The Taqwacores by Michael Knight Page B

was a riot, as though real salvation hinged on having a little taste of everything. Then Jehangir reached the point of drunkenness at which he could talk about nothing but Allah, his tragic failures as a mumin and the promise that within the next twenty American years or so Islam would blossom into something that you could not witness anywhere else in the world.
    Some guy put Billy Bragg on the stereo: “Joe DiMaggio’s Done it Again.” Jehangir threw his spiked-leather-jacket-arm around me and hung off my body for support. He wore red plaid pants. Seemed like he always had them on.
    “Listen Yusef Ali,” he said. “My grandmother used to talk about DiMaggio all the fuckin’ time. She hated the Yankees, did you know that? She only fuckin’ hated the Yankees because her dad liked ’em, so it was like they would give each other a hard time about it. You know what I mean? If the Yankees won or lost, one would tease the other. Father-daughter bonding.”
    “I see.”

    “So then her boys in turn liked the Yankees, and gave her a hard time when they won.”
    “And then you, the next generation—you hated the Yankees, right?”
    “My dad died before he could really get that ingrained in me.”
    “Oh. I’m sorry.”
    “Eh, so it goes. I grew up in a house full of women.”
    “I remember you telling me that.”
    “It worked out, I think. It all works out.” He turned his head at a girl walking by. “Gave me something, I think,” he whispered to me with such disgusting alcohol-breath I could smell it through my ear.
    “Did you ever get with Fatima?” I asked.
    “Funny you should mention that. Fuck, I need to sit down.” We went over to an empty spot on the couch that Fasiq used as a bed. Surrounded by noise and dozens of autonomous conversations and blaring Billy Bragg, he told me the story. “Listen, Yusef. I had her up in my room, right? And we’re making out and whatever, and I go for her tits. And that’s cool, she’s cool. So I’m messing around with her tits but over the shirt. So then I think, ‘well, might as well go under the shirt.’ So I’m under the shirt, over the bra. Then I figure I can free the tits up completely so I yank one out of the bra and then the other and she’s totally good to go. I pull up the shirt, I’m suckin’ on her tits and whatever, and after that what can I do? Might as well go down for the crown. I put my hands between her legs—over the jeans, of course—and I can fuckin’ feel the warm moisture, bro! Even through the fuckin’ jeans. She’s liking it so I go to unbutton her jeans and she puts her hand over mine and I’m thinking fuck, that’s it. And she just looks at me and you know what she says?”
    “What?”
    “She says, ‘sorry if this is a dumb question, but if you were to,
to...’ and she couldn’t even get the words out so I’m like ‘finger you?’ and she goes ‘yeah... would that break the hymen?’”
    “Wow,” I replied, not knowing how else to react.
    “Yeah, bro. I couldn’t believe it. So I told her that most girls lose their hymens years before that’s even an issue. And she had no idea! I was like, shit, you can lose your hymen when you’re eight years old riding a bike. She looked at me like I just blew her mind.”
    “Don’t they teach you all that in health class?”
    “Yeah, absolutely. That’s where I heard all that, like in seventh grade. But her mom kept her out of that shit, wrote a note to the teacher saying to send Fatima to another room once they hit Sex Ed. So the girl had no clue, here I was a scumbag guy trying to get in her pants and I had to tell her shit about her own body that she didn’t even know.”
    “So what happened after that?” I asked.
    “What can you do, after that?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Fuckin’... what can you do, after that? This girl was scared I would break her hymen. Jesus, man. If we did shit I would have felt like a child molester or something.”
    I looked around the