No True Believers

WE NEVER SEE the world exactly as it is. We see it through whatever lens we choose. I never understood the difference until that sunny Thursday afternoon, the last day of April, when I stood face to face with Mariam in her driveway. In that moment the world became clear in all its stark ugliness. I was losing my best friend. Mariam Muhammad: my soul sister, lifelong neighbor, and general co-conspirator in all things.

My eyes fell to the driveway. It was ridiculous; even the pavement made me want to cry. We’d played hopscotch here. And there was no use spinning it as Oh, she’ll come back to Arlington all the time. We knew better, both of us. Seeing each other from now on would involve passports and expensive airfares, clearances and checkpoints. Also, eight time zones. The truth was that she wasn’t moving. She was fleeing. She and her whole family were now refugees—off to Dubai, the new Promised Land—an escape from Mason Terrace, a cul-de-sac so ridiculously safe and suburban that local real estate sites featured it to prove the entire neighborhood’s safety and suburban-ness.

Comical, if it weren’t so depressingly false.

When I looked up, Mariam was smiling, of course. Mariam the brave. Mariam the good. Cheery in the face of stress and sorrow. I lurched forward to hug her, the bright side of the Salma-Mariam moon. We were a unit in that way: visible yet detached, maybe a bit mysterious (we hoped)? Yes, we’d stay in touch. Through Twitter or WhatsApp or whatever. Even old-fashioned letters! she’d said. Mariam wouldn’t let me slide, even though videoconferencing was illegal in the UAE. Which didn’t help diminish the sudden and intense loneliness. Our moon would be all darkness now.

How am I going to survive the rest of senior year at Franklin without you?

It’s going to be okay, Salma, Mariam whispered in my ear.

I stepped away, wiping my eyes. Can’t you just stay through till the weekend, till the grand fundraiser? I was thinking of raiding the mosque’s funds. Pay off your parents’ mortgage or at least get y’all a ticket for later in the month. I’ve never celebrated an Eid without you.

"Yeah, pretty sure stealing from the masjid won’t go over too well with the Lord of the worlds, she joked, trying to snap me out of my funk. Besides, if you wanted me to stay that badly, you should have hacked into Air Emirates. Gotten us cheaper tickets."

If you only knew, I thought miserably.

Hey, look at it this way. Now you get to spend more time with Amir. Mariam gave my hand a final squeeze. And that brother is way too cute for you to be so sad.

She was right about that, at least.

—

Amir and I began several months ago at one of Vanessa Richman’s legendary Hey, my parents are out of town parties. We were packed in the basement with thirty other kids from Franklin, mostly Vanessa’s friends, though I’d brought a couple of mine: the usual twosome, Lisa and Kerry. Or as they jokingly referred to themselves, Dora and Boots.

Lisa de la Pena happened to be my physical therapist’s daughter, but she had recently become my go-to party pal. Kerry Morrison, a willowy redhead with a Southern cowgirl style, was basically Lisa’s Mariam: like Mariam and me, they were a unit, BFFs since toddlerhood. The self-made Dora the Explorer nickname came in middle school. Apparently Kerry had come up with it after some idiots had bullied Lisa for being Latinx and accused her of being an illegal. (According to Lisa, Kerry was also unafraid to use her cowboy boots for butt-whoopings of bullying idiots, though I’d never seen her be anything but likeably goofy.)

Mariam’s parents had a sixth sense about parties and road trips and generally all things haram—so as far as Mariam was concerned, Vanessa’s place was never an option. But Lisa and Kerry were always game.

Point being: It’s always better to arrive with a posse. And Lisa and Kerry were in fine form that night. Maybe that’s why I was already feeling more comfortable than usual. Plus, after months of hounding, I’d finally convinced Vanessa to screen Fight Club for the obligatory 72-inch surround-sound feature presentation. I’d claimed I had a shameless crush on Edward Norton. Which wasn’t false. (He always looks so lost and vulnerable.) But the secret truth was that I’d wanted to share with Vanessa—a less judgmental friend than Mariam, I admit—this treasure I’d only recently discovered on the more secure chatrooms. Fight Club was the cult classic every hardcore anonymous online activist revered.

As it turned out, Vanessa had been hiding a hidden agenda of her own.

I know a boy who loves that movie as much as you, she’d told me the moment I arrived.

In typical Vanessa fashion, she refused to say who. But I forgot all about this mysterious boy once the movie started. Ten minutes in, the keg suddenly arrived. At first I thought it was a shared aversion to cheap beer; Amir ended up being the only other warm body to remain in the basement. We’d always been a part of the same social scene, the circles of friends that orbited around Vanessa. But I would have never pegged him as a fellow Fight Club fan. He didn’t exactly give off that vibe. He gave off the opposite, in fact—a hippie-hipster musician, with an old-school guitar pick and feather dangling from a slim black cord around his neck. Then again, I, of all people, should have known how deceiving looks could be…and his looks are fine.

