Free The Taqwacores by Michael Knight Page B

spray-painted flag and Imam Rabeya. Umar gave the iqamah. With a look down at his feet right of mine I wondered why in all his anal sunna he would pray behind a woman. Jehangir stood on my left. On Umar’s right stood Amazing Ayyub. On Jehangir’s left was Fasiq Abasa. On Ayyub’s right stood Rude Dawud.
    “Allahu Akbar,” said Rabeya, hands to covered ears. Then came a brief silence, followed by Fatiha and al-Kauthar, shortest sura in the whole Qur’an. It’s about a pond or river in Paradise where Muhammad’s supposedly going to meet all of us. As she recited I was sure Amazing Ayyub had a store of hadiths about it
from his Muslim death book.
    I almost forgot: sallallaho alayhe wa salaam .
    After completion of the fard, Umar shuffled back to a corner of the room and did two sunna rakats. Jehangir just let himself lean back until he was lying down with feet to the qiblah. Everybody else got up except Rabeya, who sat in silent du’a, and me, who just kind of sat. I thought about a few things, thought about nothing, looked over at Jehangir, looked back at Umar, looked at Rabeya, looked at Albert getting up from the couch to go back upstairs with Rude Dawud, looked at Amazing Ayyub when he said he had to piss and Fasiq Abasa when he walked towards the kitchen.
    Umar ran his hands over his face, stood up and left the living room. Rabeya got up after awhile, leaving me still sitting and Jehangir flat on his back staring at the ceiling.
    “Do you think I should call Lynn?” I asked without looking at him.
    “Why shouldn’t you call her?” he replied, still looking to the ceiling.
    “I don’t know.”
    “See what she wants.”
    “Okay.” I stood up and left him there. Went to my room, looked up her number in my planner—never knew her well enough to memorize it.
    “Hello?”
    “Lynn?”
    “Hey.”
    “It’s Yusef Ali.”
    “Oh hey, what’s up?”
    “Nothing much, I just heard that you came through today and said to call you—”
    “Oh yeah, I was just wondering how you did on your finals.”
    “I think I did pretty good, actually.”

    “Cool, cool. I could have done better than I did, but I’m just glad to be done with it for a few months.”
    “Yeah, definitely.”
    “So are you guys still having jumaa over there at the house?”
    “Yep.”
    “Cool... I think I might make an appearance one of these days.”
    “Really?” I asked with overexcitement.
    “Yeah, I haven’t been to a jumaa in forever... not going to go back to my old masjid anytime soon.”
    “I hear that.”
    “So I guess I’ll see you... this Friday?”
    “Insha’Allah,” I replied.
    “Cool... talk to you later.” Did I have a jumaa date?
     
     
    Jehangir Tabari had a way with girls. Sometimes the deen even helped his efforts. He could get a girl alone, run his usual game with spirited tone and raised eyebrows—“you know, Prophet Muhammad said that when a man and woman are alone together, Shaytan is the third present but I never understood that... to me, Allah has put all of us here to learn from one another and grow with one another, and to avoid an entire gender like that just seems to be limiting your growth and almost—no, definitely—denying one of Allah’s favors...” and more often than not he had it. I never doubted Jehangir’s sincerity—he honestly, deeply meant every word he said—but I must confess he knew such monologues would win him sexual attention.
    His Islamic angle seemed to work best with kafr girls because they usually did not know enough about the religion or culture to feel anything but intrigue and sympathy for his struggles. Muslim
girls were generally no fun anyways, he explained, programmed from birth to have no sexual impulses. Rabeya supported his thinking.
    “I spent my whole life hearing that it was my job not to tempt men,” she told me at the kitchen table. “If you ask Muslim women why they cover up, ninety-nine percent of them will say it’s to avoid arousing men. Fuck