The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf (2 page)

"Brian Lott, whyn't you go pick on someone your own size?" Eyad yelled at the boy on the dirt bike.

"Fuck you, raghead!" Brian shouted back. "We're gonna get all you fuckers!" He wheelied on "fuckers."

Before they got to Khadra's street her brother Eyad skidded to a halt and said, "Get off Hakim's bike and get on mine. 'Cause he's a boy and Mama might see you."

Hakim used to give her handlebar rides all the time, but she was getting older now, and her mother said she shouldn't ride with boys anymore.

The Lott boys had been the bane of Khadra and her family since day one. The day years ago when the Shamys moved in to number 1492 Tecumseh Drive, Fallen Timbers Townhouse Complex, Indianapolis, Indiana, on the southern city limits where the sprawling city almost met up with the small adjoining town of Simmonsville. Little Khadra had got out of the wide station wagon, blinking in the sunlight, a pudgy, shortwaisted girl wearing an elastic friendship bracelet.

There was her father, wiry and olive-complexioned, with glasses. He wore a short beard on a thin pointy chin. Her mother was green-eyed and ivory-skinned and lovely. She wore a white wimple on her head, and a long blue robe. The color of sky, it swept the earth. A boy with short, smooth chestnut-brown hair got out last, stretching. Khadras brother Eyad was ivory-colored like the mother, with the high contrast between dark hair and pale skin that many Syrians have.

Khadra and Eyad were unloading the U-Haul when they heard taunts behind them. Two boys with coarse pink faces, noses broadened in sneers. What they saw spilling out of the station wagon with its fake wood panel was a bunch of foreigners. Dark and wrong. Dressed funny. Their talk was gross sounds, like someone throwing up.

"Hey, Allison-Bone!" one of them called. "Get a load of this."

A thickwaisted white girl with a bowl haircut peered over their shoulders.

Khadra and Eyad were inside calling dibs on bedrooms when they heard the crash of glass. Beer bottles, a pile of brown and gold shards at their doorstep.

Their father went up to the door across the street and knocked. Khadra and her brother sat on the curb, watching as their mother swept up the glass bits with a plastic yellow broom. Skinny little white woman answered the door. Yellow hair like the broom bristles.

"Yeah, that's Vaughn's boys."

Sound of their father saying something. Stiff British textbook English, in an Arabic rhythm. Back of his head bobbing. He believed, he believed in the innate goodness of people, and in the power and sweetness of communicating with them.

"Vaughn!" the yellow-haired woman called over her shoulder.

Burly man at the door now. "-ACCUSING MY CHILDREN -OFF MY PORCH-BACK WHERE YOU PEOPLE CAME FROM!"

The neighbors on the other side were as nice as the Lotts were mean. They were a young couple and each had long hair and wore loose clothes and lots of necklaces. Lindsey and Leslie bewildered the Shamys, because you couldn't tell which of them was the woman and which the man.

"Miso soup for our new neighbors!" one of them said at the door, holding a bowl of something with a potholder under it. If male, he had very cleanshaven soft skin. If female, she had big knuckles and a very flat chest. This unnerved Khadra's mother. If she could be sure it was the woman, she'd invite her in, but if it was the man, she'd stay behind the screen door and be careful not to touch his hand when she took the bowl. What was she supposed to do? In the end, she smiled politely and thanked him or her, wondering what on earth was in the soup.

Khadra peers up now at the passing signs on the highway. "Home of James Whitcomb Riley." "Pecans, We Buy and Sell" (hand-lettered on rough boards). "Merchants and Farmers Bank, your neighbors who care." "Indianapolis Motor Speedway, use 465 to 65." Her family had always avoided that route this time of year, and she now does the same. No sense getting pulled into Indy 500 traffic. "New Palestine Jct. 74." And finally, "Welcome to Indianapolis-City at the Crossroads." Here we go. Looking for the exit sign that will lead her back to horrible little Simmonsville.

Back where you came from.

How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?

-Psalm 137

The first world Khadra remembered was Square One. This was before Indiana, when they lived in the Rocky Mountains. Four buildings faced a center playground, and around the playground lay a swath of green grass, dandelion dotted. Forming a ring around the grass was a sidewalk wide enough for hopscotch and Big Wheel drag racing. There was a willow tree on the lawn, which her mother called "the Shy Tree," its Arabic name (because look how it's tucking its head down shyly). The lawn was watered by wonderful spigots that made a musical sound as they inched around, chica-chica, chica-chica, chica chica. Then up swept an arc of water going back to the beginning, chica-chooooo.

