How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position (11 page)

Ravi was not entirely wrong. When I disclosed Ravi’s prank to Ms. Marx—I put it in the light of a practical joke played by him and she never conceded that it might have influenced her to start dating me—a shadow of irritation crossed her face. Two small vertical creases appeared between her eyebrows; I now know that they are a sign of anger. But then she laughed. And she agreed to see me again.

For the first time in my years in Denmark, I heard the sounds of domestic strife as I walked up the stairs that night. The evidence I had seen all around me—even the statistics of a nearly 50 percent divorce rate, which, Ravi perversely claimed, was slightly less disturbing than the statistics of a one percent divorce rate in India. But I had never heard the sounds of domestic strife. Not in Denmark.

The sounds came from the twin-flat of Great Claus and Pernille. First, a torrent of high-pitched Danish words (which I did not understand) from Pernille. Then a great booming “nej, nej, nej, jeg har sagt nej”—no, no, no, I have said no—from Claus, which was rudimentary and loud enough for me to understand. Then china or glass being smashed on the floor, a language that needs no interpretation across cultures. The slamming of a door. And then that loudest of noises: silence.

THE PRINCIPAL CLAUS

Ravi had spent the 1st of May trying to find a single public event or protest in the city that was, in his words, worthy of the occasion. It was an annual ritual with him. As usual, he had failed.

But this year, he took the disappointment quite well. He did not talk about how Denmark was the only modern country that never had and never would have a revolution, or try to explain why this peculiar quirk of Danish history could be traced to the mid-nineteenth century founding of the Tivoli Entertainment Park, for the distraction of the people, in Copenhagen. He even ignored the usual rhetoric put forth by the usual Danish politicians calling for the abolishment of Labor Day and its replacement by the Queen’s Birthday as a “truly Danish event.”

I had noticed this in recent weeks: his love for Lena had made him less critical, or at least more forgiving. It made me overcome the irritation that I felt at times at Ravi’s tolerance of Karim Bhai’s more Islamic habits. Ravi, despite all his cracks, was someone who put people first. In those days, not uninfluenced by a lecture I had written on Swift, I saw in Ravi the shade of that caustic Irish writer who, in response to his critics, had claimed he did not hate humankind—because, unlike his critics, he was never surprised by human failings. Perhaps I was wrong in that too. Perhaps Ravi expected more from humankind than Swift. I am certain he expected more from Lena.

One morning, late in May, Karim Bhai turned to us over breakfast, with his dark-edged baby-eyes, and said, “Will both of you be here on Saturday afternoon next week? Ajsa wants to drop in and pick up her things.”

Ajsa still had a few boxes and books stored away in the flat. It looked like she had finally found space for them in the place she shared with Ibrahim.

Ravi was going to be away for the weekend with Lena. He said so.

“Are you working on Saturday, Karim Bhai?” he asked.

“No, actually, I am not,” replied Karim.

“Then you won’t need us,” said Ravi. “She just has some odds and ends. You will manage between the two of you.”

Ravi, despite his interest in Karim’s faith, could be surprisingly blind at times to its intensity and rigidity. I knew by now that Karim Bhai wanted one of us around because he would not allow himself to be alone in a flat with a woman he was not married to and who was not related to him by blood.

I agreed to stay and help them move Ajsa’s stuff. Karim looked relieved. His chastity was no longer under threat by the dangerous and decadent sex, I supposed.

Ajsa was thinner than I remembered her. The crow’s feet around her eyes, the slightly cavernous look on her face, accentuated her surprising leanness. Was it because the weather had removed some extra layers of clothes from her, from all of us? Or had she lost weight over the past few weeks?

Ibrahim did not come with her. He is out with Ali, she said, and shook her head. It was tightly wrapped in a black-and-white Palestinian scarf, her blonde hair almost invisible. Karim nodded, as if he understood. Later, I thought about that nod. I mentioned it to the police. The officer nodded too, as he jotted it down.

Ajsa declined to stay for a cup of tea. It took us less than five minutes to cart her boxes and belongings, some stored in the basement that we shared with all the residents, to the old blue Peugeot that she had borrowed from someone.

We had already been out as couples with Ms. Marx and Lena—once to a café and once to a French film in Øst for Paradis, the alternative theater in town. “You can tell it is alternative because you hardly ever see any Dane under fifty here,” Ravi had quipped.

