The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf Read Online Free PDF Page A

interaction closely for signs of dog drool. "And you better wash your hands seven times."
    Tayiba turned away, bristling at Khadra's know-it-all airs about religion.
    Her dad was a very pale white man with almost white-blond hair. Khadra did not know hair could be that blond for real. He was the Dawah Center accountant. He also gave "Why I Embraced Islam" lectures regularly at mosques across the nation.
    Tayiba's mom, Aunt Ayesha, did secretarial work at the Center part-time. She was thin-lipped, pointy-nosed, and sharp-tongued. Her oval, upwardly slanted face with aristocratic features was as darkest blue-black as her husband was palest white. She came from a family of schoolteachers in Mombasa. If she fixed a certain look on you through her turquoise cat's-eye glasses that were studded with tiny rhinestones, you were pinned to the spot and forgot whatever foolish thing you were going to say.
    Tayiba's sister, Zuhura, was a lot older, practically a grown-up to Khadra and them. She went to Indiana University, Bloomington. A well-spoken girl, she had adult conversations about social justice in Islam with the learned Uncle Kuldip and with Khadra's father and the other uncles and aunties. Aunt Ayesha, standing next to her husband, managed to maintain a stern gaze even as you could see she was beaming at her daughter's eloquence. Zuhura looked like a taller, plumper version of her mom, not like her dad at all.

    "She's full Kenyan," Tayiba said. "My mom's first marriage."
    It took two people to handle Tayiba's hair, which bulged enormously under her headwrap. When she let it out of its bundle, it bounded out, with a span nearly a yard wide. Khadra couldn't even believe how big it was.
    When Tayiba had to wash her hair, everything came to a screeching halt. "I can't go biking with you today, I have to wash my hair."
    "So? Wash it and get your booty out here," Khadra called up to Tayiba's window, annoyed. What a blow-off. "Wash my hair" -like that takes all day.
    Tayiba rolled her eyes. "You don't understand. I have to WASH my HAIR," she said. "It's not like washing your little ole hair, girl. It is a whole THING of its OWN."
    It felt weird calling Tayiba's dad "Uncle Joe," the way the kids in the community called all the Muslim grown-ups "aunt" and "uncle." "Joe Thoreau" just did not seem like a proper Muslim name. Uncle Joe was so white he had that blotchy pink type of face that white men had. The kind that, when it loosened and got jowly on older men like the school principal, made Khadra's mom shudder because she said it looked like the underneath parts of a man's body that should be covered. Why didn't American men grow beards like decent folk?
    After a while, Tayiba's dad changed his name from Joe to Yusuf. Then he grew a beard. And sent the dog away, to his brother in Chicago. He started to fit in at the Center much better.

    ... the presence of the heart with God, always or most of the time, certainly has primary over the ritual acts of worship.... Indeed, the rest of the realm of worship is sanctified by this conscious remembrance, which is itself the ultimate aim of the practical act of worship....
    -al-Ghazali
    Hanifa cartwheeled across the masallah-the prayer space-of Salam Mosque.
    "Betcha won't!" Khadra had dared, and that was all it took -Hanifa was off, a flash of arms and legs. She was like that, a daredevil.
    "You too!" she said to Khadra, flushed and laughing.
    Khadra, after looking over her shoulder, had just lifted her arms high in the air when an uncle walked in. She stopped short, and then she and her friend dissolved in giggles, and couldn't help having intermittent giggle fits all the rest of that day in Sunday school.

    Masjid Salam Alaikum, or Salam Mosque, was a storefront space in the black part of Indianapolis and had served the local Muslim community before the Dawah Center was a gleam in a bearded engineering student's eye. The Salam community welcomed the influx of immigrant Muslims in a cautious