American Dervish: A Novel (25 page)

I shut my eyes and felt her lips on my forehead. When she pulled away, I turned and waited for sleep to take me.

When I awoke again, the room was dissolving into light. Before me was a tray of food. Mother and Father stood to my right. At the foot of the bed was a large, bald, potbellied man with a stethoscope around his neck. I had the odd impression that he was surrounded in a soft white glow.

“How’s the patient feeling?” the man asked in a chipper tone.

“Fine.”

“Hayat, you remember Dr. Gold?” Father asked, sharply. I remembered the man from the previous day, but I wasn’t sure who he was exactly. My hesitation irritated Father. “He’s your surgeon. He’s fixed your wrist.”

“You’re a brave young man,” Dr. Gold said. “A model patient. I’m sure your parents are very proud of you.”

“Oh, we are,” Mother quickly added.

“So how’s the old bod feeling?” Gold asked.

I was confused.

“The arm?” he prompted. “How’s it treating you?”

I looked down at the cast. My arm was aching, but I was getting used to the pain. What was new was a coarse, irritating itch along the skin beneath the cast.

“It itches,” I said, scratching at the cast’s edges.

“Well, you’ll have to get used to that, son,” Gold said. “It can itch like hell under there. Especially with the new stuff we’ve got on you…But you’re a tough kid. I could tell that from the way you handled everybody moving that arm around last night. Won’t be the end of the world…Now, tell me: You still feeling pain?”

“Little bit.”

Gold nodded, assessing my response. Then he looked down and made a note on the chart he was holding. “We’ll up the dosage on the painkillers just a touch. No need for him to be in any pain at all…”

“How much longer do you want to keep him here?” Mother asked.

“No more than another couple of days. Maybe even just ’til tomorrow. Let’s see what the X-rays show.”

I looked over at the side table, on which a large bouquet of yellow roses stood. They were giving off the same soft light as the doctor. I stared, intrigued. And the longer I did, the more deeply the roses seemed to recede, disappearing into this diaphanous glow.

“Those are from your auntie. She’s so worried for you…,” Mother said, trailing off. She stole an almost fearful glance at Father, then stepped between us, reaching her hand out to check my forehead. “He’s still a little hot,” she said.

“We’re on top of it,” Gold said. “Fever’s down. This is normal post-op stuff.”

“So he’s fine?”

“Couldn’t be better—all things considered, of course.” Gold laughed, then turned to me. “So listen, son. We’re going to do another X-ray—maybe later today. We’ll be sure to go gently, but I just want you to know, okay?”

I nodded. Dr. Gold turned to my parents. “Nothing to worry about. I’ll check back in on him later today.”

“Hayat. Thank Dr. Gold,” Mother said.

“Thank you, Dr. Gold.”

“No problem, young man. Get some rest,” he said, patting me on the leg. Then he shook hands with Father and walked out.

Everywhere I looked, things were fading into a transparent haze. Even Mother and Father both seemed to be vanishing behind the peculiar and pleasing light.

Father cleared his throat: “So, Hayat…”

“Naveed, please,” Mother interrupted.

“What is it?” he snapped. “You don’t have any idea what I’m going to say…”

“Don’t I?” Mother snapped back. “Not like you haven’t been pestering me day and night about it? You’re
itching
to get at him. And I’m saying: Now is not the time.”

Father ignored her. “That man who just operated on you, Hayat…Dr. Gold? You know that he’s Jewish?” Father pointed at me as he spoke. “Hmm? So next time you want to go around bad-mouthing Jews, make sure you tell those same people that a Jew fixed your arm. And if he hadn’t, you’d never throw another ball with that hand. Or write with it!”

“What’s wrong with you, Naveed?” Mother asked. “Are you drunk?”

Father glared at her, disgusted. He looked back at me. “One more thing for you and your mother to think about…,” he said, his voice trembling. “If I
ever
see you with that book again, I will fix you. You can trust me on that.”

I wanted to ask him what book, but before I could, Mother started shoving him toward the door. “Get back!” she shouted. “Get out! Will you?!” Finally, she pushed him out of the room.

