One Amazing Thing Read Online Free PDF Page B

they might all be outside by now. However, missing the Dhuhr prayer earlier was no one’s fault but his own—Tariq was honest enough to accept that. His own weakness had kept him from pulling out the prayer rug and the black namaz cap from his briefcase and kneeling in the corner of the room, because he had not wanted people to stare. He would make up for it now.
    His beard was itching again. He forced himself not to scratch it. He had abominably sensitive skin, easily inflamed, and he did notwant to have to deal with that additional problem now. Ammi, who blamed the beard, was always asking him to shave it off. He smiled at the irony of that. For years Ammi had begged him to get more serious about his religion, weeping and praying over his bad behavior in high school—his drinking and fighting and getting suspended. But when he did change, his mother was too anxious to enjoy it, because America had changed, too: it was a time when certain people were eyed with suspicion in shopping malls and movie theaters; when officials showed up at workplaces or even homes to ask questions; when Ammi gave a rueful sigh of relief and told her friends when they came over for chai that perhaps it wasn’t such a bad thing her son was so westernized.
    The first sign of Tariq’s change was arguments with friends (at that time, most of them had been white) about what had led to the attacks on the Towers, about the retaliatory bombings in Afghanistan, about what Muslims really believed. To argue better, he started reading up on these things. He visited websites with strange names and seemingly baffling views and stayed up into the small hours of the night trying to decipher them. He started e-mail conversations with people who held strong opinions and presented him with facts to back them up. Mostly as an experiment, he quit drinking. One day he rescued from its wrappings a salwaar kameez outfit his mother had bought him from India—and which he had promptly tossed into the back of his closet—and wore it to the masjid. He liked the glances he got from the young women, especially a certain young woman, and did it again. Yes, he might as well admit it: women had as much to do with his transformation as his political beliefs.
    When Ammi was advised by friends to stop wearing the hijab, he sat her down on the sofa and took her hands in his. He told her she must do what she believed in, not what made the people around her feel better. And most of all, she must not act out of fear. It didnot work. She folded the head scarves and put them away in a drawer. Still, sometimes he would catch her watching him adjust his black cap in the mirror before he set off for Friday prayers. Pride would battle with astonishment in her face. At unexpected moments, he would be struck by a similar astonishment. What made him change? Was it 9/11, or was it Farah?
    Farah. The thought of her pulled Tariq off the floor. He tried to stand tall, but pain shot through his neck, making him curse the African American. He put the anger away in a small, dark closet in his mind. This was not the time. He needed to purify his heart now, to praise Allah, to ask for help, to request blessings, particularly for Abba and Ammi, may the angels enfold them in their protective wings. He groped through the darkness until he found his briefcase, still standing upright where he had set it down beside his chair, though the chair was gone. A small miracle whose meaning he would have to ponder. He unrolled the rug, pulled on the tight cap. He tried to ascertain in which direction Mecca lay, but he was confused by darkness and fear. (Yes, stripped of pride in front of God, he admitted to the fear that ballooned in his chest every few minutes, making it hard to breathe.) Finally he chose to face the door he had been prevented from opening.
    “Allahu Akbar,” he whispered. “Subhaaana ala humma wa bihamdika.” He tried to feel on his tongue the sweetness of the words that had traveled to