Free The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf by Mohja Kahf Page B

frivolity and the forgetfulness of God. Instead of music, they listened to tapes of melodious Quranic recital and nasheeds-songs with voice only, no musical instruments whose permissibility was questionable. Songs in male voices celebrating the Islamic resistance movement of Syria on cassette-Abu Mazen crooning sadly for Muslims to "awake at last from their long night, and make again the world right" and Abu Rateb lamenting the suffering soul in prison:
    Like a candle, like a candle burning in the night crying, melting itself down to its heart of light.
    Nonetheless, Khadra's father kept a small stash of Um Kulsoum and Fayruz and Abdo and Nazem cassettes.
    "From my jahiliya days," he confessed, "my time of ignorance, before I woke up to Islamic consciousness."
    "Why don't you throw them away?" Khadra's mother said.
    But he couldn't bring himself to put them in the trash. In moments of weakness he would still turn them on and put his hands to his forehead and go "Ah, ah" in delight, and dance with arms outstretched, in spite of himself. For in song lies the mystery of Being. Even Ebtehaj had been known to smile at moments like these and sway in Wajdy's open arms, in spite of herself.

    I was a hidden treasure, and I loved to be known.
    -attributed to God in a Hadith Qudsi
    Zuhura's henna was to be held in the community room of the Fallen Timbers Townhouse Complex. An engagement party was womenonly, of course. So they could remove their headscarves and coverups at the door and enjoy an evening dressed as they were within the home, with their hair out and their bodies as attractively clothed as they wished. However, an obstacle to this was discovered the morning of the party: there were no drapes on the large picture windows of the community room. To solve this problem, Uncle Yusuf bought plastic tablecloths-Aunt Ayesha made him get them in colors that coordinated with the decorations. Khadra, Hanifa, Hakim, and Eyad worked to tape them up on the glass. Hanifa switched on the radio while they worked and Kool and the Gang sang "Ladies' Night" Then the Commodores came on.

    "My grandmother's a cousin of one of the Commodores," Hanifa boasted.
    "Nuh uh," Khadra challenged.
    "Yeah huh, she is too. She's Lionel Ritchie's cousin. He grew up right in her hometown, Tuskegee, Alabama. She's known him since he was a baby."
    After which Khadra ran home to get dressed.
    She was thrilled when Ebtehaj seated her at her own dresser mirror, where she made up her face every day before Wajdy got home. Then he'd lift her hand to his lips and say, "Thank God for the blessing of Islam!" Little compacts of make-up and circles of blue eye shadow and small plush jewelry cases stood in neat rows. The kohl came in a brass vial with a filigreed stopper. It had been a gift from her own mother, who had died when Ebtehaj was fifteen.
    "Like this," her mother said, sliding the metal applicator into the vial. It came out with a fine dusting of kohl. "Khadra, what are you doing?" Ebtehaj giggled. Her daughter was blinking rapidly and trying to roll her eyes backward into their whites. "You don't have to do that to put on kohl, Doora."
    Khadra basked in her mother calling her by her baby nickname.
    "Just-here, you hold the kohl rod-now slide it through so it touches the rim of your eye. There."
    She looked at herself in the mirror. She saw a magical creature, something from the stars, a Princess Leia.
    "And what about earrings?" Ebtehaj said, stepping back and surveying her handiwork.

    "Gold hoops," TEta, who'd been overseeing, said. And stepping up, she opened her palm and supplied them.
    "TEta! They're perfect!" Khadra cried when she put them on, turning her head to see in the mirror. Time to move up from turquoise babygirl studs!
    Hanifa wore gold hoops too, and a long poly-orlon dress like Khadra's, with bottom ruffles and yoke ruffles and eyelet and rickrack, only she filled out her dress more-she was already wearing a bra. The Haqiqat sisters, Insaf and