The Taqwacores (3 page)

Rabeya’s khutbahs, though lacking the gleaming punk melodrama promise of Jehangir’s, hit me with the feeling that we had done a great deal for Islam just by sitting there to hear her. She knew her stuff more than any of us, used books for furniture in her room—guests sitting on stacks of Betty Freidan and Adrienne Rich and Simone de Beauvoir, and Fatima Mernissi and Leila Ahmed and Amina Wadud and what-not-and gave everything she had, every stupid second of her life, to that Islam. But I felt like there was nowhere else in the world that she could give a khutbah to men, and for that maybe we would be the vanguard of something new.

When it came Umar’s turn to play imam, he did it all Sunna. Gave the proper du’as, recited ayats in perfect Arabiyya, told us to make our lines straight. Once while leading, Umar had us do an
extra sujdah. I asked him about it after prayer.

“It’s a sujdah-e-sahw,” Umar explained. “I had forgotten to straighten up after the second ruku; you didn’t notice?”

“Oh,” I replied. “Oh yeah, yeah I remember that, I just didn’t know you were doing, you know, a sujdah-e-sahw. That’s cool, though.”

 

 

Didn’t even realize Rabeya was in the house until I heard Tori Amos’ “Muhammad My Friend” blaring from her room. I went out to the porch and leaned back in the recliner ready to pass out again. The two mohawks came out and chilled. Jehangir’s eyes stayed glazed to the street in front of our house, as though if he looked at it long enough the road would just reach out, grab his neck and take him somewhere. Fasiq seemed focused on his feet. Nobody said anything for awhile.

Then came a dread-headed white girl jogging around the corner, dreads flopping around with her bounces. Hoped Umar wouldn’t come out and see her gym shorts and sportsbra or he’d complain about it when she was gone. Lynn, the Muslimah-gone-wrong; maybe it was Islam-done-
her
-wrong. She had converted to Islam, or
re-
verted to Islam or
embraced
Islam or however they say, from a Catholic upbringing. Somebody had turned her onto Rumi which led her to read up a little on the deen and she liked the general idea of it—you know, One God who doesn’t beget children, remembering your Creator five times a day, the whole racial-unity Malcolm sense and
theoretical
lack of a priesthood. So she went to a masjid in the suburb of Amherst and took shahadah. They gave her a hejab but were nice about it. They were nice about everything—those guys could say the meanest, most ignorant things but still use a gentle voice and try to sound rational and loving through
it all. Told her she had to break up with her then-boyfriend, get rid of her dog, throw away old kafr clothes and cover it all except the face and hands, take a nice Arabic name, stop listening to her favorite artists, give dawah to her family or else their brains would burn and boil like Abu Talib, the whole nine. Eventually Lynn gave up on it, kept to her Rumi and stopped going there. We constituted the last vestige of her abusive relationship with the
umma.

“Peace,” she said, slowing down to a walk.

“Peace,” Jehangir replied.

“Wasalaam,” I replied.

“Lynn, man,” said Fasiq. “What’s the good word?”

“Oh, just out for a jog. You know, won’t be long before I can’t anymore.”

“Yeah,” Fasiq replied. “Fuckin’ Buffalo. We have like five good months, maybe.”

“Can never tell,” she said. “Can’t wait for the summer to get here, though. Finish up school—”

“You’re graduating?” I asked.

“I mean, just for the year,” she replied. “Just to not be stressin’ shit.”

“Oh.”

“I still have a ways to go.”

“Mash’Allah.”

“I like the hair,” said Fasiq.

“Really? Thanks. It’s getting kind of itchy.”

“You should show it to Rude Dawud,” said Jehangir.

“Have you noticed his accent changing?” noted Fasiq. “It’s like, this weird hybrid of Sudanese and Jamaican.”

“I think it’s the guys he’s hanging out with all the time,” Jehangir replied. “The whole Caribbean thing, it’s rubbing off on him.”

“Is he still in that band?” Lynn asked.

“Which one?”

“What were they called... Save Me the Skank, I think.”

“No, they broke up,” Fasiq replied. “Then he had another one called Skallahu Akbar.”

“Oh,” said Lynn, smiling. “I like that.”

“They broke up too.”

“Oh.”

“Only two ska bands in Buffalo history,” said Jehangir with a laugh.

Just then Umar shoved the screen door hard out of his way and went stomping down the steps.

“Where are you off to?” asked Fasiq.

“I gotta go get ’em,” answered Umar.

“Who?”

