Read Online American Dervish: A Novel by Ayad Akhtar - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Ayad Akhtar
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never be closed, because they were the gates that led to the Lord.
“Somebody just said they were closed. I walk through them as I please,” she added.
“But since when is that for you to decide?” Mother asked, surprised.
(I was surprised myself that Mother even knew what ijtihad was.)
“Who else can decide, Muneer?” Mina said with passion. “Some mullah from a thousand years ago? When we’re told that the Quran says we are not equal to men, is it true? The Quran’s laws are more progressive than what the Arabs had before Islam. That was the intention. To move things forward, to create more freedom. How can the rule matter when it is not true to the deeper intention?”
“So they shouldn’t be able to marry four wives?”
Mina considered, a smile slowly appearing on her lips: “Or we should be able to marry four men…”
“God forbid!” Mother exclaimed with a laugh. “One is enough!”
Perhaps it was her belief in her purity of intent that made Mina think she could enroll herself in a training program for beauty salon technicians and somehow remain unsullied by the cosmetic ruses of white women. How else to explain what she was thinking when she decided to make her living here in America by learning the very outward wiles so at odds with the feminine modesty central to our Islamic faith? But perhaps it was precisely in the contradiction where the appeal lay. After all, here Mina was, now living in a world where a woman’s life was truly nothing like the life she’d known. What did it mean? What was it like to be a woman in America? What were the sorts of thoughts that passed through the minds of the large-boned, blonde, and blue-eyed Amazons she saw driving their children to tennis lessons and soccer practice; who wandered the malls, their arms covered with shopping bags; who shuffled along the grocery aisles, pushing carts filled to overflow? Mina must have wondered. And perhaps it was at the local grocery—where she and Mother went weekly—while standing in line and taking in the spectacle of white women with their intriguing and unfamiliar frozen dinners, deli cheeses, Hostess snack cakes, and the forbidden bottles of wine and beer in different shades of brown and green (and of course, the shocking cuts of pork, pink like human flesh); perhaps it was there that Mina first noticed the selection of magazines showing American beauties with impossibly wide smiles, their hairstyles gorgeously tousled by the breeze of freedom that seemed to blow across every glossy cover. For it was from those photo-thick fashion journals— Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar and Cosmopolitan —that Mina would get the idea of becoming a beauty salon professional.
But if it had truly been her intention simply to learn the beauty secrets without using them on herself, she would fail miserably. Within weeks of starting her education, the habitual Pakistani garb—the loosely fitting shalwar pants, kameez tunics, and dupatta head coverings—gave way to not-so-loose-fitting blouses and jeans. She had to dress appropriately for school, she explained to Mother, an excuse that only forecast further innovations in her appearance. Now she started to let her new friends at the Institute for Women & Beauty—a storefront school at the local mall—make her up not only with lipstick and blush, but mascara, foundation, and eye shadow. And even if she usually wiped all the “face paint” off before coming home, leaving only the vaguest traces for us to discern, there were a few times she hazarded the full-frontal display, stepping into the kitchen, her eyes wide with defiance. Thinking back, I can only imagine that in moments like these, Mina was casting herself as the testing adolescent, and Mother as her parent. But if Mina expected resistance, Mother gave her none. She loved the fact that Mina was exploring. Likely, it was this very permission Mina had been seeking for much of her life.
Barely two months into her training,
“Somebody just said they were closed. I walk through them as I please,” she added.
“But since when is that for you to decide?” Mother asked, surprised.
(I was surprised myself that Mother even knew what ijtihad was.)
“Who else can decide, Muneer?” Mina said with passion. “Some mullah from a thousand years ago? When we’re told that the Quran says we are not equal to men, is it true? The Quran’s laws are more progressive than what the Arabs had before Islam. That was the intention. To move things forward, to create more freedom. How can the rule matter when it is not true to the deeper intention?”
“So they shouldn’t be able to marry four wives?”
Mina considered, a smile slowly appearing on her lips: “Or we should be able to marry four men…”
“God forbid!” Mother exclaimed with a laugh. “One is enough!”
Perhaps it was her belief in her purity of intent that made Mina think she could enroll herself in a training program for beauty salon technicians and somehow remain unsullied by the cosmetic ruses of white women. How else to explain what she was thinking when she decided to make her living here in America by learning the very outward wiles so at odds with the feminine modesty central to our Islamic faith? But perhaps it was precisely in the contradiction where the appeal lay. After all, here Mina was, now living in a world where a woman’s life was truly nothing like the life she’d known. What did it mean? What was it like to be a woman in America? What were the sorts of thoughts that passed through the minds of the large-boned, blonde, and blue-eyed Amazons she saw driving their children to tennis lessons and soccer practice; who wandered the malls, their arms covered with shopping bags; who shuffled along the grocery aisles, pushing carts filled to overflow? Mina must have wondered. And perhaps it was at the local grocery—where she and Mother went weekly—while standing in line and taking in the spectacle of white women with their intriguing and unfamiliar frozen dinners, deli cheeses, Hostess snack cakes, and the forbidden bottles of wine and beer in different shades of brown and green (and of course, the shocking cuts of pork, pink like human flesh); perhaps it was there that Mina first noticed the selection of magazines showing American beauties with impossibly wide smiles, their hairstyles gorgeously tousled by the breeze of freedom that seemed to blow across every glossy cover. For it was from those photo-thick fashion journals— Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar and Cosmopolitan —that Mina would get the idea of becoming a beauty salon professional.
But if it had truly been her intention simply to learn the beauty secrets without using them on herself, she would fail miserably. Within weeks of starting her education, the habitual Pakistani garb—the loosely fitting shalwar pants, kameez tunics, and dupatta head coverings—gave way to not-so-loose-fitting blouses and jeans. She had to dress appropriately for school, she explained to Mother, an excuse that only forecast further innovations in her appearance. Now she started to let her new friends at the Institute for Women & Beauty—a storefront school at the local mall—make her up not only with lipstick and blush, but mascara, foundation, and eye shadow. And even if she usually wiped all the “face paint” off before coming home, leaving only the vaguest traces for us to discern, there were a few times she hazarded the full-frontal display, stepping into the kitchen, her eyes wide with defiance. Thinking back, I can only imagine that in moments like these, Mina was casting herself as the testing adolescent, and Mother as her parent. But if Mina expected resistance, Mother gave her none. She loved the fact that Mina was exploring. Likely, it was this very permission Mina had been seeking for much of her life.
Barely two months into her training,
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