I couldn’t help but sneak glances. He kept tucking loose strands of that thick, dark hair behind his ears. And he was definitely a Fight Club fan. He was whispering the lines.

Eventually I stopped paying attention to the movie.

I didn’t care how obvious I was being, staring at him. I couldn’t get over it. I couldn’t believe this boy I’d known but not known was a kindred spirit. But how kindred? Message-wise, the film was timeless. Take the general social commentary and apply it to Snapchat: As outward tastes are being engineered, so, too, our inward bigotries. Bam! Mind blown.

I wanted to test Amir. Test his knowledge. I scooched down the couch, just a tad, to better hear him.

He murmured another line. Perfectly.

I made a point to whisper the next line with him.

He did the same. All of a sudden we were in a quote-for-quote competition. He inched toward me, too. Soon it felt like we weren’t even at Vanessa’s at all, like there wasn’t a party upstairs. I started to laugh.

What’s so funny? he asked me.

That you know every line of this movie.

He turned with a smile and leaned even closer, as if he were letting me in on a secret. It’s not the movie. It’s Edward Norton. I love that guy.

In that moment I was so Amir-struck that I almost forgot that we were speaking. I nodded mutely and stared back into his dark eyes…vulnerable maybe, but not lost. Then we turned back to the screen and sat snuggled against each other like that right up until the crucial scene where the two main characters, Tyler Durden (Norton) and Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter) hold hands and watch their world collapse. You met me at a very strange time in my life, says Tyler Durden.

I turned to Amir. Without warning, he leaned in and kissed me. His long hair tickled my cheek. I pulled away, then leaned back in, returning his kiss, intoxicated. I had no idea how long we’d been making out when Vanessa appeared at the top of the stairs and drunkenly cackled, "Oh my God! I knew it!"

We jumped apart, faces flushed, moment ruined.

Vanessa then proceeded to turn off the lights, which for some reason shut down the massive TV system, too. Amir and I exchanged a few awkward giggles. We fumbled our way out of the darkness, holding hands. I let go only when we reached the kitchen, so I could stop by the sink to splash cold water over my red-hot face. I couldn’t stop smiling. Lisa and Kerry snickered and blew kisses at me from the doorway, and I still couldn’t stop. Then my back pocket buzzed. I assumed it was my parents checking up on me. But when I pulled out my phone, I saw Amir’s face.

My silly smile grew even wider. Vanessa had given him my digits in advance. That figured.

The next time we hung out alone, we made a point not to tell her beforehand.

—

Alone in the driveway now, I reached for my back pocket again. But I couldn’t bring myself to pick up the phone. What could I say that he didn’t already know? Hey, I just lost my best friend to a one-way ticket from Dulles to Dubai because her dad can’t make a living anymore because people hate ‘Mooslims’ and that’s the shitshow we’re living now.

No doubt he would answer with something annoyingly positive.

Amir had friends in the UAE. Online friends, like mine. Fellow musicians. (The tragic difference: I kept my online friends hidden from him, even after we became an official thing.) Amir plays the oud, one of the oldest instruments known to man. Literally: like beginning-of-time old. It’s a Middle Eastern guitar, a cousin to the lute. He would never admit how talented he is, but he first met these friends because of videos he posted—just him playing alone in his room. Naturally the cool people he met led him to believe that the UAE was a cool place: international, open-minded, stress-free. He kept insisting that Mariam was off to greener pastures. I knew he was trying to make me feel better. But I didn’t need gentle reminders of how lucky I was, that we were, that my parents were tenured professors at George Mason and his were comfortably retired…that we had stability. I didn’t give a shit about any of it. I wanted my friend. I refused to put on a happy face because I didn’t have to flee, myself.

How would you act, Amir? If you lost your soul brother, if you had a soul brother?

I took a deep breath and wiped my damp cheeks with my free hand. Definitely best not to call him. Why take it out on him? I shoved my phone in my pocket. No…better to wallow alone in a coma of self-reinforcing misery, and mine craved only one type of company: fresh buttermilk scones.

—

Twenty-three hours later (I’d been counting), I sat in our cushioned bay window, staring out at Mason Terrace. I hadn’t slept much. I hadn’t really moved much, aside from periodic scone binges. Luckily, my sisters and parents were thoughtful enough to leave me alone. All on our street was leafy green and springtime sunny, as it had been yesterday. Yet lifeless. Deserted. Abandoned. I was about to pull out my phone for the millionth time (to do nothing) when I heard a car approaching.

I sat up straight. There was a glint of shiny black metal at the cul-de-sac entrance. My heart jumped.