“Rude Dawud. He’s down at the Jamaican store on Main Street, needs a ride.” Umar climbed into his truck and drove off, Minor Threat playing where they had left off.

Rude Dawud was one of
those
guys, you know, the automatic and necessary legends. He never said much, did not really do much to impose his personality on the place the way somebody like Umar would, but there was something about him that made you love the idea that he was there, to some extent a participant in your life and you’d relish his role because he was the only one who could fill it. Nobody could step into that house and take Rude Dawud’s spot any more than I could have taken Mustafa’s.

Fasiq, Jehangir and Lynn had gone inside and I had almost fallen asleep in the recliner when Umar’s truck returned, this time blaring Desmond Dekker’s “It’s a Shame” which I received as comedic simply for Umar’s usual diet of straightedge fare. When he pulled up to the curb, out climbed Rude Dawud—skinny Sudanese guy in sharp black suit, tie, shades and pork-pie hat—and a chubby dreadlocked character in red, yellow and green shirt
looking like the flag of some country, but which one I had no idea. Umar looked pissed when he got out—maybe not pissed, at least not any more pissed than usual, but vaguely
wary
.

“As-salaamu alaikum,” Dawud said to me with big warm smile.

“Wa alaikum as-salaam,” I sent back at him. I pulled myself up for a genuine handshake and embrace.

“This here is Albert,” said Dawud.

“What’s up,” I said to Albert upon casually taking his hand.

“Chillin’,” Albert replied.

“Where’s brother Fasiq?” asked Rude Dawud.

“He’s in there,” I replied. “Lynn stopped by too.”

“Mash’Allah,” said Dawud, and they went inside. I could have gone upstairs to my room but it was too easy to just sink in that recliner and sleep. When I woke up the sky was a different color and I felt as though twenty years had passed. I sat silently appreciating the time-travel of a heavy nap. Then Umar crashed out the door with a small bat in his hand.

“The screen door, be careful,” I said wimpishly.

“Fuckin’ kids,” snarled Umar. “Fuckin’, fuckin’
kids
, that’s fuckin’ bullshit.”

“What?”

“Oh, please forgive the language, y’akhi.”

“No, no it’s cool, what’s—”

“Those fuckin’ kids!” Umar went over to his truck at the curb and banged on the side once with his little bat, giving a loud
clang
that reverberated through the neighborhood. Then he turned and walked toward the house looking like he was about to tear it down with his weapon, but stopped at the sidewalk. “You know what they’re doing up there?” I automatically assumed it had something to do with
khamr
or
zina.
“They’re smoking up!” he exclaimed. “But you know, whatever they want to do, fine. If they want to
poison their bodies and their minds and destroy themselves,
al-hamdulilah,
let ’em at it. That’s not what it is. What it is, is... fuckin’ Rude Dawud, man... he had that shit in
my
truck. Him or his man, whichever, one of them had that shit in
my
truck. When Rude Dawud called for a ride, he knew they would be bringing that shit in
my
truck, over here to
my
home, to smoke with Fasiq. That’s just disrespect, man. That is total fucking lack of respect. All of them, man. Fuckin’ Dawud, fuckin’ whats-his-name Rasta Man, fuckin’ Fasiq, and fuck it, that bitch too man. Fuck all ‘em. Man, I am sorry for cursing right now, but I am heated. I am real mad, y’akhi. They just completely disrespected me man, and I’m pissed.”

“I understand,” I said.

“Man, if we were pulled over with weed in my truck? That’d be it. I would be busted for that too. That would go on
my
record. I’d have drugs on my fuckin’ record. Wouldn’t that be something.”

“Fasiq thinks that shit’s halal,” I said for no real purpose.

“Yeah, little hashishiyyun,” Umar replied. “That’s because of all these characters the King of Ska’s bringing by. He thinks he has some fuckin’ spiritual basis for it, too.”

“Well,” I said, though I had no real place in the argument, “he says the Qur’an only specifically forbids alcohol.”

“That’s fuckin’ bullshit,” Umar snapped back. “That is fucking bullshit. 5:90, man. That shit is fuckin’ as
khamr
as anything else.” Umar always seemed to pronounce Arabic terms with a certain tonal emphasis. I realized what a stupid scene it was, me half-out in the recliner and Umar storming up and down the sidewalk in front of our house. “2:219,” he added for good measure, making me wince with a hard slap to his own tattooed neck. “Is Dawud even Muslim anymore?”

“Sure he is.”

“Mash’Allah,” he replied with sarcastic relief.

