The Submission - Amy Waldman [124]
Nasruddin rued damaging the image of Islam. His own image had been damaged in turn. His brazen grabbing of Asma’s arm, repeatedly, in public, had started rumors, or perhaps confirmed them: a married man so casually handling a widow, especially one he had spent much time helping since her husband’s death, did not go unnoticed by his neighbors, or his wife. Every time he entered his house the temperature seemed to drop forty degrees.
But soon these troubles were forgotten. Letters were finding their way to Asma, even though she had no listed address. Unable to read the English, she passed them to Nasruddin, who alone saw the words: “we’ll burn you,” so wounding, given how Inam had died; “terrorist bitch”; “fucking cunt.” Nasruddin did not know the English language could be so vile, did not even know some of the words himself, and faced the embarrassment of having to ask his daughter, who knew them all.
Nasruddin wanted to go to the police, but he feared exposing Asma to deportation. He spoke informally to Ralph Pasquale, a beat cop he considered a friend. “Nobody forced her to get up there and speak,” Ralph said. His eyes were unsympathetic. “What do you want us to do? Park someone outside her door? You know how short we are on bodies. You’re always complaining we don’t do enough foot patrols. Don’t think it will sit well if an officer’s off the street full-time because the lady sounded off. File a report if you want.” It was the first time in years Nasruddin, so polite, so respected, had been dismissed like that. To be described as “complaining,” when he thought his requests gentle, was painful.
He felt a new kind of exposure. The day after the hearing, he went to pick up a set of keys from the landlord he worked for. The landlord, whom Nasruddin called Senior because he and his son shared a name, was also a butcher. Nasruddin found him in white cap and bloody apron, disemboweling a lamb.
As usual, no greeting, but instead of the usual barked orders or complaints—“Leak at 28 Baltic Street”; “Mrs. Whiting said your boys didn’t sweep up all the paint chips from the floor”—he got this: “The missus says I should fire you.”
Nasruddin had met the missus a number of times through the years. She was a full-breasted, red-faced woman who seemed to bear him no animus. “But why, sir?” he asked, although he knew.
“She saw you on TV defending that Muslim and thinks you’re on their side,” Senior said.
The butcher’s son, Junior, was young and good-looking and not so bright, by Nasruddin’s assessment. He was interested in Tibetan Buddhism and yoga: he would disappear from the butcher shop for a month at a time “chasing his girlfriend’s pussy to India,” as Senior put it. Junior assumed that Nasruddin’s brown skin signaled an encyclopedic knowledge of all things Eastern and spiritual, even though Nasruddin had set him straight several times, putting on a goofy grin to soften the corrections: He had never done yoga. He knew nothing about Tibet or Buddhism. And as a Muslim, he had no problem with the bloody cuts of meat in the butcher shop, as Junior had assumed he would. But no, he then had to explain, he did not want to buy choice cuts at a discount, or be given the less choice ones, since he only bought halal meat. Then he had to explain what that meant—“Like kosher, but for Muslims,” he said—thinking to himself is it really possible that a butcher couldn’t know about halal meat? And then thinking, in this neighborhood of Irish, Italians, and prosperous,