Free American Dervish: A Novel by Ayad Akhtar Page A

brightening our lives, she was from the same world as my parents. And confident as she claimed to be in Allah’s ultimate goodwill toward humanity, I think she fully expected things to turn against her in the end.
     
    It was late December. After my lesson with Mina one evening, I spent another few hours at my desk with the Quran. By midnight, I was in bed. But I wasn’t sleeping. I stared up into the darkness as I quietly cycled new verses on my lips:
     
Have We not opened your heart
And removed your burden?
Have We not remembered you?
Truly, with hardship comes ease,
With hardship comes ease!
     
    I heard something in the hall. I stopped and listened. It was something like a voice. I got out of bed and stepped to my door, quietly pulling it open. A thin sliver of light bled through the partly open doorway of the bathroom down the hall.
    Someone must have left the light on, I thought.
    I stepped out and made my way to the door. As I reached my hand to the knob, I heard a sigh from inside. I stopped and pressed my eye to the crack. In the mirror, Mina stood, naked. Her breasts hung, smooth and ample and round, tipped with large dark nipples. Her skin gleamed a taut, pale brown. I had never seen anything so perfect as her naked body, its swelling at the chest and hips, the tapering between and down along her legs. My heart stirred. Something inside me was already burning.
    Her eyes were closed, her left hand pushed in between her legs. She moaned softly to herself, her right hand touching her right nipple. She moaned softly again, continuing to rub her hand between her legs, more intensely now as her lips parted and she seemed to disappear inside herself. And then, all at once, her body tensed. She pulled her hand away to reveal a dark triangle between her legs. I was shocked. And then I realized:
    She was looking at me.
    Abruptly, she brought her right arm across her breasts and cupped her left hand over the darkness between her legs. Then she kicked the door shut.
    I went back to my room and listened. A door opened. Another shut farther down the hall. I was in turmoil. I tried to sleep, and then I finally did. I tossed and turned through the night, the verses I’d learned echoing in my mind, the perfect form of Mina’s naked body—and that shocking darkness at the top of her legs—haunting my dreams.
    Had it not been for the awkwardness at breakfast the following morning, I might well have wondered if I hadn’t dreamt the whole thing. But when I saw her sit at the table and attend coldly to her breakfast without even a look in my direction, my shame erupted—viscous, punishing. And her arctic reply to my sole attempt at bridging the sudden gulf between us—I asked her if she wanted me to pass her the salt for her eggs—sent a shudder of remorse through me.
    After breakfast, she disappeared into her room. I followed her upstairs, but she wouldn’t let me in. I was desperate. “I’m sorry, Auntie,” I said, crying. She held the door barely cracked, just enough for me to see one eye and part of her mouth as she whispered back with a damning hush: “Hayat. We are not to talk about that. Don’t ever mention it again. To me. Or anyone else.” She paused, easing the door open just a crack wider to pin me with a silvered, watery gaze.
    And then she shut the door in my face.

5
    Love at First Sight
    I t was a silent, despairing winter that followed my discovery of Mina in the bathroom. Her cooling toward me lasted weeks, and then months; her fatigue from long, late hours at work was now the excuse she used for avoiding our Quranic study hour. Whatever time we did spend together was not the same, troubled now by a discomfort whose source we both knew too well. I wished it had never happened. I prayed to God to wipe the memory of that night from both our minds. And prayer wasn’t the only magical thinking to which I resorted. After reading an article in one of Mina’s magazines about how we created what happened to