"Mama, what's heaven?"

"Heaven is where you have all your heart desires."

Khadra figured that meant heaven was Square One. There were swings on long silver chains. You wriggled your butt into the seat and you got pushed up-up-up and you learned the lines of the Fatiha:

"Bismillah arrahmani 'rahim!" Khadra sang as her father pushed her up. Green grass full of dandelions fell away beneath her.

Alhamdu lilahi rabil alamin, " Eyad yelled on the next swing. He knew how to pump for himself.

Arrahmani 'rahim!" Khadra called as she climbed into the blue atmosphere like an astronaut.

Her father, pushing her one day, said, "Lift your legs hard going up. Push them down hard going down."

Suddenly Khadra could do it. "I can swing! By myself, I can swing!" Treetops flashed beneath her feet. "See me, Mama, see me, Baba!" And they saw.

In Square One, their mother used to be willing to wash Eyad and Khadra's bottoms. Your butt hung in the bowl, chin to knees, legs dangling down the white porcelain, you called, loud's you could, `Mamaaaaa! Pleeease wash my booottom!" And she came hustling. The big fat water tin was too heavy; a grown-up had to lift it.

One day she got a pink plastic watering can. It was small and light. "Look. You pour the water with your right hand like this, and you reach down with your left hand like this, and while the water runs over your pee-pee or your poo-poo place, you wipe and wipe and clean yourself."

"Ew„

"No ew and no phew about it, young lady. Everybody has to clean their own bottom in this world."

Alessandra-called-Sandra was from Mexico and spoke only Spanish until day before yesterday. A lot of the children in Square One were from other countries besides America. The American kids in Square One didn't seem to know yet that they were supposed to be better than the rest because it was their country. Their parents were all students at the same university.

Khadra and Eyad spoke only Arabic at first. You didn't need to speak the same language to exchange friendship bracelets, and this Khadra and her Spanish-speaking friend did. Khadra couldn't remember how she learned the new language, only that she opened her mouth one day and English came out. Pretty soon after Khadra and Alessandra-called-Sandra could talk to each other in English, they started making fun of the little Japanese boy in South Building for saying "I sreep in my loom."

"Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees, look at these!" Khadra and Sandra taunted, pointing to their non-existent breasts at the last line. The boy cried and went whimpering home.

"You be'd mean to that boy," Eyad said to her. He was two and a half years older than Khadra.

"You're not the boss of me!" She stamped her foot.

Her parents called her and her brother in: prayer time. "Hafta go," she said under the Shy Tree to Alessandra-called-Sandra.

"Why?"

"Hafta pray."

"Can I come?"

Khadra made her wait at the door, by the tin box where the milkman left cold bottles of milk at fajr time. "Mama, can Alessandra-called-Sandra watch us pray?"

"Welcome, welcome to the guest," Mama said, sitting the little girl on a slatted wooden chair. "The guest is always welcome." There wasn't much furniture yet. America put wardrobes right into the walls, saved you having to buy them.

Her father was calling the qad qamat. Eyad spread the prayer rugs. Khadra ran to splash her ablutions fast-fast so she wouldn't miss the bow and have to do the whole ralat over.

"Elbows, please," her father said gently, when she skidded into her place on the prayer rug, dripping water.

She stuck her elbows out for inspection.

"Dry elbows," he said, shaking his head. "Do over."

"What if I just wet my elbows?" Khadra said.

"That's not ablution," her mother said. "Ablution goes together, can't be separated. It's all one thing. Like prayer."

May my hands be instruments of peace, may my mouth speak only truth, may this nose smell the fragrance of holiness, may this face shine with the light of compassion, may these ears hear the Word of God, may this neck bend in humility to the One, may these feet walk in paradise.

Alessandra-called-Sandra swung her little ashy legs against the chair, bumpity-bump, while the family whispered the Fatiha, arms folded across chests. When they all knelt down-down-down, and put their faces on the floor for the sajda, her legs went still and her eyes got round as saucers.

In Square One, Khadra and her brother didn't notice how, near the end of each month, their mother measured out the cups of rice smaller and cooked a little less every day. They did notice marvelous snowcovered days, when she'd scoop the fresh fall into a bowl and sprinkle sugar on it and hand them spoons. Snowcones from God.

The family's first winter in the new land was a season of wonder. Khadra's parents took the children for a drive up a Rocky Mountain ridge. The snow gave a halo to everything.

