Chapter 7

MUSTAFA REBELS

December 9, 2014

On the next evening, a dull and cloudy evening, Mustafa found himself in his bed, his body stripped to his underwear. His head pounded from the alcohol he drank the previous night. A nausea gripped him, and although chilly in his room, he wiped beads of sweat from his brow and stumbled to the bathroom where he vomited. He had been sleeping for hours, right through the day. He remembered the previous night clearly. He wished he could forget it. He didn’t know whether his mother was telling the truth or telling lies symptomatic of her general maladies. After vomiting and brushing his yellowing teeth, he met his mother in the hallway; She was dressed in religious garb.

“C’mon, Mustafa, get ready.”

“Quiet, please, quiet,” he said, scratching his buttocks.

“No, we must go. Hurry up and change!”

“I can’t. I need a few more hours of rest.”

“No time for rest, Mustafa. Let’s go, get ready.”

“I really can’t. I’m sick.”

“That’s the devil inside of you...”

“Oh, not this again...”

“ ... yes, the devil. We must go to the mosque. Don’t you remember, you’re an Imam! You must learn how to pray, and the mosque is the best place.”

“Even the Imam must have an off-day,” he said sardonically.

“No time, Mustafa, no time.”

“Besides, they probably won’t let me back in.”

“Why won’t they let you in?”

“Can we go to another mosque? There must be another mosque in this city.”

“This is the closest, and it’s the finest mosque.”

“I just don’t want to go.”

“Doesn’t last night mean anything?”

“You’re lying. I know you are. Maybe you need a doctor. I’m sorry about last night. Really very sorry.”

“No time for apologies. Come now, get ready.”

“I told you. I don’t want to go.”

“If you consider me anything you’ll come. You are an Imam, the descendant of Ali. I wasn’t lying to you. I’m telling you the truth, may Allah strike me down if I’m lying.”

Thinking his mother a crackpot, the Imam donned the same garments he wore the night before. His motive was to see Nasiba again. Upon arrival at the mosque he avoided running into Nasiba, as though ignoring her would build some attraction. He avoided also the same men who threw him out. He kept a low profile and stood on the opposite side of the street while his mother entered immediately.

He considered finding a hospital for his mother. She had gone too far, and although he felt a profound sense of guilt by pulling the knife on her, he couldn’t stand living with her any longer. But where would he live? He had no money. Where on earth could he go except back to the Riverside Drive apartment with his mother’s lies and ill-health? He justified leaving his mother by reviewing in his mind how he could have easily killed her, and departing from her home would keep her alive should the incident ever repeat itself.

There were so many places he longed to visit, such as California, especially California where the sun continually shines and the grassy hillsides roll for eternities, and the atmosphere overflowed with new ideas. He had to make the move away from his mother. California seemed like the best place. He planned on stealing money from his mother’s purse for the prized bus ticket. As a gust of wind tunneled down Ninety Sixth Street he made a firm decision to leave his mother. He imagined what he would find in California besides the bountiful sun. Perhaps the women would smile. Yes, wasn’t that the real reason for leaving? To see a woman and to be embraced by one? Isn’t that the ultimate reason for any man’s journey through the darkness, only to be found, or at least discovered, by the tender eyes of a woman?

‘A woman must provide peace of mind,’ he thought. ‘And in California the women are so beautiful. Maybe I’ll meet a woman who looks like Nasiba, yes, exactly like Nasiba, only that she won’t be so religious, and she will love me as I love her. Yes, I must leave.’

Mustafa heard the adhan being called, and through the muddled haze of his hangover, he entered the mosque inconspicuously. He went straight up the stairs making sure to avoid each and every believer. He sat on the floor towards the back of the crowded room. He followed the believers by bowing and prostrating himself at the appropriate times. He believed such actions would absolve him of his prior behaviors.

The prayers ended more after a time. He fought the urge to leave the mosque before the amilsaab’s sermon. He could hardly see ahead of him but smelled incense drifting above the gathering, fuming under the high dome.

The amilsaab then began his sermon:

“Most of you must be wondering about the doom which shall pass through this planet once the time elapses, once this world is overrun by infidelity and sin. If things continue on their normal course, the doomsday will be here quicker than we expect. How will we know the doomsday approaches? Well, let me mention the ways.

“The Prophet of God had affirmed that two groups of men destined for Hell will appear in the future. One group will carry whips like the tail of oxen, and they will beat people with them. They will be openly cursed by the All Mighty morning and night. The second group will consist of women wearing clothes which will reveal their naked bodies. They will tempt us, and we will be tempted by them. Their nudity will not arise from poverty. They will go around naked just to show off their bodies to men in order to seduce them. Their heads will not be covered. They shall wear their hair in a seductive fashion. These women will not enter paradise. They will not even smell it. Instead they will wear perfumes to trick the men they seduce.

“Infidelity shall be widespread. Men shall be believers by morning and turn to infidelity by evening. Knowledge will disappear and ignorance shall prevail. Adultery, drunkeness, and debauchery will increase, and as a result the population of men will decrease, decrease so much that a single man will account for fifty women. The number of children born out of wedlock will also increase, and when this comes to pass, the entire ummah will face the danger of the doomsday. As the tradition says: the Doomsday will not come until a scantily clad woman passes through a crowd of men, and one of those men will rise and lift her short skirt and engage in copulation with her. This man engaged in such a sinful act will appear afterwards as righteous as a Caliph.

“The Prophet of God (May peace be upon him) has observed that the end will come when killers will not know why they killed, and the victim will not know why he was deprived of life. Thousands of lives will be lost due to petty divisions in dogma, such that the divisions in dogma will unleash weapons of war, and people will never know why they fight or whom they are fighting. People will be killed senselessly just for their own misdirected causes. We will cease calling the cruel man cruel, and people will follow different paths to Allah except the one appointed by his Prophet. Men will worship false deities, and these same men will manufacture lies and lead virtuous men into wrong beliefs. Of course everything flows from the past. Each succeeding period will be worse than the former. But it is useless to complain about this apparent trend. We should be content under Allah for the period in which we live. We should give thanks that we live now and have the opportunity to change our sinful ways, for the odds are against us.