Chapter 19

A SPEEDING TAXI CAB

20th of Rajab 1417

(December 2, 1996)

Rashida left the garment shop for lunch and dropped by the apartment for prayers. She found Khozem lying on the mattress. She dropped her things noisily and stood above him. She compared him to an invalid with neither legs nor arms nor brains to function. Her softness with him in bed turned rough in the day time.

“Khozem, why aren’t you up?”

“I am up. I’m talking to you, aren’t I?”

“Don’t be smart with me.”

“It’s nothing.”

“You’ve been telling me that every day for the past month.”

“Add one more day then.”

“You need to find a job. We need to be married. Money is too tight.”

“I know all that.”

“Are you upset because of something I did?”

“It’s beyond our control.”

“Have you been visiting the Kaa’bah? What happened to that?”

“Everything falls apart. We spend most of our lives waiting for things that never come.”

“What has happened to you? This is exactly what you wanted. We have the Kaa’bah around the corner, a place with me in the holiest city on Earth, and we’re getting married soon. Isn’t this what you’ve been dreaming about?”

“The Kaa’bah is so beautiful, isn’t it? The angels come down and shed their light upon the minarets like a celestial waterfall. They float around without being seen, high in the air and swoosh! down onto that cool marble, checking us out, watching our every move as we circle that black thing around and around. And what’s the purpose of that? Why is one holier just because one prays near the Kaa’bah? It’s all some sort of twisted game. The more one borrows from the Kaa’bah, the more one needs.”

“The more you lie here the more twisted you’ll get,” said Rashida. “You have to move around, take part in some activity, maybe make new friends. You can’t close everyone out. We need some sort of social support. Why don’t you ask some of your friends down in the Kaa’bah to go out to dinner one of these days?”

“What if they find out who I am?”

“Don’t tell them your last name. It’ll be fine.”

“The time for making friends has come and gone.”

“We are still young, Khozem. You can’t expect to become a holy man overnight. It takes years of discipline, and right now you need other people, not only me, but other friends.”

“I don’t need friends.”

“Well, I do. I want to have a woman friend.”

“Then go out and get one. Why bother me about it?”

“What is bothering you? Get up. Get up now.”

She pulled at his arms, but he just lay there numb. She let out tears.

“It’s a long road,” Khozem sighed, “and I’ve let it get beyond me. I’m not sure why, but I’m not myself anymore. I need to be mylself again. Being mmyself demands that I run into some sort of failure...”

“With me?”

“You will always be my first success. I mean that I run into these failures. I lost it somewhere. It just vanished. I’m not cut out for much. I’m trying to be someone I can’t be. I can’t concentrate, and I’ve been sleeping so much.”

“Why not start by taking a shower?”

“And then?”

“We’ll talk about it. What else can I say? You’ve got to take a shower sometime. You haven’t said prayers for a while. So start with a shower, and then we will overcome the next obstacle, okay?”

“I don’t want to move unless it’s all laid out plain, and until that time comes, I’ll just lie here and daydream about it.”

“You won’t get very far. By the time you think it out, you’ll be dead.”

“One starts with his dreams. When you lose that, then your faith will be next. After that, you lie in bed and ponder how to get out of bed. What am I going to do? I don’t feel like getting up. I don’t feel like talking. It’s impossible to be anything in this place, to get married, to be a holy man. What’s so glorious about becoming a wise man of Islam? Is it nobility in being totally anonymous? It’s a prison. I’ve tried. I’ve done my best. I contemplate Allah all day. I picture him sitting above a blue and open sky, breathing life into the rotating planets, balancing the sun upon his finger tip, and leaving his creation spinning without an unambigious book of instructions. Allah is so far beyond contemplation, like staring into the sun and taking away a collage of white spots.”

“You’re thinking too much,” said Rashida.

“So what does Allah look like? Does he have eyes to see, a nose to smell, and a mouth to taste? Did he have a string of selected children? Does he have a wife to reproduce similar worlds? Is Allah guilty of neglect? Who is to blame for street children at the age of five? There are never stupid questions, only stupid answers. When an answer is not known, the answer becomes Allah, because Allah alone is the reason behind reasoning itself. Let me lie here. Leave me alone.”