For a blissful delusional moment, I thought Mariam’s family had come back. A Ramadan miracle? Yeah, right. Stupid me. Funny that this was Friday, May 1. Mayday, mayday, mayday…No, it wasn’t Dr. Muhammad’s beat-up sedan. It was a new pickup truck hauling a trailer, its rear a collage of bumper stickers. I SERVED IRQ. I SERVED AFG. POW-MIA.

Military folk, like a lot of our neighbors.

After a brief pause at Mariam’s mailbox, my new neighbors pulled into the driveway where we’d said goodbye, rolling right over the past and my memories. I felt my breath catch. My fists clenched at my sides. I was itching to see their faces. I wanted to know who these infiltrators were. Okay, yes, I knew that they were simply the owners of a new home. (Mariam’s home.) Her family had sold it; this family had purchased it. Still, I wanted to stop them. The second they opened the front door—a door through which I’d passed nearly every day of my life—the whole thing would be official, irreversible.

What could I do, though?

I blinked a few times at the truck before it disappeared into the detached garage that mirrored our own.

I’d already tried to stop Mariam’s family from leaving. What I’d tried wasn’t crazy or anything. But it wasn’t exactly legal, either.

—

From earliest childhood, I’d spent an excessive amount of time fiddling with computers. As in the actual software on hard drives. It runs in the family; Dad is a professor of computer science. His unofficial job is fixing his department’s IT issues. All of his younger academic colleagues are theoreticians without any practical skills. He loves to joke how his job security is dependent on how backward everything really is. Especially infrastructure. He has a point; the Arlington internet hub—as in the actual machinery that makes it all work—is housed in a crumbling cement building that should have been condemned before I was born. Good thing us old folks know how to repair a toaster oven, he often cracks whenever we drive past it. It’s the first thing you kids will need when your screens go dark. Hardy-har-har. Gallows nerd humor from the Muslim tech guy.

On the other hand, that humor has made him something of a lovable dorky legend at work. So when Mariam first told me how bad it was for her father, I had a hard time believing her.

She rolled her eyes at first. Then she got mad. Salma, his name is Dr. Muhammad Muhammad. It might as well be Dr. Evil-Evil. You’re so naïve!

Never mind that he was the best chiropractor in Northern Virginia. Even my grandmother Titi—convinced that a spoonful of honey and nigella seeds can heal anything—swore by his talent. Nobody listened. The depressing truth about the Muslim community, at least ours, is that it sucks at supporting its own. We’re either trying to cope with our alienation or debating the legality of something ridiculous, like what qualifies as a clean sock. I’m not kidding. Our imam might hold the world’s record for discussing the virtues of doing laundry. Shoes come off for prayer at every mosque, yet somehow we here in Arlington, Virginia, end up with the halal sock police. (Of which Titi is a proud member. So I’m just as guilty of not listening to her sometimes.) All of which is to say that occasionally I’m forced to take matters into my own hands…or fingertips, to be exact.

Anyway, Mariam is naïve, too.

Like most non-nerds, Mariam doesn’t have a clue as to how interconnected we all are. Or that there are people—yes, even some who aren’t Russian villains—who manipulate search engines. There are even some who do it legally, as a job. Yet for some reason we nerds seem to be the only ones who know the truth.

Human beings don’t pay attention to truth or logic. They pay attention to Google searches.

While I couldn’t hide the Muslim heritage of Dr. Muhammad Muhammad, I could up his game by placing his reputation front and center. The downside: I couldn’t tell Mariam, because I had to hijack her router to do so.

In my defense, I’d at least tried to guess her dad’s username and password. (Isn’t it a good thing I can’t read the mind of a suburban chiropractor?) Failure to hack in the old-fashioned way prompted me to cross a line I hadn’t before: I ventured onto the Dark Web. For better or worse, it didn’t take long for me to understand what the benefits were. After I tossed off just a single cursory password-and-username query into this gated netherworld of encrypted networks, a friend appeared to help me: Pulaski88. I was quickly ushered into a chatroom for ethical hacking—a forum for the subversive but righteous—and there, under the handle I’ll never share, we struck up a conversation. It turned out Pulaski88 was exactly who I was looking for, someone who specialized in accessing nearby non-criminal hardware.

Long, redacted story short: after I answered some ridiculous questions (On what planet would you hypothetically live?), Pulaski88 walked me through what I needed to do to take control of Dr. Muhammad’s hard drive—and also warned me of the penalties involved, everything from a class B misdemeanor to a class D felony.

I wasn’t concerned. Pulling it off was the easy part.

Once inside, undetected and glitch-free, I tinkered with Dr. Muhammad’s meta tags, those keywords that make websites more discoverable. From that night on, whenever someone local searched for a back pain specialist, voilà: Dr. Muhammad Muhammad rose to the top. I did feel guilty. What I’d done was black hat, criminal. And worse, I’d kept it from my best friend. But it reinforced that invaluable secret: privacy is an illusion. Easily hacked and easily violated. The next morning I covered my webcam with a postage stamp in case anyone out there wanted to snoop on me. And full disclosure? Mostly I felt a flush of pride. Mariam’s father was briefly the king of the Arlington chiropractors.