Now Ravi talked all of us into visiting Lena’s parents for a weekend. Lena’s parents lived in a village off Aalborg—very picture postcard, Ravi promised us—where they worked. It was just an hour’s drive.

Ms. Marx had trouble fitting it into her schedule. Her son was going to his father only on Saturday afternoon. She could not leave before that. Finally, we decided to go first—Lena, Ravi and I—by bus. Ms. Marx would join us for dinner on Saturday night—she had a car—and I would return with her on Sunday afternoon. Ravi intended to stay on for a couple of days with Lena and explore, what he termed, her childhood shrubberies.

As usual, we asked Karim Bhai to drop us at the bus stop. Like most of our neighbors, we had got used to hiring his cab in the black. He always refused to let us pay, but then finally accepted a sum that was, as a rule, a bit less than his usual fare would have been.

That day, however, he refused to let us pay, perhaps because Lena was with us. Was it courtesy? Or was he just being careful with a Dane he did not know and who could inform on him?

Allah-hafiz, said Karim Bhai to us at the bus stop. Go in the care of God.

Allah-hafiz, Ravi responded.

Waiting for the bus, I took him to task. Lena looked on, bemused.

“Why the fuck do you have to say Allah-hafiz, Ravi?” I asked him.

“Why not, bastard? I say namaste, I say goddag, I say Merry Christmas…”

“It’s not that. I remember you used to say khuda-hafiz. I distinctly recall you khuda-hafizing my parents with a vengeance when they visited three years ago.”

“That was before Karim Bhai. He says Allah-hafiz.”

“That is my point, you wannabe fundu! It was always khuda-hafiz in India and Pakistan: go with God, go in the care of Khuda, the Persian word for God. Now these woolly Wahabbis are trying to get all Arabic, and they insist on using Allah, the Arabic word…”

“Hardly an issue for me, bastard.”

Lena did not know whether to smile or not. She never really understood the tone of our conversations around such issues: our disagreements and agreements were too uncertain and disorderly for her way of thinking.

“Yes, it is, you ignorant kafir. See, Allah-hafiz already existed as a phrase in Urdu. If you said Allah-hafiz, it was a dismissive gesture. Like ‘Only God can put some sense in him now.’ So these fucking fundus are messing up my bloody language, their own bloody language. It is a matter of historical and linguistic accuracy: Allah-hafiz does not mean the same as khuda-hafiz in Urdu, whatever it might mean in fucking Arabic.”

Ravi mulled over the problem.

“Point noted,” he said. Lena looked just a bit relieved; she took our arguments more seriously than we did. In general, like all the Danes I had met, she hated conflict of any kind. Revolution was not the only thing Tivoli had subverted, or so Ravi might have quipped once upon a time.

After this discussion, to be fair, Ravi went back to saying khuda-hafiz to Karim Bhai. But Karim Bhai either did not notice the switch or obdurately continued replacing the Persian “khuda” with the Arabic “Allah” in his responses.

Lena’s parents had one of those flat-roofed, yellow-brick houses that appear to have been built in clusters all over Denmark during the 1970s. They are neither ugly nor attractive. They are convenient and nondescript. Like Denmark, Ravi would have snorted in the past. But flippancy was not on Ravi’s mind when we alighted from the large Ford that Lena’s “far”—dad—had driven to the bus stop to fetch us.

Far was tall and lean, impeccably dressed, with grizzled blonde hair: he spoke—no matter what the language—with such precision that it was easy to locate the source of Lena’s drive for perfect poise and control. Apart from that, he did not resemble Lena. Mor—mum—was a broader and older version of Lena, but she exuded the kind of natural warmth that Lena lacked to my mind. No, Ravi would not agree with that. He always saw Lena as a person capable of more than she allowed herself.

We entered the house through the kitchen. It was large and comfortably furnished. The sitting room was big enough to contain two sets of sofas. There was a piano. There was art on the walls: mostly lithographs and watercolors. It was tasteful but not the sort of serious stuff that hung in Claus’s flat: one had to be an art fanatic to have dinner under a painting by Michael Kvium, Ravi had once observed, and I agreed. A white PH artichoke lamp hung in the dining room.

It was the kind of house—comfortable, polished and predictably domestic—that would have elicited scathing comments from Ravi in the past. But he was on his best behavior now. He could not refrain from indulging in the occasional quibble, but he consciously avoided commenting on Danes or Denmark. I had never imagined him capable of such restraint.

