The Taqwacores by Michael Knight Page A

‘forget what is and is not Islam.’”
    “Attar?”
    “Farid ud-Din Attar. Conference of the Birds, ever read it?”
    “Can’t say that I have.” Marcos walked towards the door carrying his slices in a large brown paper bag, making sure to hold it straight.
    Lynn called him over.
    “S’up,” he said standing before our booth.
    “Hey Marcos, we just wanted to get a closer look at your ink.” He stiffened his green arms as though to make for easier viewing. “Didn’t you get one on your stomach?” Marcos lifted up his shirt
to reveal a Fisabilillah arched huge below his ribcage.
    “Got that done a month ago,” he explained.
    “Nice, very nice... now Marcos, what would you say to someone who told you that was haram?”
    “I would say fuck off , and then I would say that when my body’s resurrected and Allah asks ‘what’s that?’ I would answer, ‘it’s to glorify Your Name.’ If He wants to throw me in Hell after that, then what kind of Allah did I believe in?”
    “Exactly,” said Lynn.
    “Mash’Allah,” I added.
    “Well Lynn, good seeing you again.” He turned to me. “And I didn’t catch your name—”
    “Yusef Ali,” I replied.
    “Oh, cool. Yusef, I’m Marcos.” We shook hands.
    “Oh I’m sorry,” said Lynn. “I should have taken care of that.”
    “It’s all good,” said Marcos.
    “What’s your good name?” I asked him.
    “Marcos,” he replied.
    “Oh. I mean, you didn’t change it?”
    “No, I didn’t.”
    “That’s cool though.”
    “Yeah. Well, nice meeting you. Lynn, take care.”
    “Later Marcos,” she said.
    “Nice meeting you,” I said. And then he was gone.
    “Good name?” asked Lynn, leaning in on the table. “What the shit is that?”
     
     
    “Why does Rabeya wear the full burqa?” I asked Fasiq while sitting on the roof. Blunt hanging from his lips, he closed up the Qur’an and placed it on his right. Took a hit before replying.

    “What do you mean?”
    “Well, she doesn’t wear it for the notion that it’s sunna, we know that much... and she doesn’t wear it because her family is really strict... and I don’t think she wears it for some Islamo-Feminist gesture... so I don’t know why—” Fasiq interrupted me only with a suddenly active, alert silence that felt as though he would say something. He looked at me and said it.
    “Ever have a day when you didn’t want people looking at you?”
    “Yeah,” I replied, “I guess so. Is that why she wears it?”
    “I don’t know,” he said with a puff and then dramatic exhale. “But that’s why I’d wear it.”
     
     
    “What the shit is this?” boomed Umar, running down the stairs. I was sitting with Rabeya in the living room.
    “What?”
    “This!” he held it up for us.
    “Looks like a Qur’an,” Rabeya replied.
    “Yeah, yeah it is. It’s a Qur‘an. And you know where I found this Qur’an?”
    “The Qur’an Store?”
    “Funny, sister. But no, I found this in the bathroom, sitting right on the sink.”
    “And...”
    “And what’s it doing in there? This is the Word of Allah Subhana Wa Ta’Ala!”
    “Fasiq probably left it there by mistake,” Rabeya replied. “You know he uses the bathroom window to get up on the roof, that’s where he reads Qur’an—”
    “No, that’s where he smokes his ganja!”

    “Yeah but it’s also where he reads. I’m sure it was an accident. He probably climbed in through the window, set the Qur’an on the sink and then forgot about it.”
    “The bathroom is filthy.”
    “This whole house is filthy.”
    “Yeah, yeah you’re right. Back when Mustafa lived here it never could have looked like this.”
    “Back when Mustafa lived here,” Rabeya shot back, “I could never sit in the living room.”
     
     
    Of course, that night all of Jehangir’s kafr cronies filed in and trashed the place as he stood in a corner watching it all go down with a sly satisfaction that only hours ago our house had been a masjid and now it