My happiest memory from that otherwise grim period was catching him at his phone with a bewildered smile, shaking his head at his sudden rise in internet rankings.

The difficult part? Accepting fate. Boosting his rankings was like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. A futile, pathetic attempt at stemming the inevitable.

SALMA, GET READY. No dawdling. And please wear something nice. Like one of your kaftans.

Ugh. Saturday evening, and instead of going out with friends, I was being dragged to the mosque. During Ramadan. I don’t fast for health reasons, which means that I’ve always struggled with the Ramadan spirit. Mom. Do I have to?

For Titi, dear. It’ll bring her joy.

It’ll bring her joy. Titi is moving in with us. Salma! Can you take the basement and give her your room? It’ll bring her joy. Titi would like to go on a walk. Salma! Can you be her cane? It’ll bring her joy. Salma! Titi needs another prescription refill. Can you run to the pharmacy?

Yes, I’m Titi’s personal assistant. A full-time joy-maker. But you know what? Titi deserves it. And if paradise lies at the foot of a mother, I am quite certain that the key to its highest realm is straight through the heart of a grandmother. So I forced myself out from under the covers, brushed my teeth, and jumped in the shower. After battling with my Queen Bey big curls, I unzipped the hermetically sealed takchita that had been hiding in my closet since last April.

A takchita is like a kaftan on steroids. Mine was a vibrant sea of oranges and reds. It would have been gorgeous on some, no doubt—if you had big boobs and wide hips to fill it in, but that ain’t happening. Besides, I was more of a tunic-with-leggings sort of girl. I preferred something low-key and comfortable. Simple. A double-layered, ankle-length dress is…anything but. This particular takchita consisted of a cotton undergarment hidden by a layer of silk and sequins, dripping with beads: a fountain of femininity tied at the waist with an oppressively thick made-for-a-queen belt.

As I tied it tightly, I reminded myself of Titi’s joy. Then I contemplated the shoes. They matched perfectly with the gown, but those two-inch heels induced palpitations. I, Salma B., utterly lacked the charm and grace of an Oscar-winning actress. Odds were that I would stumble and fall on the mosque’s red carpet. Forget it. No way. Mom appeared once again as I finished lacing my cherry-red Doc Martens—Amir’s favorite.

Really, Salma?

This dress is ridiculously long. No one will see. Then I smiled sweetly. It’ll bring me joy.

She laughed. Touché. Now hurry up.

My family attends the local mosque only a few times a year: for janaza—the funeral service—when someone dies, the two Eids, and a night or two during Ramadan. It was the grand fundraiser and fancy weekend iftar that had us all piled into the minivan and overdressed. When it comes to how my family practices Islam, both of my parents are highly opinionated. Dad is outwardly secular, but as Titi’s original joy-maker, he doesn’t mind going to the mosque a few times a year. It makes her happy. It’s heritage. Mom is outwardly more observant, but inwardly critical. She’s got major qualms with the board of our local mosque. It’s all male and physician dominated, she regularly complains. But she still felt bad for not attending regularly, so going on a night like tonight—holy and charity-oriented—was like double the karmic value.

The funny thing: Mom was born a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant. She grew up not far from where we live now. Her life changed in 1993, the year she received a postdoctoral research grant to study Islamic literature in Tangier. (In her heart she’d dreamed of studying in Tehran—both cities are notorious for producing brilliant authors and poets—but as an American she couldn’t if she’d tried unless she was a spy.) Her love of the Transcendentalists, particularly Ralph Waldo Emerson and his poem Saadi, attracted her to Sufi poetry; her determination to educate herself in a Muslim country brought her to Morocco instead of Iran. By year’s end, she’d met my father. She fell in love with him as she fell in love with Islam. Ever since, she’s been a proud WASM: a white Anglo-Saxon Muslim.

Of course, she claims she’s always been one, her entire life. It just took one step toward Allah for Allah to take two steps toward her.

—

Amir was waiting for us in the parking lot. He was standing in one of the last empty spots, saving it for my family. Parking is tight on holidays, even though our nice neighbors at All Souls Church share their lot with us. They’re Unitarians. (I’m still not sure what that means, but I know they’re very welcoming.) They have amazing signs all over their lawn. I’ve always loved the quotes they display. LOVE RADICALLY. WONDER DAILY.

Amir wore a long tunic, a matching kufi, and pressed khakis. He was a gorgeous slender reed.

Me, I was a carrot in a takchita and Doc Martens. I didn’t care, though. I burst