“Was Jehangir in there with them?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.” Umar looked at me quizzically, as though confused or even annoyed by my interest. Sometimes I did approach Jehangir Tabari with a sort of childish hero-worship; and while I knew he was no straightedger, hearing of his occasional abstinence gave me a strange comfort.

“I got to get out of here, y‘akhi. I’ll check you later.” While walking back to his truck Umar turned and said “insha’Allah” as an afterthought.

Jehangir Tabari had come from California and would often speak of the Muslim punk scene out there—“taqwacore” as he called it, pointing to various patches on his spiked leather jacket and red plaid DogPile pants as he told stories about the bands. Taqwacore bands ran the gamut in attitude and ideology; there were groups like the Bin Qarmats and the Zaqqums whose lyrics and behavior lurked somewhere between social protest and juvenile disesteem, but also bands such as Bilal’s Boulder that wouldn’t even allow girls into their shows. Some bands had high political content and others veered more toward the aloof Sufi end of the spectrum. Jehangir seemed equally proud of them all, as though nothing in the world could pin him down to an intellectual commitment.

“You should see it, y‘akhi,” he told me once, sitting on the back of his car in a parking lot while we waited for Fasiq to buy rolling papers. “I was at this fuckin’ Mutaweens show in Sacramento and—”

“Who?” I asked.

“The Mutaweens,” he replied, pointing to a sticker on his car. “Great fuckin’ band, I have one of their records up here, you
should check them out. Anyway, I’m at this Mutaweens show and I’m in the pit, getting tossed around n’ whatever, and then the music just
stops—
bam, just like that, it stops and we stop slamming into each other, everything just freezes and all you hear is the singer up there reciting
ar-Rahman
as beautiful as I’d ever heard, and he just keeps going with it—the whole sura, you know, all the
fabi-ayyi ala irabbikuma tukazibans
and shit, and all these hard-ass punks just stand there listening and by the time he’s done, half of us are in fuckin’ tears, bro.”

“Mash’Allah,” I replied gravely.

“Yeah, y’akhi. It’s an amazing scene of people out there.” Sitting on the trunk of his car, I looked down at all the stickers, a few representing bands I’d never heard of. Jehangir had since gotten New York plates for his car, but the stickers still bore witness to his voyage; he had really been out
there,
out
West
; he had stood at the very edge of this continent, soaking in the future of American Islam, and then came out here to share the good news. Actually, I never found out why he had come out here. Once I thought he said it had something to do with his brother, but Jehangir didn’t have any brothers.

“How did you get to Buffalo?” I asked, realizing as soon as I said it that the question had nothing to do with anything.

“The I-90,” he replied.

“The whole way?”

“I actually left from Seattle,” he explained. “I had some friends up there, I drove up for a big show and crashed at their house. You should see their place, y‘akhi—it’s the ultimate taqwacore house. Had a fuckin’ cupola on the side that they used as a minaret. My boy Uthman climbed up on the roof, put a gold fuckin’ crescent right on the top of it. Unbelievable, y’akhi. You should’ve seen that fucker shining in the sun. Made you really feel something, you know? Had a sound-system in there, the whole neighborhood
heard their fuckin’ adhan.” Just then I noticed that faraway gleaming gaze that Jehangir got sometimes, as though he were right in Seattle looking at it. Made me almost feel like
I
could see it, cupola-minaret with sun bouncing off a golden crescent, before Jehangir came back to the world. “But yeah, mash’Allah, I went up to Seattle for a show, had my car all packed, left the next morning. Did you know the I-90’s the longest interstate in the country?”

“No.”

“It is. In fuckin’ Montana there’s spots where it’s not even a divided highway, it’s just a regular road.”

“Really?”

“We should go out West sometime, Yusef Ali. Get a van, make like an interstate jam‘aat. Fuck, if we did it this summer we could stop at the ISNA convention in Chicago.” I laughed at that knowing how taqwacores felt about ISNA scenes, or how such scenes felt about
them.
“Fuckin’ A, Yusef. We should do that. Hit ‘em all, make a tour of it. ISNA, ICNA, CAIR, AMC, MPAC, shit, what else do they have now? We’ll get thrown out of all of ’em. And along the way we’d round up all the queer alims, drunk imams, punk ayatollahs, masochistic muftis, junkie shaykhs, retarded mullahs and gutter-mouthed maulanas we can find, just load up a van ‘til we can’t fit no more and then have guys hangin’ off the side like in Rawal-fuckin’ pindi! Shit, man, down the I-90. And it all ends in Khalifornia.”