"Look! Up there!" her father said as they turned a corner. Tall grand houses were padded with white down and outlined in colored lights, gable and turret and door.

"And-look down!" her mother cried, pointing.

There, spread below them, was the city, pinwheel after pinwheel of light. Spinning gears of light. This was amazing. This was America. The children marveled, but the parents were young themselves, and could hardly believe they were looking upon the world from these dizzying heights. They were a galaxy away from home, for the first time in sober young lives spent mostly within a small radius around Damascus.

Danger abounded. Pork was everywhere. At first the young couple thought it was merely a matter of avoiding the meat of the pig. Soon their eyes were opened to the fact that pig meat came under other names and guises in this strange country. Sometimes it was called bacon, other times it was called sausage, or bologna, or ham. Its fat was called lard and even in a loaf of Wonder Bread it could be lurking. Bits of pig might appear in salad-imagine, in salad! Jell-O had pig. Hostess Twinkles had pig. Even candy could have pig.

Pig meat was filthy. It had bugs in it, Khadra's father said. That's why God made it haram, her mother said. If you ate pig, bugs would grow and grow inside your stomach and eat your guts out. Always ask if there is pig in something before you eat anything from kuffar hands.

Mrs. Brown the kindergarten teacher poured the candy corn into a little flowered plastic cup on Khadra's desk.

Khadra said, "I can't eat this," her round, baby-fat face grave.

"Why not, sweetie?" Mrs. Brown said, bending low so her white face was next to Khadra's.

"There's a pig in it."

Mrs. Brown laughed a pretty laugh and said, "Nooo, there isn't a pig in it, dear!"

"Are you sure?"

"I'm positive."

She was so pretty and so nice and so sure. Khadra ate the candy corn and put some in her pocket. But when Eyad saw the candy corn on the bus he said, "Ommm, you ate candy corn. Candy corn has pig!"

"Nuh uh!"

But it did. And it was too late to throw it up. Khadra was tainted forever. If she lived, that is. Too ashamed to tell her parents, she waited in horror for the bugs to grow in her stomach and eat her guts out.

Go forth lightly and heavily and strive with your wealth and your selves in the path of God, that is best for you, if you but knew.

-Quran 9:41

One day Khadra's father heard a call in the land and, the love of God his steps controlling, decided to take his family to a place in the middle of the country called Indiana, "The Crossroads of America." He had discovered the Dawah Center.

His wife said that a Dawah worker's job was to go wherever in the country there were Muslims who wanted to learn Islam better, to teach it to their children, to build mosques, to help suffering Muslims in other countries, and to find solutions to the ways in which living in a kuffar land made practicing Islam hard. This was a noble jihad.

"Position open: Chapter Coordinator, Dawah Center. Develop Islamic education programs via logical Islamic methodology. Requirements: Practicing Islamic lifestyle, sound Islamic belief, college degree. Contact: Br. Omar Nabolsy or Br. Kuldip Khan, Indianapolis Home Office, 1867 New Harmony Drive, Simmonsville, Indiana." (Classified in The Islamic Forerunner)

So they loaded up everything they owned on the luggage rack of the station wagon and set off over prairie and dale like pioneers. Tall tall mountains shining in their eyes. Immaculate lakes like God's polished tables. Rivers that churned and frothed. Forests, high-treed and terrifying, and then land so wide and flat it made you lonely.

"Where's Syria?" Khadra asked Eyad, staring at her stubby toes on the back window of the station wagon where they lay on a Navajo blanket. Khadra couldn't remember Syria, although she thought of it whenever she rubbed a little boomerang-shaped scar on her right knee that had been made on a broken tile in Syria. Red blood running down a white stone step. Walay himmek. Ey na'am. Sometimes she had a vague memory of having been on a mountain. Dry sunny days that had a certain smell made her think of Syria, and when she bit into a tart plum or a dark cherry, her mouth felt like Syria.

Eyad, with his serious gray-green eyes, remembered Syria in complete sentences, not flashes of words and tastes. Life there had Aunt Razanne and Uncle Mazen. And their kids, cousin Reem and cousin Roddy, drinking powdered milk from a big tin that said NEEDO. Syria was Mama's daddy called Jiddo Candyman, with his tuft of thick white hair like cotton candy, throwing you up-up while you screamed with delight. The adhan floating down from up in the air. Streets busy with people who spoke Arabic in the same rhythms as his mother and father, ey wallah, people whose faces bore his parents' features. Here in 'Mreeka, no one looked like them and they looked like no one.