Read Online Good Muslim Boy by Osamah Sami - Free Book Online

said I loved the Ayatollah,
it would prove I had religious affiliations and expose our thuggy costumes as a terrible
front. If I said I hated the Ayatollah, he could hand us to the authorities for a
lengthy punishment.
    ‘Get out of my shop,’ concluded Mr X, gesturing to the exit with as much force and
finality as a cricket umpire.
    A real thug would’ve known how to respond to this scenario. As for me and Musty,
we never learned the correct response. We tried schemes like this one time and time
again, with various alcohol vendors—there were many men like Mr X. But they always
chose not to deal with such unconvincing clients, who could always be gathering intel
for the Piety Police. The punishment for selling alcohol was either jail or death.

Beware the Monkerat
    Calling them the ‘Piety Police’ may sound like a diminutive term, but there was a
Persian proverb that duly applied to these people: ‘Don’t scoff at chilli, so puny
and small—gorge a handful and your balls will fall.’
    They were better known as the Monkerat, which literally means ‘against vice’. They
worked undercover, and had a talent for smashing people’s teeth—in or out, it was
up to them. They landed precise punches.
    They were different to regular police. They only executed religious warrants. Beardless
men were slapped around, as were young ladies who left the house with but a strand
of hair poking out from under their hijabs. As for beardless men like me who tried
to chat up girls like these? We made the perfect public punching bags for the Monkerat.
    The Monkerat shaved their beards to blend in with the sinners. They popped their
top two shirt buttons, wore silver chains like me. They slicked back their hair and
hung around noteworthy hotspots of sin. They chewed gum far too indolently, spat
on the sidewalk to look ‘hard’. They even used their prayer beads like genuine street
rats did, spinning them in circles round their index fingers while they smoked cigarettes
hands-free.
    They were very good at what they did, always three moves ahead. Of course, we all
spent countless hours trying to make them. We analysed gum-chewing techniques, comparing
the styles of thugs to those of the average man on the street: thugs chewed like
camels, while the average person chewed gum like a cow. A novice Monkerat would ham
his chewing and show too much tongue. But that was when they were novices; they got
real good, real quick.
    They also spat their phlegm differently. A real spitter with no agenda wouldn’t care
where their chunky throat soup might land; a rookie Monkerat would hesitate, look
around, lest he accidentally dirty a freshly painted wall.
    Following this logic, I one day saw a thug spit on a wall that had a slogan from
the Ayatollah sprawled across it in official font. A Monkerat would never go as far
as blasphemy—that would be like a cop taking real heroin, which doesn’t happen, most
of the time. I sauntered up to him to get the goss about an alcohol vendor.
    ‘Sup,’ I said, bouncing up and down like a gangster.
    ‘Fuck off,’ the thug replied.
    ‘Take it easy, bro,’ I said.
    ‘You with the pigs? They send you?’ He looked me up and down. Lately, the Monkerat
had been hiring kids younger than me.
    ‘No, swear to God.’
    ‘Swear on your father’s eyes,’ he said. ‘Say, “May he go blind if I’m lying.”’
    ‘May my dad go blind if I’m a cop rat,’ I said solemnly. ‘Now can you please tell
me who’s selling some liquid around here?’
    ‘What sorta liquid?’
    ‘You know. Get high.’
    ‘Alcohol?’ he said.
    My face turned pale. A real thug would never use that word. I inspected his attire
again, as casually as I could, trying to pick out a glitch, and suddenly there it
was: he was wearing black business socks beneath his basketball shoes.
    I shook my head and addressed him formally. I was very close to having a very real
problem. ‘What alcohol?’ I spat. ‘Damn you and your evil mind! This is