I turned away from the door, my gaze settling on the armchair to my left, where Mother had been sitting the previous night. It was brown and beige, its upholstery worn on the headrest. It, too, was gently held in the same translucence. No matter where I looked, things appeared to be disappearing into this gossamer-thin light, a luminosity nothing at all like the hard, brisk brightness of the morning sun bleeding through the mostly drawn curtains, and nothing like the fainter whitish-blue overlay of the fluorescent ceiling beams. It did not even seem like a light that illuminated, but rather was like a thing itself. I kept gazing around me: at the sheets on my bed; at the blank, gray-white cinder-block walls; at the flowers and the dark brown surface of the table on which they stood. The effect was not only visual, for there was silence in this light, too. And in this glowing, illuminated silence each thing appeared distinctly for what it was. A chair. A table. A flower. A sheet. And each thing held my attention simply, completely. I remembered something Mina had once told me: That God’s light was everywhere; one simply had to learn to see it. And she’d shown me a verse in the Quran to explain what she meant:

God is the Light of the heavens and the earth.

His Light like a lamp within a niche, of glass like a brilliant star,

Lit from a blessed tree, an olive tree, not from the east nor from the west,

Whose oil would burn and glow even without fire.

Light upon Light!

God guides to His Light whom He wills…

This is
Allah’s
Light,
I thought, looking around.
And He is guiding me to see It.

That night I had a dream. I was running from a woman in a torn
burqa.
She wailed and howled as she chased me. And then I heard a deep voice: “Come with me,” it said. I turned and saw the Prophet. He was just as Mina described him: warm, wide eyes rimmed with thick eyelashes, a full beard, and a gap between his front two teeth as he smiled at me.

“Come,” he said again as he took my hand.

Muhammad led me to a white mosque in the mountains. Inside, the mosque was filled with figures. I couldn’t tell if they were statues, or people magically frozen in place. The Prophet led me to the front of the prayer room and told me I would be leading the prayer. I sang out the call to prayer, and all the figures started to move. Amazed, I turned to the Prophet and asked: “How did they come to life?”

“Who?” he asked. I pointed at the figures now taking their place, shoulder to shoulder, for the prayer. There were only men.

“This is your
ummah,
” he said. I knew from the Quran that the word meant “my fellow Muslims,” but it wasn’t an answer to my question. The Prophet turned away from me now, closing his eyes as he prepared for the prayer.

Silence fell through the mosque as we prayed. I moved; the Prophet moved; the figures moved in unison behind us. The prayer went on and on. At some point, I realized it would never end.

I walked out of the mosque and left them praying.

Outside, the sun was shining, bright and strong. I looked down and noticed my arm was covered with a golden cast. There was a name signed across it: Yitzhak.

I woke up.

My room was dark. Cold air soughed through the ceiling vents. I felt something inside me, a gnawing, an itch—but nothing like the itching on my arm—that my mind tried to reach. Mina had said it was a great blessing to see the Prophet in a dream, but there didn’t seem to be any blessing in mine. Instead of staying and praying with him, I’d left.

Something about the figures bothered me as well. I kept thinking of Nathan’s story of Ibrahim and the idols that couldn’t talk or move. I turned in place, trying to doze off again. I remembered Dr. Gold. And then the golden cast from my dream signed “Yitzhak.” I remembered that was Jason Blum’s name.

Why does Allah hate them so much?
I wondered. It didn’t make sense to me.

I lay there, troubled, for what could have been minutes, or could have been hours. At some point, still only half-asleep, I heard the door hinges creak. I cracked open my eyes. A woman in white stood in the doorway. I didn’t realize she was a nurse until she’d stepped inside. I shut my eyes. She approached quietly, a sweet lilac scent floating in behind her soft-soled steps. She stood beside me for a long moment, and then the door hinges yawned open again.

“What are you doing in here?” a man whispered. I stole a peek. It was Father.

“I just wanted to see him,” the nurse whispered back. “He’s beautiful.”

“Julie,” Father said.

“I just want to see what he looks like. Is that too much to ask?”

“Fine,” he said after a short pause. “Just don’t wake him.”

“I won’t.”

The door closed. Julie sat down in the bedside armchair. I pretended to rouse, as if awakened by the sound of the armchair cushions taking her weight. Squinting, I feigned surprise. “Who are you?” I asked.

