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.It had happened, he concluded, because the gays were after him.How else to explain the fact that when he was looking for a place to eat he got stuck with a bunch of queers in a gay pride parade in West Village? What else explained the fact that during class orientation, of all the tour guides possible, he had gotten the flaming gay one? Why else would he go into a cafe and see his ex-roommate sitting with his legs crossed, being all faggoty with his faggot-fuck buddy? All these homosexuals were surely sent as a sign to remind Moosa Farid how much of a Muslim he was; how unlike Manhattan he was.And the more Moosa talked about homosexuals, the more Muslim I felt too.As soon as we settled into our room, he started grilling me about Islam.“Do you eat halal?” he asked, “or are you wack?”“I eat halal.”“Real halal? As in slaughtered in the Islamic way? Or just so-called halal, when you say bismillah over the meat like wack Muslims?”“Real halal,” I said, suddenly wary of this “wack” category that inspired so much animus in my roommate.“Are you a player?” he asked.“Are you going to have girls here?”“No girls.That would be wack,” I said, testing to see if I had picked up the lingo correctly.“Good.” He nodded approvingly.“Tell me: are you going to join the Muslim Students Association?”“Of course I am.Are you? Or are you wack?”He laughed at the competitiveness filling the air.“I already know where the next MSA meeting is.Do you?”“No,” I conceded, realizing that he had won.“How often do you pray?” he asked.“I pray all five times,” I said aggressively, though it was completely untrue.“Me too,” he said, nodding.“Let me ask you: do you shake hands with women?”At first I thought it was a trick question.Didn’t all human beings shake hands with each other? Certainly I’d shaken hands with people all my life.Then I realized that Moosa wouldn’t have posed the question unless the answer was no.“Come on!” I said, taking on an incredulous expression.“I’m not wack!”“Me neither,” Moosa said.“Touching women you aren’t married to is haram.”“I agree.”“Do you lower your gaze?” he asked, continuing the inquisition.I had no idea what he meant.Was this a code phrase that good Muslims used to identify the wack ones?“What do you mean?”“You don’t know?”I shook my head.“The Quran says that you shouldn’t look at women you’re not married to.If you happen to glance at one, it should be only one look.So when you catch yourself looking at an attractive woman more than once…”“…you lower your gaze,” I concluded, putting it together.“I get it now.”“Right.If you don’t lower your gaze, you’ll go to hell.I’m surprised that you didn’t know that.Haven’t you ever seen that T-shirt that some of the sisters wear? On the front of the shirt it says, ‘I know I’m hot,’ and on the back it says, ‘So lower your gaze because hell is hotter.’”I shook my head.“Never seen those.But that’s creative.”“Yeah.I saw one last year.I was looking at a pair of breasts in a mosque, and the shirt really put everything in perspective.Like, what is looking at a hot girl with mangolike D-cups when the punishment for looking at them is an eternity in hellfire? Fi nari jahannum.”“I’ll keep my gaze to the ground.”“I’m just looking out for your afterlife, brother!”Once we’d established that we disliked homosexuals, weren’t wack, and indeed executed Islam perfectly, we struck out to try to socialize with people.I suggested that we meet up with a Pakistani girl named Kyla I’d been chatting with on AOL; she was also on campus as a freshman.I figured this would be safe since she was Pakistani, and all the Pakistanis I knew were good Muslims—in other words, not wack.We made an appointment to meet Kyla at the student center near the security guards.As we got approached we could see her waiting.“That a pretty short skirt she’s got on,” Moosa said, turning to me.“That’s pretty immodest!”I immediately regretted setting up the meeting.“Let’s go back,” I said in a concerned voice.“Can’t.I think she’s seen us.”Sure enough, Kyla waved and came toward us.She was the height of wackness.Low-cut blouse.Lots of cleavage.She kissed cheeks when she greeted.She took my wrist and pulled me close for a hug that I couldn’t prevent.Moosa was more adept: he avoided her sin-trap by backing away and saluting from a distance.He never did come any closer.Kyla said she was delighted to meet other Pakistanis.When I’d made the appointment with her I had been too, but now my enthusiasm was dead.I was worried that Moosa would impute her wackness onto me.She kept trying to talk to me, but I gave her monosyllabic answers.Anxiety about what Moosa thought about me skittered around in my head until Kyla got irritated from my terse responses and stomped off.When Moosa and I were alone, I wanted to say something to let him know that I didn’t approve of her lifestyle and wouldn’t try to hang out with her again.However, to say that I would ignore her because she was immodest wouldn’t quite work, because that would suggest that I’d noticed her (lack of) clothing, which would mean that I paid attention to immodest women—and only wack Muslims did things like that.“She’s ugly,” I declared.It was just as effective.I soon got an opportunity to redeem myself in Moosa’s eyes.A Jamaican guy we knew came over to the dorm when he heard that Moosa had a DVD burner.He brought a bag full of discs with him.“I’ll make you a business deal,” he offered, scattering his stuff on my bed.“I’ll give you a dollar for each one you burn, and if you want to burn an extra copy for yourself, that’s fine too.I have two hundred blanks on me.”“You just want me to burn them?” asked Moosa.“Yup.”“What do you do with all these movies anyway?” I asked.“I’m a distributor,” he said.“I sell them.”The deal was struck immediately and the guy left.“That’s a sweet deal,” I noted as Moosa popped the first DVD in and the computer started whirring.“I wonder if he has a copy of The Rock with Sean Connery.”“Let’s see if he has Executive Decision,” Moosa suggested.“It has a Muslim in the story line, although like always they make us look evil.”Suddenly the film came onscreen and Moosa let out a massive yelp.“Shit! It’s porn!” he exclaimed, clinging to the wall as if he’d been shot.“Are you serious?”I leaned over the monitor: sure enough, there was a gorgeous black-haired girl giving a blow job.Up and down, up and down.Her hair was so black it was purple.Up and down.The actress was stunning.Part of me thought that if Moosa was so scandalized, he should leave the room so that I could enjoy the goods.Rather than expressing what I really thought, I pulled back from the screen and took on a serious air, twisting my face into a disgusted sneer [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]