at least right now.”
“Alice,” Thomas said.
“He asked!”
“I did,” Mo said. “And if I were any other Muslim I might agree with her.”
The exchange twanged dissonantly in the air even after the talk turned elsewhere. Half an hour later Mo stood, his legs cramped, the Space Needle unfinished, and said he needed to get home. The word burned his mouth.
“Good luck at the hearing,” Alice said, hugging him before he got in the elevator. “And I meant what I said: my opinion only holds for any other Muslim, which you’re not. You’re ours.”
“Alice!” Thomas exclaimed.
She rolled her eyes at him. “Mo knows what I mean. He doesn’t need you to protect him from me.”
Mo had been desperate to escape his solitude; now he wanted only to reclaim it. He gave an exhausted half wave and let the doors close. Avoiding the subway, as had become his habit—he didn’t want to be recognized, applauded, or confronted in its close quarters—he had called a livery cab.
“Mohammad Khan,” the driver, one Faisal Rahman, said without emotion when Mo climbed in the car.
“That’s me,” said Mo, grimly resigned to a long, interrogatory ride home.
But Faisal was quiet most of the way. Only when they swung onto the Brooklyn Bridge and saw the Empire State Building lit up red and white, like a parfait, did he speak. “The first two years I lived here,” Faisal said, “whenever I saw green lighting on the Empire State Building, I thought it was for Islam. I told everybody back home; half of Matlab still thinks it’s true. Then I found out it was for the Jets!” He started laughing, and despite his mood, Mo did, too. “But for those two years, I couldn’t believe how much this country loved Islam.”
When they reached Mo’s destination, Faisal refused to accept payment. “I wish you luck and blessings from Allah,” the driver said. “You will need them.”
Three nights before the hearing, Mo dreamed of drought, the dry ground hard. He dreamed of floods, his garden turned to swamp. He dreamed of locusts devouring plants and swarming him, and from this dream he rose, twitching, groped to the kitchen, took the orange juice carton from the refrigerator, and drank, drank with the same sickening weakness he suspected a relapsing addict must feel, but also the same sordid relief: this is who I am, now I can stop pretending otherwise. Orange juice first thing, an American routine, but with it he had ended his Ramadan fast. He didn’t even know why, only that he had woken with the sudden, abrupt sense that strength wouldn’t come from this kind of sacrifice, that his abstention would never be anything but hollow. If he couldn’t say he believed in the paradise fasting was meant to obtain, how could he believe in the fast? This Ramadan would test him even without it.
Once, about a year earlier, Mo, curious about his father’s newfound piety, accompanied him to Friday prayers. From the moment they pulled into the parking lot, Mo began critiquing the mosque’s architecture. The cartoon dome and minaret, the gaudy, chilly interior spaces: “No one’s going to find God in there,” he said when they