After tea, we went for a walk in a neighboring forest—the trees had been planted in straight lines, crisscross, and Ravi could not help quipping that Danish forests were remarkably well-behaved. When we returned to the house, Ms. Marx had arrived. She was sitting in her station wagon, listening to the radio and waiting for us.

Ms. Marx and I were given the main guestroom, in the basement, while Lena and Ravi put their bags in the other guestroom, which had once been a sauna and still had florid yellow wood paneling everywhere. Ravi and Lena disappeared into the sauna-bedroom for a short while: they had not been alone for hours. All through the walk, I had noticed their hands fluttering like butterflies over each other, restrained only by the fact that Lena’s parents were walking with us. In this, both Lena and Ravi were surprisingly conservative. They seldom kissed and never fumbled in public. But it was difficult not to notice how they automatically drew together as they walked, how their eyes swept each other relentlessly, caressing the sight of the other.

Dinner was cooked by Lena’s parents. It was roasted duck in brun sauce, a Christmas specialty, which was the only meat dish Lena allowed herself. Ravi had offered to make something Indian—he had brought some of his powders and curries along—but Lena’s parents would not hear of it. He was to cook tomorrow night instead.

“Why don’t you two stay on, ba…?” he said to me, managing to stifle the customary “bastard” out of consideration for the sensibilities of Lena’s parents. But both Ms. Marx and I had classes on Monday morning, and we needed to get back and prepare the next day.

What do I recall of the dinner?

Not much. It was a brilliant evening, probably: Lena and Ravi kept the conversation going, and Lena’s parents were unusually well-informed and articulate. Ms. Marx, like me, is a quieter person; we needed to add only the odd bit of response or query. The food was good, the conversation was pleasant; the wine flowed. Ravi made a rare exception to one of his unspoken rules and played the piano—some lively Mozart, I assumed, though I have little knowledge of European classical music—with bravado and aplomb.

But what I really recall from that evening is something different. It took place after dinner. We had retired to the more comfortable set of sofas for coffee. Ravi, or was it I, brought up some reference to Baudelaire. Lena, whose French was as good as Ravi’s, quoted a line in the original. Lena’s father was uncertain about the pronunciation of a word. I do not recall the word; my French is not good enough to enable me to remember conversations in that language. But I recall Lena’s father correcting her pronunciation and then, to be certain, consulting two heavy dictionaries.

It was a minor matter and it was done kindly, if much too efficiently, by her father. But for an instant, Lena looked panic-stricken. Her green eyes sought refuge in different corners of the room. There was only one other time when I saw her mask of confident poise slip—it was back up in an instant on both occasions—and that was to come much later, under circumstances easier to read. At that moment, though, as her father looked up the correct pronunciation of the French word, Lena glanced with something like fear at Ravi. It was as if she was afraid of falling in his esteem.

The next morning was Sunday and Ravi did something uncharacteristic. Despite his strictures against walks in nature on Sundays, he went out for a walk after breakfast with Lena and her parents. I tried not to smile.

“That was a very pleasant stay,” said Ms. Marx, driving us back in her station wagon, after an early lunch. I agreed. I was too busy watching her steer to disagree with anything she might have said; I have always found it incredibly sexy to watch a small woman drive a large car. But I remember thinking that it was good Ravi was not with us: the word “pleasant” would have made him squirm. Or at least, it would have in the past, before he fell in love with Lena.

Great Claus was leaving Karim’s flat when I got back. He looked irritated and almost forgot to respond to my greeting. Inside, Karim was obviously irritated too. I knew that Claus and Pernille often confided in Karim. I assumed they had disagreed about something. But I did not want to ask. I had a novel to re-read in time for my class on Monday. It was not a novel I wanted to re-read.

Sometimes I feel that there is a strict rationing of happiness by nature or providence or whatever you decide to call it. Some dark-coated bureaucrats sit there, dour and rule-bound, and flick the switch when light gets too abundant: let’s cut the power, they grumble; let’s ration the water, they whisper; time to switch off the happiness, they chuckle grimly. With Ravi’s cup brimming over and mine around the halfway mark, which is all I have ever expected, a scarcity of happiness was to be expected in other quarters. The quarters where providence cut corners, for the sake of good governance, were those of Karim and Great Claus.