She didn’t answer. She just kept looking at me with her long, wide-set, yellow-brown eyes. Her hair was blond beneath her nurse’s cap, and her lips were thin and bright red. She looked somehow familiar to me, though I didn’t know why.

She lifted her hand and ran her finger across her eyebrow. Her nails were tipped with the same bright shade as her lips.

“You have beautiful eyelashes,” she finally said.

“Thanks.”

“I’m Julie,” she said. She got up from her chair and stood above me. She raised her hand. I closed my eyes. And I felt her finger along my forehead.

“Your father loves you, you know that?” she said. “You know how much he loves you, right, Hayat?”

I opened my eyes and shook my head.

“He loves you more than anything else in the world,” she added quietly. She pressed in and kissed me on the forehead.

“Don’t tell your dad you met me. Okay?”

“Why not?” I asked.

She looked away, considering. “I’m not the nurse on duty. I don’t want to get in any trouble.”

“Okay,” I said.

 “Look at him,” Mother said, pointing as we pulled up the driveway. Imran was hopping about with joy on the front lawn; Mina stood by the walkway farther on. “He looks so happy to see his
bhai-jaan.
” As the car came to a stop, Imran pulled open the back door and tried to hug me. “Be careful, sweetie,” Mother told him. “His arm is still broken.”

“Broken,” he repeated with a troubled frown.

“But he’s going to be all better,” Mother said. “That’s why he was in the hospital.” Imran nodded, trying to smile. I climbed out of the car and put my free arm around him.

“I love you,
bhai-jaan,
” he said, holding me tightly.

“He missed you,
behta,
” Mina said. “So much. He asked about you all the time.” Mina looked odd to me. Her face was covered with a layer of skin-colored paste. It looked like she was wearing a mask.

“How are you feeling,
behta?
” she asked.

“I’m okay,” I said.

“I cooked your favorite for lunch.”

“
Paratha
s?”

She looked at me deeply, and all at once, she started to cry. I suddenly felt like crying, too. “
Paratha
s were the least I could do,” she said as she took me into her arms. “I’m sorry,
behta.
I never meant to hurt you.”

“Auntie,” I said into her ear. “I had a dream with the Prophet, peace be upon him.”

She pulled away, surprised. “You did? When?”

“At the hospital. He looked just like how you said he would. He even had the gap between his teeth.”

“My God, Hayat, what a blessing… ,” she said, her hand on my head.

“Okay, okay…enough of that,” Father interjected from behind the trunk. “Everybody’s hungry. Let’s get lunch.”

I smiled at her. She smiled back.

“C’mon, c’mon,” Father pressed as he marched past us for the front door. “What are we waiting for? Let’s get going.”

“You’ll tell me later,” Mina said to me quietly once he’d gone inside. “Your father doesn’t want to hear us talking about that…so you’ll tell me later, okay?”

At lunch there was an argument. The phone rang as we were eating. Mina was sitting closest to it, but she refused to get it. Finally Father did; it was Nathan.

“No, no, Nate…you’re not interrupting. We’re just having some lunch. She’s right here. I’ll put her on.”

Father held out the phone to Mina.

She shook her head.

Father’s face darkened. He put his palm over the mouthpiece. “What are you doing, Mina?” he asked with a hint of aggression. He didn’t look entirely surprised.

“Naveed,” Mina pleaded. “Please.”

“Please? What…You won’t speak to him?”

“Naveed, please,” Mina insisted. She looked away, resuming her lunch.

“Unbelievable. Just unbelievable,” Father muttered as he brought the phone back up to his ear. “She’s in the middle of lunch, Nate. I’ll have her call you back. Okay?…I will. Don’t worry… ’Bye.”

Father slammed the phone back into its holder on the wall.

“He doesn’t understand,” Father said after a long pause.

“Not now, Naveed,” Mother said, commanding.

Father turned to her sharply, suddenly seething. “I’m going to say this once and only once. Don’t you
ever
tell me what to do or when to do it. Do you understand?”

Mother recoiled, shocked at his tone.

“Bhaj,”
Mina interjected. “It’s okay…let me handle this.” Mina turned to Father. “Nathan understands. He just doesn’t want to accept it.”

“Well, help him accept it.”